Let's start this anniversary year with a playthrough of the first Final Fantasy spin-off that I played:
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was my first contact with the world of Ivalice and the reality is that I didn't become too invested in it, I was groaning when it was announced that FFXII took place there too. Thankfully my angsty teenager years wore off and now I can appreciate it better. So let's start!
We start with what seems to be the preparations to snowball fight. Sadly, we don't know the team selection criteria but there are complaints already. Hey, that's what I always say when playing Overwatch, so I can emphatize.
I understand the opponents trying to tilt the opposing team but the first guy is in Mewt's team, that's not how you're supposed to win. From class conflict to school bullying, Final Fantasy Tactics always touches upon real world problems, what a wonderful series.
So the protagonist, also called for now the blonde dude with a scarf, steps to defend the bullied kid from those little pricks. According to the dialogue it seems we're playing with a silent protagonist, but these dudes also think it's something they can make jokes about. Being a silent protagonist is a difficult way of life and you just can't get away with mocking it, these guys are going to suffer if I can do something about that.
Attacking girls too, some people just don't have respect for anyone. Thankfully Ritz wants the fight to start already and solves the matchmaking problems with a simple switch. Switch? Does someone have said switch? Final Fantasy Tactics Switch confirmed, you heard it here first!
Finally the naming screen. This was going to be some kind of serious playthrough but it would be so boring without some childish name changing. Imagine all the sentences with double meanings! Look at all those symbols I'm not using, I must confess that I felt the temptation of using some but NoFunGuy is enough for now.
It seems the protagonist isn't silent or just not very talkative; or he wasn't allowed to talk until someone said his name. I remember that stupid game in school where if two people said the same thing at the same time one could say frozen to the other and then the other one wouldn't be allowed to talk until some other person said its name. If that person talked before, the punishment was a punch.
So there was a teacher there all along. Teacher sanctioned bullying is the best bullying. Anyways, what kind of school activity is a snowball fight?
That last question is immediately answered in the game's first tutorial. Snowball fights in this place are treated like volleyball, which means that it has more rules than it seems at first, so I suppose they're using it to teach team coordination and competitive behaviour like shit talking the opponents and underperforming teammates.
This tutorial teaches us the turn order and movement in battles. Not too fun but it's better than not knowing what to do when the enemies have more dangerous attacks later. The teacher and Ritz get crazy and start talking about abstract things like a
speed stat or a
B button while explaining how to play.
Is this some kind of madhouse? And this is how the tutorial ends, time to put the rules in practice.
The snowballs only do 1 point of damage, thankfully. Imagine all the kids in the infirmary after physical education class. The teacher also gives the most important battle tip in the game: try to hit enemies from behind. As in every single strategy game ever you want to maximize you chances to hit, so you don't spend a turn with a dumb face while being at the mercy of the enemies.
Even after the proper fight the bullying continues. This time the teacher isn't there so the naughty kids can step up in their aggresive behaviour. I can't wait for the tide to turn.
And another secret surfaces: Ritz's hair color isn't natural and not just anime coloration. The kid that looks like he was dressed in a garbage dump thinks he can talk bad about someone else's uncommon hair color.
I forgot again that there was a teacher there all along. I suppose this game has a pretty scathing commentary about the passiveness of many teachers towards school bullying. And people say Final Fantasy Tactics is the game with a deeper story, they don't know at all.
"Staring at the ceiling, I suppose. Why do you ask?"
Mewt's going to buy a totally mysterious book about monsters and magic because he's the biggest nerd. Even though NoFunGuy has other compromises he thinks about meeting with them at his house with his brother Doned. Doned seems to have some health problems and has to go to the hospital often. Ritz can't come up with any good excuses to skip it so she has to act nice and come along later too.
Mewt's father is another total loser and he also has to hear that from his friend. This situation is so sad that it's actually funny. At least the father seems nice, so Mewt shouldn't complain too much.
Ouch, more deceased parents. Next, please.
So here we meet NoFunGuy's brother Doned and he also likes to tease him, sounds like the typical brother.
NoFunGuy friends finally come with the mysterious book written in a unreadable language. It's also pretty spoilerific as it shows all the races of Ivalice. It should be banned!
Latin, in my Final Fantasy? No, I can't believe it for a second, it must be something else. As if someone would do that, pffft.
Doned doesn't waste any time and takes advantage of every single moment he can to annoy NoFunGuy. Maybe it's revenge for all the boring things he does.
Be careful what you wish for, Mewt. Ritz isn't too thrilled about the idea, she seems to think that all books are like the Yellow Pages. Totally wrong, of course, there are exciting books out there like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray.
He would like to be in Final Fantasy without number, so I suppose that's the first one. Which job would he choose? Fighter, with his interesting press A/X fighting style? Monk? THIEF? Or some of the interesting jobs like the colored mages? Would he choose to live in an
ironman run where everyone is a hammer wielding robe user? The possibilities are endless.
Time to leave for our new friends and hit the bed!
As soon as midnight arrives all the town transforms into some kind of middle eastern magical land. Our protagonist also changes clothes. I wonder what kind of adventures await.
NoFunGuy seems confused about where he is. No wonder why, but I bet we will know about that soon.
Uh, oh, NoFunGuy doesn't start his adventures in the best way. He hits accidentally a big lizard man and then calls him "lizard". That was excessively mean.
Thankfully, some kind of winged rabbit thing appears to save the day. He looks like one of the creatures from the book, just like that lizard.
It doesn't matter how many times you apologize, because as soon as you cross your eyes with another
trainer fighter an
engagement starts.
This is the first real battle in the game and I don't really know if you can lose it, but I wouldn't even dare to experiment to know that after that long intro.
Poor NoFunGuy, every single person in this game mocks him, even this inoffensive rabbit.
Oh boy, my favorite feature from this game, the law system! It basically prevents the player from doing certain actions in battle at the risk of getting your party members sent to jail for a few battles. The best thing is that as the game progresses these laws get more stupid and there can be three at the same time! It surely sounds like fun...
After all the explanations our heroes can finally start beating the crap out of those annoying lizards. Remember that tip about positioning from before? NoFunGuy does and starts the battle backstabbing one of his foes. Meanwhile, the moogle has some tricks under his sleeve: black magic. Yeah, unlike every other game set in Ivalice this game's magic doesn't have that k added at the end. Well, spells usually do damage in a tile and the adjacent ones. Unlike in FFT, spells don't have charge time so they're immediately casted like in most Final Fantasy games.
These new attacks do real numbers unlike the snowballs and the first Bangaa gets KO'd fast. Every KO gives the person who did the killing blow a judge point, which can be spent in battle to do certain powerful skills.
...
Here comes the first victim of this place's totally crazy law system. Even though he was a jerk he didn't deserve that fate, I'll avenge you!
NoFunGuy discovers the truth of this world. No wonder he wants to return home, those laws would drive anyone mad.
Before finally explaining a bit from where does he come, NoFunGuy doesn't lose the opportunity of trying to piss another one of these exotic animals.
In this world Final Fantasy XII is a computer game and it wasn't in development hell forever because it released in 2003. A true fantasy based on fantasy.
Despite all the nonsensical stuff that NoFunGuy said, Montblanc offers his help and the first thing he does is...
Bringing him to a tavern! This moogle certainly knows how to make friends. Even there NoFunGuy has to spoil the moment wanting to leave already. It's a bit understandable after watching the wacky law system but he could at least endure until the truly nasty laws start appearing.
Montblanc is just asking for trouble. Let's see with what name can I come up.
The premade name is kinda terrible. Good thing I'm here to solve that.
NoFunGuy can't stop thinking about returning home so he chose that. He's also a fan of FF6 so there's that. I just hope this clan is better than that bunch of good for nothings that disappeared from the game's narrative in the middle of the game.
For some reason you can place Ivalice's landmarks yourself. Doing it in certain ways leads to getting some nice treasures. This new town, Sprohm, is the one with the prison. And with this tutorial done we can finally customize our party.
This game makes the return of the job system after a gap of eight years (Final Fantasy X-2 was released a month later) since Final Fantasy Tactics. Not much changed since then, with the basic formula of learning skills in certain jobs and then using them after switching being still there. The most significant change is that this game uses FF9 way of learning skills from equipment. That has its cons as often the characters will have to equip not so good weapons to learn the skills that they want and certain abilities associated with certain rare equipment will be hard to learn. Once the skill has been mastered it can be used by any other job and obviously the same job without equipping those items. The job selection also depends on the race of the character, so different ones have access to unique job options. Females humans often count as Vieras, though.
These guys are the premade members of the clan. I didn't like having two soldiers so Douglas changed to an archer, Louize changed from Archer to Fencer to get some Viera exclusive jobs, and Zenelly and Watoo stayed in their base jobs. I suppose I will explain more about the different jobs/races in the next update.
Well, this was enough Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for now. I hope the next post is shorter, so until next time!
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