Kicking off my year will be a play through of Final Fantasy Tactics, commemorating the games 20th Anniversary. After some help from Aeana, Dark Schala, and others, I have the PSP version up on custom firmware to aid with screenshots. I also installed patches to remove spell slowdown, and get rid of the screen stretching (the original game was 4:3 ratio, but I believe they stretched it to fit the PSPs widescreen ration).
While I am not doing a speed run, I do plan on moving through the game rather briskly in terms of playtime (time taken in real life might be a different story). As such, some ground rules:
1) Im not going to do the end game optional dungeon
2) I may do some of the side quests (some are fun), but probably not everything.
3) I will make use of God mode
in the later part of the game
4) Im not bothering to steal the Genji gear, and will generally cheese some of the later levels where height can be exploited.
5) A bit of JP grinding is OK, but Im not going to go crazy on the random battles
While this is an old game I guess I should mention:
****THIS WALKTHROUGH WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS****
I will try to keep from giving a play by play of the entire story (which is worth experiencing), but I will be making some general comments. I'll try to keep most of my writing focused on the actual gameplay and mechanics.
I plan on writing my play through with the assumption that people reading know nothing about the game. Hopefully those who do still find it interesting. I don't claim to be a top level FFT expert!
So let's start. Oh, and to get into the spirit of the thread, heres a status banner Ill use for my playthrough:
TUTORIAL LEVEL
This was my old nemesis from the very first time I played Final Fantasy Tactics (1998).
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I died on this level the first time I played the game. I have no idea how I managed to do so. It should have been easier to die in real life from boredom. You basically learn to move, rotate the screen and attack. You can only control Ramza, and therefore spend 10 minutes watching the computer beat the level for you, getting in 2-3 hits before its all over.
Speaking of Ramza, while I always keep his canonical name, I set his birthday to my own (March 6th). I dont know why, its sort of a habit at this point. Ramza is actually my favourite Final Fantasy lead protagonist. He's the son of a famous Knight, and spends the entire game sticking up for friends and family, and generally doing what he feels is right. He's not moody, dense, or hyperactive like many of his counterparts in the numbered games.
Ramza's best friend is Delita. Delita is a common born son of members of Ramza's father's court. The opening cutscene for the game informs you that Delita becomes a major historical figure, while Ramza is forgotten and excommunicated. You spend 40-70 hours figuring out why.
BATTLE 1: Gariland
Heres my party selection going into the first battle.
I like to start with two chemists and two squires in addition to Ramza, choosing a male and a female of each for some nice balance. While I dont play the game often enough to confirm it, Im pretty sure names and bravery/faith levels are random on each playthrough. If you don't like the units you get, you can buy/recruit new generic ones after this battle.
I try to grab units with decently high bravery stats. If possible, I also try for high faith stats on the chemists. If you are new to FF Tactics, Bravery affects how often reflexive skills trigger (those will show up later), as well as the damage of some classes (like the Monk I believe). Outside of a couple instances (some of the tavern missions), higher is usually better. If your bravery is too low, your units can turn into chickens (and even leave the game out of cowardice if it gets to 5 or less). Faith affects spell damage/healing and how much damage/healing you take from spells. As it goes up, both increase. If your characters get to be too faithful, they can leave the game to become religious zealots. You get warnings before that or the cowardice criteria come into play though. Also, theres several ways to raise and lower these stats later in the game.
So the first actual battle is straight forward. You need to kill some ruffians, and surprise, surprise, their group also consists of squires and chemists! This fight is easy. Your squires and Ramza attack. Your chemists heal with potions if needed. Otherwise, they can attack as well. Your best bro Delita will do his own thing.
And thats that!
Check your noble privilege Ramza! Most of these no deceased bandits probably turned to crime because they were sick of going hungry to fund your Dad's warring, and didn't want to die on a flea-ridden mattress on the dirt floor of some hovel without a gil to their name.
With that battle out of the way, let's take a closer look at my party. These will be my main squad mates before the cool special units invite me to sit at the popular kids' table (at that point, I'll just send them on tavern missions).
Here's Ramza:
My general character progression strategy for Ramza is to make him into a superhero. Eventually, he'll be able to attack twice, scale tall buildings in a single leap, and many other cool feats.
The Squires:
Angelet and Dawson will be my physical units in the first portion of the game. Some maps will only allow me to take 4 units instead of the usual 5. In those instances, I will probably leave one behind.
The Chemists:
Dalmas and Frideswide (that's a mouthful) will be my magical units. To get into the spirit of the sexist 90s, Dalmas will focus on attacking magic to start, while Frideswide will be my healer. OK, the real reason for this is that I dislike the way female black mages look, but female white mages are super cute. Much better than their goofy male counterparts anyhow:
Speaking of attacking magic, it looks like Dalmas can class change already. I'm going to slip him into those Black Mage robes before the second battle:
When you change jobs, make sure you learn some skills (I had to reset when I got to the battle screen and realized my awesome black mage had no magic...)
Black Mages are ranged AOE spell casters. Magic in Final Fantasy Tactics is very powerful, but comes with a turn delay as you perform the spell. Depending on the spell and your character attributes, this can be anywhere from 1 to over 10 turns. As such, make sure you check the turn roster before deciding to cast magic. A well placed black mage spell can hit up to 5 enemy units (in reality, 2-3 is more likely due to spacing). However, you can also hit your own units, so you need to avoid wiping your team to hit one baddie.
BATTLE 2: Mandalia Plain
Before we get to the actual battle, we are treated to a cutscene. Being a JRPG we should conclude that Ramza's same sex parent is either dead, or will be dead shortly. This is confirmed in a mood setting father deathbed flashback!
Once you finish reminiscing about dear departed dad, it's onto the second battle. And look what we have here. More bandits. And this time they have a hostage!
You sometimes get dialogue choices that can affect the battle objective for the map, as well as lead to bravery bonuses (or penalties in once instance I believe). If I chose to save Argath, it will be game over if he dies in the battle:
Overall, this map is also easy. If you choose to save Argath, make sure to keep him healed. He doesn't really value his own life, and will try to fight 1 against 4 instead of retreating towards your units.
This map introduces us to our first monster enemy (a panther in this case). Monster enemies can be some of the most annoying foes in the game. Especially on the random battle maps which scale to the level of Ramza. We will see more of them later.
For now, keep Argath out of trouble and take down anyone with a blade. You'll notice that the enemy forces will start to include advanced units. If you have a black mage by this point, magic comes in handy for getting out of reach enemies. If not, just attack, and keep your health up via potions from your cleric.
After the battle, Argath will introduce himself. Spoiler alert: He's a douchebag.
Like most douchebags, he thinks he's a superstar even though we're a bunch of 15 year olds.
Ramza's big bro thinks otherwise
There's a lot of cutscene set up surrounding the first couple of maps. You find out that Ramza has two older brothers and a younger sister. Your buddy Delita also has a younger sister (every JRPG hero needs one). Said sisters are color coded for your convenience. Beoulves are blond, and Delita's sister is brunette
And no European renaissance period analog is complete without a little class discrimination:
Now that all the cutscenes are out of the way, let's take an initial look at the job system:
Your characters can learn active attacks/magic, reflexive skills, and passive skills by taking on a job (class) and earning JP by completing actions in battle. As you earn JP, you will also level up your current job. All jobs have levels from 1 to 8. As you level up a job, you will earn more JP for your actions. Advanced jobs are unlocked by meeting the level requirements of pre-requisite jobs. For instance, I was able to change my cleric to a black mage because my cleric reached job level 2. Job levels are separate from character levels.
If you are playing this game for the first time, keep this handy:
With that, you can plan your character progression based on the jobs you want to unlock. I suppose it is possible in theory that some players will wish to discover new jobs through happy accidents, but those people are crazy. Look at the requirements for the Dark Knight class (new to the War of the Lions version). No one is discovering that by accident, unless they are playing for hundreds of hours. Since you can switch jobs on the fly outside of battles, there's no harm in experimenting!
The job system wouldn't be nearly as fun if you could only use the skills of your current job. Every character can equip that active skills/magic of one class (in addition to their current class which your can't unequip).
On top of that, you can equip one reflexive skill (performed when an enemy attacks), one passive skill, and one movement based passive skill (which typically changes your move or jump stat, allowing you to navigate certain terrain easier).
For now, I am going to keep Ramza and my physical characters as Squires, even though some of them can move to advance classes. There are several squire skills that are worth learning, and will make the beginning section of the game easier. In fact, I would recommend that even the magic based characters spend some time as squires to obtain these skills. Luckily, in addition to earning JP towards your current class by performing actions in battle, all other characters receive 1/3 the value of JP earned by their teammates. Having a bunch of squires early on will make it easier to get these useful skills.
Let's take a look at some I would recommend:
Above is a list of squire active skills for Ramza. Ramza is actually a special squire unit, so he will get some unique skills in later chapters of the game. For now, the most important skill on this list is focus.
Focus: Focus allows you to boost your base attack by +1 during battle. You can keep doing this each turn for further boosts. What makes focus essential is that you earn exp and JP by casting it. There's typically 1-2 "dead turns" at the start of a map as you get into position and move towards the enemy. This allows you to earn much needed JP while making these turns, and you also have the added bonus of hitting harder when you actually reach the baddies.
Throw Stone is also somewhat useful in the early game, as it gives your physical unit a weak ranged attack, but that isn't a priority.
Above are the passive skills for the squire. Most classes will include a passive skill that lets you equip a weapon type that another class cannot natively use. For now, all you care about is JP boost.
JP Boost: Self explanatory. When this passive skill is equipped, you will earn more JP. This will be super useful for character progression in the early game, when you are trying to unlock classes and get specific abilities.
Squires also have a movement skill that boosts their movement range by 1. You can probably figure out why this is useful. Later you will get better movement skills, but it is good for early game.
-END PART 1-
Thanks for reading the long first installment of my playthrough if you made it this far. As I naturally get through the basics of the game in the first few maps, I will probably move through the maps quicker. Foundation is important though!