Escapism To Its Logical Extreme: Let's Play Final Fantasy Tactics Advance!

Gotten used to the snow in St. Ivalice yet, Marche? It's much warmer where you're from, isn't it?

Yes, sir. It never snowed. This is practically my first snowball fight...

Well is it or isn't it?

Really? Then let me give you some pointers. Ritz, could you help us out?

Yes, Mr. Leslaie.



Once your turn comes around, first you have to "move." You can only a set distance, so think first, then move.


When the menu isn't up, press the B BUTTON to see your move range.

You can redo a move as many times as you want! Ready to move?


This just gives me the hilarious mental image of a group of schoolchildren having a snowball fight, but then suddenly one kid is like "hold up! I actually wanted to run over there!" and every kid stops and retraces their steps for about 5 seconds. It's also sorta contradictory to the "think before you move" statement 2 screens prior. But whatever.

Also, this is another example of how FFT and FFTA are different. In FFTA, You aren't forced to commit to a move you regret. Some may say that this ruins some of the strategy, but I disagree.



Choose "Snowball" from the "Action" menu.

The green colored panels show your throwing range. Now choose where you want to aim within that range!

If no one from the other team is in range, just "wait."

You see, this at least makes sense in terms of a snowball fight. "If you don't see anyone to hit, wait until you do." The whole bureaucracy over when one can actually throw this snowball is another thing, though.

Waiting makes your next turn come around quicker.



Once you've thrown, you have to schoose a "facing." Once you've chosen a facing, your turn ends.

They're really throwing all the TRPG syntax out in one go here.



And in case you didn't get it, the nice owl is willing to repeat the lesson to you.

The first thing we are given the reigns of is Ritz, who is the fastest child on the field.



And she swats Colin with a snowball for a damage.



And then everybody gangs up on Mewt, who has the least HP of anyone on the field.

The enemy team always does this. If you have everyone on your team attack Mewt, and you abuse savestates have REALLY good luck, for Mewt to die. HUmorously enough, the last blow is dealt by Ritz, who was defending him 5 seconds ago.




It's easier to hit someone from the side or behind. Think about which way your opponent's facing when you move.



With that knowledge in tow, Marche snowballs Lyle in the side of the head.



And on the other side of the coin, Colin sidesteps Mel's point blank frontal assault.



Mewt gets struck again, but this time the bastard actually fights back!



And Ritz demonstrates what critical hits are like in FFTA. they (usually) do extra damage and push the enemy in the direction of assault. As we can see, Lyle got knocked off his snow fort. Little snot deserves it, too. Even completely disregarding him being a dick to Mewt; who goes on top of the snow fort? You're supposed to hide behind them!



But that's what Mewt does best! Hah hah!

♪Confusion♪



What? We're not breaking any rules!

Sure! You've been aiming at Mewt this whole time!

Are you OK, Mewt?

Yeah... I'm fine.

See? He says he's fine, so what's the problem?

He knows you'd pick on him worse if he said anything else!



Mewt, your forehead is bleeding!

Huh...?

There was a rock in that snowball!

It's Mewt's fault for being so lame!

He's an easy target, and we've gotta get points, right?

I was not aware there was a point system in turn-based snowball fighting.

So the end justifies the means? You guys are horrible!

And here we get a philosophy lesson from a 7th grader.

Whatever you say, whitey locks!

What did you call me?!

OH NO HE DIDN'T

We know you dye your hair 'cause it's really all white!

Yeah, just like an old grandma! Prissy little grandma!

Step over here and say that again!



And Cliffhanger!

Well, moreso my internet being wonky right now. I'll have the rest up tomorrow next week very soon. Not even I trust myself enough to slap a proper due date on something.

Man, those kids are dicks. If this was like REAL Final Fantasy Tactics, you'd be able to stab them with a sword.

Oh well, guess it's just 40 hours of snowball fights for us...

I love how this game starts. The atmosphere of the intro, the depcition of St. Ivalice, and the snowball fight tutorial is inspired.

I do love when characterization figures into AI like this.

god this lp is making me regret losing all my gba games a few years ago even more.

Well, that's what emulators are for.

Incidentally, FFTA is one of the few Final Fantasy games for which there's no known strategy for breaking the game that doesn't involve a lot of grinding. (You can, of course, break the game if you're prepared to grind in unusual ways early; if you repeat a bunch of counterintuitive actions in order to unlock specific missions and then do them again and again, you can get Steal: Ability very near the start of the game, which sort-of unbalances the whole game from then on. It probably isn't worth it if going for speed, though.)

I've done that. It's rather tedious to do and unlocks more tedium (hidden items) but it pretty much destroys any challenge until later in the game. It becomes more challenging to try and maximize the gains from that strategy. At first that strategy only helps Humans and Moogles but you can use it to get things to help the other races.

Yeah, my point is that breaking the game isn't particularly interesting if you do it via a load of grinding, and at that point, you may as well just play the intended way. (I do approve of game-breaking that doesn't require repetitive actions, though. Just FFTA seems rather short on that, which is unusual among FF games. About the only tricks along those lines I know is repeatedly casting Slow on bosses so that they never get a turn; most of them are vulnerable to it. And manipulating the laws during boss fights against multiple enemies, because only one of them can have a law ribbon.)

I don't think I ever used that first trick (because of the nerfs to that spell and its opposite). I think that second trick is almost as tedious and repetitive as the early trick.

I think I did that Steal:Ability thing or something just like it, as knowing there are rare things to steal that I can't have bothers me.

The trick I remember is the one where you fill up your roster early on, but only level up a handful of units, in order to drag your average level (and thus the level of your enemies) way below the level of the guys you're using.

And then its all down hill from there?

Moved to Abandoned