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Gripe about What You're Playing 2: Bellyache-tric Boogaloo

Final Fantasy Tactics is not only bastard hard but bastard tedious. Restarting fights umpteen times so I can get just the right config of jobs, abilities, and gear to finish this or that battle is not my idea of a good time. It forces me into min-maxing (or something adjacent to that), which is anathema to how I play most games.
 
Heh, yeah it does have its fair share of difficulty spikes. It's also not really the most well tuned game, considering the many infamous battles and exploits. I think what it excels best at is being a tinkerbox RPG, giving you many ways to develop your characters. The story is also decently enjoyable as a political conspiracy thriller, even if the way it resolves is rather blah imo.
 
I think for the west at least much of Final Fantasy Tactics' appreciation is a case of being in the right place at the right time for a lot of strategy RPG fans. It was both our introduction to Fire Emblem style SRPGs and the job system in Final Fantasy right as Final Fantasy was at its high point if cultural relevance.
 
I managed to overcome the fight I was stuck on (the first fight at the end of Chapter 2, the second fight was a breeze) by simply reloading the fight until one of the enemies decided not to turn my main attacker into stone, and then the other enemies conveniently decided to configure themselves in such a way that Agrias was able to wreak havoc. No real changes on my part; just resetting until the RNG worked in my favor.

It's so clown shoes I almost respect it. Oddly reminds me of FF Mystic Quest, where the opening enemy RNG can just fuck you into a game over and you have to retry immediately.

Also, some of these "rescue/protect the NPC!" missions would be fun if the NPC wasn't brain dead. *stares at Orran*
 
4-So said:
Also, some of these "rescue/protect the NPC!" missions would be fun if the NPC wasn't brain dead. *stares at Orran*
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You'd think with how powerful Time Stop is, Orran wouldn't be so difficult to protect sometimes.
 
4-So said:
Final Fantasy Tactics is not only bastard hard but bastard tedious. Restarting fights umpteen times so I can get just the right config of jobs, abilities, and gear to finish this or that battle is not my idea of a good time. It forces me into min-maxing (or something adjacent to that), which is anathema to how I play most games.
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Two questions (for this item):
1. Can I make a suggesion?
2. If I did would you consider it?

4-So said:
Also, some of these "rescue/protect the NPC!" missions would be fun if the NPC wasn't brain dead. *stares at Orran*
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Are you playing the Chronicles version?
 
1. Sure.
2. Sure.
3. I am play the Ivalice Chronicles version, so the "remaster" with fast forward, new UI, etc.
 
For FFT you don't really need to try to maximize things as much as possible. Good enough is all you really need.

4-So said:
Also, some of these "rescue/protect the NPC!" missions would be fun if the NPC wasn't brain dead. *stares at Orran*
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I thought the Chronicles version had a fix for this but then I remembered that only applies to Guest characters. So you still have to try to protect characters with no sense of self-preservation.
 
Playing Stories Untold. I liked Story 1 and 2 but found part 3 50% inscrutable to me with some code stuff I didn't understand at all and even the stuff I did like the more code felt like a slog to work through. Basically most of this was me going to the walkthrough and just writing what it said because half the time I didn't even know where to begin.
 
Got as far as the fight in Riovanes with Wiegraf/Belias and I think I might be done with this game. Absolutely Infuriating.
 
That is the pinnacle of bullshit in the game. If you can surpass that then I think it's really all downhill from there.
 
I think I see a clear strategy. A few in fact, but they all require me to exit completely and grind up jobs to get things like Dual Wield, Bahamut, some of the Geomancer's stuff, etc. etc. The throughput just isn't there with my current team.
 
4-So said:
I think I see a clear strategy. A few in fact, but they all require me to exit completely and grind up jobs to get things like Dual Wield, Bahamut, some of the Geomancer's stuff, etc. etc. The throughput just isn't there with my current team.
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Are you playing in the mode that has difficulty settings? I certainly wouldn't blame anyone for turning that down for those fights.
 
Johnny Unusual said:
Playing Stories Untold. I liked Story 1 and 2 but found part 3 50% inscrutable to me with some code stuff I didn't understand at all and even the stuff I did like the more code felt like a slog to work through. Basically most of this was me going to the walkthrough and just writing what it said because half the time I didn't even know where to begin.
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That was my favorite part of the whole thing. The inscrutability is the whole point of it, really. Well, that and a general love letter to numbers stations and microfiche viewers. And I suppose not being somewhat familiar with both of those would hurt it a lot.

The general idea is here you are, with SOMETHING going down, clearly some large scale serious stuff is going on, you are PROBABLY doing something to help by just acting as a relay in some incredibly obfuscated classified system that's need to know and you don't need to know, plus getting weird glimpses of ominous shapes in the background, and being nervous about both whether you're doing your tasks correctly and if doing them is even what you should be doing.

This is, of course, before the 4th story comes along and recontextualizes everything from the first 3 into quite possibly the single most infuriating plot twist I have ever encountered in any media that would have destroyed all my good will for the game if not for the fact that the game mostly just gets by on vibes and a look and I mean, it still has those at least.
 
Purple said:
That was my favorite part of the whole thing. The inscrutability is the whole point of it, really. Well, that and a general love letter to numbers stations and microfiche viewers. And I suppose not being somewhat familiar with both of those would hurt it a lot.
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I mean, I got some of it but it took me 10 minutes to figure out things when the level started so just spend most of the time going back and forth between the microfiche and the monitor and having no idea what was wanted of me after one guy said "don't worry, even a stupid idiot could do this". I eventually started to get it. Then I got to the phonetic alphabet and could not make heads or tails of it and the part with the code variables completely lost me. If Hack/Slash taught me anything, stuff that involves typing in computer code and understanding the language of that loses me very fast. So most of the time I was just going through the walkthrough and by then I was completely checked out of the story. Which is a shame because usually there's no way to get me on board faster than isolated station in the frozen wastes with a crackling radio.
 
4-So said:
Got as far as the fight in Riovanes with Wiegraf/Belias and I think I might be done with this game. Absolutely Infuriating.
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Does your Ramza have Scream? Or whatever the ability is called (maybe shout or cheer? I forgot), that ups his stats every time it is used? I think I made it through this, by running away for a lot of turns, either healing myself with potions, or using that ability. At some point, I got three turns for every turn Wiegraf got. You can then use that part of the fight to buff yourself as much as you want, for the second part.
 
Yell/Scream is the absolute most broken tool in FFT's toolbox. That particular trap of a fight is the one place you should feel no guilt in abusing he hell out of it yeah.

Scream you don't get until act 4, which is the one that brings all your stats up, yell just does speed, but... that is Sufficient.
 
Yep, the speed buff is essentially the "universal" solution to that duel. And it does carry over to the main fight, making that part hilariously anticlimactic (so long as you don't get your Ramza killed, lol).
 
I managed to get it but I did not use the speed buff. I left the fight entirely, unlocked Ninja, and dual wield was enough for the first part. My Ramza was in critical status but alive nonetheless. I then sacrified Ramza by killing two of the adds - for whatever reason, Ramza got two turns back to back - and then I used the rest of the team to sort of "bait" Belias and the other add around the battlefield. But the key part was just RNG and the fact that for one time out of literally 50 attempts or so, Belias did not open with Cyclops and instead opted to melee Ramza for his first attack. That was enough for my white mage to reach Ramza and rez him after a turn or two, while my archer and Agrias just tried to stay out of range. In the end, only the archer was left alive and a hail-mary standard attack killed Belias. The only real change in my strategy (aside from Ninja Ramza) was that I substituted my summoner for a geomancer. Otherwise, it was the same setup that failed me so many times before.

I'm in Chapter 4 now.
 
Man, it is such bullshit that you have to have collected not only all the 120 regular stars, not only the 120 green stars, and not only all the comet medals, but also collect 9,999 starbits to unlock the final star in Super Mario Galaxy 2. Come on, man. I'm playing on touchscreen. I have to grind out like 7,000 medals to just start attempting that last level. Ugh

EDIT: Grinded out the stupid starbits and then beat it after 54 minutes of tries lmao
 
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Playing Dark Souls for the first time in over a decade, and I have to say that I am glad that bonfire warping is unlocked at the start in every other game From has made that is either a Dark Souls sequel or a different game that is still just Demon Souls with a coat of paint. Getting stuck in BlightTown with a fire weapon, in which the area boss is very resistant to fire, is awful!

It is strange how so many of the early bosses are demons that are strong against fire. A lot of the big bosses later are weak against fire, including Demon Firesage(!), but in the first quarter of the game you are boned if you started with pyromancy or trudged through the Catacombs to make a fire weapon like I did.
 
Fire weapons kind of suck but pyromancy is pretty great in that one since you just buy better scaling for it. Screw being smart.
 
I could not go to sleep until I got out of BlightTown, reinforced a different, non-fire weapon, came back and beat the boss with it.

My plan now is to get the Covetous Serpent Ring in Sen’s Fortress, after which I will finally defeat the Black Knights l’ve been leaving alone and pray the increased drop rate will give me at least one of their sweet, sweet weapons. My very first time through the game had me net a Black Knights Halberd, carrying me right until the end.
 
Until Dawn seems to have a gameplay loop of wandering around looking for collectables between on-rails QTE segments, and I wish it was just the latter.
 
Just ignore the totems. You'll never find them all, they're annoying to look for, and what they give you is entirely useless anyway.
 
JBear said:
Just ignore the totems. You'll never find them all, they're annoying to look for, and what they give you is entirely useless anyway.
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That's probably for the best. I don't really want to do the multiple playthroughs thing with this one which I'd need to do if I wanted to 100% it.
 
I mean, I'd hard counter-recommend that regardless. Games like this always fare terribly across multiple playthroughs, where you're essentially pulling back the curtain and examining how heavily the narrative leaned on the illusion of choice. Much better to stay seated in the theatre and be wowed by the spectacle.
 
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