But if you abused bugs then you could defeat Wiegraf as a frog:
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Revier's Chronicles of Ivalice - Final Fantasy Tactics (Complete!)
- Thread starter Second Duke Revier
- Start date
Lol.
Also fair note to everyone following along, I'm doing four separate playthroughs through Chapter 4. This is because I found that the sidequests give enormous amounts of XP and JP, to say nothing of the powerful equipment and characters offered to the player. They completely break the difficulty of the game, imo. I shall be doing one playthrough on the PS1 and PSP version each without the sidequests, and one playthrough with. Stay tuned!
Also fair note to everyone following along, I'm doing four separate playthroughs through Chapter 4. This is because I found that the sidequests give enormous amounts of XP and JP, to say nothing of the powerful equipment and characters offered to the player. They completely break the difficulty of the game, imo. I shall be doing one playthrough on the PS1 and PSP version each without the sidequests, and one playthrough with. Stay tuned!
The fourth and final act of this game begins with Revier and Malak discussing the church's potential motivations for acquiring the stones. They reason that the church could perhaps have its interests in seeing the two factions grind themselves down, making the existing nobility lose their power and legitimacy, and opening up a space for them to step in and seize power. Yet, the stones having demonic power, or potentially demonic power, at any rate, cast some serious wrinkles into their plan. It was far more likely that the church itself was being played by the cabal, who had motivations more sinister, as most of them were demons in disguise.
Revier finally decides to try and speak with Delita, as he's in the cabal's employ, and thus would be better informed of their true motives - assuming, of course, that he himself wasn't being used by them and being intentionally kept in the dark.
We then cut to Orlandu and his son-in-law Olan. True to his word, they have been trying to investigate the cabal to try and foil their plot. Unfortunately, their efforts so far have been unsuccessful, as their spies kept getting caught whenever they tried infiltrating close enough to obtain new info. Orlandu also reveals that he himself is in possession of a stone, so they're bound to come for him sooner or later! And when that happens, he vows that there will be "true war". Damn.
The dawn of a new act means the introduction of some new shiny items, including rings that protect against instant death and grant reraise, meaning the character gets to revive automatically after their death! It's certainly quite powerful, but at the moment I choose instead to improve Revier's equipment, as he was back to being a full fledged dragoon!
I also turned the archer into a chemist, as his bows were starting to fall behind, and he hadn't got an upgrade in a long time! Besides, new and exciting items showed up in the stores, including hi-ethers and x-potions! Certainly would be nice to use those!
The fight at the pass had Revier's squad face off against Goltana's border guards. The dragoons were a bit concerning, but on the whole the fight was tense without ever truly getting out of hand. A nice change of pace from Act 3's ending fights!
Bervenia had them face off against a mysterious lady who wanted revenge for the deceased cabal leader, as he was her brother.
However, she started within the vicinity of my spellcasters, and poorly guarded herself, making her pretty laughable. Bye miss!
I also got a bracer. a humongous stat booster granting as much as 3 additional physical attack! This made Revier quite deadly, with his regular spear stabs now hitting for 143 damage!The fight at the river was a bit tricky, thanks to the red chocobos knowing a decently powerful skill that ignored evasion and had a fair amount of range, but they were quite frail in turn, and were easily dispatched by both Revier and the black mage!
At Zeltennia, the capital of Goltana's faction, Revier finally gets to talk with Delita. He confirms that indeed the church does want to grind down the power of the two factions by making them exhaust themselves in the civil war, then assassinating their leaders and inciting further revolts, paving the way for their rule. Revier pointedly asks him why he's working for the church, and Delita claims that he isn't, before threatening Revier and also reassuring him that he's "working for the same goal", despite all evidence to the contrary. The awkward conversation is cut by a commotion outside, as the inquisitor from earlier arrives again with a considerable force!
This leads to a strange, largely non threatening fight where he started in vicinity of Delita's sword skills, and oracles casted all kinds of goofy status effects on the team. The oracle was a gimmicky class that relied heavily on status effects, and on punching things with poles. Poles were essentially some sort of magical spears, having attack power on par with swords and doing fairly good damage as a result. However, these oracles didn't elect to use them, and as such, with Delita on our side, the fight wasn't very difficult. I took advantage of this and finished the monk's training, getting enough skillpoints to unlock Counter.
After the fight, they discuss uncovering and foiling the church's plot, and another mysterious lady, this time one sent by the church itself, saunters in. She informs that Dycedarg's forces have already begun moving to besiege Goltana's main border fort at Bethla. Delita not so subtly cues Revier to hurry up and intervene, and she berates him for being such a schemer. Lol.
And that does it for this session! The fights were overall a bit goofy for my liking, but the first battle was still tense in a good way, and there was some decent variety to them. It's also nice for the game to remember the civil war side of things, even though Delita remains untrustworthy and the fact that he seems to get no repercussions from playing literally everyone on every side is more than a little weird. See you next time!
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This is a rather annoying example of devs saying "No fun allowed." You can't use knockback on the inquisitor (Zalmo) so you can't shove him off the tower for a quick and easy win.the inquisitor from earlier arrives again with a considerable force!
Heh, are there even any reliable ways of knocking people back a space? Sure would be funny to be able to do that, lol. Sadly, as far as I can tell, this game doesn't have anything like Tactics Ogre's shield bash, which did a tiny bit of damage, but had good odds of shoving its target backwards. It just happens at random on crits.
The Dash and Throw Stone abilities from the Squire class have a 50% chance of causing knockback. (This also applies to a couple of monster abilities.) That's still not all that reliable but it's the best you can get.
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This addendum shall take a look at the sidequests, or rather the first of them, as I am curious in them. I looked up how to initiate them with a guide, and it was pretty simple - head to Goug, hometown of the archeologist Mustadio, then to Goland, where the bar gives news of monsters capturing the local mine. This then leads to a scene in Lesalia's bar, where Revier eagerly volunteers to free the mine, and a mysterious knight offers to accompany him.
This leads to a series of bizarre fights against chemists, thieves and behemoths. The experience and skill points from random encounters had added up enough to let Revier unlock full horizontal jumps; you can see how glorious the end results look!
The monk had also finished training himself up, and was qualified to become a samurai, but given how pricey its katanas were, I chose to instead make him travel down the defensive mage path and become an oracle instead. Like I mentioned earlier, this is a rather gimmicky class that casts status effects and thwacks things at a two tile range with poles. Poles were actually fairly decent at damage though, having as much power as swords, and the paralysis spell was actually quite effective, nailing its targets more often than not. It was quite fun to go around rendering enemies useless in one stroke, and Chakra meant that he could do it as often as he liked!
I stumbled onto a rather interesting quandary on the second map, as the chemist there had the first magical gun I'd seen, and it hit pretty hard to boot! The problem is, none on my team had learnt how to steal weapons! I pondered this problem for a while, and eventually figured out a pretty easy solution - get enough skillpoints to unlock the final defensive mage class, the Mediator, and unlock its persuasion ability to persuade the chemist to join.
This was accomplished by intentionally delaying the first map, and then switching him over to a Mediator for the second. The initial skillpoints were more than enough to acquire the persuasion ability, as it was a pretty cheap one, and as you can see, persuading units didn't require much fussing about. As a bonus, the Mediator also got to wield guns!
Actually the Mediator was a fairly interesting and peculiar class of its own, being able to do all sorts of things with its speeches, including making enemies lose turns, making them berserk or sleepy, and even raising or lowering their Brave and Faith! The last bit there was unexpected, given that most of the design implied that those two were permanently fixed stats, only altered by story events. It didn't seem right to be able to freely mess with them, and and so I decided to ban those skills for myself. The rest certainly seemed pretty intriguing though, despite their bad range!
Revier learnt Vertical Jump 6 and was basically done with the class. It was quite unlikely for enemies to be 8 levels above or below him, and if they were, they were unlikely to threaten him.
This was the downside of taking up the sidequests - the extra xp and skillpoints from the random encounters and from this sidequest itself meant that Revier's squad was becoming powerful much faster than I wanted. This is why I made a separate save to tackle them, and shall be handling them on this alternate save.
The third battle mixed some ice dragons in alongside the usual fare, which theoretically made it more threatening, as the dragons did have powerful ice breaths, which they used to kill the accompanying knight! A shame, then, that they were too slow, and susceptible to all kinds of magic, besides. The mediator easily made them lose their turn, the time mage paralyzed them in position, and Revier easily finished them off!
The final floor of the mines at least mixed things up by featuring a rescue mission where a holy dragon needed to be rescued from monsters, who surrounded it on all sides! That being said, the holy dragon was quite beefy itself and could kill its assailants with ease. The monsters attempted to inflict all sorts of status effects, but few of them hit and this was yet another easy battle.
Post battle, it was revealed that the knight, Beowulf, was in fact looking for the holy dragon, Reis, and was quite attached to it in fact. Huh. As thanks, he gives Revier his own magical stone, and joins his cause, alongside the dragon!
After this, I switched my Mediator over into being a Samurai, as he had learnt most of the skills relevant for melee combat, and I could actually afford the best katana now. I switched the archer over to a chemist as there was little interesting to learn from the archer class, and he hadn't received a bow upgrade in a damn long time! Besides, some brand new items had unlocked for the chemist, including hi-ethers and x-potions! Not to mention, the chemist could use the magic gun I had pilfered! Though, noticing its ridiculous power, I put it aside for the mythril gun for now.
The stone was then delivered to Mustadio, who had excavated some strange kind of mechanical contraption and observed that it reacted to the stones. The contraption was none other than a fully fledged robot, which activated with Beowulf's stone! It looked very strong, and had innate magic immunity and enhanced defense, making it quite the standout!
Getting back to my team's classes, one big downside of the samurai's skills, which became apparent when I tried them out, were that they had a chance of breaking their respective katanas upon being invoked. That meant that outfitting a samurai was actually even more expensive than their gear prices suggested. On the upside, they were indeed fairly powerful aoes, dealing decent damage while covering quite a bit of area around their caster. They would certainly help immensely in clearing up the battlefield. Besides that, the samurai class itself seemed fairly strong, though its raw attacks seemed weaker than either the knight or the lancer, a fair tradeoff for having access to aoes.
And that wraps this session up! The sidequest was a bit weird and goofy, but on the other hand it does seem to have a decent bit of plot attached to it. I was disappointed by the difficulty of the fights, but hey, it's just the start of the sidequest, perhaps it will ramp up later, as I unlock more parts of it.
That will be all. Next time, we get back to the story fights! See you all then!
Revier hurries towards the border fortress, Bethla, but his journey is interrupted by one of the cabal leaders, who unleashes a poison bomb on his party! He laughs, and boasts about how he's unleashed this poison on Dycedarg's faction's army, meaning they too will be put out of commission!
Thankfully, despite his boasting, this was generic poison that wore itself out. Despite this, the fight was quite hard. The enemy was well entrenched, but that wasn't really a problem by itself. You see, this leader was a speed devil, often getting their turns in very inopportune times. Not only that, he was equipped with a magical ice gun, and had no qualms about shooting the party with it! I could've cheesed this fight by making everyone wear ice shields, but I decided to be a sport and bear the pain. Eventually the team got past him, albeit after a prolonged and tense battle that involved many a revive!
The upside of this was that the team earned lots of xp and skillpoints, letting Revier effectively complete his Jumping command and getting his samurai very close to buying a good katana aoe. The chemist also unlocked Auto Potion, which effectively cancelled many weak attacks thrown his way and even dented many strong attacks, effectively cutting their damage by half most of the time!
Meanwhile, the church set their plan in motion. They framed Orlandu as a conspirator and had him arrested, while getting Delita closer to Goltana in preparation for their strike.
At the fortress itself, Revier got a choice of approach, being able to assault it either from its front gate in the north, or the back gate in the south. I chose the northern approach and was able to defeat its forces fairly easily, despite it being composed of decently well equipped units. Perhaps I had already started outpacing the enemy, at least, as far as its regular units were concerned.
I took a peek at the southern approach out of curiosity, and it wasn't really much harder, but the presence of a thief and a ninja near the start did make it more annoying. At the end of this fight, the game cut to Dycedarg's faction's army, who were in terrible shape indeed, passing out in mass to the swiftly spreading poison.
Dycedarg and his ruler, Larg, were both victims of the poison themselves. However, Dycedarg, upon meeting Larg, wastes no time stabbing him to death! It turns out the church had reached out to him and made him their assassin for his faction. Truly, his skullduggery knew no bounds!
Inside the fortress' walls, Revier discovered something very interesting - a dam controlling the flow of the river! With it open, he could flood the battlefield and stop the two armies from assembling! The dam's security seemed intimidating at first, but the knights on the dam's levers stayed put, and the rest of the force wasn't anything special, despite the fortifications aiding them.
The mission was also unique in that killing everyone did not end it - Revier had to specifically clear the levers' tiles by killing their guards, waiting for their bodies to decompose into either crystals or chests, and then stepping on them. This meant that the mission dragged on despite all real resistance being neutralized quite early, which was a little blah, but whatever.
Once the levers were pulled, the river's flow created a mighty splash, flooding out the land below. The rest of the church's scheme is revealed here, as Revier rescues Orlandu from the fortress with their help, Delita assassinates Goltana and one of the church's members sacrifices himself by pretending to be Orlandu and willingly getting killed, so as to complete the frame job and also plant false news of his death. It turns out the church wasn't a fan of the cabal either, and they were intentionally letting Revier and Orlandu loose, hoping they'd find and extinguish the cabal's members for them.
With that disaster averted, Revier now headed for Limberry, hoping to defeat Elmdor and rescue his sister. But I must spare some words for Orlandu. So, remember when the holy knight, Agrias, kicked all kinds of ass with her swordskills? Well, he's a uber version of that. He starts with top tier equipment, including a freaking Excalibur, he has high stats, and, most important of all, he has an outrageous list of swordskills, combining BOTH the holy and dark knights' moves alongside some equipment breaking moves! Disgusting!
And with that, this session ends. The church's plan seems increasingly unhinged and ad hoc, taking many a drastic and risky step that succeed only because the plot wouldn't work otherwise. I'm also a little annoyed that, at the end of it all, the church ends up using Revier without clearing his name or acknowledging its slip ups. I mean, that's kind of the point of the story, but it still feels dirty. I'm also worried that the game may run out of meaningful progression or challenges soon, going by my experience with the fortress. Well, let's be optimistic, the game is still enjoyable and it will be a while before it tires me out of itself.
That's all for now. See you later!
The averting of the Bethla clash naturally involved shops opening up more of their stock, including this crazily powerful rod! It certainly tempted me to switch someone over to Oracle-ing. Too bad every character is more or less set on achieving their final forms now.
I redistributed Orlandu's gear, but the Excalibur remained a frustratingly hard item to utilize, as it could only be equipped by Knights, and the sword equipping passive did not permit equipping it! I didn't want to switch anybody to that class, it was an exceptionally unattractive class, being completely superseded by the Lancer and the Samurai, and being tied down with a rather uninteresting command, at least, with its weapons of choice. In the end I decided to forego using it and just keep it in reserve, pulling it out only if need for it arose.
Revier's team passed by a dilapidated trading city, where a woman resembling Aeris sold him a flower, and sighed at her miserable life, hoping to escape it someday. Ahead, they ran into some brigands foolish enough to ask them for a "toll", and even more foolish to attempt killing Revier for his bounty! They were pretty easily dispatched, though the time mage starting so close to them made him go down quickly and contribute very little to the battle.
Of course, that got fixed by the next battle, as he picked up Auto Potion too, making him quite survivable despite his comparatively low HP. There was another forgettable battle against undead on the lake enroute, and then they arrived at their destination, Limberry.
Elsewhere, the plot kept unravelling itself, as it was revealed that Dycedarg had indeed poisoned his father to usurp control of the family estate! The cabal leader, after confronting him with his embarrassing crime, gifted him one of the stones for safekeeping. Huh, that was weird. Maybe the cabal really wanted to sell him on their scheme, so that he wouldn't suddenly turn on them. Also Zalbag caught all of that! Oops!
At Limberry, they found the front gate strangely deserted. It turns out, Elmdor had set up a trap for them! The trap had them confronting his two assassins and a bunch of demons with powerful status inflicting spells. For a while, I had little luck progressing, as the enemy team simply kept killing off the party too fast! Eventually I decided to focus all my damage on one of the assassins, as they were, by far, the strongest and most bothersome units on the field, what with their stop and instant death moves. This killed the assassin, which won the fight! Umm, alright. A bit anticlimactic, but I guess it wouldn't be too reasonable to expect you to fight the entire force off, heh.
It is revealed that the cabal have been getting desperate - their grand scheme had failed, and their numbers have been dwindling, thanks to Revier's exploits. They gave Dycedarg the stone because it resonated with him. Now, they are planning to invoke their master through Alma to aid them in unleashing hell upon the world. All they need to do is find a dead city from the past...
The next fight is against Elmdor himself, and he's certainly a powerful customer, with the ability to teleport just about anywhere, powerful katana aoes, and worst of all, an ability that gave him ridiculous evasion against all physical attacks! Even gunshots and jumps!
Fortunately, I did have strong non physical attacks, with Holy on my Time Mage and Flare, recently learned, on my Black Mage. Two consecutive casts of these nukes, and bam! Boss fights are certainly going to be hilarious now, lol.
The final battle of the castle was against Elmdor's demonic form, and he proved to be surprisingly tough! His aoes inflicted death clocks, sleep and stop, and he often followed those up with an aoed flare, making it hard to last very long against him! He also had an enormous amount of HP, so the strategy earlier didn't work, and he was too fast for Revier to jump on him, considerably cutting into his damage!
I eventually figured out a way past him. Enemies curiously placed little priority on attacking characters with death clocks, and with Angel Rings on, they started with Reraise, which cancelled out the clock when it counted down! This, along with some optimization, gave me an avenue to attack him with my wizards, as long I was careful to keep them out of serious danger.
That did the job, and one more demon breathed its last. Revier and Meliadoul, the knight who had tried to avenge one of the cabal leaders' deaths earlier, discuss about how these demons seem a far cry from the legends around them, being fairly vincible to human ingenuity. Mayhap they knew they weren't very powerful, and so needed the stones to invoke a greater power. Meliadoul also forgives Ramza, as she saw with her own eyes that his struggles against the demons was real, and they had insidious designs of their own. As apology, she even joins his team, and points him in the direction of the next stone - the very same one gifted to Dycedarg! Boy did this get awkward fast...
And that does it for this session! It's pretty clear that the game is wrapping itself up. It's a little disappointing that the plot is choosing to end all of the intrigue with rather hamfisted, clear cut villains with no interesting plans or motives. As for the gameplay, while there is technically some progression left, most of the important milestones have already been hit, and there aren't many places left to meaningfully visit. Time to end this soon, I think. See you later!
You didn't mention it but do you know about the "trick" you can use to make Auto Potion more powerful?
You can softlock in this battle if you petrify one or both of the knights and don't have any way to remove the status (but that is a rather unlikely situation). I'm trying to remember if confusion, berserk or turning a knight into a chicken can get them to move off of the tile.
They don't call him Thunder God for nothing.
There are some optional challenges that still remain (but I think you just skipped one of them). You can choose to do some of them but there are some that you can't really control.
I am interested in seeing how you handle some of the upcoming difficult battles with only generic units & Revier. I've generally always relied on the unique units to win those battles.
I think for how you're building your units you might run out of progression. Advancing that beyond where you currently are does require delving further into all of the different classes than you've done so far. But I think that's just going to give you more options not necessarily better ones ( with a couple exceptions).
I wonder if it was designed that way in an attempt to make knights more appealing in the end game. But if that's the case then it sounds like it backfired, especially for you.
I generally didn't use the knight swords very often since they were unique and I was afraid of enemies breaking them. I still found the highest level of shop weapons to be sufficiently powerful enough to win without that concern since they're easily replacable.
Speaking of gear from shops - are you still having the 'little money' problem? If you could buy Angel Rings for your entire squad then it sounds to me like that might not be an issue anymore.
Yes, his "exploits". That reminds me of something from the game which I found amusing. The game has an encyclopedia which has information about all of the differenct characters. Towards the end of the game many of the encyclopedia entries for the cabal leaders (and many other characters) finish with the line "Killed by
That cabal leader was her brother, Izlude - who was actually killed by the Lucavi Hashmal(um) when he possesed the siblings' father Vormav at Riovanes Castle.
Orlandu joining does a disservice to a lot of characters/units.
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Yes. The description says it uses the weakest potion in stock to heal the character's wounds. I sold off all my Potions to make it potent (and I can even sell off my Hi Potions to make it ridiculously overkill, but I don't see the need to do that yet).
Perhaps. The big swords do look pretty powerful, I can see why the designers assumed having access to them would be on par with the Lancer's and Samurai's powers.
The money seems reasonable right now, I've had to spend a bit more than "normal" as the Samurai is a rather expensive class, but I've been able to manage the party finances just fine.
Hah! Only fitting, lol.
It is definitely weird that a god of war joins you before the final "paladin" of the game. I wonder if in an earlier version of the game, his recruitment came later? I have heard rumors that the church agent who follows Delita around was supposed to have a bigger role in the script, but had a bunch of her stuff cut out, so it's certainly possible that Orlandu was supposed to have a more involved recruitment process which got cut later, leaving him to join earlier than "intended" as an oversight.
So more than just her tongue?
Heh, perhaps. Also...
Revier's entourage headed for his former family castle, Igros. Meanwhile, Olan tried breaking into Ovelia's chambers to convey her the truth about his father-in-law, Orlandu, but he was injured by the castle's security, and by the time he got to her, Delita got wind of his antics and stormed in! He outright boasted about how he'd done a "good thing" by framing Orlandu as Goltana's killer, and how killing Goltana was completely justified.
Ovelia and Olan are aghast to hear of such blatant skullduggery, but Delita, running high on arrogance, goes a step further, and tries to persuade Olan to work for him while outright stating he wants the Church's High Priest dead! This goes too far for the church's agent, who prepares to stab him, but Delita catches her in the act and stabs her!
Cutting away from all of that, we see Zalbag pay a visit to their father Barbaneth's grave, with a chemist in tow. The chemist confirms that he had indeed been poisoned, and further mutters that the poison mushrooms sprouting from his grave are a terrible omen, foretelling the fall of his family. Zalbag pays him and gives his thanks, before heading back to settle some affairs...
Sure enough, by the time Revier reaches Igros, he finds Zalbag already at Dycedarg's throat! This leads to a quick and rather anticlimactic showdown where Dycedarg calls upon his personal forces to fend off his brothers, only to be blasted to pieces!
Of course, he, having obtained one of the stones, also had a demon transform. This demon tried to intimidate Revier's squad by instantly dismissing all of his guards and obliterating Zalbag. Unfortunately, he wasn't good enough to face them by himself, relying too often on slow, albeit powerful summons that were easily dodged. He was killed with little fanfare, effectively marking the end of the family. I felt a little sad about this, honestly; despite Dycedarg being an evil schemer, it did seem like the rest of the family had good intentions, and tried to be nice to Revier, their workers and their subjects.
The story wastes little time mourning the moment however, as Revier makes his way to the grand monastery of Murond, capital of the church. It turns out the cabal had already turned on the High Priest and stabbed him after killing his guards. They forced him to reveal the way to the dead city - it was underneath the monastery of Orbonne, sealed by some ancient magic! The means of unsealing it was within the forbidden book Revier had acquired from Orbonne's head priest! The cabal cursed this turn of events and took their anger out on the priest, brutalizing him! Ouch!
Outside, Revier runs into the monastery's guards, oblivious to the betrayals happening within. They tried to stop him as he was a heretic, but they were poorly prepared for battle, and probably couldn't have prepared for the mighty combination of Flare, Holy, a Lancer jump, a Samurai's katana, and a gun! The only real concern was the geomancers getting lucky with the status effects on their geomancy; while they had very low odds, they were still very capable of debilitating or even outright "killing" their targets! Thankfully, that didn't happen, and the monastery's forces were cleared out before they got to do much of anything.
Inside, the remaining survivors of the cabal confronted Revier and cajoled him into an obvious trap...err, I mean a deal. They wanted the forbidden book and his stones in exchange for returning Alma to him. Revier gave the book, and of course, the moment they figured out the unsealing method, they turned on Revier, swearing to kill him to avenge their fallen! This was yet another quick affair, because all the party had to do to make them back off was kill their most prominent leader, though they did get to take out Revier on his first turn.
To be fair, he was also wearing outdated equipment for a damage and healing boost, having learnt everything he wanted from Dragoon. Switching over to Geomancer allowed him to combine its naturally high movement and some damage boosting light gear with a spear via equip spear, and infinite vertical clearance with ignore height. The extra power also made his Chakra considerably stronger, letting him theoretically fend for himself, despite his bad armor.
In other gameplay related news, I had also unlocked Teleportation on the time mage. This was a potentially very powerful skill, allowing its user to travel to any tile within the map! The catch was that it had a chance to fail, and the chance got considerably higher the farther they tried travelling. This, combined with the largely small maps, did a good job of reining it in, but it was still quite the impressive movement skill!
The last map of the Murond monastery had the cabal resurrect Zalbag as a vampire to spite Revier, before fleeing. Once again it went pretty quickly, though Zalbag, to his credit, did manage to evade dying to the chemist's gun by outpacing it with his movement fueled regen. Of course, that didn't do him much good evading holys and flares, to say nothing of the mighty samurai's strikes itself! Heh!
That left everything except the final dungeon cleared. I shall, however, first showcase the rest of the sidequests before diving in and finishing this off. See you all later!
Revier's entourage headed for his former family castle, Igros. Meanwhile, Olan tried breaking into Ovelia's chambers to convey her the truth about his father-in-law, Orlandu, but he was injured by the castle's security, and by the time he got to her, Delita got wind of his antics and stormed in! He outright boasted about how he'd done a "good thing" by framing Orlandu as Goltana's killer, and how killing Goltana was completely justified.
Ovelia and Olan are aghast to hear of such blatant skullduggery, but Delita, running high on arrogance, goes a step further, and tries to persuade Olan to work for him while outright stating he wants the Church's High Priest dead! This goes too far for the church's agent, who prepares to stab him, but Delita catches her in the act and stabs her!
Cutting away from all of that, we see Zalbag pay a visit to their father Barbaneth's grave, with a chemist in tow. The chemist confirms that he had indeed been poisoned, and further mutters that the poison mushrooms sprouting from his grave are a terrible omen, foretelling the fall of his family. Zalbag pays him and gives his thanks, before heading back to settle some affairs...
Sure enough, by the time Revier reaches Igros, he finds Zalbag already at Dycedarg's throat! This leads to a quick and rather anticlimactic showdown where Dycedarg calls upon his personal forces to fend off his brothers, only to be blasted to pieces!
Of course, he, having obtained one of the stones, also had a demon transform. This demon tried to intimidate Revier's squad by instantly dismissing all of his guards and obliterating Zalbag. Unfortunately, he wasn't good enough to face them by himself, relying too often on slow, albeit powerful summons that were easily dodged. He was killed with little fanfare, effectively marking the end of the family. I felt a little sad about this, honestly; despite Dycedarg being an evil schemer, it did seem like the rest of the family had good intentions, and tried to be nice to Revier, their workers and their subjects.
The story wastes little time mourning the moment however, as Revier makes his way to the grand monastery of Murond, capital of the church. It turns out the cabal had already turned on the High Priest and stabbed him after killing his guards. They forced him to reveal the way to the dead city - it was underneath the monastery of Orbonne, sealed by some ancient magic! The means of unsealing it was within the forbidden book Revier had acquired from Orbonne's head priest! The cabal cursed this turn of events and took their anger out on the priest, brutalizing him! Ouch!
Outside, Revier runs into the monastery's guards, oblivious to the betrayals happening within. They tried to stop him as he was a heretic, but they were poorly prepared for battle, and probably couldn't have prepared for the mighty combination of Flare, Holy, a Lancer jump, a Samurai's katana, and a gun! The only real concern was the geomancers getting lucky with the status effects on their geomancy; while they had very low odds, they were still very capable of debilitating or even outright "killing" their targets! Thankfully, that didn't happen, and the monastery's forces were cleared out before they got to do much of anything.
Inside, the remaining survivors of the cabal confronted Revier and cajoled him into an obvious trap...err, I mean a deal. They wanted the forbidden book and his stones in exchange for returning Alma to him. Revier gave the book, and of course, the moment they figured out the unsealing method, they turned on Revier, swearing to kill him to avenge their fallen! This was yet another quick affair, because all the party had to do to make them back off was kill their most prominent leader, though they did get to take out Revier on his first turn.
To be fair, he was also wearing outdated equipment for a damage and healing boost, having learnt everything he wanted from Dragoon. Switching over to Geomancer allowed him to combine its naturally high movement and some damage boosting light gear with a spear via equip spear, and infinite vertical clearance with ignore height. The extra power also made his Chakra considerably stronger, letting him theoretically fend for himself, despite his bad armor.
In other gameplay related news, I had also unlocked Teleportation on the time mage. This was a potentially very powerful skill, allowing its user to travel to any tile within the map! The catch was that it had a chance to fail, and the chance got considerably higher the farther they tried travelling. This, combined with the largely small maps, did a good job of reining it in, but it was still quite the impressive movement skill!
The last map of the Murond monastery had the cabal resurrect Zalbag as a vampire to spite Revier, before fleeing. Once again it went pretty quickly, though Zalbag, to his credit, did manage to evade dying to the chemist's gun by outpacing it with his movement fueled regen. Of course, that didn't do him much good evading holys and flares, to say nothing of the mighty samurai's strikes itself! Heh!
That left everything except the final dungeon cleared. I shall, however, first showcase the rest of the sidequests before diving in and finishing this off. See you all later!
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Have they not been reading the encyclopedia? Did he think this was going to work any better than it did the first 3 times the cabal tried that?
I feel like Geomancers mostly rely on their shield for protection since they can't (naturally) wear heavy armor but that wouldn't have helped against the undodgeable attacks you faced in that battle.
Real dick move there.
"Surely this time it'll be different! We've got stronger spells after all!"
On a sidenote I think these fights also show why "balancing" more powerful spells with longer cast times tends to be a bad idea past a certain point.
Yeah they do get to wear shields, and have a decent base evasion of 10%. I just dislike how weak and gimmicky their spells are, relying too heavily on the statuses to be useful without even showing the odds of the status hitting. But they do seem like the strongest class capable of wearing the biggest power boosting helm and armor (unless Ramza's squire class gets even better physical attack? Not sure, heh. Well I suppose making Ramza buff himself before Jumping couldn't hurt lol).
Which helmet and armor are you talking about?
The Twist Headband and Power Sleeve respectively, both of which add 2 physical attack each.
Geomancy is a product of PA and MA, with MA being weighted more heavily. (The exact formula is Floor((PA + 2) / 2) * MA.) This means you'd usually be better off wearing a Triangle Hat but for the fact that it'll weaken your regular attacks. If you're all-in on Geomancy, you can clear 200 damage with a little effort, which isn't bad at all. It's affected by Magic Attack Up (also Magic Defend Up and Shell), so if you have, say, 16 PA, 14 MA, and MAU, you'll do ((16 + 2) / 2 * 14 * 1.5) = 189 damage.
You'll get more bang from your buck from practically any other source of damage, of course, but Elemental is free, instant, and AOE.
And you don't have to fuss around with the math stuff to target it.
And doesn't it also avoid friendly fire and is undodgeable - or am I not remembering that correctly?
(Also, I thought Magic AttackUP was times 4/3 not 3/2.)
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Geomancer is only slightly better than Ramza's Chapter 4 Squire class. Ninja is better than both of those classes but doesn't play well with spears.
And I see now that you've built and equipped you team for high damage output but have sacrificed durability, defense and status protection in the process.
I like Geomancers even though they are a weird mish-mash of a class. Part of the reason is because I think they're a decent option for parking the sword skill unique units in for most of the final chapter.
Well, Screaming at himself to boost his PA and Speed is a good combo with Jump.
What for? Triangle Hats only give a + 1 magical power bonus, and have long since been obsoleted by better light helms giving the same bonus.
How do you get to 16 physical power and 14 magical power at the same time? That seems quite unlikely to hit without a lot of optimization/grinding. Perhaps by holding two Rune Swords?
Only on Ramza, mostly because I got curious on how far I could push Jump. The samurai is still fully clad in heavy armor, the chemist wears the best available light armor at all times, and the wizards are optimized for speed/evasion.
So are you going to try to get the best spear or farm for some of the ones that you can only get from enemies?
Rune Blade + Aegis Shield + Twist Headband + Power Sleeve + Diamond Armlet would give +5 PA and +4 MA.
I brought up the idea of dual wielding Rune Blades because I noticed the Ninja can dual wield, and that sword has a +2 magic power bonus, which is quite hefty. The Aegis Shield only gives a +1 magic power bonus, though arguably the 50% magic evade is more worthwhile than an additional point of magic power.
But then you'd have to account for which unit has the best combination of physical and magical power, which can get quite complicated quite fast.
Just wait for my next post.
But then you'd have to account for which unit has the best combination of physical and magical power, which can get quite complicated quite fast.
Funny you should mention that...
Just wait for my next post.
Alright, let's go through the rest of the sidequests.
To begin, you need to read this conversation from a bar in and around Zeltennia. This opens up an island off its coast...where, oddly, nothing happens.
To progress this further, you need to go back to Goug after clearing Bethla, where Mustadio's father has excavated yet another machine from the depths. This one requires an entirely different stone, and given that Nelveska Temple had mysteriously opened up earlier through a rumor without being actually visitable, the stone could only be placed there.
Sure enough, there's a fight there now. It's pretty rude, featuring lots of fast fighters that can easily attack any member of your team within their first turn, and an extremely powerful robot that spams exceptionally powerful lasers! That being said, my samurai was powerful enough to singlehandedly kill half of them, and Revier handled the other half.
This fight is also notable for being one of the few places where the item finding skill is worthwhile, my friend let me know of the four great treasures that can be found with it. Now of course, it's not easy to get them, even if you can handle the enemies. First of all, two of them are atop high pillars, and your characters can't reach them with the item finding skill on, as it takes up the movement skill slot. A "large creature", like the friendly robot here, can however make up for it, providing 3 units of height and acting as a "stepping stone" for the tile it occupies.
The treasures are pretty awesome, featuring a great spear, shield, ninja sword and a gimmicky, yet potentially useful weapon that has great evasion and the capability to turn its targets into frogs. That being said, none of this is really necessary, and I only broke out the item finding skill for demonstration purposes.
Upon defeat, the robot resurrects itself with 1 HP, and, on its second demise, turns into the stone the machine requires. But that's not all, as the stone also has the power of decursing Reis, transforming her into her human form! Yep, all these sidequests are connected to each other, lol.
Speaking of! The machine, once revived, teleports in Cloud from Final Fantasy 7! He's very standoffish, being under the influence of drugs and Sephiroth's mindfucking. He abruptly rushes outside before anyone can even ask him about his destination!
Thankfully, it's not too hard to trace him. Remember the dilapidated trade town with the Aeris reference? Yeah, Cloud goes there, and saves her from some brigands trying to harass her into paying off her debts, but then gets mindfucked again! A quick mission follows against some rabble, provided you slew Dycedarg first. Yeah, this mission doesn't unlock until then, for some reason.
The reward for this is recruiting Cloud, who comes with some cool gear. Sadly he's also level 1, and doesn't even have any of his skillset unlocked! What a pain lol.
I suppose I should also briefly touch on Beowulf, Reis and Worker 8, the robot activated after the mine quest. Beowulf is essentially an Oracle with swords, heavy armor and instantly casted spells. So basically, better than them in almost every way. Reis is a funky take on the Dragon Tamer from Tactics Ogre, having a bunch of breaths and dragon specific buffs. She can't equip much, but she gets good HP to compensate. Worker 8 is just like the robot at Nelveska, dealing damage with lots of powerful moves. The catch is, they self damage the robot, and with innate magic immunity, it's impossible to heal or buff it with spells. Items work just fine, though, and with proper support it can easily obliterate entire enemy parties on its own!
That about covers the sidequests in the PS1 version, barring the endgame side dungeon, which is unlocked by visiting Warjilis after the events of Murond's cathedral. I'm not covering it, because I tend not to enjoy endgame side dungeons in my games. Hell Gate/Palace of the Dead in Tactics Ogre was no exception, being a goddamn chore involving a series of tedious fights.
But now for the PSP version.
First, let's cover the "essentials". There's an additional scene where they tie up the entire reed flute arc, making Delita teach the princess how to play it well and also having her fall for him more. There's a brief battle against one of the surviving cabal leaders with Meliadoul in tow, where they're hinted at having some long distant relationship. Sadly the game doesn't bother elaborating the exact nature of this relationship, or why the guy chose to become a demon.
The most notable of these is a rematch with a resurrected vampiric Algus in Limberry, right after the fight with Elmdor, and right before the fight with his demonic form. Algus is mostly an upgraded Gafgarion who is extra resilient against spells, thanks to having innate Reflect and low Faith. His minions, the Ultima Demons, are mildly threatening because they all possess a variety of mediocre magical aoes, which nevertheless can add up quite quickly if you aren't careful to space out.
That being said, they're also rather brittle, especially if a character can catch them while they're casting. Really though, the battle isn't difficult, just mildly frustrating as Algus heals too fast and blocks out too many damage sources to be bursted down easily, to say nothing of his counter skill that can heal him to full whenever he drops to critical HP! Ugh! That being said, I still appreciated the inclusion of this fight, as it made the Limberry sequence feel more meaty and imposing, much like the earlier battle sequences.
Now for the version's specific sidequests. The first one is fairly straightforward, as long as you check all the bars for new gossip. Balthier shows up in Dorter, facing off against a band of brigands gunning for his treasures. This is a fairly easy battle, because he's fast as hell, often double turning the entire enemy squad, and has a powerful gun to his name!
Naturally, he's pretty powerful as a party member too, having improved theft skills, very high speed, x-fight, and of course, an awesome gun. If you need some help, he's certainly a handy pick! Of course, Orlandu is an even better pick, but he shows up later, and Balthier's got more style.
The rest of the sidequests unlock after Mullonde's cathedral, and are essentially expansions of plot points brought up earlier. One has Agrias meeting with Ovelia, discovering Delita's arrogance and brashness, and handing her a knife to keep her safe. Another, occurring afterwards, has her fight off some of Dycedarg's former soldiers who've gone brigand.
The most notable of them is the expansion to Beowulf and Reis' storyline, which has one of Beowulf's former friends kidnap Reis for a sleazy, cowardly cardnial, newly appointed to replace the slain one at Lionel. Not only do they have him face off against the one behind Reis' curse, they also provide a good source of thieving targets for people looking for good gear. Indeed, the battle against the brigands actually has items from the endgame side dungeon itself!
Alright, hopefully that's an enjoyable and extensive enough coverage of the side quests of this game, both in its original and the PSP versions. I will say, while I was hoping for a bit more of a solid narrative foundation to them, as well as better/more original level design, the fights themselves were still pretty entertaining, with some of them even posing an enjoyable challenge ever so often. And of course, they provide a variety of interesting special characters, even if I dislike how powerful most of them are with respect to your generic units, given that the character customization is a major portion of this game's appeal, and making characters just outdo your handgrown characters with little effort required goes against its very premise.
That will be all. Next time, I get to complete the game! See you all then!
To begin, you need to read this conversation from a bar in and around Zeltennia. This opens up an island off its coast...where, oddly, nothing happens.
To progress this further, you need to go back to Goug after clearing Bethla, where Mustadio's father has excavated yet another machine from the depths. This one requires an entirely different stone, and given that Nelveska Temple had mysteriously opened up earlier through a rumor without being actually visitable, the stone could only be placed there.
Sure enough, there's a fight there now. It's pretty rude, featuring lots of fast fighters that can easily attack any member of your team within their first turn, and an extremely powerful robot that spams exceptionally powerful lasers! That being said, my samurai was powerful enough to singlehandedly kill half of them, and Revier handled the other half.
This fight is also notable for being one of the few places where the item finding skill is worthwhile, my friend let me know of the four great treasures that can be found with it. Now of course, it's not easy to get them, even if you can handle the enemies. First of all, two of them are atop high pillars, and your characters can't reach them with the item finding skill on, as it takes up the movement skill slot. A "large creature", like the friendly robot here, can however make up for it, providing 3 units of height and acting as a "stepping stone" for the tile it occupies.
The treasures are pretty awesome, featuring a great spear, shield, ninja sword and a gimmicky, yet potentially useful weapon that has great evasion and the capability to turn its targets into frogs. That being said, none of this is really necessary, and I only broke out the item finding skill for demonstration purposes.
Upon defeat, the robot resurrects itself with 1 HP, and, on its second demise, turns into the stone the machine requires. But that's not all, as the stone also has the power of decursing Reis, transforming her into her human form! Yep, all these sidequests are connected to each other, lol.
Speaking of! The machine, once revived, teleports in Cloud from Final Fantasy 7! He's very standoffish, being under the influence of drugs and Sephiroth's mindfucking. He abruptly rushes outside before anyone can even ask him about his destination!
Thankfully, it's not too hard to trace him. Remember the dilapidated trade town with the Aeris reference? Yeah, Cloud goes there, and saves her from some brigands trying to harass her into paying off her debts, but then gets mindfucked again! A quick mission follows against some rabble, provided you slew Dycedarg first. Yeah, this mission doesn't unlock until then, for some reason.
The reward for this is recruiting Cloud, who comes with some cool gear. Sadly he's also level 1, and doesn't even have any of his skillset unlocked! What a pain lol.
I suppose I should also briefly touch on Beowulf, Reis and Worker 8, the robot activated after the mine quest. Beowulf is essentially an Oracle with swords, heavy armor and instantly casted spells. So basically, better than them in almost every way. Reis is a funky take on the Dragon Tamer from Tactics Ogre, having a bunch of breaths and dragon specific buffs. She can't equip much, but she gets good HP to compensate. Worker 8 is just like the robot at Nelveska, dealing damage with lots of powerful moves. The catch is, they self damage the robot, and with innate magic immunity, it's impossible to heal or buff it with spells. Items work just fine, though, and with proper support it can easily obliterate entire enemy parties on its own!
That about covers the sidequests in the PS1 version, barring the endgame side dungeon, which is unlocked by visiting Warjilis after the events of Murond's cathedral. I'm not covering it, because I tend not to enjoy endgame side dungeons in my games. Hell Gate/Palace of the Dead in Tactics Ogre was no exception, being a goddamn chore involving a series of tedious fights.
But now for the PSP version.
First, let's cover the "essentials". There's an additional scene where they tie up the entire reed flute arc, making Delita teach the princess how to play it well and also having her fall for him more. There's a brief battle against one of the surviving cabal leaders with Meliadoul in tow, where they're hinted at having some long distant relationship. Sadly the game doesn't bother elaborating the exact nature of this relationship, or why the guy chose to become a demon.
The most notable of these is a rematch with a resurrected vampiric Algus in Limberry, right after the fight with Elmdor, and right before the fight with his demonic form. Algus is mostly an upgraded Gafgarion who is extra resilient against spells, thanks to having innate Reflect and low Faith. His minions, the Ultima Demons, are mildly threatening because they all possess a variety of mediocre magical aoes, which nevertheless can add up quite quickly if you aren't careful to space out.
That being said, they're also rather brittle, especially if a character can catch them while they're casting. Really though, the battle isn't difficult, just mildly frustrating as Algus heals too fast and blocks out too many damage sources to be bursted down easily, to say nothing of his counter skill that can heal him to full whenever he drops to critical HP! Ugh! That being said, I still appreciated the inclusion of this fight, as it made the Limberry sequence feel more meaty and imposing, much like the earlier battle sequences.
Now for the version's specific sidequests. The first one is fairly straightforward, as long as you check all the bars for new gossip. Balthier shows up in Dorter, facing off against a band of brigands gunning for his treasures. This is a fairly easy battle, because he's fast as hell, often double turning the entire enemy squad, and has a powerful gun to his name!
Naturally, he's pretty powerful as a party member too, having improved theft skills, very high speed, x-fight, and of course, an awesome gun. If you need some help, he's certainly a handy pick! Of course, Orlandu is an even better pick, but he shows up later, and Balthier's got more style.
The rest of the sidequests unlock after Mullonde's cathedral, and are essentially expansions of plot points brought up earlier. One has Agrias meeting with Ovelia, discovering Delita's arrogance and brashness, and handing her a knife to keep her safe. Another, occurring afterwards, has her fight off some of Dycedarg's former soldiers who've gone brigand.
The most notable of them is the expansion to Beowulf and Reis' storyline, which has one of Beowulf's former friends kidnap Reis for a sleazy, cowardly cardnial, newly appointed to replace the slain one at Lionel. Not only do they have him face off against the one behind Reis' curse, they also provide a good source of thieving targets for people looking for good gear. Indeed, the battle against the brigands actually has items from the endgame side dungeon itself!
Alright, hopefully that's an enjoyable and extensive enough coverage of the side quests of this game, both in its original and the PSP versions. I will say, while I was hoping for a bit more of a solid narrative foundation to them, as well as better/more original level design, the fights themselves were still pretty entertaining, with some of them even posing an enjoyable challenge ever so often. And of course, they provide a variety of interesting special characters, even if I dislike how powerful most of them are with respect to your generic units, given that the character customization is a major portion of this game's appeal, and making characters just outdo your handgrown characters with little effort required goes against its very premise.
That will be all. Next time, I get to complete the game! See you all then!
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Ah, yeah, you're right about Magic Attack Up.
Elemental can't hit the caster and is unaffected by evasion / Reflect / Counter Magic / Blade Grasp / basically anything else that doesn't trigger on just "damage," but it can hit allies. Basically every status it can inflict is really good, too, although it only inflicts at a 25% rate.
Delving into stats like that for this game can be like a bottomless pit.
Reis: Beowulf, would you still love me if I was a wyrm?
the stone also has the power of decursing Reis, transforming her into her human form!
And if you teach her Equip Armor then she can get even more HP.
Skills like chakra and wish (and I think some others) also work on Worker 8.
I found the
The endgame was imminent. I wasn't really impressed by Revier's Geomancy getup, and wanted to put him in something more satisfying. I flipped him around jobs for a bit, then recalled the advice offered about his Squire class and greatswords.
Thus, I discovered his ultimate move - Jumping on his enemies with the Excalibur! This led to predictably amazing results, as you can see here. Not only was his damage output considerably higher, he also got far more jumps, thanks to its auto-haste! He was truly a speed devil now!
My only other bits of preparation were to fill up the party's stock of x-potions, and switch the wizards to statistically better robes, reckoning that the white robes were obsolete and most threats wouldn't be tied to the three main elements anymore.
The first fight had some decent offense on the enemy's side, thanks to their monks. However, it wasn't very hard to stack up the damage and bring them down, one by one.
The next fight was against one of the few surviving cabal leaders and his posse of wizards. It was certainly an amusing fight, with spells getting misdirected on both sides and the summoners switching to a weak healing summon to desperately keep themselves and their leader alive. The black mage even got to learn Bolt 4 from a random cast! In the end it was not very hard however, with Revier's jumps and the samurai getting the better of him. He did get to break the samurai's armor, which was rather annoying, but thankfully I had a spare suit lying in my collection, so it wasn't much of a setback.
In revenge, the leader threw him, along with his team, into the sealed, accursed ruins of Murond, the former church capital in times past. To further spite him, he intentionally blew apart the way back, leaving them stranded! Of course, this was hardly a setback for Revier, who was at this point determined to see their schemes ended for good.
The next fight got a bit difficult, mostly because the next cult leader was surprisingly prudent at not using his turns frivolously, making it considerably harder to land jumps on him. Further, the ninjas stopped my wizards from acting much. The situation looked dire for a bit, but eventually the samurai and Revier found enough of an opening to attack him and do him in.
The next cult leader, the man who had poisoned Dycedarg's army, smartly placed himself past a huge chasm, and used his moves to block Revier from acting. His hydrae were very meaty, but also very lethal, launching high power multihit elemental attacks at range! On the first try my team got crushed, as they were able to flatten the wizards before they could get in range of attacking him, and Revier regained control of his senses too late to finish him off. I immediately positioned the wizards closer while keeping Revier away from his initial line of sight, and that let the team blow him up before his pets got to them!
This left their most prominent leader for last, and he was fuming that, despite the stone reacting to Alma, he simply couldn't get to summon his master. He's startled by the team's arrival, but eventually concludes that they could help him, reasoning that the master just needed some more bloodshed, and their blood would do nicely as a sacrifice!
He transformed into a lion-themed demon to fight them. His spells were certainly impressive, hitting a huge area for 210~ damage, but he too fell to the team's concentrated damage, with Revier contributing a considerable chunk of the damage!
Defeated, he decided to make up for it by sacrificing himself! This worked, and their demonic master, who was apparently the Jesus figure of this world's church, took possession of Alma's body! Unfortunately for them, Alma rejects them, and they're forced to split and take up their own body!
They had similarly powerful spells, and further, had four Ultima Demons at their beck and call. These demons did pose a threat, spamming two medium damage aoes that nevertheless did reduce two of the party members to low HP and threatened to outright kill nearly half the party! Thankfully, Revier killed them before they could do any further harm, and they then transformed to their ultimate form, wiping out all of their help.
Unfortunately they did little of interest, spending too much time idle and resorting to basic melee strikes on most of their turns. As such, this battle was little more than a glorified victory lap, and, in the end, even their final form proved no match. Unfortunately, they blew up the ship the team was on, taking them all out! The game slyly congratulates the player for beating the game afterwards, adding to the sheer irony.
But the game did indeed end, with many people mourning the death of the Beoulves. Olan muses on Delita's true nature, and somehow catches sight of Revier and Alma galloping past, looking just fine! The epilogue goes on to tell that he wrote an account of their entire story, but the church, fearing the exposure of their schemes, arrested him and burnt him at the stake! Ulp! Thankfully, the historian narrating this tale managed to retrieve it from the church's long buried records, and now seeks to spread the truth far and wide. Oh, and he was part of Orlandu's family, the Durais, all along!
Well. Okay then. So...did any of this happen? Is any of this story believable? Or is this just an account by a fringe historian trying to peddle an alternate history? Got to say, that entire ending scene felt like a copout, and was a big dampener to the plot.
Oh, but we're not done yet. We see Delita, now granted kingship, trying to offer a bouquet to Ovelia. But she abruptly stabs him, claiming that she's fed up of him betraying everyone and treating them as mere pawns. He stabs her in turn, and then, in a bit of regret, wonders if Revier gained a better fate after all.
So, on one hand, I understand this as the writers depicting his comeuppance for all of his betrayal and scheming. But on the other hand, why did it take so long? Why did we not see it backfire elsewhere? How is Delita remembered as a hero if he got stabbed, and stabbed his wife? Did he survive the stab? Did this happen years after Ramza's adventure? Who knows! Better leave things ambiguous because...I dunno. Sequel bait? Screwing with people's minds?
Bah, whatever. In any case, this truly ends Final Fantasy Tactics. On the whole, I found it enjoyable as an open ended RPG with highly customizable characters and tactical battle maps. I will admit, I was expecting something more akin to Tactics Ogre, and the game obviously didn't deliver that. I also found it rather disappointing that, come Chapter 4, meaningful character progression seemed to gradually vanish, with fights largely simplifying themselves into a matter of outputting high damage before getting taken out. The story was enjoyable as a conspiracy thriller, but the haphazard and confused ending segment ruins the payoff, making it all seem a little hollow.
Still, I consider it a good game overall, and I think that, with some better balancing and sensible restructuring, it could realize its full potential and become a very rewarding RPG, with both interesting choices and challenging fights that take advantage of the player's breath of choices. Perhaps there are mods that do this already, I will be certain to try some of them, off screen.
Alright, I think that about covers all my thoughts on this game. Thank you all for reading this to the end, and see you all next Let's Play, whenever that will be!
Thus, I discovered his ultimate move - Jumping on his enemies with the Excalibur! This led to predictably amazing results, as you can see here. Not only was his damage output considerably higher, he also got far more jumps, thanks to its auto-haste! He was truly a speed devil now!
My only other bits of preparation were to fill up the party's stock of x-potions, and switch the wizards to statistically better robes, reckoning that the white robes were obsolete and most threats wouldn't be tied to the three main elements anymore.
The first fight had some decent offense on the enemy's side, thanks to their monks. However, it wasn't very hard to stack up the damage and bring them down, one by one.
The next fight was against one of the few surviving cabal leaders and his posse of wizards. It was certainly an amusing fight, with spells getting misdirected on both sides and the summoners switching to a weak healing summon to desperately keep themselves and their leader alive. The black mage even got to learn Bolt 4 from a random cast! In the end it was not very hard however, with Revier's jumps and the samurai getting the better of him. He did get to break the samurai's armor, which was rather annoying, but thankfully I had a spare suit lying in my collection, so it wasn't much of a setback.
In revenge, the leader threw him, along with his team, into the sealed, accursed ruins of Murond, the former church capital in times past. To further spite him, he intentionally blew apart the way back, leaving them stranded! Of course, this was hardly a setback for Revier, who was at this point determined to see their schemes ended for good.
The next fight got a bit difficult, mostly because the next cult leader was surprisingly prudent at not using his turns frivolously, making it considerably harder to land jumps on him. Further, the ninjas stopped my wizards from acting much. The situation looked dire for a bit, but eventually the samurai and Revier found enough of an opening to attack him and do him in.
The next cult leader, the man who had poisoned Dycedarg's army, smartly placed himself past a huge chasm, and used his moves to block Revier from acting. His hydrae were very meaty, but also very lethal, launching high power multihit elemental attacks at range! On the first try my team got crushed, as they were able to flatten the wizards before they could get in range of attacking him, and Revier regained control of his senses too late to finish him off. I immediately positioned the wizards closer while keeping Revier away from his initial line of sight, and that let the team blow him up before his pets got to them!
This left their most prominent leader for last, and he was fuming that, despite the stone reacting to Alma, he simply couldn't get to summon his master. He's startled by the team's arrival, but eventually concludes that they could help him, reasoning that the master just needed some more bloodshed, and their blood would do nicely as a sacrifice!
He transformed into a lion-themed demon to fight them. His spells were certainly impressive, hitting a huge area for 210~ damage, but he too fell to the team's concentrated damage, with Revier contributing a considerable chunk of the damage!
Defeated, he decided to make up for it by sacrificing himself! This worked, and their demonic master, who was apparently the Jesus figure of this world's church, took possession of Alma's body! Unfortunately for them, Alma rejects them, and they're forced to split and take up their own body!
They had similarly powerful spells, and further, had four Ultima Demons at their beck and call. These demons did pose a threat, spamming two medium damage aoes that nevertheless did reduce two of the party members to low HP and threatened to outright kill nearly half the party! Thankfully, Revier killed them before they could do any further harm, and they then transformed to their ultimate form, wiping out all of their help.
Unfortunately they did little of interest, spending too much time idle and resorting to basic melee strikes on most of their turns. As such, this battle was little more than a glorified victory lap, and, in the end, even their final form proved no match. Unfortunately, they blew up the ship the team was on, taking them all out! The game slyly congratulates the player for beating the game afterwards, adding to the sheer irony.
But the game did indeed end, with many people mourning the death of the Beoulves. Olan muses on Delita's true nature, and somehow catches sight of Revier and Alma galloping past, looking just fine! The epilogue goes on to tell that he wrote an account of their entire story, but the church, fearing the exposure of their schemes, arrested him and burnt him at the stake! Ulp! Thankfully, the historian narrating this tale managed to retrieve it from the church's long buried records, and now seeks to spread the truth far and wide. Oh, and he was part of Orlandu's family, the Durais, all along!
Well. Okay then. So...did any of this happen? Is any of this story believable? Or is this just an account by a fringe historian trying to peddle an alternate history? Got to say, that entire ending scene felt like a copout, and was a big dampener to the plot.
Oh, but we're not done yet. We see Delita, now granted kingship, trying to offer a bouquet to Ovelia. But she abruptly stabs him, claiming that she's fed up of him betraying everyone and treating them as mere pawns. He stabs her in turn, and then, in a bit of regret, wonders if Revier gained a better fate after all.
So, on one hand, I understand this as the writers depicting his comeuppance for all of his betrayal and scheming. But on the other hand, why did it take so long? Why did we not see it backfire elsewhere? How is Delita remembered as a hero if he got stabbed, and stabbed his wife? Did he survive the stab? Did this happen years after Ramza's adventure? Who knows! Better leave things ambiguous because...I dunno. Sequel bait? Screwing with people's minds?
Bah, whatever. In any case, this truly ends Final Fantasy Tactics. On the whole, I found it enjoyable as an open ended RPG with highly customizable characters and tactical battle maps. I will admit, I was expecting something more akin to Tactics Ogre, and the game obviously didn't deliver that. I also found it rather disappointing that, come Chapter 4, meaningful character progression seemed to gradually vanish, with fights largely simplifying themselves into a matter of outputting high damage before getting taken out. The story was enjoyable as a conspiracy thriller, but the haphazard and confused ending segment ruins the payoff, making it all seem a little hollow.
Still, I consider it a good game overall, and I think that, with some better balancing and sensible restructuring, it could realize its full potential and become a very rewarding RPG, with both interesting choices and challenging fights that take advantage of the player's breath of choices. Perhaps there are mods that do this already, I will be certain to try some of them, off screen.
Alright, I think that about covers all my thoughts on this game. Thank you all for reading this to the end, and see you all next Let's Play, whenever that will be!
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
This was fun, and A+ on the timing. I've just picked up the remake and am excited to start playing it soon.
You're welcome. Thanks for doing this. Looking forward to your next LP endeavor.