This topic for the discussion the events in Chapter 2 of Final Fantasy Tactics. I'll be creating new topics for subsequent chapters.

As of this post, I am currently processing tomorrow's episode. I had a pretty bad headache this morning and thought I might have to cancel tomorrow's episode, but eventually recovered quickly. Another benefit of the Bailly Curse is that we're very resilient and generally quick healers.

Have fun!

Well that was fast.

This chapter brings back so many bad memories of getting my ass handed to by Gaffgarion at Golgollada Gallows and the Lionel Castle Gate. Now I'm just gonna sit there and frown while you make both battles look like a cake walk. <_<

*cries*

Stop using overly fancified names

I remember having trouble with those two battles when I first played the game. I beat both battles by using Chemist (which I thought useless at the time :) ) and learning things like Hi-Potion, Auto Potion, etc. Made it a cakewalk.

I also thought I would have to restart with the 1 on 1 fight with Wiegraf, but I beat that one by using Lancer with Time Magic secondary and using haste to spam jump Wiegraf as well as Velius. Everyone died save for Ramza and I just used Max range jumps to kill Velius. Memories.

Shame that I can't remember the fight afterward on the roof with the Marquis. I'm sure it only took one try because I don't remember having trouble. It not a difficult battle, but the starting position of the party members dictates if the Assassins go after Rafa immediately or your party. I guess I got lucky.

Can't wait for Celia and Letie. I wish there were more to the characters than being Ultima Demons.

Hey, don't blame me, blame Squaresoft's usual high quarity tlansrations during the late 90s.

"I'm protecting Agrias! Geronimo!"

I always found this line funny in the original translation.

@hcbailly
This is in ch. 1 discussion, but thats closed now :( I say a good failed battle is either riovannes, or the rare battle at barrios hill against the tiamats, behemoths, and dragons, or at the bottom floor of the deep dungeon against the lvl 99 tiamats. But I agree that showing failures in an LP is kinda lame.

Also, will you be poaching in any battles, and by that I mean not adding monsters to your party and then having them lay eggs, but actually just doing it in random Battles or the deep dungeon?
If not I understand, because it can be time consuming and pretty random, plus the rewards are overkill. (though it might be nice to show the viewers how to acquire an uribo from zigolis swamp and a Tiamat from barrius valley as early as ch. 2)

@taku
It was pretty funny, in the battle against weigraf I had ramza as an unarmed ninja with concentrate. I went first and killed him in one shot, due to high PA. Then when velius arrived, ramza again went first and hit him, and then got a SECOND IMMEDIATE turn, and killed him.
Three turns, all ramza, battle over. I almost pissed myself I was laughing so hard, especially since that was the battle that used to give me nightmares as a child. And can I just say that the zodiac demon boss theme is one of my favorite tracks ever? Just thought you all should know, haha :)

Well, Wiegraf and Velius are easy. The most surefire proof way of beating him is with Ramza as a Squire and Items secondary. Yell and Accumulate as necessary while X-Potion after each hit. Should be able to down Wiegraf and Velius with them getting no turns.

I agree. Honestly the game as a whole is pretty easy, unless you get lazy, unlucky, go to quickly through the game, or just don't know what you're doing (like me as a child). But when you're in the fourth grade and you don't understand how the battle mechanics work, I can see how people could have trouble with the game.

@anyone who cares haha
Also, even though this is a little early, who do you all like using for your endgame team?
I already have my choices, but id like to know all your opinions!

@HCBailly - If you happen to have a few minutes after the post-Wiegraf cutscenes, you can try to fit the next battle at the end of the episode, be like "I have a feeling this next one will be pretty short". Within a minute Rafa dies and "NUUUUUUUUUUUTS!" -episode ends

The thing that make's this game hard is that you basically have to know most of the mechanics inside and out. If you don't pay close attention to Zodiac Compatibility, you can basically say goodbye to buffs being useful ever. If you don't pay attention to faith, you'll wind up with a Priest whose Cures heal 6 HP. Most people who play Final Fantasy games aren't going to look into these stats, and by not doing so, they die. Flat out.

There's also the fact that grinding in an SRPG is so much more annoying and boring than in a turn based RPG because even the short battles take so bloody long. Seriously, on my first run I remember having lost track of what I was about to do at points after a random battle interrupted me. To me, a decent SRPG should either be grind free, or at the very least, give the player an ulterior motive for fighting extra battles, like FFTA's mission system.

Also it's very easy to end up spending JP on things that aren't actually useful at all, and the player shouldn't be faulted for that since they won't know any better, and shouldn't be expected to research every little thing ad nauseum before they even turn the game on either. Which seems to be what a lot of vets of the game expect of new players. :/

Honestly, regardless of what you say with regards to your own playthroughs, FFT is a very hard game for the audience it was marketed to, that being existing FF fans.

I still think FFT is a good game, dont get me wrong, but it suffers from having been marketed to the wrong audience. I honestly think the game probably should have been it's own IP.



Why is it all of my posts lately have been ranty? I hope I'm not offending anyone. :(

Grinding in Disgaea (3 especially) is easy
The enemies all line up in a nice straight line or in a big 3 X 3 square
It goes by in about 3 turns and you can turn off battle animations

Update on playing the FFT Rebirth patch of the game.

1st fight of Chapter 3 where I have to save Olan. 1st 3 turns of the fight.

Olan charges Galazy Stop and moves horribly.

Thief attacks Olan with Poison Crossbow - 140 Damage
2nd Thief attacks Olan with Crossbow - Around the same damage.

Olan dies. Game over before I get a turn

O_O > O_o

2nd try went much smoother once I hit a speed based set-up. Of course, a stupid thief had to have matching compat and have 96% chance to charm Ramza...yeah...

http://www.nexus-studios.org/?page_id=120

Info on the Rebirth patch. Thieves can use XBow naturally if you were wondering. That improved steal is also why Charm was 96%.

Equipping a Chameleon Robe on Ramza makes him immune to all of Wiegraf's sword skills, leaving just his Punch Arts (which are still mean, but not as mean) which can be handy.

Well... without any grinding I'm a bit behind. I guess Ramza and my other male Generic will have to spend a few battles as Thieves to unlock their future Jobs. But apart from that things are going unexpectedly smooth, maybe because I don't try to prolong battles but just kick ass...


I honestly can't recall my first encounter with Wiegraf... I think it might have been a Ninja Ramza encounter which meant he was killed before he could kill me. On the other hand it's more probable I got my ass kicked and I just have been successful in forgetting it. That OTHER mean battle... I never had much problem with it unless I've tried to steal stuff. I guess at this point you can usually just do enough battle to kill most stuff easily if you want to.


As for beginners... of course the game is easier if you know what you are doing but if you at least have a look into offered Tutorial and don't completely stay away from grinding you should be able to handle the game. If you don't look at the tutorial of course.. good luck :D

as for propositions, I was using this but I suppose it doesn't really matter.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/197339-fina...24499445?page=3

And scroll down to where he says "final results"

It was funny like after I did all the propositions (which sometimes involved going back and forth between 2 points until I got to a certain part of the year to make a few propositions available) and got all the rare poaches that weren't available elsewhere, Ramza was like 50 years old in brave story and prince orinas was like 30 and I was like "ok I think he's old enough to rule now." Interestingly, ages max out at 99. I noticed that with Funeral since he starts at like 85.

Also little known fact that I found out on ffwikia. They had visual novels in the game for a few of the treasures that you get from propositions in the Japanese version. ffwikia is awesome. I found out about the ff13 episode 0 and episode i stories and some novel (an actual physical book) about ff2 where they tell you the emperor's name is Mateus. They said that I think 3 out of 4 of the visual novels in FFT were fan translated. I believe Nanai's Diary, which happened to be in today's episode in HC's LP, was one of the items. ooo I found a video of it. too bad it's in japanese =(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG03EcJCCdk

I also recommend the website The Cutting Room Floor. They have a ton of stuff on Final Fantasy Tactics. Apparently there was also a music test in the Japanese version with notes by the composers.

http://tcrf.net/Final_Fantasy_Tactics

about what you said with chocobos
black chocobos can fly (and you can still ride them) and that can be really useful in some battles like the lionel castle gate battle

Yeah, but the Wizard already has Teleport and HC plans to learn Flare as well. He'll probably just Port and Flare to one shot Gaffy.

Yeah, Cheetah is trying to fit those into future versions of the FFT: Complete hack. Can't wait till he's completely done with it. It'll pretty much be the definitive version of FFT, IMO.

too bad i didn't think of that in advance <_<
jp grinding here i come <_<

One thing about Jump - All you need to learn is the highest two. Horizontal 8 and Vertical 8 I think? If you use Jump, the max one is the only one that influences how far you can jump, if you have horizontal 8 you can jump on someone 4 panels away without Horizontal Jump 4 :P

Oh, right forgot about that. But aren't those pretty expanesive as well? Nah, I never could get along with Jump... Lancers are nice and all but the way Jump needs to be leveled it really feels useless to me. Also, doesn't it have have quite some charge time? I was mostly able to run from any lancer that tried to jump me. Or bash my units out of the way or something.

Jump's charge time is based on Speed (Equip Spear Ninja pretty much falls instantly), it completely removes your unit from any damage (you can charge a summon on a Lancer, move him and jump to avoid the summon, good way to add range), and since you only need the two skills, the skillset is a LOT more affordable. Still costs quite a bit but it's useful if you can time it right :)

There are plenty of ways to counteract everything you mentioned though. Auto-potion, Blade Grasp, Orlandu, and a host of other abilities make the hardest battles absurdly easy.

don't know if this was mentioned but the first spear you have access to at a shop, the javelin, has a range of 1 and not 2. All other spears I think have more range. There's also a Javelin II and Escutcheon II found in Nelveska Temple while you're getting Cloud, though the game only gives you a different sprite and doesn't have II's in the names so you have to be careful.

I notice if you set a lancer to ai control they become quite efficient once you got the horizontal 8. Probably one of the two times I may consider using the ai option on a character.


Concerning monsters I did find the red chocobo to be useful early on with their meteor. Not sure if do it this time around since I breed a rank 1 dragon and a minotaur to get rank 3 forms and don't want too many monsters. Rank 3 version of the minotaur has a better version of accumulate so use that like 2 times and watch stuff die from one hit.

HC, I know this happens at the end of the Chapter, but when you get to the battle with Queklain, you should note that it's not a story battle and it's definitely not okay to lose. I learned that the hard way. I saw that he had ??? for all his stats, so I figured it was one of those "you have to lose to win" situations. It wasn't.

Is Chapter 3 a long chapter? Chapters 1 and 2 seemed rather short. I'm guessing Chapter 3 is collecting the Zodiac Stones and Chapter 4 is the short "save the world" missions.

Also, are you going to start using completely unique character teams, or are you going to stick with your 3 generics that have synergy and just rotate in whichever unique you need for the specific mission?

i had an army of like 5 red chocobos and i sent them in on a random field battle and they all started to do around 145-155 damage per meteor. but i was on the psp version and i had 3 dark knights for the final battle and oh boy was it fun. but in this chapter (2) where HCBailly is and when he fights Gaffy in the future i just removed his equipment and well its all done.

I left this comment on Today's video, but I'll post it here as well:

Teleport ignores Height. Vertical distance does not factor into it at all, only horizontal.

Teleporting onto rooftops is one of my favorite things to do in this game. :D

HC just used a Javelin today and it does have a range of 2. All spears do.

I had something weird happen to me today,,, Agrias used Stasis Sword and totally ignored the fact she hit my Monk with it. It didn't kill him or anything but I don't think I ever saw a AI character hurt an ally intentionally with their AoEs... (Or maybe I forgot?) At least made me wonder if I made Agrias angry somehow...

If you're close enough to ending the battle, the AI doesn't bother going out of their way to avoid your characters if there's no other way to hit the enemy. Or something like that

Ya the AI is actually pretty good, but you need to be careful about which abilities you teach

For example, I only teach my ninjas ball and shuriken throws because the AI will toss the strongest weapon they can, so any excalibers or just any weapon you don't want them to be thrown, will get thrown. Plus, why would you want to throw your weapons, when you can just sell them?

Same thing for chemist, dont teach them elixer, because that's the first thing thatll get tossed.

Also try to avoid useless abilities, like charge+20 just in case they get stupid for some reason

But other than that, the AI is pretty good and really fast, especially with things like math skill.
I alwasys use the "save fading life" AI setting.

But then again, if you're trying to master job classes, none of this applies haha

I've seen AI attack allies multiple times. If they judge it's a good idea to hit both the enemy and ally they will. However, they won't do it to detriment your party, like intentionally killing an ally. Basically the ally will just to to be a man (or woman) and take the hit.

Ramza doesn't do any asskicking in this playthrough.

I wonder how many people will request you to read the entire Germonik Scriptures, HC.

I'll probably show them quickly, as they do have some interesting backstory on the plot. Several people have requested me showing all the lands and treasures you can unlock from propositions. If I don't do all of them during the LP, I have a save file from my last test run that I can use.

Show them quickly? Psh...

Record yourself reading them and upload as a special midnight episode so I can use it as a bedtime story <3

You'd be asleep before the end of the first page.