Current Events > The judge system in Final Fantasy Tactics sucks ass

(+) Yeah! (+)

facts

(Tactics advance btw)

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A2?

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Good to see you corrected yourself

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Yeah it exists to punish the player for no reason

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I like it. It's the one thing in the game that makes it stand out from other isometric turn-based strategy games.

TheRadiant posted...

Yeah it exists to punish the player for no reason

Once you get past the Ezel story sequence, you get more control over it and can start rigging it in your favour, and it adds another layer of strategy. If you plan ahead and know your enemy, you can effectively neuter them.

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TheRadiant posted...

Yeah it exists to punish the player for no reason

You get so many fucking anti law cards it's essentially non-existent for the player and the lawless zone is still a thing anyway if you want to grind or something.

In A2 the law system got completely neutered and you can basically ignore it. You miss some extra rewards and the only other penalty is you can't use raise for that battle.

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Kaiganeer posted...

I hate that design so much. There's just way too much going on there >_>

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yeah it's a weird system but i guess they dont want you sticking to one thing and makes players equip new stuff and abilities and yeah it just gets annoying

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FFTA is a weird fucking game in general. Like, legitimately one of the weirdest games around when you take the time to think about what actually transpires throughout the course of it.

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The law system made me quit the game twice maybe 2 hours in. Not sure what law it was but it made it so I couldn't hit a certain enemy type with anything. Which made me frustrated and quit.

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The worst thing about it, IMO, is that it punishes the player a lot harder than the NPCs. Like, they don't really have to care about breaking the law, I do. Felt really unfair.

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Eh, I always tried to use it in my favor. What I remember most was to ban fire for the fire crystal mission. Either with the card, or walking around until it matched up. Enemies that would typically deal fire damage and confuse would no longer attack, making it a cake walk.

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scar the 1 posted...

The worst thing about it, IMO, is that it punishes the player a lot harder than the NPCs. Like, they don't really have to care about breaking the law, I do. Felt really unfair.

NPCs literally break the law all the time wtf are you talking about.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

NPCs literally break the law all the time wtf are you talking about.

yeah but correct me if i remember incorrectly, some of the punishments for breaking the law is stuff that affects you long-term, which NPCs don't have to care about?

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I always use cheat codes to have them disabled.

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scar the 1 posted...

yeah but correct me if i remember incorrectly, some of the punishments for breaking the law is stuff that affects you long-term, which NPCs don't have to care about?

No. The punishment for breaking the law is go to jail. If you lose the fight, those characters are permanently lost. This was already a default thing that could happen in FFT it's just the "law" was always "raise or win in less than 3 turns" instead of a random thing. If you were smart about it, you could force enemies to break the law like using berserk on a "no attack" law.

And like I said you ended up with so many cards that you could essentially just ignore the law system anyway.

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FFT Judge system is in that weird area of extremes where having the system can sometimes terminate any fun to be had, while not having the system makes the game too piss easy.

Not the best design...

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OpenlyGator posted...

FFT Judge system is in that weird area of extremes where having the system can sometimes terminate any fun to be had, while not having the system makes the game too piss easy.

Not the best design...

Eh, iirc you can walk around to change the laws, so it is impossible for it to terminate any fun. Actually now I want to load that save file I have where I got the cinquedea as soon as possible and stole steal weapon from that one early thief and just run around stealing all the useful weapons early on.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

If you were smart about it, you could force enemies to break the law like using berserk on a "no attack" law.

oh yeah i remember an enemy breaking the law, A2 on the other hand lets them break it without punishment

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Nukazie posted...

oh yeah i remember an enemy breaking the law, A2 on the other hand lets them break it without punishment

IIRC in A2, the enemy isn't effected by your laws. It is your team deciding to use a judge to gain benefits at the cost of obeying the law.

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Nukazie posted...

oh yeah i remember an enemy breaking the law, A2 on the other hand lets them break it without punishment

Breaking the law is a joke in A2. It basically just makes it so you can't use raise and you lose the bonus loot. There were bosses in A1 that had accessories that made them immune to the law which could be irritating but it's understandable why they would do this.

Basically between pardons, anti law, wasting time, and just fielding a team that can fight without concern for breaking the law, you could completely dodge the law mechanic outside of a few event fights like the mage duel. Overall TA was much more fun than Tactics but the TA story was awful and morally stinky.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

the TA story was awful and morally stinky.

I liked the moral stink. Stopped the game from sliding into childish escapism.

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Oh so I got A1 and A2 mixed up

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tbh I liked the judge/law system, at least for the first 80% of the game. It forces you to adopt new playstyles or swap out your MVP or something.

At the very end it's annoying AF, because something like "don't directly attack a monster" means just a long-ass battle where you park a unit in front of one and rely on Counter to allow you to get out of the random battle.
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philsov posted...

tbh I liked the judge/law system, at least for the first 80% of the game. It forces you to adopt new playstyles or swap out your MVP or something.

At the very end it's annoying AF, because something like "don't directly attack a monster" means just a long-ass battle where you park a unit in front of one and rely on Counter to allow you to get out of the random battle.

Theres a strict rotation to the laws so if you see "no attack" it means you can do basically anything else like magic, aim, item, etc.

And if you really don't like it you should have like a dozen "ignore all laws for the entire battle" cards at that point anyway.

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I'm mainly talking about "Dmg2: Animal", which means fight, magic, aim, etc all result in a penalty.

It's poison and counters, or burning a great "ignore law" card on a random battle.
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Xavier_On_High posted...

If you plan ahead and know your enemy, you can effectively neuter them.

This.
The CPU will not break laws, outside of the occasional scripted event.

philsov posted...

I'm mainly talking about "Dmg2: Animal", which means fight, magic, aim, etc all result in a penalty.

It's poison and counters, or burning a great "ignore law" card on a random battle.

You can tell what the law is before even getting into battle, so you can fudge with it by moving in the other direction and back.

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KainWind posted...

A2?

A2 considerably softened the punishments, but the tradeoff is that some of the new laws were even more absurd than A1. Pretty sure A2 even had a law that forbid you from taking damage.

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philsov posted...

I'm mainly talking about "Dmg2: Animal", which means fight, magic, aim, etc all result in a penalty.

It's poison and counters, or burning a great "ignore law" card on a random battle.

Dmg2 Animal is one of the easiest ones to deal with. You confuse or charm the animals. They attack other animals and go to jail.

The most annoying ones are copycat, skills, and holy.

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