Board 8 > Andy plays Final Fantasy Tactics (Blind Playthrough)

(+) Yeah! (+)

friendly reminder if the game prompts you to save, create a separate save file

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Lol thanks Martin, I expect you'll catch up in no time. And yes, I can never be reminded of that enough, Bigpun!

Me using Ninja and getting speedy double hit kills: Haha yeah! Yes!
Me when a map full of enemy Ninjas gets speedy double hit kills on my team: Well this sucks. What the ****.

We start with an easy map today, adding some light background flavour to the war with desperate deserters trying to escape their situation, and Ramza and co just having to mow them down. I'm guessing this one isn't supposed to be tough, and its ease is part of the narrative (also some respite after the string of battles we just had). Olan returns and inspires Ramza a bit, then reconfirms Orlandu as a good guy and leaves.

We're not tools. Tools for murder! If we stay here, we'll be used as tools till we die!

The next map introduces us to Rafa and Malak, who have a good war orphan story and disagree on the intentions of Barinten. They are Heaven and Hell Knights respectively, which is cool in theory but their abilities seem pretty random. (Heaven/Hell/Holy/White/Dark, how many Knights are there?) This map is awful for me on the first attempt as noted above, but second time round things just happen to work much better thanks to Asura, Agrias's OP skills and some decent luck in Stopping one of the Summoners.

This castle's built for war. It's far more beautiful than one built for government.

Rafa explains herself to Ramza and Malak orders us to the castle through the medium of Frog. Honestly it's hard to feel like Rafa/Malak are much more than a filler arc, but it's still decent. The next map is another easy one, a bunch of spirits in a forest. Cool in theory but not much of a threat. Then we get to the real meat of this plotline with a great scene inside the castle interior (which looks cool, very atmospheric). Barinten actually makes for a pretty interesting villain in his brief appearance here, and Vormav's reveal catches me (and Izlude) off guard. We pan off screen much like with Draclau previously, and now I wonder just how many of the characters we've met have already become demonic...

The battle at Riovanes Castle Gate is somewhat challenging. Rafa dies very early but fortunately that's kind of good for me, as both her and her brother flee the battlefield. The Knights just deal and withstand so much damage these days, it's hard to handle it all. Thankfully my Ninja avoids most of the archer shots and he and Agrias deal most of the damage here. Mustadio is sadly pretty useless on this map and spends most of it unconscious.

Both Beoulves are now alerted to the enemy infighting inside the castle, and Ramza rushes inside to face Wiegraf once more. ...Alone? Despite setting up all 5 squadmates before the battle start? Oh dear. Time to pause and return to figure this one out later!

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Good luck! This is considered by many the toughest fight in the game.

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I hated this next fight.

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Why don't they let you save after the 1 on 1 oh my god I thought that was the hard part

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Yeah sorry I'm gonna have to go back to a previous save this is annoying the **** out of me. So what I tried to do so far:

Failed miserably thinking that if I just stalled enough turns the teammates would come out, soon realised that wasn't going to happen and I'd have to buckle down with some ability swapping. I had Ramza learn Auto-Potion, Move-HP Up, Magic Defense Up (Which as it turns out does nothing to protect against Wiegraf's Lightning move) and dumped regular potions so he'd heal with Hi ones. This worked ok until Wiegraf crits or Ramza decides not to use Auto-Potion for a turn or two (>_>). I don't have enough JP for him to learn Phys Def Up, and idk if that'd even work.

The tactic works eventually and I breathe a sigh of relief before realising there's a whole other phase to this. Clops is insanely powerful and I lose on this phase twice. The second time I was able to take out all his henchmen (which I think is the way to go, no idea how much HP Velius has) but it's a stretch. So I'm probably gonna go back to the world map save and get a bunch of X-Potions and grind so people have enough JP for the best passives (they're all almost at Auto-Potion at least). If they saved after the Wiegraf fight I'd keep trying but it takes too long to get through that phase for me and I don't know if I'm close to taking down Velius. Ugh. Will have to leave it til tomorrow too, which I hate to do.

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andylt posted...

Why don't they let you save after the 1 on 1 oh my god I thought that was the hard part

because then it would be easy

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Back when I played it, I didn't understand why you needed to set the rest of the party members, so I skipped it on later attempts to save time and get back to making another attempt faster.

lol.

anyway I think the popular tactic is to run away spam Yell until Ramza can act multiple turns in a row but I never tried that.
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I was just about to say let's not say anything unless he asks for our help

And then there's that post

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It's really just because of this fight that I suggested you save to a separate file when the game prompts you. If you're not too prepared in an area like the underground book storage, you can probably still muddle through, but the fight against Wiegraf/Velius can cause people to have to start the game all over. There's definitely no shame in going back to the overworld to prepare a bit - I had to do that last time I played.

Some tips for this battle in particular:

- If you give Ramza a chameleon robe (which absorbs holy) Wiegraf's AI will think it can't target you with holy sword skills, which makes that part of the fight a lot easier.
- Oracle's life drain and Time Mage's Demi/Demi 2 deal percentage of max health damage, making them the fastest method of killing Lucavi
- If you can manage to hit Velius with Agrias or a hard-hitting unit like a Ninja while he's charging, that will take out a big chunk of his health.

IMO, it's better to just focus down Velius rather than take out his minions. You can take him out in like 2 turn rotations if you're using high damage dealers and Oracles/Time Mages. The hard part is managing that before he kills you.

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Yeah, I don't bother attacking the minions unless I know I can one-shot them or Velius is out of range. Just hit him with all you've got.

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I proceeded with my maximum cheese method on Queklain:

-gained my Calculator class for the 2 characters I was aiming for just before his fight + needed to level up Mediator to get Bard
-Two-Sworded Speed Break (plus a regular Speed Break) getting him to minimum speed

...I may have gone a little too crazy, let's just say I'm starting chapter 3 off with maxed Math Skill as the secondary ability for each of them, and this is also the first time I've used the Bard class, very exciting. Though I kind of regret setting up both my female units down the Calculator path rather than setting one up as a Dancer, eh... probably gonna get started on that for one of them tomorrow.

andylt posted...

Why don't they let you save after the 1 on 1 oh my god I thought that was the hard part

I lol'ed :(

ah.... that definitely brings back memories. I do remember relying on Auto-Potion too. A true trial for every first time FFT player - look forward to next update!!

My first experience with this game was actually through giving this game to my older brother for a christmas present ages ago

Which was a big risk because not only has he never played a Final Fantasy, hes never played an RPG before

but it paid off. thats the power of FFT.

he was visiting for a few weeks, and with my Christmas break, we just did nothing but play this game. We never discovered how to do the more advanced classes like Ninjas. We just muscled our way along.

Then yea, the duel happened. We didn't have enough supplies to last us. We didn't have much spare JP for ramza to learn anything else, OTHER than Auto Potion. but we only had regular potions so it didn't do much good. and we didn't have any equipment that could negate his attacks. We never could beat Wiegraf and we had to start over.

It was a terrible feeling and I at least always try to warn people about multiple save files so it doesn't happen to them :(

To this day my brother STILL speaks highly of this game, and it still remains as his only RPG ever. He took the game with him and he beat the game with a bunch of knights. I think he taught Ramza two swords but he didn't bother with his generics.

I eventually inherited his copy. I borrowed it some years later but he said I could keep it til he wanted it again. And I still got it!

This game brought me and my bro a little closer

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Good luck with Wiegraf/Vielus. Back in the day I definitely had to start all the way over after not saving in a different file and not being able to throw together a strategy to beat him.

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That's a really cool story Pun! The save thing is probably the only truly unfair thing I've seen so far, it was fine for me as a bunch of you warned me (thanks!) but for kids and people who have no idea about that it seems pretty mean. They could've split the gates battle and the Wiegraf ones onto different map squares or something, making you fight two phases in one is already enough of a challenge. It feels like this game is still a little cult classic that never touched the mainstream despite how beloved it is and the FF branding. It's a shame because man it's good.

Martin you are indeed catching up fast lol, I still haven't even seen the Calculator, Bard or Dancer classes (but the harps are in store now). Is Dancer like in FE where it gives you multiple turns? Cos that is something I would be very interested in!

And yeah Crispy I was getting tempted to do the same thing and not set up the whole party, I thought they were just trolling us with the setup. I can imagine how horrifying that was for you lol. The worst thing that I forgot to mention was Wiegraf cheerfully levelling up and jumping up and down while Ramza's corpse lays nearby as we fade to Game Over.

I stocked up on a bunch of X-Potions (and sold the lower ones) so the first phase should be easier now, and I made sure everybody has access to Auto-Potion/Throw Items so 4 of my 5 can heal. I kept Abandon on my Ninja so he can hopefully evade more, and gave him Attack Up from the Oracle so he can do massive damage now- he already one-shots (well, two-shots) the minions. I swapped everyone's classes and abilities over already too so I don't have to go through that after every game over. If this setup doesn't work when I play later I'll read Exdeath's spoiler bars and try a different approach but I'm optimistic! Though I just remembered Vormav is in the castle in monster form so I'll probably have to fight him too. Hopefully there's a save after Velius at least >_>

For something calmer, I found the Izlude fight track that's probably my fav piece of music so far:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGdKQjjwBSU

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FFT has great battle themes

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ahahahaha theres another fight

Edit: What in the ****? I got a game over from Rafa dying before I even had a chance to move!

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Yeah, that's the fight I said ninjas help with because of their speed stat. For the record, you only have to critically injure one person to end the fight.

The most dangerous enemy in this battle is Rafa's AI

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I have a Ninja! She still died before any of my team had a chance to move. Just tried again and she walked right into not-Sephiroths sword and impaled herself. I'll equip the speedy shoes on my Ninja and hope for the best.

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Yeah, if you have any speed boosting items, put them on your ninja because the enemies all have high speed stats.

Also kind of a pro-tip in case you keep getting stuck: Completely unequip a party member and place them at a spot near one of the enemies. Sometimes they'll go after that character because of their vulnerability if you're lucky.

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You can beat it without having to go to those lengths. You just have to get lucky with Rafa's and the enemies' AIs in some cases.

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Yeah a lot of the time this battle just comes down to resetting a few times until things go the right way.

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I'm actually surprised nobody spoiled this fight for you. The two assassin babes have a unique moveset where one of the attacks is 100% guaranteed instant death. And as you witnessed, you can lose the fight before even moving. It might be the harder fight actually, at least with the previous one you weren't babying an NPC

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Phew, time for a proper update.

First time through today and I reset on the castle gates map after losing a unit thanks to Raise failing an 87% success rate three times in a row and Chemists not being in the right place. Oops!

But then again, people are satisfied being used... 'God' is nothing but an image created out of their insecurity. It's their fault for knowing they're comfortably numb, and not doing anything about it.

Wiegraf returns, sadly seeming to have lost his humanity. He doesn't care about his sister's death anymore, and his worldview is a darkly twisted mirror of his previous ideal. Poor Wiegraf :( He still makes for a challenging conversational adversary to Ramza, who I've noticed is now speaking with more and more confidence whenever he's challenged. The battle is, of course, dreadful, but after the reloads it's no issue with Ramza healing 150 of the 168 damage he receives *almost* every time (Auto-Potion's random miss rate keeps my heart rate elevated constantly).

Ramza gets the better of the 1v1, which is a very cool thematic idea it just sucks gameplaywise when you're given no preparation. Velius comes out properly, and I fail again the first attmpet today. Turns out Auto-Potion isn't very useful when you get one-shot by his summons! Second time round I do as Leon suggests and rush Velius with everything I have. My Ninja gets off a double backslash for 300 damage, Ramza hits him for a solid >100, Agrias gets off one of her powers, Ramza takes precisely 178 damage when at 178 HP (>_>), Mustadio hits him and takes the brunt of the summon alone off in the corner, and my Ninja hits again for another 300, finishing him off. Aries get. Finally!

Don't worry. No need to fight anymore.

Velius dies, hooray! But that means Wiegraf is gone for good, boo! Izlude also sadly perishes in front of Alma, a shame as I was hoping for more scenes with him. He does pass on the information he has, and a stone (I believe I read it was Pisces he had somewhere in the records) to Alma, who does a good job comforting him in his final moments. So he was mortally wounded by the demon that merged with (?) his father, then is left to slowly die gruesomely on the floor while pondering his mistakes. This game is really grim, man. Can nobody catch a break? Well, not Alma! Vormav returns in human form ready to kill Alma until his own stone (Virgo, I'm trying to keep track here) responds to her presence. My secret princess theory grows stronger yet again, although given how he speaks maybe it's more than that... She's kidnapped again and the stone is left on the floor.

Cut to the roof, where Barinten is arguing with Rafa (Why did Vormav leave him alive?). Many dramatics ensue, Malak dies, Barinten is yeeted off the roof by a new character, and Marquis Elmdor shows up. I'm pretty sure I saw a rumour in the bar of him having already died, so he's Lucavi for sure! Ramza is convinced too, and we're in for another bizarrely unfair fight. The goal is to protect Rafa, but the first two attempts I make she wanders up to her own doom before any of my party can fight. Then I equip my Ninja with Sprint Shoes and a Green Beret, increasing his speed to 10. I also put a Beret on Mustadio to get him to 9, but it's not necessary. My Ninja Heinline gets to move even before the Marquis now, and walks right behind one of the girls and double backslashes them, instantly ending the fight. Phew!

The villains leave, Rafa mourns her brother and her stone lights up. Ramza wisely warns her away from the stone, but it instead brings Malak back to life. My first thought here is that Malak is now a Lucavi demon, but the game treats this as a positive miracle moment so I'll assume it's sincere. The gang now assumes that the stones aren't inherently evil, and take on the form of whoever is holding them.

Ramza picks up Izlude's stone (a shame his couldn't bring him back to life :( ) and after a chat about who the real bad guy is, he decides to go after Delita. Feels like it's been ages since we've seen him, I'm very curious to find out exactly how much he knows and what his plan is. Hopefully he's not been twisted the way Wiegraf was. There's another scene with Olan and Orlandu where he reveals to the audience his own stone (be careful Orlandu!), and I'm just relieved to see the World Map so that's enough for now.

Trying to account for all 12 stones- we have the one Mustadio found, Draclau's, Wiegraf's and Izlude's. Vormav has one, presumably Elmdor and his assistants have one each, Orlandu has one. That leaves 3 unaccounted for. Ramza doubts the High Priest has knowledge of the stones so he probably doesn't have one. Hmm... Delita is possible but I'd hope not, maybe Dycedarg or the princes but they seem preoccupied with their own war. Which one was Rafa's? Oh I don't know. RIP Wiegraf and Izlude, we lost some good ones today.

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The song that plays during Malak's resurrection is probably my favorite non-battle theme in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D46Ql2S_QM

so good

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That is a good track, I've not been commenting on them much lately because they're all at least pretty good (and I was just relieved to win the battles) but hearing it in isolation that is a great one.

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Is Dancer like in FE where it gives you multiple turns? Cos that is something I would be very interested in!

No, FFT Dancers specialize in debuffing all enemies. Bards can do something akin to what you're thinking of, but honestly, the best fit for a FE Dancer is a Time Mage with the Quick spell (if it resolves successfully, the target's CT gauge fills and it gets the next turn.)

I kept Abandon on my Ninja so he can hopefully evade more, and gave him Attack Up from the Oracle so he can do massive damage now

Attack Up is Geomancer; Oracle gets you Defense Up.

Cut to the roof, where Barinten is arguing with Rafa (Why did Vormav leave him alive?).

If I recall correctly, once negotiations break down, Barinten calls the guards and books it for the door. I suppose that got him enough of a head start.
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Ah thanks for the dancer info (I do have Quick but haven't used it yet), there's too many classes I haven't even seen. This game seems designed for multiple playthroughs for sure! Though I haven't seen Dancer/Bard/Samurai in the enemy ranks yet so maybe I'm not supposed to have them myself just now, I usually unlock them around the same time they pop up for enemies. Haven't seen Geomancer among enemies either though.

Yeah I got Geo and Oracle mixed up there somehow, and I must have missed Barinten running away, I thought he was at the window and the door was the other side.

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andylt posted...

I thought he was at the window and the door was the other side.

Come on, you know these old castles always have secret doors for the villain to escape through!

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I always raise a dancer with thief skills every time i play

I know it would be better to have a thief with dancer skills but i like dat foxy dancer sprite

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Not a lot of story missions today.

New chapter, new gear, first thing I do after buying some stuff is head to Goug to get a new gun for Mustadio (They seem to only be sold here) but there wasn't a new one available. What there was was a strange scene with Besrodio having found a steel ball with a mysterious mark on it. I've gone back to Goug to check a few times since then and there's been no additional scene and no new jobs in the city I think, so not sure what to do to progress this. I'll keep doing jobs around the world, I recall some that had to do with mining so fingers crossed.

I was also wanting to switch up jobs to keep things fresh for everyone and hopefully discover the new classes some of you have been talking about. I did manage to unlock Samurai for Ramza! The first mandatory battle has no story really, but the next introduces Izlude's sister Meliadoul. This battle looks pretty tough with them having the high ground and there being multiple summoners around, but I get lucky. My Ninja tanks the two summons thanks to Auto X-Potion, and double stabs Meliadoul to kill her pretty much instantly. Welp. She leaves vowing revenge.

Prince or Princess... It doesn't matter as long as they are easily controlled.

The next battle has no plot or great difficulty either, my main team feels like they're gelling pretty well. After that though, we finally get to see Delita again while Ramza prays at a church. He is very open about the church's plan, which involves killing Orlandu, Zalbag and Dycedarg (Ramza notably doesn't bat an eye at this!). But he's not working for the church either, and claims to still be an ally. I'm still not sure what his plan is or whose side he'll end up on- presumably he still holds the interests of the common people at heart but Ramza isn't exactly pro-noble anymore so idk how they will split into conflict. Would he choose Ovelia over Ramza? I don't think so. Maybe they won't fight! But this game is pretty relentless so far, if there's a chance for conflict it takes it! We shall see.

I would give my life for her... Is that strange?

Delita also seems to have feelings for Ovelia. Their scene together was good before but I didn't realise it was this deep. Ramza calls him out on using her for his own ambition and Delita honestly claims he doesn't know if he's using her or not. It would be fascinating to get an internal monologue from him to properly figure out how his mind works, there's a lot going on there. You could probably make a pretty solid game centred around his own perspective. Zalmo surrounds us and Delita is a guest once again for another pretty easy battle. I reclassed my Ninja back to Lancer to get him to learn the distant Jump skills (It seems you can just learn the biggest one and it teaches you the smaller jumps too), so he can get to Zalmo from the other side of the map. My guy is pretty OP.

Stay alive, Delita.

You too...

Post-battle we get the most shocking revelation yet- T.G. stands for Thundergod! (This may not be a new revelation and I missed it somewhere, but I definitely looked in the records earlier and it wasn't named there) Ramza shares his side of the plan with his best pal and a new named character shows up who Delita seems to trust. I'm not so sure, she seems an odd addition at this particular moment in time. Either way she seems pretty interesting, also calling out Delita on using his friends (which clearly strikes a nerve). Ramza and Delita have a proper goodbye here, and I am very worried about whether/how they will reunite again. Just let them be, game!

After looking at the local rumours we get access to what appears to be a new side-area, so I'll probably go here before continuing with the plot. It looks like Delita isn't going to be joining up with us anytime soon if at all :(

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Now that you're in chapter 4, take another look at Ramza's Squire class. It has a nice new move, and can equip knight swords now (if you want to know why the latter is important, look at what Orlandu has equipped.)

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I would 100% play a Delita game.

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The only thing I can think of to tell you is if you get offered to buy a flower for 1 gil

BUY IT

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andylt posted...

After looking at the local rumours we get access to what appears to be a new side-area, so I'll probably go here before continuing with the plot.

If you're referring to Nevelska something-or-other, don't worry about it showing as a red dot but not triggering a battle... more sidequesting needs to be done before you can follow through on that (something I learned myself yesterday & followed through on today).

I remembered the game's story beats from the first 3 chapters pretty clearly but wow, I forgot a lot of what happened in Chapter 4, including the fight with Delita joining as a guest. Which was great.

Zalmo: hey aren't you Delita

Delita: since you saw me, now you must die!

I lol'd.

I'm almost done swimming in dopamine from my gaming binge here, game file just passed 37 hours when I finished for the day. Also just realized those 37 hours don't include all the times I died... including 3 times against Wiegraf and cheesing to get through 4th. Some things never change.

Anyways, from my googling it looks like I did all the (non-WotL) optional stuff except for Deep Dungeon so I guess it's that and finishing the game tomorrow. And then it'll be time to catch up on the workload hell waiting for me for daring to take vacation time...

Looking forward to reading andy's ongoing updates now that I remember what actually happens, hahaha...

Wow you raced past me! Glad to know Wiegraf is still a problem even for veterans lol. Feels like Delita was just looking for an excuse to off the Heresy Examiner, can't say I blame him. And yeah I meant Nevelska, so that's good to know. Sidequest-wise, I wonder if there's anything in particular I should be doing to trigger things. I'm reading rumours and taking jobs where I can, but there's so many around I could miss a trigger for an important quest or something. I guess if there's nothing missable (So long as I keep the named plot characters alive, as said earlier) then I don't need to know anything else, I'll figure things out. And yeah I'll be sure to buy that flower Pun, sounds like a VII reference. This game is packed with refs to the earlier games, huh.

So I'm guessing there's only 4/5 chapters then if you're nearly done. Given that we only have 4/12 stones I figured it'd be longer, and I could quite happily sit in this world for 10 chapters or more if the writing kept up. Even so I am going to finish well over your 37 hour mark, I think I might already be around that point lol, though I have rewatched many of the scenes in records to help me remember things while I note down my updates in this topic.

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The sidequests themselves are not missable as long as you dont boot or let certain unique characters on your team die. IIRC, The only one youve recruited so far that needs to stay alive and in your team is Mustadio.

Regarding missables, there is some missable gear, which can be found on certain maps with Move Find Item that you only go to once, if you care about that. Theres also a boss that has unique Genji equipment that you cant get anywhere else unless you steal it. None of this is really that earth shattering, though and Id think most miss those without a guide. Theres also two missable spells that you can learn by having them cast on you. One is at the end of an optional sequence later. The other you can get in a couple of upcoming story battles (the character and ability are in the spoiler text, the place you get it is not):
Ramza can learn Ultima if hes in his Squire class and its cast on him.

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A slight heads up with learning that spell, make sure you aren't turned into a frog when hit by the spell or you wont learn it.

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^Noted! I'll swap Ramza to Squire once he's learned what he can from Samurai.

There's no such thing as equality! One side is always being exploited! Then I wanna be on the 'exploiting' side!

We start the day in Bed Desert, where the Shrine Knights have been spreading poison onto the armies and us. One well-placed Esuna pretty much frees us up and the only annoying thing here is constant Phoenix Downs from the enemies. After a while I just wipe Balk and be done with it, he has some cool dialogue here. I don't wanna take it for granted, it seems like pretty much every minor antagonist in this game is given their own motivation and speech, it's really cool. I'm not generally a fan of FF villains, the 'evil for the sake of it and also badass and cool' thing never did it for me, I love how they do it in this game.

Cid gets thrown in jail thanks to the high priest's meddling, I like how they animate his body having to be physically shoved out of the room. Goltana has terrible political instincts, it's a wonder he's survived as long as he has. Sidebar, I've unlocked the Calculator class! Multiple people have mentioned this being a great class, so I try it on a random battle and... oh god it's so slow. It's so slow and you can barely move and how does the Math skill even work, it's not really explained. I don't think having such a slow class on my healer is a good idea so I take it off for now, and now seeing the requirements I unlock it on my Wizard and set it on him.

Onto the next battle (I choose South if that changes anything), and never mind Calculator is still impossible to use lol. Thankfully the battle is fine, I manage to steal a Crystal Helmet and some luck with Geomancer status effects nulls a couple of enemies. We then get a very interesting cutscene with the Beoulve boys. Zalbag's bedside manner isn't great but it's a heck of a lot nicer than Dycedarg's (I'm only just noticing how weird his walking animation is). Dyce ices Prince Larg in a pretty brutal manner, and I'm not 100% sure what the plan is and who knows what here. Zalbag seems shocked by the murder and poison but mentions a 'plot', and Dycedarg thinks the third party wants the Beoulves to take centre stage before collapsing himself. Hope he isn't dead here, there's more to investigate with him (and the fact he killed his father!). In any other story I would hold out hope for Zalbag being redeemed, but this game continually has people succumb to their weaknesses so I'm not expecting much there.

Nobody's wants you to be King!

We then get a weird gimmick battle with two water levers. Honestly I don't see how this is much different than a 'kill all enemies' map, as unless I did it the hard way you have to wait for the two knights' bodies to disappear before progressing anyway. The battle itself is OK, I swap out my Calculator and my healer uses Holy for the first time (pretty good!), Ninja+Lancer is still OP, and enemy Knights still deal way too much damage. Our reward for opening the floodgates is Orlandu on our team! This is not a surprise as multiple people have alluded to him being a party member in this topic. Olan heads back to Zeltennia, and Delita assassinates Goltana and has a poor soul sacrifice himself for the cause, with the aid of Balmafula (still don't trust her). Delita's bio mentions him continuing to use people for his own ambitions and well being. That's certainly a more sinister description than before, but he continues to rise in the ranks and presumably still has his own ideas of justice and morality at play here.

The High Priest attempts to sue for peace but both armies decline even without their leaders, and Ramza heads to Limberry (where Elmdor is leader, thanks bio) to get Alma. I send my Calculator on jobs to get JP, I do a mining job but it doesn't trigger any kind of scene at Goug, and I test out Orlandu in battle. Holy **** is he OP. Onto the bench you go, Agrias. (Also yay Malboros! Or should I say, Morbols).

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You don't have to kill everyone there, just the knights standing on the levers.

And yes, now that Orlandu is on your team, the game will never be hard again.

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The Calculator class itself is really statistically weak to compensate for how powerful its Math Skill is. It's basically a class you stay in just to gain JP and then use its secondary skill as a Wizard. When used right, it lets you cast spells like Flare, Holy, or Break on multiple targets all the way across the map with no charge time and no MP cost, but I personally don't really like it because it requires a lot of manual number-checking and the reward for good use of it is to completely trivialize battles.

And yeah T.G. Cid is basically a win button. Interestingly his starting weapon, Excalibur is a big part of that and if you give it to Agrias she will become nearly as strong as he is. It's probably optimal to use them both. The Holy Sword skills are just so powerful.

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Finished the game just shy of 42 hours. That's it for gaming binge for now... though the "FF8 using GFs only" challenge is up next. Though that's probably a Christmas break binge...

andylt posted...

Sidebar, I've unlocked the Calculator class! Multiple people have mentioned this being a great class, so I try it on a random battle and... oh god it's so slow. It's so slow and you can barely move and how does the Math skill even work, it's not really explained.

lol!! It can't be TOO good, the speed is the downside. It's best as the secondary ability on a Wizard, yeah... that's why I did my grinding in a single battle to max it out, jacking everyone's Speed up with Yell & Speed Breaking the enemy down to 1. That was my Wednesday night, I think? As tedious as it was, never had to worry about it again. Though Calculators really are so broken...

I think if you hit Select it'll explain a bit better what the class entails/how to use it? Otherwise I'm sure one of us can explain it.

Also:

Nobody's wants you to be King!

Another line that made me lol.

I mean... when he's right, he's right.

Yeah calculator is very powerful but also very advanced tactics.

You are fine to ignore it and use other classes if you dont want to deal with it.

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I don't suppose you stole Balk's gun? It's not a unique item, but they are hard to come by.

Sidebar, I've unlocked the Calculator class! Multiple people have mentioned this being a great class, so I try it on a random battle and... oh god it's so slow. It's so slow and you can barely move and how does the Math skill even work, it's not really explained.

You know the classic Final Fantasy Blue Magic, Level 5 Death? Math Skill is inspired by that. In FFT, if you want Level 5 Death, you combine Level and 5 from Math Skill with Death from Black Magic.

Onto the next battle (I choose South if that changes anything)

North wall is a different generic battle but it's still generic.

We then get a weird gimmick battle with two water levers. Honestly I don't see how this is much different than a 'kill all enemies' map, as unless I did it the hard way you have to wait for the two knights' bodies to disappear before progressing anyway.

That's pretty routine. It is possible to provoke the Knights into moving (by inflicting Confuse, for example) but it's easier to kill them and wait.

I believe that in order to advance the Goug sidequest you'll have to check for unique rumors in Goland Coal City.
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de-equip Excalibur or just don't use Orlandu if you want the rest of the game to still be challenging

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Or give Excalibur to Ramza, and leave Orlandu on the bench. Excalibur is still really strong, but not outright broken on someone without sword skills.

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I will continue to send my Calc on proposition jobs to grind JP, then switch back to Wizard and try it out a bit to see what I think. If Orlandu really is that broken then yeah I'll probably bench him, I don't want to sleepwalk through the game. I'll try Excalibur on one of my others to see how that goes, maybe Ramza when I switch him back to Squire. And I did not steal Balk's gun sadly.

Thanks as always for the tips, I'll probably try to focus on completing jobs first today to get some Calc JP and hopefully trigger that sidequest (and any others!) to move forward. I don't want to overgrind though, idk if this is normal but generally what I do is save every few map spaces and reset the game if I get a battle I don't feel like doing >_> There was a wild 8 dragon fest in Bariaus Hill that I was not at all prepared for yesterday.

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