screenshot Let's Play Final Fantasy Tactics (WOTL): The Nadir of Videogames

[Parrhesia]

Good/Best compatibility deals more damage and is more broadly effective against each other, Bad/Worst compatibility deals less damage and is less broadly effective against each other. This also includes positive effects, so it's hard for units that don't zodiac well to buff or heal each other too.

It's a shitty system.

Faith is just more means your magic is better and you're affected by it more. Unlike Bravery you don't just want it as high as possible on your mages because if you get too Faithful you leave the clan to go find yourself spiritually, no joke, no warning. It's bullshit.

[maybe]

1 minute ago, Parrhesia said:

Unlike Bravery you don't just want it as high as possible on your mages because if you get too Faithful you leave the clan to go find yourself spiritually, no joke, no warning. It's bullshit.

okay that's actually pretty funny I like FFT now

[Augestein]

9 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

Good/Best compatibility deals more damage and is more broadly effective against each other, Bad/Worst compatibility deals less damage and is less broadly effective against each other. This also includes positive effects, so it's hard for units that don't zodiac well to buff or heal each other too.

It's a shitty system.

Faith is just more means your magic is better and you're affected by it more. Unlike Bravery you don't just want it as high as possible on your mages because if you get too Faithful you leave the clan to go find yourself spiritually, no joke, no warning. It's bullshit.

I thought I should clarify things about the zodiac systems. These are all expansions on the systems in Tactics Ogre. In Tactics Ogre, there were elements Fire, Water, Earth and Wind. Fire did more damage to Water and vice versa, and Earth and Air were paired together as well. Using Earth elements gave damage boosts etc for matching correct spells. It was meant to be a more elaborate version of that. The problem? No one knows the freaking zodiacs off hand on a first playthrough, so you're going to be spending more time looking at the status menu or having a piece of paper next to you to remember them. The idea of having the zodiac teams is actually a pretty solid idea to be honest: it allows some actual variation in damage differences between units without having random variance on damage and making it unpredictable. All damage can be calculated by considering PA, WA etc right off the bat, so that is kinda nice. It encourages you to have a team of units that have good compatibility chains with one another. I'd argue that THIS system itself isn't bad, what's bad is that you can't create units and dictate what their signs etc. are when you recruit them, so it requires constantly entering and exiting the Soldier Office Menus to get what you want. 

This is actually a better system than Chaos Frame from Tactics Ogre to be honest. In Tactics Ogre, people had different factions, races, and alignment that affected their liking to your leader, and would determine if the unit would stay or go. And the game didn't actually show numbers for what the units were for raising loyalty either. So you'd just get warning messages that some character hated you and you had no idea WTF you were supposed to do stop this from happening. With Faith, that's not entirely true about the person leaving without warning. You did get warnings. A bright red flashing text of "WARNING" would flash on the screen at you. And the character would start saying crazy nonsense. Incidentally, the same thing happens if your unit's brave gets to low as well. They leave because they are too afraid to fight. Considering that you have the mediator class to regulate these stats and no Faith alteration ever happens in the game, having a unit leave for faith would simply be the player's fault. Unlike Loyalty from Tactics Ogre, where you could simply recruit a person that has low loyalty and they immediately leave a battle or two later. The faith value has to be at >94 IIRC for them to leave. So you have to royally botch this to even have that happen. 

[eclipse]

50 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

Faith is just more means your magic is better and you're affected by it more. Unlike Bravery you don't just want it as high as possible on your mages because if you get too Faithful you leave the clan to go find yourself spiritually, no joke, no warning. It's bullshit.

And on the other hand, low Bravery/Faith.  Low Bravery is great for finding hidden items, but if it goes too low, your character wusses out of your army.  Low Faith means less damage from magic attacks (and I assume healing).

[Mage Knight 404]

All these summations of mechanics and we just gloss over that our boy Mercurio has the same voice as Samurai Jack. Got to get back to the past, indeed.

Just don't be faithful in this world of grey Ivalice. You'll find it misplaced.

[maybe]

11 minutes ago, Mage Knight 404 said:

All these summations of mechanics and we just gloss over that our boy Mercurio has the same voice as Samurai Jack. Got to get back to the past, indeed.

Just don't be faithful in this world of grey Ivalice. You'll find it misplaced.

wait is that actually phil lamarr

i'm very disappointed, phil lamarr is usually great

[Mage Knight 404]

2 minutes ago, unique said:

wait is that actually phil lamarr

i'm very disappointed, phil lamarr is usually great

That's him, yeah.

[Parrhesia]

1 hour ago, Augestein said:

[Zodiac is better in theory but overcomplicated elements]

[Brave/Faith departure is better than Loyalty]

Didn't know about the warning text - you know, I can't actually find any images of it. I might try and make it happen in the LP itself...

Low bravery makes sense, and like, a unit with single-digit bravery is probably fucked anyway. But it's entirely intuitive to give a wizard extremely high faith, so that they wizard... better. I know I pumped everyone's bravery to near-maximum the first time I played the game. Still, 'better than a bad mechanic' doesn't necessarily equal a good mechanic. I like Loyalty in TO, but I've only played the PSP version (which, unlike WotL, did change a bunch of stuff) and haven't had anyone Actually Desert yet so the rank of how much units like me is almost more like trivia than anything.

[maybe]

ok yeah unironically that faith mechanic is dumb regardless of execution

hilarious, but dumb

Edited March 27, 2017 by unique

[Augestein]

1 hour ago, eclipse said:

And on the other hand, low Bravery/Faith.  Low Bravery is great for finding hidden items, but if it goes too low, your character wusses out of your army.  Low Faith means less damage from magic attacks (and I assume healing).

Bingo. Brave also affects Knight sword damage, fist, and Katana damage as well. Low Faith means less accuracy on status effects as well. It's not entirely true about magic though, as there are magical attacks that don't use faith: Draw Out / Iaido, and Geomancy / Elemental attacks are also registered as magical damage (despite having PA in their formula as well). I like the idea of Brave and Faith, it's just not used very well. There's also Malik's Hell Skill which uses the reverse of the formula and Rapha's/Rafa's skills also ignore faith. 

 

19 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

Didn't know about the warning text - you know, I can't actually find any images of it. I might try and make it happen in the LP itself...

Low bravery makes sense, and like, a unit with single-digit bravery is probably fucked anyway. But it's entirely intuitive to give a wizard extremely high faith, so that they wizard... better. I know I pumped everyone's bravery to near-maximum the first time I played the game. Still, 'better than a bad mechanic' doesn't necessarily equal a good mechanic. I like Loyalty in TO, but I've only played the PSP version (which, unlike WotL, did change a bunch of stuff) and haven't had anyone Actually Desert yet so the rank of how much units like me is almost more like trivia than anything.

Most people don't even bother to do it as it's a complete pain in the butt. If you want to do it pretty fast, I recommend using Threaten (or whatever it's called in the PSP version. The Mediator move that lowers brave) on Rafa/Rapha. Losing brave is very slow unless you're using "chicken" from Chocobo which you need BeastMaster/ Monster Skill for that. 

I actually don't know if it's in the PSP version  of FFT to be honest, as there are some things removed from the PSP like Spell quote text.  The PSP version is much more difficult to have people desert than the original version of the game. In the original Tactics Ogre, people lost loyalty every single time they got knocked out and revived, and it was incredibly easy to get OHKOed at moments. The only way to gain it was through dialogue choices, MVP (a bonus which was the result of killing many enemies with 1 unit and a free level for the unit that did it and bonus EXP, I can't find an image for that either to be honest), or leveling on non-training fights (this was also a removed mechanic from the original Tactics Ogre). In the PSP version, you can still see loyalty via using the select button and going on their name. The messages are catered within the unit's alignment. It's super obscure. Anyway, in the original for instance, Arycelle would auto-leave if you chose in route for chaos for instance, and all of your Bacrum soldiers took a much larger hit for loyalty than they did in the PSP Version. PSP version, I believe she simply loses 80 loyalty, which considering she had 100 when you actually get her, it's not as bad as getting -100 like the original had. The PSP version actually takes a lot more cues from FFT to be honest and ends up being a hybrid of both. With some extra pains that ultimately somehow make me like it less than both FFT and the original Tactics Ogre despite the fact that with most of its changes, it *should* be better. Also, I forgot to mention I agree with the fact that "better than a bad mechanic" doesn't make it a good mechanic, but you have to understand that it was a massive improvement over the original cryptic version. 

I'm actually really looking forward to this, as I don't think the game has necessarily aged poorly, just that it has a ton of broken mechanics-- like many strategy RPGs. It's just not a very tactical game but it's a good strategy game for building units. It's funny because I feel that FFT and Tactics Ogre (original and remake) as well as Knights of Lotus all have decent foundations but make some atrocious decisions all over the place that stop it from being a "mileage may vary" sort of thing. PSP Tactics Ogre for instance? It has so many things that drive me bonkers that it's not even funny. 

Edited March 27, 2017 by Augestein

[Parrhesia]

Knights of Lodis felt weirdly unfinished to me and I have absolutely no idea why.

[Slumber]

I love FFT, so you can go fu-

Alright... breathe... calm down... Okay.

For real, I look forward to seeing what you have to say, since this is actually the first time I've ever seen a group of people that don't like it(Especially on a forum full of SRPG fans). And while I like it, and I enjoy talking to others who like it, I could just be completely glossing over some legitimate flaws(Though I agree with the Zodiac and Faith/Bravery obtuseness. I don't actually think they're BAD mechanics, but their implementation could be a lot better and clearer).

However, the dude complaining about confirmations being O instead of X didn't play many early Japanese PS1 games, because they're ALL like that(Including Final Fantasy 7).

You should experience Front Mission 3. I know that's a different tone entirely, but holy shit, you haven't seen awful until you play that game. I don't think I hate any videogame protagonist more than Kazuki. And I've played God of War and the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. I don't know why he's not more hated than he is. I think more people have to experience his petty shit-headness.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Slumber

[maybe]

5 minutes ago, Slumber said:

However, the dude complaining about confirmations being O instead of X didn't play many early Japanese PS1 games, because they're ALL like that(Including Final Fantasy 7).

like i said i was joking about that but that does bother me even though i've played a fair amount of japanese ps1 games (i have a lot downloaded on my ps3)

the thing is, ff7 (and many others) lets you change the controls, so I was able to easily make it what I wanted to

this came after ff7, so I have no idea why you can't change the controls here. pressing o to select things is not a legitimate issue but not being able to change the controls in a game with as simple controls as fft is just weird

i could probably still play it if I enjoyed the gameplay enough but i really didn't

[Dark Holy Elf]

Slumber kinda stole my thoughts. Really surprised to run into a chunk of FFT hate on a SRPG forum of all places since I've basically never seen it elsewhere. Unlike a lot of the RPGs I liked from the PSX era I always thought this one had aged well (some issues with mid-dungeon saving and challenge spikes aside...), partly because it always relied on gameplay over plot and partly because man those sprites look a lot better than early 3D lego models now. But hey, taste I guess. WotL is a pretty inferior version on a few fronts (worse JP balance, animation lag) whch probably doesn't help.

Brave/faith are a bit weird and not well-explained but once you know how they work they're not really a problem; just make sure your mages have decent faith and any fist-users have decent brave and you'll be fine. The part about people leaving at high faith isn't a problem in practice because it'll only ever happen if you ignore like 8 battles in a row worth of warning messages and keep manually raising faith anyway. (If it was something that could happen by accident like if white magic use automatically raised your faith or something then yeah I'd totally understand.)

 

EDIT: Changing the controls in FF7 was really weird because some mini-games (chocobo breeding for sure) didn't change their controls when you changed them in the menu and IIRC you would have to change them back for such segments. I agree that you should be able to change the controls on principle though.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Dark Holy Elf

[Slumber]

7 minutes ago, unique said:

like i said i was joking about that but that does bother me even though i've played a fair amount of japanese ps1 games (i have a lot downloaded on my ps3)

the thing is, ff7 (and many others) lets you change the controls, so I was able to easily make it what I wanted to

this came after ff7, so I have no idea why you can't change the controls here. pressing o to select things is not a legitimate issue but not being able to change the controls in a game with as simple controls as fft is just weird

i could probably still play it if I enjoyed the gameplay enough but i really didn't

Changing the controls in FF7 fucks up inputs that have their own mechanics. Want to do Chocobo breeding? Well, better change your X back to O, or else you won't be able to use either! And for a few mini-games, you were forced to use O as confirm, and for the ones that didn't have their own separate controls, swapping X and O would similarly make both buttons unusable. FF7 was unique it its ability to let you map your controls, and I'm sure Square realized how much it fucked up parts of the game, which is why they didn't do it again for any PS1 FFs.

I actually can't think of any early PS1 games that use O as confirm by default that let you change controls BESIDES FF7.

Control schemes didn't really become a thing until Halo, and even after that, most modern console games don't let you customize controls beyond just picking from half a dozen pre-set schemes. It seems weird to expect a 20 year old game to have map-able controls, when the one case before it actually made chunks of the game unplayable.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Slumber

[Parrhesia]

my emulator thinks the X key is O anyway so I'm chill

by the by I haven't mentioned the spoiler policy anywhere but the spoiler policy is no spoilers. If we've seen it in the LP, we're good, if we're not, you don't.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Parrhesia

[Interdimensional Observer]

I was playing the PS1 version of FFT. It felt a little too slow, and for other various reasons, I've stopped at what is probably the final fight of Chapter 1. Also, while I heard things get easier later on, I've burnt through hoards of Phoenix Downs and Potions in most fights. I've two males and females (one mage and one physical unit for each gender) plus Ramza in use, with lots of monk on the physical side.

Want to get back as I do to my entire PS3 backlog (MMX4 & 5, FF9, ToG, ToX, VC, BoF4, Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, DDS2, RKv.tSA), but after the Wii U, I feel like there is something wrong with TV-only consoles. They devour precious tens of hours of your short life without letting you enjoy other things at the same time.

And on that note- how is Ogre Battle 64? Any chance it'll later be put on Switch and I should wait?

[Parrhesia]

Update 2
In Which Our Hero Flashes Back

Spoiler

 

We abruptly flash back to a year ago, to the first mention of Delita in the history books.

So yeah shit sucked. The war kind of fucked everything up. Take a moment to appreciate Sass Squire on the left. We're in the Gariland Academy, apparently, which the game insists on misspelling.

what the fuck is a wain

yeah damn fucking right it's archaic

Delita reckons this dude, Duke Larg, is coming to town.

Delita's theory is that there just aren't enough Northern Order Knights going around, so they're on a recruiting drive, then some guy comes in and tells everyone to form up.

This dude tells everyone that basically there's these bad dudes called the Corpse Brigade - the same deserters that the chapter intro talks about - and the Northern Order are gonna fuck them up.

They need more dudes to cover their back, and those dudes will be us. Another knight comes in, whispers in his ear and leaves.

Boom, first mission. We're gonna go fuck these dudes up.

Our prologue stats are a thing of the past. The prologue battle was fucking meaningless. We are at least five dudes now, but all our dudes are just, like, four squires and two chemists. Two squires get swords, as does Mercurio. Everyone's level 1.

Notice how we do not get to look at the battlefield before committing to a formation. Mercurio will also often be shunted somewhere totally different to start fights.

These dudes are green, the Bandit Colour (which will also represent the Corpse Brigade).

I think this line was originally 'Blame yourself or God!' in the more flamboyant hatchet-job OG PS1 translation.

Ugh, I'm pretty sure when I was like, fifteen, I thought 'none will mourn your passing' was a cool enough line to crib, and put it like three places in my own work. 

This fight is literally just all squires against all squires plus one chemist who heals himself for 30 and has positioned himself where only two of my dudes, who deal 15 damage apiece, can get to him. It's fine, just boring.

Oh, and Zell's turned into a crystal. The crystal mechanic fucking sucks. Basically three turns after being knocked out, a unit dies, which goes for the player as well (and if Mercurio crystallises, it's game over). This sucks because it takes fucking forever to get any payoff for killing something - half the time the payoff is an item, half the time it's just a random array of their skills which you can't tell until you move onto the crystal in a game you can't take moves back in. But it's irrelevant because you won't get those turns because across literally half the game there is a fucking guest character going haywire.

Exit the chemist.

Mercurio wonders why the poors don't just get jobs and buy houses. And that's it - that's the mission. Boom, kick to world map.

Update isn't quite over. Like everyone else who has ever played FFT we're going to ignore our starting dudes and instead get new dudes who are named. The new dudes always cost a fair amount and are always level 1 squires with no skills which is pretty fucking bad, so buy guys immediately or not at all. Their bravery/faith are randomly generated between 40 and 70.

Incidentally, because Fuck You, The Player, men are worse at magic and women are worse at fighting. Therefore all fighters (except arguably samurai) should be men and all nerds should be women. There are two niche classes you get from very advanced male nerds and female fighters. They are not worth it. The one caveat is they are at least nice enough to give Mercurio the best of both.

And, finally, before we end;

FUCK OFF.

 

 

[Mage Knight 404]

Mercurio needs no scrubs or moppets - only solid muscle and nerdage.

It's the other meme line you're thinking of that the original translation used there - "Surrender or die in obscurity!" Though I believe the one true line is used not long after?

[Parrhesia]

Ah, you're right. "Blame yourself or God" was what Delita originally shouted back at Agrias when he fled the church in the prologue.

[Punished Dayni]

32 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

The crystal mechanic fucking sucks. Basically three turns after being knocked out, a unit dies, which goes for the player as well (and if Mercurio crystallises, it's game over IMMEDIATELY) 

(Edit by me for emphasis)

OH Yeah, the shit that made me quit FFT. I still don't get the actual point of characters having such a short time to die when they turn to crystal. Add the idea of a questionable reward system and it seems like a system that should have been questioned in the concept phase.

Also, holy crap Phil LaMarr voices Mercutio? I do feel bad now.

[Heptade]

The story would have been great if not for the Lucavi. I mean, it presents itself as a complex political plot, and quite a well-written one at that (at least in the PSP translation), yet in the end, the villains are just stereotypically evil demons... way to lose any semblance of moral ambiguity...

I also didn't like that once a character was recruited, they just disappeared from the story (with very few exceptions, which were short optional cutscenes anyway).

Still, the game was enjoyable, but it had a lot of wasted potential (a bit like FE Fates, imo, even though I love Fates).

[Parrhesia]

I mean yeah it manages to go all the way until next update without any major narrative fuckups

7 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And on that note- how is Ogre Battle 64? Any chance it'll later be put on Switch and I should wait?

Ogre Battle 64 fucking owns with the one caveat that you kinda need to know how to dupe items to play it, otherwise everyone will be Lawful in a game that needs you to have guys across the alignment spectrum.

It's really fucking good though.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Parrhesia

[Parrhesia]

vagued out for a second

Edited March 27, 2017 by Parrhesia

[Dandragon]

I made the mistake of not dumping my guys immediately because I feel bad about their departure lines. And I am a sissy that feels bad about mooks in video games. Incidently, is there really no point in buying new mooks later than now, if they start at level 1 every time?