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

[Parrhesia]

Pretty much. You only ever need three new guys since the game forces a deployment limit of four for basically all missions until like, halfway through Chapter 2.

I don't mind the departure lines but spoilers we are going to be seeing a lot of them unavoidably.

[Dandragon]

Unfortunate. I'd be hoping to train up many people in order to use several different characters and classes, but it sounds like that's not really recommended, even if you are going for a sub-optimal run. Well, I suppose you get the two knights and that one squire at the beginning of chapter 2.

[Augestein]

4 hours ago, Dayni said:

(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.

As opposed to Fire Emblem's instant death upon someone's hp reaching 0? I really don't understand how this is bad mechanic. 

[maybe]

13 minutes ago, Augestein said:

As opposed to Fire Emblem's instant death upon someone's hp reaching 0? I really don't understand how this is bad mechanic. 

no one said fire emblem's mechanic wasn't bad too

but even then, fire emblem's design is completely different from fft to the point that it's pretty much incomparable

[Augestein]

5 minutes ago, unique said:

no one said fire emblem's mechanic wasn't bad too

but even then, fire emblem's design is completely different from fft to the point that it's pretty much incomparable

I'm confused on how giving you a turn counter to revive a person is a bad mechanic. Like a "so bad I quit" mechanic. You are literally given 3 turns to revive a fallen comrade or they die. This literally means that you can finish the fight before they reach 0 or just revive them, and each time they die, it starts at 3. It's honestly one of the better "fallen" mechanics for a game with perma-death. 

And no, it's not incomparable. They are both SRPGs with perma-death. 

Edited March 28, 2017 by Augestein

[Radiant Dragon]

2 hours ago, Dandragon said:

Unfortunate. I'd be hoping to train up many people in order to use several different characters and classes, but it sounds like that's not really recommended, even if you are going for a sub-optimal run. Well, I suppose you get the two knights and that one squire at the beginning of chapter 2.

You totally can do this, actually. With only two gender-exclusive classes, there is a lot of mixing and matching of skillsets available, unlike in FFTA/FFTA2 where some races only have a couple of good options. Many of the unique characters also use certain classes better or worse than others, and there are one or two that are broken enough that they will almost never use a generic skillset except maybe to heal/revive others. There are a couple challenges to running a large team that you'll need to keep in mind, however.

One, if you want to keep and use all of the special characters, you have to make sure you don't go over your roster limit. In the original FFT, there were 16 roster slots, exactly enough for Ramza and the 15 special characters, so any generics you recruit and train through chapter 1 have to eventually either get booted or boot out someone later. I think WotL has 20 or 24 slots, and only has two additional unique characters, so you have some wiggle room there for additional generic units or monsters if you want.

The second challenge is that you're probably going to have to fight a lot of random battles to keep a large team all leveled, since FFT doesn't have any sidequests until chapter 4, unlike FFTA/FFTA2. Your generics can run propositions for JP on the side (basically dispatch missions like in FFTA/FFTA2), but they don't give EXP.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Radiant Dragon

[Parrhesia]

36 minutes ago, Radiant Dragon said:

One, if you want to keep and use all of the special characters, you have to make sure you don't go over your roster limit. In the original FFT, there were 16 roster slots, exactly enough for Ramza and the 15 special characters, so any generics you recruit and train through chapter 1 have to eventually either get booted or boot out someone later. I think WotL has 20 or 24 slots, and only has two additional unique characters, so you have some wiggle room there for additional generic units or monsters if you want.

The second challenge is that you're probably going to have to fight a lot of random battles to keep a large team all leveled, since FFT doesn't have any sidequests until chapter 4, unlike FFTA/FFTA2. Your generics can run propositions for JP on the side (basically dispatch missions like in FFTA/FFTA2), but they don't give EXP.

That explains it. Yeah the playthrough I saw had a ton of guys ditched but it was in FFT where Lavian/Agrias/Ladd (spoilers those three guys will be recruited later) were irrelevant. I looked it up and WOTL's limit is 24.

But yeah if you don't want to be stuck in permanent grinding hell, just pick three generic dudes at the start, keep one of the starting dudes for Chapter 1 random battles and otherwise just use special boys as filler. The game's level curve is fucking aggressive, it does not encourage squad rotation in the least.

[Slumber]

1 hour ago, Augestein said:

I'm confused on how giving you a turn counter to revive a person is a bad mechanic. Like a "so bad I quit" mechanic. You are literally given 3 turns to revive a fallen comrade or they die. This literally means that you can finish the fight before they reach 0 or just revive them, and each time they die, it starts at 3. It's honestly one of the better "fallen" mechanics for a game with perma-death. 

And no, it's not incomparable. They are both SRPGs with perma-death. 

Yeah, complaining about main character death game overs on a Fire Emblem board seems... really, really weird.

Especially when the FFT one is way more forgiving. I don't think I've had a Ramza-related game over in over a decade(Outside of maps where Ramza is isolated for story purposes). If I ever get a game over, it's because of a total party wipe.

[Parrhesia]

Fire Emblem permadeath is bad, Final Fantasy Tactics permadeath is still kind of bad. It would be infinitely less bad if sources of raising the dead on Not Single-Digit Health were 100% accurate. A Good system imo is Tactics Ogre's (LUCT, not KoL) of 'you get three turns before a death, and three deaths before a... like... proper death'.

As it stands you kind of have to treat the three turns as like, one. Otherwise, whoops, you missed, you're fucked.

[Augestein]

Spells are decently accurate with decent faith (like not sub 50 on both caster and the target) between both targets and compatibility to help. Raise/Life will definitely have 100% accuracy with "not bad compatibility" and decent MA (pretty much any mage class or a Geomancer with magical boosting equips). If it's still too inaccurate, you could inflict the faith status effect on yourself with equips or the faith inducing skill from the Oracle/Seer class. Tactics Ogre PSP (the original absolutely did not use this, it used the same Fire Emblem system) is the exact same system as Final Fantasy Tactics with a person having the ability to "die" 3 times over the course of the game before they die forever. 

The three turns are still three turns because the timer goes down based off of the fallen's CT. So unless the person's speed is something ridiculoulsly over everyone else's, you should have around 12 of your units' turns to revive them. I feel like if you didn't revive someone in that long of a time by any of your allies, I feel like that's a fair response to lose a unit, because even in Tactics Ogre PSP, if you ignored your ally like that 3 times, they're dead. The only difference between TO: PSP and FFT at that point is that you'd have lost 3 units in FFT as opposed to 1. Which I guess is "nicer" but it's not exactly better for being more forgiving. 

[Radiant Dragon]

7 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

That explains it. Yeah the playthrough I saw had a ton of guys ditched but it was in FFT where Lavian/Agrias/Ladd (spoilers those three guys will be recruited later) were irrelevant. I looked it up and WOTL's limit is 24.

But yeah if you don't want to be stuck in permanent grinding hell, just pick three generic dudes at the start, keep one of the starting dudes for Chapter 1 random battles and otherwise just use special boys as filler. The game's level curve is fucking aggressive, it does not encourage squad rotation in the least.

True. I always just ditch the first three of the starting generics so that Lavian, Alicia and Ladd join in slots 2-4, then I ditch the rest of my generics at the start of Chapter 2. You only get to deploy three non-Ramza units for most of Chapter 2 anyway, and by the time you get to add a fourth you've recruited other plot characters to fill the gap. Thankfully, you get some wiggle room in WotL.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Radiant Dragon

[Parrhesia]

Update 3
In Which Our Hero Meets An Angry Boy

Spoiler

 

We're gonna start off with exposition, provided to us by the pub guy who was the worst-translated dude in the PS1 original.

Okay, second screenshot, first sentence, is fucking horrible and should be excised from the world, but you get the idea. Corpse Brigade's a pack of thugs.

Henry VI ain't doing so hot, but it's okay because Margaret of Anjou's got it sorted out anyway.

By the way, have you ever heard the concept of 'show, don't tell'?

Eight screenshots of just endless fucking proper nouns.

I'll be honest, I'm not even 100% sure what country FFT takes place in. I'm gonna assume it's Ivalice. Maybe a look at the map will clarify thi-

thanks, game.

This is the overworld. Red dots are story battles. Blue dots are cities where you can do things. Green dots are filler you can fight random battles in sometimes. Random battles are not optional. If the game decides you're fighting there, you're fighting there. You can't flee. Someone dies in a random battle they die for real. If you get wiped out, it's a Game Over.

So the plotdump mentioned a dude called Beoulve, right? Which is Mercurio's surname?

yeah don't get used to him lmao

The names in FFT fucking suck. This guy named his sons ZALBAAG and DYCEDARG.

Anyway his shitty idiot sons are telling Patriarch Beowulf how the war's going great and how some emissary agreed to his proposal.

This is Alma, who will come up a lot for some reason.

guess he's too

mercurial

Upshot of this is that Dyce/Zal/Alma are the proper family heirs. Mercurio's a bastard. Or, as Barbaneth puts it;

, because the localisation was fucking awful.

Mercurio dashes in late and Dyce is like 'what the fuck'

This speech is important. This is going to make up the foundation of basically the rest of Mercurio's actions forever.

Barbaneth and his darkside equivalent, El Cid, are basically like, the two remaining bastions of chivalry in a pretty fucking shithouse world. Spoilers, the guy whose names is literally Zalbaag and the goatee and nightrobe man are not going to live up to his legacy. We are.

Barbaneth's pulled strings to help us out, too. Our boy Delita's been entered into the academy along with us, to be given a proper squire...ship. His last words to us; hell, to anyone, before slipping away? "Take care of your sister..."

Yeah Barbareth just straight up told the bastard youngest son that his two other sons and actual heirs had totally failed to live up to his legacy, in front of those two other sons, on his deathbed, as his final words.

Barbareth owns. Or, I suppose I should say, owned.

shit i forgot to save again before heading out to mandalia plains

Anyway they're beating down some rich kid.

Boom, meaningful choices- haha no, not really. We can decide to play the chapter fairly by killing everyone, or we can decide to make the chapter luck-based by relying on saving Argath. Mercurio - in fact I think everyone in the party - gets 10 brave for the duration of the fight and two permanently if he escorts, 5/1 otherwise. Every temporary brave/faith adjustment of 4 translates to a permanent 1, rounded down.

Mercurio just got the whole speech on being a proper knight, so he's gonna save this dickhead. If we don't, Delita's like 'what the fuck, well, if you won't save him, I will'

Argath, by the way, is a dickhead. If the 'bronze platemail and overalls' aesthetic didn't tip you off, his shitty richboy face should. He hits the squire and stays put, which is really bad, since it lets guys gang up on him, which they don't quite and the thief helpfully misses. The game has decided that we are able to continue. Good.

Argath's making his way over to us. Good. So introducing our new crew, the male squire is Thurio, named for the Shakespearean character, the chemist is Portia, named for the Shakespearean character, and the female squire is Selkie, who is not named after a Shakespearean character, I just really like selkies okay. The squires only know how to hit things, and then I realise something.

Yeah, turns out I was wrong about the Bravery thing. After the big chivalry speech? You are in fact meant to just say, 'fuck this guy, exterminate the brigands'.

haha bye nerd

Dude, don't blame me, blame the mechanics! This isn't consistent, by the way - later on we'll be faced with some random guy, without Delita to guilt trip us, in a situation where Mercurio's meant to be more hardened, with the same choice. And if we don't choose to save him, we actually lose Bravery!

Oh good, I set up a situation where I have a sweet kill for Thurio on these dipshit little squires, except Thurio arbitrarily deals half normal damage to this guy, something I cannot adjust for by moving him back because I cannot move him back so I just have to commit. Incidentally, isn't it nice how some games reward you for flanks and backstabs? Haha yeah the FFT squad never realised that. I think maybe shield evasion gets ignored for backstabs and parrying is only head-on, but basically only knights even get either of those bonuses.

Item isn't a regular default command in FFT - instead Chemists are somewhat weirdly the default wizard class, and yeah, they do have to learn each item command like a skill, and yeah you do have to keep your supplies up. Actual Chemists can throw, guys with it as a secondary skillset (or with a certain passive that nobody will ever use because the only passive in the game until Act 4 is JP Boost) can only use it on guys next to them. That said it's a useful skillset to have because it has Phoenix Downs, the only source of 100% accuracy resurrection in the game.

Yes, the implication was that Raise Dead can miss in a game with permadeath. I think I already mentioned that. I absolutely don't care. It's insanely stupid.

We finally explode a squire. Spot Delita, the guest character, hanging back, and spot Argath, the other guest character, literally out of frame, and realise that instead of these two dipshit wastemen we could've had like, an actual unit we could control, to do things. All the enemy counterattacks have procced so far, by the way, including the 40-brave cat. All monsters have innate counterattack.

It turns out the other eastern squire is also a Scorpio and thus Thurio can barely scratch him, either.

Argath punches the wolf in order to not kill him rather than using his sword, which would kill him, to kill him.

Just in general assume a doctrine that most otherwise unremarkable 'dude gets hit' shots imply the death of the hit dude. Selkie's been standing here like all match just tanking shit in the face and getting healed by Portia.

These three turns are all consecutive. We snowball.

For all my gripes, this is a fine enough mission. We get some enemy variety, we have the chance for our own dudes, et cetera. And it's an interesting map with a lot of chokepoints.

'Hurt', Mercurio. Is he 'hurt.' Has he been harmed, you could maybe address Delita to say, at a stretch. But, centrally, you are asking if he is hurt.

There's like seven lines, I have condensed them to two and lost nothing. The marquis is the only marquis we have heard about or indeed ever will hear about - Limberry.

See?

Delita just kind of looks him up and down and is like 'haha yeah sure overalls boy'

I like Argath... 's concept. A gentle time to remind people that no spoilers, please. I know what's happened, others may not.

He's really happy to hear that Mercurio's a Beowulf and totally ignores Delita, the guy who actually wanted to save him.

Argath really wants to hang onto the coattails of success.

Delita points out, correctly, that hostages aren't generally taken to be arbitrarily executed. Mercurio also points out correctly that there's like six of us. Six dudes is not many dudes. So they all agree to head to Eagrose - and that's where we'll call it an update.

 

 

[maybe]

at least barbaneth is a pretty funny name, without hitting incredibly stupid zalbaag territory

[Laura]

tbh the chemist outfit for girls is like really cute b+ for that chanel dress but the color blue is not good on you along with that conservative look like unless u wanna bang old men thats weird

[Parrhesia]

Sadly I don't think we fight any other female chemists in the story across the entire game but if we come across one in a random battle I will screenshot her for you

[Augestein]

The story haha. I'm so glad you decided to hit up the bars/taverns as well. Beautiful. 

[SoloCross]

Fun Fact: Ramza Mercurio is the only unit that can get to 99 Faith with no repercussions, so he could make for a capable magic caster...

[Mage Knight 404]

Oh dear, the super detailed background plot the taverns lay threadbare in whole - I never paid attention to it at all until after the last playthrough I witnessed. It's certainly a trial.

Argath! Everyone's favorite punching bag. He knows he'd better follow Mercurio so he can be punched less.

[Slumber]

6 minutes ago, SoloCross said:

Fun Fact: Ramza Mercurio is the only unit that can get to 99 Faith with no repercussions, so he could make for a capable magic caster...

Yes, and you make him the ultimate Summoner bait in the process.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Slumber

[Omegaprism]

I hated his stupid face when he was just 'Algus,' and I still hate it now. Man, he's got a punchable face.

[Parrhesia]

I'll vent more about Argath later, but I honestly think he represents a lot of wasted potential. Not least in terms of 'taking up a party space that could instead be a fifth dude'.

 

still a prick tho

[Integrity]

On 3/27/2017 at 5:03 PM, Parrhesia said:

flamboyant hatchet-job 

tag

your

self

[Parrhesia]

Update 4
In Which Our Hero Is Publically Embarrassed By His Idiot New Friend

Spoiler

 

Dice Beowulf is the eldest, and in charge now. He's impressed with Mercurio's work so far, but notes that Mercurio's kind of a gloomy cunt. Mercurio's like 'yeah thanks bro whose disappointing my late father I'm covering for, but I'm sort of sad about the whole Marquis thing'.

jesus christ mercurio.

Anyway yeah Dice Beowulf is now the third guy to point out that he's going to be ransomed and, hell, if not, he's probably already dead lol.

Argath decides that the best way to repay his friend is to demand a fucking army, under the leadership of him, Argath, some dipshit stable boy, to go save his liege.

Ellipses flying solo in dialogue are almost always bad. This one is an exception.

Argath doubles down. Delita and Mercurio are just sitting there like, 'let's see how this plays out.' Dice is like. Dude. The fuck. I'm already sending dudes to sort it out. Sit the fuck down, foreigner.

Yeah apparently Argath's a foreigner. 'Not a man of Gallione'. Where is Gallione, you might ask? I don't know.

Dice hilariously smacks Argath the fuck down and in more Nice Spritework Argath sits down in a hilarious sulky pose for all of like, a second, before getting up again, briefly glancing at Dice and assuming his current pose, blanking him. Dice's word is final, and makes perfect sense. His dudes will handle it. We, the idiot baby squires, will sit back and let them handle this, because we're fucking squires.

Argath's going to plotdump on us. I love you guys so I will summarise it. His family was hot shit once, but his grandfather fucked it up during the war. He was captured and sold out his mates to buy his own freedom, walked out the gates and was hilariously immediately shivved by some guy.

Word got out of the whole thing and that was like, boom, family gone, one bad apple kind of fucking it up for everyone.

Argath's got this whole inferiority complex - you can see it through everything he does. He obsesses over proper high families - he's devoutly loyal to his liege, as is proper, and to the Beowulfs. He forgets sometimes that he's just some generic now, because he's sort of... not meant to be? But he respects the order of things, and has absolutely no filter between brain and mouth.

Anyway he's interrupted by our sister and brother. Also by Tietra, Delita's sister, as you can tell by the fact that she's the world's sole brunette.

Zalbaag's a little less lordly and more knightly than Dice.

It sets him up pretty clearly as Jolly Knight rather than Icy Lord. Typical second son material honestly.

So yeah Tietra's off at handmaiden school or whatever, but Zalbaag's like 'right, I'm off to go kill these motherfuckers'

But he'll casually tip us off first.

Hilariously Zalbaag squints at Argath for a couple of frames. All like 'are you for real dude'

Here's the deal, anyway. Zalbaag knows we're restless and bored, and he doesn't have the manpower to sort out his informant.

And like hypothetically it would be really great if off the record SOMEONE busted his dude out mysteriously, the dude who last reported back in Dorter.

Then he's off. This animation's cute.

Alma reminds us that there is no less reliable source of information in the world than of a teenager telling their authority figures "I'm fine" despite all evidence to the contrary. Tietra's also common trash and everyone bitches at her for it. The Beowulves are fine with it - Barbaneth was a big Delita fan, Zalbaag seems to be as well, and Alma's got Tietra's back - but much of the rest of Ivalice's nobility is less chill.

Alma's like, "Mercurio would it kill you to chill" and he's like "haha yeah" and walks off and, no joke, the music cuts out and there's a breeze in Alma's skirt as she clasps her hands to her chest for some reason.

We're thrown into a random battle in Mandalia.

thanks fft

As you can tell it goes perfectly according to plan. We wander back into Eagrose, forget to resupply, and wander back.

And then there's another random battle. In a mechanic I like to call 'Fuck You', every random battle enemy's level is the same as Mercurio's. Which is 3, when everyone else is 1-2, and that Really Matters at low levels. Portia goes on a bird-killing spree anyway. In another mechanic which isn't so much Fuck You as just kind of annoying, it's possible to crit without doing extra damage, which Thurio does.

I was going to continue this update, but instead this happened, so, you know. Fuck it. Bye.

 

 

[Mage Knight 404]

Those poor squires don't know the true glory of FIGHTING WIRE FRAMES. Truly they are lost.

[Laura]

On 2017-03-28 at 6:30 PM, Parrhesia said:

Sadly I don't think we fight any other female chemists in the story across the entire game but if we come across one in a random battle I will screenshot her for you

thx u r a real sweetheart