I wrote this blog because in my other blog located here My Top 10 RPGS of All TimeI left out FFT because it was so different from the other games on the list. FFT is awesome.
Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the most enjoyable games ever made.
For anyone who doesn't know, Final Fantasy Tactics is a turn based strategy RPG. The story begins in a war between successors for the throne. The main character Ramza, is a mercenary who is of royal blood. What ensues is one of the most dark, gritty, confusing, and epic story lines ever to come across a video game.
The storyline is fantastic, but the real meat of the game is the game play. FFT differentiates from other common RPGs by having all battles take place on a 3D isometric field.
Units move one at a time on this 3D battlefield, and perform skills/attacking/magic to gain job points and EXP. Most battles have the goal of eliminating the opponents.
At the beginning of the game, you start out in a party full of squires and chemists, the two most basic character classes in the game. Squires are your basic fighters. They do hand to hand combat, and have very basic skills. Chemists are support users that use items. Each unit gains EXP and Job EXP through performing skills and magic in battle. EXP levels up the character on a scale of 1-99 and raises personal attributes. Job EXP levels up the users class, like you can become a level 4 squire that is level 7 overall.
Once you reach a certain job level, you can change your character class. For instance, a level 2 squire can then change to a level 1 knight or a level 1 archer. The knight or archer then can learn new abilities, and won't be able to learn anymore squire abilities unless he changes back. Once you gain more and more job levels, you can begin changing to very high level classes like ninjas and summoners.
Yes, you can even become a calculator
When a character dies in FFT, there is a 3 turn timer. If the character is not resurrected, or the battle is not over, the character turns into a crystal or a treasure chest. THE CHARACTER IS GONE FOR THE REST OF THE GAME! This adds a huge level of difficulty, because you can grow attached to a certain character, and you don't want to advance in the story if they die because you like the character, and you will lose all of their skills. If Ramza turns into a crystal or treasure chest, it's game over.
In addition, you can recruit monsters to come fight on your side. There are also lots of side quests and hidden characters that come join your party with unique skill sets that generic characters are unable to unlock.
I'm looking at you Orlandu, you bad ass mofo
Finally each character has 5 different skill sets. They get a primary skill set (the class they are currently in), a secondary skill set, a support ability, a counter ability, and a move ability. Each character can mix and match skills from the different classes he has learned to create extremely powerful combination.
This adds to an extreme replay factor. Many people have created challenges to beating the game with certain requirements like using only one class. For example, one user tried a straight calculator character challenge, where the calculators weren't allowed to learn magic. Basically the calculators had to fight everyone using pointy rods. The guy ended up taking 2 YEARS to beat it. Talk about perseverance.
In the last couple of years, a community dedicated to modifying Final Fantasy Tactics has arisen at FFT Hacktics
Their flagship mod, FFT 1.3
FFT 1.3 Greatly increases the difficulty of vanilla FFT, where the game was in certain places very unbalanced, and easy once certain mechanics are learned. It also adds in a new class, and redistributes skills to balance classes and battles. Amazing mod!
I guess I will keep on waiting for a direct sequel to FFT to come out on one of the major consoles. FFT Advance just didn't do it justice.
Here are some AI tournaments that the people at FFT Hacktics are put together.
If you would like to relive some of the nostalgia, here is a guy commentating on his play through of every battle of 1.3
I hope that if you haven't heard of FFT, you will be excited enough to try it out, and if you have tried it, take a look at 1.3. I'm always amazed at what great communities can do!
both this and the gba version were amazing! i played this on my playstation forever, and came close to maxing out the speed, attack, defense and hp one of my male characters.
also, yell/scream were such cheap, cheap moves ^_^
yes, this game was so awesome. i wish there could be a way to make it multiplayer but a bit faster paced. i always thought those jumpers were so cool, plus dual sword plus move-hp boots haha and calculator + white magic + ragnarok sword was too imba tbh. i always wished they made knights more viable in late game, ie that they had something useful to learn that you could use late game... for the life of me i can't remember anything they had that was good. same with archers. and of course, accumulate? (or was it yell?) = best move in the game
On April 19 2010 06:38 d_so wrote: yes, this game was so awesome. i wish there could be a way to make it multiplayer but a bit faster paced. i always thought those jumpers were so cool, plus dual sword plus move-hp boots haha and calculator + white magic + ragnarok sword was too imba tbh. i always wished they made knights more viable in late game, ie that they had something useful to learn that you could use late game... for the life of me i can't remember anything they had that was good. same with archers. and of course, accumulate? (or was it yell?) = best move in the game
In 1.3 they address all of those issues. Knights now gain Ruins. A ranged skill that lowers the enemies physical attack or magic attack, and other attributes I believe. Archers are much improved (I think charge time is decreased), and yell is instead haste. There are countless other changes that make 1.3 just an amazing game. The closest thing there is to multiplayer is the AI tournaments that I posted a link to. You would really enjoy 1.3
Love FFT! Aside from bugs(you can avoid) and translations errors (actually made it more charming in some cases) this game as as good as it gets.
I was kind of disappointed in the FFTA's. Not that they were super bad, but they just went into a totally different direction(imo worse) and didnt build on the things that made FFT great. I'd like to see them make a true successor to FFT.
Ugh, I've owned FFT since it came out forever ago. I didn't like it then and I still don't like it now. I've tried several times to get myself into it again, but it's all in vain because I just do not like the game. I went through it once forever ago just because I hate to start a game and not finish it unless it is just horrid.
I played FFTA for a while, but it got annoying pretty quickly since your towns get attacked practically every other turn on the world map. I finally got pissed off enough that I quit playing and started on Fire Emblem. -_- From what you've described, the original sounds a lot better. I guess I'll give it a try sometime.
Gameplay is fun and interesting. Downside is the story/writing is atrociously bad. It's also a little lackluster at times because many of the jobs are just vastly inferior so you get tight-casted, so to speak, into fewer rolls despite there being a decent # to choose from and unlock.
On April 19 2010 06:38 d_so wrote: yes, this game was so awesome. i wish there could be a way to make it multiplayer but a bit faster paced. i always thought those jumpers were so cool, plus dual sword plus move-hp boots haha and calculator + white magic + ragnarok sword was too imba tbh. i always wished they made knights more viable in late game, ie that they had something useful to learn that you could use late game... for the life of me i can't remember anything they had that was good. same with archers. and of course, accumulate? (or was it yell?) = best move in the game
In 1.3 they address all of those issues. Knights now gain Ruins. A ranged skill that lowers the enemies physical attack or magic attack, and other attributes I believe. Archers are much improved (I think charge time is decreased), and yell is instead haste. There are countless other changes that make 1.3 just an amazing game. The closest thing there is to multiplayer is the AI tournaments that I posted a link to. You would really enjoy 1.3
this mod sounds really interesting, do archers have skills other than crappy ones like Charge +20? (seriously, this thing doesnt go off until the end of the battle). also, does scream cost mp?
also, what emulator should i be using to run it? ePSXe is the only one i know of, but i dont know anything about the plugins i should use or anything -_-"
On April 19 2010 06:38 d_so wrote: yes, this game was so awesome. i wish there could be a way to make it multiplayer but a bit faster paced. i always thought those jumpers were so cool, plus dual sword plus move-hp boots haha and calculator + white magic + ragnarok sword was too imba tbh. i always wished they made knights more viable in late game, ie that they had something useful to learn that you could use late game... for the life of me i can't remember anything they had that was good. same with archers. and of course, accumulate? (or was it yell?) = best move in the game
In 1.3 they address all of those issues. Knights now gain Ruins. A ranged skill that lowers the enemies physical attack or magic attack, and other attributes I believe. Archers are much improved (I think charge time is decreased), and yell is instead haste. There are countless other changes that make 1.3 just an amazing game. The closest thing there is to multiplayer is the AI tournaments that I posted a link to. You would really enjoy 1.3
this mod sounds really interesting, do archers have skills other than crappy ones like Charge +20? (seriously, this thing doesnt go off until the end of the battle). also, does scream cost mp?
also, what emulator should i be using to run it? ePSXe is the only one i know of, but i dont know anything about the plugins i should use or anything -_-"
I use ePSXe, not sure about the plugins though. You should be able to find plenty of tutorial videos on youtube.
I think bows got buffed quite a bit, and the charge times got reduced. Here is a list for all the changes to FFT 1.3 FFT 1.3 FAQ + Changes
For example, Yell now casts hastes, Scream (targets self only) casts haste, berserk and innocent. There are so many changes I can't list them here even in a spoiler, you just have to check out the link.
On April 19 2010 06:38 d_so wrote: yes, this game was so awesome. i wish there could be a way to make it multiplayer but a bit faster paced. i always thought those jumpers were so cool, plus dual sword plus move-hp boots haha and calculator + white magic + ragnarok sword was too imba tbh. i always wished they made knights more viable in late game, ie that they had something useful to learn that you could use late game... for the life of me i can't remember anything they had that was good. same with archers. and of course, accumulate? (or was it yell?) = best move in the game
In 1.3 they address all of those issues. Knights now gain Ruins. A ranged skill that lowers the enemies physical attack or magic attack, and other attributes I believe. Archers are much improved (I think charge time is decreased), and yell is instead haste. There are countless other changes that make 1.3 just an amazing game. The closest thing there is to multiplayer is the AI tournaments that I posted a link to. You would really enjoy 1.3
this mod sounds really interesting, do archers have skills other than crappy ones like Charge +20? (seriously, this thing doesnt go off until the end of the battle). also, does scream cost mp?
also, what emulator should i be using to run it? ePSXe is the only one i know of, but i dont know anything about the plugins i should use or anything -_-"
I use ePSXe, not sure about the plugins though. You should be able to find plenty of tutorial videos on youtube.
I think bows got buffed quite a bit, and the charge times got reduced. Here is a list for all the changes to FFT 1.3 FFT 1.3 FAQ + Changes
For example, Yell now casts hastes, Scream (targets self only) casts haste, berserk and innocent. There are so many changes I can't list them here even in a spoiler, you just have to check out the link.
nooo my jp scroll glitch
this version looks a lot harder, especially with all the ??? enemies o.o''
EPT![[image loading]](http://pspmedia.ign.com/psp/image/article/824/824274/final-fantasy-tactics-the-war-of-the-lions-20071001062312444_640w.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamelemon.com/media/articles/top_crpgs/Final%20Fantasy%20Tactics%202.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/psx/fft/pictures/orlandu.jpg)
