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Rosalie_A posted:Can you believe I went that entire update without a Yu-gi-oh! joke? Don't think I didn't catch you making one before this post. ...Unless that was someone else. Seriously though, welcome back. And I agree about Ovelia. She deserves to be an active part of the story.
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Jan 1, 2022 02:41
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DeTosh posted:Don't think I didn't catch you making one before this post. We know from FFXII that had FFT been written about 10 years later than it was, Ovelia would have been a full-on main party cast member right through the whole game.
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Jan 1, 2022 03:23
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War of the Lions was my first PSP game way back when, so this thread makes for some fascinating reading.
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Jan 1, 2022 13:14
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nine-gear crow posted:We know from FFXII that had FFT been written about 10 years later than it was, Ovelia would have been a full-on main party cast member right through the whole game. Given Matsuno's other games where females had active roles narratively and/or mechanically I'm convinced that Matsuno would have still written the story the same way if the game he chose to draw inspiration from was Tactics Ogre. Heck, FFT is basically the Chaos Path of TO, with Chapter 1 of both games playing out almost identically but the choice to follow Ramza's conscience is made for you (and Delita therefore taking up the Law Path, except he ends the game with a Chaos Frame that's too high and even though he gets to become king we all know how that ends). Ovelia, like Kachua if she ends up nothing more than a political puppet, is doomed to tragedy. Ramza only gets to save his sister. And Alma's his sister...isn't she? 
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Jan 1, 2022 13:24
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MagusofStars posted:I also blame the devs whenever I fail, clearly our Friendly Neighborhood White Mage is to blame here.   nine-gear crow posted:We know from FFXII that had FFT been written about 10 years later than it was, Ovelia would have been a full-on main party cast member right through the whole game. dotchan posted:Given Matsuno's other games where females had active roles narratively and/or mechanically I'm convinced that Matsuno would have still written the story the same way if the game he chose to draw inspiration from was Tactics Ogre.  (Bear with me, I feel like no matter how I try to say this it's gonna come out clunky...) I know we're on about Ovelia, but between this scene (also, forgive my laziness in not going and getting the PSX version of this) and the one after the battle with Zalmo at Lesalia, I feel that making either Ovelia or Alma into more prominent playable characters would have ruined an important part of the narrative - something about how the parallels between the ruling class versus the ruled class of people alongside the power displayed by the noblemen and the powerlessness of the noblewomen. Ramza is sympathetic to Delita and Miluda before and during the events of Chapter 1 and I feel it gets reinforced again with his interactions with Alma despite him holding her back from joining the cause for her own safety as much as for needing someone he can trust that isn't directly in-the-poo poo (which still doesn't save her from getting mixed up in the worst of it.) That presentation of powerlessness for some and privilege for others is a seriously important concept in the story being told. Ovelia or Alma taking up arms and fighting alongside Ramza as major players instead of being controlled and moved like pieces on a game board by the real people in power is would straight up ruin part of what makes the story of FFT great. While I like nine-gear crow's take on how it might've gone otherwise, I'm with dotchan here; the story needs Ovelia and Alma to be swept up in the events going on instead of being in-control of their personal destinies for it to work. Celdia fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jan 2, 2022 |
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Jan 2, 2022 05:25
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I see the point people make when they say that Alma and Ovelia serve the realism of the narrative, but--really, the story's already a power fantasy. Sure, Ramza doesn't get to be the big drat political hero, but he gets an equally unrealistic political fantasy: in a situation where no side is entirely in the right and there's no one trustworthy enough for him to pledge loyalty to, he gets to choose a third option, where he exits proper politics and finds an unambiguously evil enemy to defeat. He gets to have his cake and eat it too, because he doesn't have to create his own faction (Death Corps route! Death Corps route!) or dirty his hands for someone else's, but he still gets to do good for the world and make his father proud. At that point, he may as well get to take Alma and Ovelia along while, I don't know, Balmafula gets repurposed as the Ovelia impostor necessary for Delita to take the throne. They've both got blond hair, it could work. There's even a sort of poetry to it, considering that Ovelia probably wasn't actually the real Ovelia either. (And it's not like the story's really doing anything else with Balmafula.)
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Jan 3, 2022 01:38
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Einander posted:I see the point people make when they say that Alma and Ovelia serve the realism of the narrative, but--really, the story's already a power fantasy. Sure, Ramza doesn't get to be the big drat political hero, but he gets an equally unrealistic political fantasy: in a situation where no side is entirely in the right and there's no one trustworthy enough for him to pledge loyalty to, he gets to choose a third option, where he exits proper politics and finds an unambiguously evil enemy to defeat. He gets to have his cake and eat it too, because he doesn't have to create his own faction (Death Corps route! Death Corps route!) or dirty his hands for someone else's, but he still gets to do good for the world and make his father proud. It's not as though Ramza doesn't value the things he risks or gives up to fight the good fight. And his only rewards are a sort of freedom, and knowing he gave Ivalice a chance to fix its own problems. Can it really be called withdrawing from politics if the politicians had society on the edge of dystopia (even before they became demons)?
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Jan 3, 2022 02:04
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Realism and fantasy aside, it is notable that multiple times Ovelia either suffers from realizing she's just a chess piece in somebody else's political game, or slowly begins to realize that Delita is bad news, and nothing really comes of it beyond sympathy porn and her finally getting fed up with Delita and shanking him like he deerves. And that is understandable and even relatable, considering she's not the warrior type or anything, surrounded by all kinds of bad people who only grow in power as the story progresses, as opposed to the brief time she was with Ramza and Agrias who genuinely wanted what was best for her, but then Balmafula the church assassin sent to silence Delita if he gets out of line realizes at the last minute that she can't kill him and all that happens with her is that she loses her tongue for her trouble.
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Jan 3, 2022 03:35
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Ovelia not being more active in the party is for far larger reasons - she's an actual historical figure that continues to exist in the historical record beyond when Ramza leaves the historical record. Alma's a little more of a head scratcher. A gender explanation is somewhat odd given that Agrias is in the party for nearly the whole game, and in addition to Agrias, Meliadoul and Miluda participate in combat as sword brawlers with no comment on their gender. I kind of think the plot just isn't very tight really is what's going on. Olan's arguably the axis of the story and he's barely around for example.
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Jan 3, 2022 04:22
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That's probably it. Although, I can believe Balbanes forbade Alma from becoming a knight. Maybe he wanted to protect her. Maybe being widowed twice left some scars on him. Regardless, he probably wasn't all good qualities. And there are a couple of throwaway lines (mostly from the PSP version) you could interpret as random bad guys being sexist toward Agrias. But it's still a long reach to say Ivalice has a deeply sexist culture. DeTosh fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Jan 3, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 05:23
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DeTosh posted:But it's still a long reach to say Ivalice has a deeply sexist culture. If we're gonna drag FFXIV into this mess too- Garlemald, the empire that idolizes this era and regards Delita as their cultural hero like King Arthur, isn't terribly sexist. Somewhat sexist, yes, and awful in eight hundred different ways, but not terribly sexist. There's plenty of high-ranking female Garlean officers, for instance. But FFXIV is questionably relevant to FFT anyway.
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Jan 3, 2022 12:34
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Tulip posted:Olan's arguably the axis of the story and he's barely around for example. Olan isn't a fan-fic writer and doesn't like to self-insert as the main character. 
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Jan 3, 2022 16:42
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Celdia posted:Olan isn't a fan-fic writer and doesn't like to self-insert as the main character. Lol I still REALLY want to know what level of crank history this game is. Is it like...credible but not commonly accepted? Anti-stratfordian conspiracy level? Phantom Time? Finnish Korean Hyperwar? I want the reactions of other in universe historians!
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Jan 3, 2022 17:04
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Tulip posted:Lol Wait a minute Olan O\an Qan Qanon
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Jan 3, 2022 17:33
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oh no
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Jan 3, 2022 18:12
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Orranon Durai
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Jan 3, 2022 18:26
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Celdia posted:Olan isn't a fan-fic writer and doesn't like to self-insert as the main character. He still couldn't quite resist making his cameo in the story absurdly powerful, though. After all, being saved from bandits makes slightly more sense if Olan wasn't capable of slinging instant-cast, MP free, field-wide stacking status ailments every turn.
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Jan 3, 2022 19:51
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Celdia posted:Olan isn't a fan-fic writer and doesn't like to self-insert as the main character. You'd think if Olan was a self-insert character, he'd give himself a better haircut first 
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Jan 3, 2022 20:04
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Tulip posted:I still REALLY want to know what level of crank history this game is. Is it like...credible but not commonly accepted? Anti-stratfordian conspiracy level? Phantom Time? Finnish Korean Hyperwar? I want the reactions of other in universe historians!
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Jan 3, 2022 20:56
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dotchan posted:He still couldn't quite resist making his cameo in the story absurdly powerful, though. After all, being saved from bandits makes slightly more sense if Olan wasn't capable of slinging instant-cast, MP free, field-wide stacking status ailments every turn. Well, at least he didn't make himself the main character of the whole thing. I guess one OP cameo isn't the worst historical sin if that's how it rolled. In other news: FFT: Honored v.014 is up and ready for play. Just spent all damned day troubleshooting and bugfixing and actually testing and re-testing things and I think I can safely say this one will actually run; New Game starts and doesn't lock on the emulators I tested, same for the Crafters' Guild. More specific notes in that link there, along with the download.
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Jan 3, 2022 21:06
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Celdia posted:Well, at least he didn't make himself the main character of the whole thing. I guess one OP cameo isn't the worst historical sin if that's how it rolled. Any chance of uploading a gameplay video, Celdia? A tree fell on my 'new' car today and I simply do not have the patience to smash my head against meaty tactical RPGs that I've never played before.
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Jan 3, 2022 22:40
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JustJeff88 posted:Any chance of uploading a gameplay video, Celdia? A tree fell on my 'new' car today and I simply do not have the patience to smash my head against meaty tactical RPGs that I've never played before. Sure, if you don't mind my layout imagery breaking mid-stream. I highlighted a chunk of my playtest from streaming it earlier. https://twitch.tv/videos/1252171032
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Jan 4, 2022 00:43
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Celdia posted:In other news: FFT: Honored v.014 is up and ready for play. Speaking of you making stuff, Celdia, what else have you made beyond FFT mods? I recall hearing something about an RPG Maker game but couldn't find anything with a search.
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Jan 4, 2022 05:54
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DGM_2 posted:Speaking of you making stuff, Celdia, what else have you made beyond FFT mods? I recall hearing something about an RPG Maker game but couldn't find anything with a search. Those searches would be fruitless because nothing I ever did in RPG Maker became a finished product released anywhere publicly. I've shared them with a few folks that asked specifically - via Discord or on Twitch mostly - but they weren't the kinds of things I ever felt were anywhere near to being a finished product. But, since you asked...   And now...Celdia Derails The Thread! Generic Fantasy: Remastered - GDrive Link (Self-extracting RPG Maker VX Ace .exe) So, this started as an earlier project I had just called "Generic Fantasy" because that was the original goal: Make something as absolutely bland and generic as gently caress using only the base resources found in RPGM more as a bad joke than anything and also for a little bit of learning the tools I had to work with. Well, in the midst of puttering around in a pirated copy of (what I think I remember being) RPGM 2003, someone I'd shared that project with thought it was funny to gift me VX Ace. Steam sale discounts aside, I felt vaguely obligated to try and use my new toys and dropped the original GF project (now lost to time as neither I nor anyone I know seems to have a copy of it) and started on GF:Remastered, intending for it to be an even more elaborate joke that absolutely lost any sense of focus along the way. First it was supposed to avoid RPG tropes, then it was supposed to embody as many tropes as possible, then it was supposed to play some straight while lampshading others and at some point I just started having fun with creating and didn't care so much about sticking with the original joke beyond the name carrying over. There was a broken attempt to port it over to RPG Maker MV when I got my hands on that eventually but the shift from Ruby to Javascript made the dozens of modules I'd stolen and modified for all the terribly-incompatible ideas I'd implemented in GF:R were just way too numerous to make a direct port possible and I wasn't about to manually reconstruct the project in a new engine; it's not like I was getting paid for this or working under some deadline for a game company and that kind of 11th-hour platform change is just beyond daunting and I pity anyone in the industry that has ever had to deal with something like it. So while there isn't anything wildly imaginative or ground-breaking in this, it is a mostly-solid and playable little RPG with plenty of weird little inside jokes and hidden things to be found and laughed at or groan about depending on your personal disposition. Playing it blind and without direct guidance, I've seen people take upwards of 6-8 hours on average to reach the end of it (I always want to say "the end of the demo" because I'd intended for this to be about 4x-5x as long originally but just never finished it beyond the current final boss.) There is a weird mix-and-match job system, a very basic story with occasionally-nonsense motivation for things, and some decidedly old-school design choices (like Revival and Saving happening at the church in town a la Dragon Quest  , access to areas you likely are-not-ready-for containing monsters that will pound your face in as the only warning not to be there, and even NPCs that give you no indication you need to talk to them multiple times to progress the plot) but even the best parts of it aren't quite finished or as fleshed out as I would have liked...except the Camp. That bit was probably the thing I put the most work into overall. Also, I think there is only one actual character class unlockable from mastering other classes (try Warrior 10 + Elementalist 10 to unlock Mageknight iirc) but I can't remember if I ever got around to adding in the others though I still have a whole disastrous-looking flowchart for them in my old notes: Major Game Breaking Bug: If you do grab this to play it, at the very start of the game (affects your starting character) and anytime you get a new character added to the team the very first thing you should do is go in and Set a Subclass on them. If you try to view their Skills without having done this, the game WILL crash. Something to do with module that handles Subclasses starting with a 'null' value instead of a 'zero' value. Setting it will give it some kind of value to work with and going forward from there you can even unequip the Subclass and it'll read 'zero' fine without crashing. Dungeon Crawler Project (a.k.a. The Adventures of Doug Neon) - GDrive Link (RAR archive; just unpack anywhere and run the Game.exe) I forget why I gave this idea a go in RPGM at all other than maybe accessibility and it uses MV as the base. I know I've wanted to putter around with first-person dungeon crawlers for years and years (some of my first work in QBasic that wasn't simple trivia programs was a very simple FPDCs because I couldn't quite grasp making a top-down RPG for whatever reason) but my personal experiences were more of the Might & Magic, Swords & Serprents, and Moraff's games variety so I was accustomed to maybe a bit more silliness than say Wizardry had on offer, but in my head I felt that this project was to be more Wizardry-inspired...not that I have ever successfully completed or really spent more than a few hours playing any single Wiz game. But that didn't stop me from trying! This one is a lot more basic and wildly unfinished but I have actually returned to poking at it some and adding more to it in the past few months. It was an abandoned-and-lost project for a couple years but someone I passed it on to actually had an old build that was functional and I figured out how to make that run in the MV editor without my original project files (you can trick the editor into creating a new project file from the playable-game's stored data) and began loving around with it some more. The name comes from the fact that the recovered version had a typo in the title screen which simply read "Dugneon Crawler v.0004" and when I gave it to someone else to play recently they read it as "Doug Neon Crawler" and a running gag was born. Since then, various wild theories about this mysterious "Doug Neon" character have cropped up in that small circle of friends, none of which are reflected in this game other than Doug Neon will permanently be Sir Not Appearing in This Game. Beyond that, there isn't much to mention here; the game has no overarching story, there are only a handful of floors in the previously-titular dungeon and maybe a double handful or more of monsters to encounter, but the bare-bones of the game system are there. The Town Hub is presented in classic RPGM style but once you enter the dungeon proper it switches to first-person view. If anyone gives either of these a go I would absolutely love any feedback/suggestion/criticism you've got about them. I'm always looking for ways to improve my jank gaming projects that isn't just "can you make it break less often?" because I already get that one plenty of the time. Beyond those projects I guess I can whore out my only proper game mod release (CCP1 and CCP 2nd were technically never public-release outside of the FFHacktics forums because I never felt they were really complete enough to bother with) which is a ROMhack of FF1 based on the old Final Fantasy: Restored mod - and I called it FF:CRASH. There's plenty of info for that included in the download of it in the form of a 30+ page full color PDF 'manual' I made for it. We now return you to your erratically-scheduled Let's Play!
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Jan 5, 2022 15:06
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Celdia posted:I can't remember if I ever got around to adding in the others though I still have a whole disastrous-looking flowchart for them in my old notes:
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Jan 5, 2022 15:11
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Celdia posted:Make something as absolutely bland and generic as gently caress I had an idea for something similar to this a few years ago, though like most of my 'projects' it currently only exists in a doc/spreadsheet in my google drive. :V 
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Jan 5, 2022 15:54
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I just realised that Celdia's forum avatar is an actual photo of her.
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Jan 5, 2022 17:30
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Celdia posted:a ROMhack of FF1 based on the old Final Fantasy: Restored mod - and I called it FF:CRASH. There's plenty of info for that included in the download of it in the form of a 30+ page full color PDF 'manual' I made for it. I actually did a play through of this recently. I overall liked it, but I had some snags where I'm not sure if I was me missing something. I feel like more hints could have been dropped with townspeople dialogue about how stuff was remixed. I started talking to everyone eventually, but there was one dungeon hidden away somewhere that I found by accident and can't recall anyone pointing me toward it. Something like mentioning the minions of Kary have been pillaging relics from nearby ruins , and doing that for various progression items. My start was also fisting things to death for gold. Because I didn't think to check the Corneria Mystic Key rooms, thinking well, I need the key for that. Me getting lost led to a bit of frustration as I dived into various dungeons, as some stat walls felt unfair - Stone golems and their earthquake spam . I think I went in just thinking it was a balance hack and less of a remix so this might be on me. I think it basically does run up against a lot of the FF1 NES engine's limitations ultimately. Finding a piece of armor meant for a upgrade before the upgrade is acquired? Usually if you could stash it away for later, sure, it's something to look forward to. But FF1 NES, as is, you can't hold onto a lot of extra armor unless you chose to take the Black Belt, and I did not. I ran Fighter/Merc/RM/WM so three of my guys always wanted to stay decently armored. Likewise with the AE attack prevalence - attrition was an appeal of the old games, but you only got 99 potions and using them is tedious as heck and you realize feeding everyone countless potions battle to battle is a bit... oof. I dealt with this as a kid but somehow I'm more annoyed with this as an adult. Unless you know assembly hacking or whatever absurd high level thing required, the Armor problem isn't really fixable. I guess, in theory, you could try to greatly limit the functionally used armor slots, but that takes a lot of the little customization you have out. Post battle healing is something that could be addressed, but you're also flirting with the in-combat healing meta if you increase the amount potions heal - which is something I know FFHackster can change easily. You could open up some deadlier design space if you could leave potions in battle alone but change out of battle healing to a higher number to make triage less tedious but more potent. Also, Heal1 seems definitely bugged to me. It healed a range of like, 15-300 or something in battle, usually leaning on the higher end. I may or may not have exploited this to deal with said beef walls. Edit Because I realized I was mostly negative: I did like turning the Thief into a much higher damage murder machine, and turning Ice into a single target nuke vs. Fire/Bolt being AE. It definitely kind of works since there's really nothing in the base game you want to AE with ice spells, versus all the ice wolves and sahagins for the other two. The upgrade spells for Fighter/Thief were pretty useful and having more spread for Raise makes it so there's less unlucky run enders. Spell fixes and spread made the RDM feel much more than a jack of all trades rather than the 'cast FAST on who needs it and proceed to play like a Fighter' that he does in the original game. Sometimes I made him nuke on bosses, sometimes he just joined the beatdown squad. I sort of wish the RDM still kept Ice3 since it feels like a hole in his kit(and bothers me that he gets Fire3/Bolt3 but no Ice. SPELL SYMMETRY), but I understand the BLM needs his place. Likewise Haste/Temper being white magic always worked better to me since I imagine if I did bring a Black Mage his hurty spells would stay up to par. The White Mage's hurty spells(Aero/Tornado) did definitely do the job in being appropriately hurty. As much as I love FF1, there's only so much you can do with it, and I really did like it for a fresh playthrough. NameHurtBrain fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Jan 6, 2022 01:49
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I am tangentially reminded -- there's an ongoing LP of Final Fantasy Ultra: Champion Edition, which, despite the name, seems to be a very well-thought-out FF1 hack. Folks here might find it interesting.
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Jan 6, 2022 03:50
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I am tangentially reminded -- there's an ongoing LP of Final Fantasy Ultra: Champion Edition, which, despite the name, seems to be a very well-thought-out FF1 hack. Folks here might find it interesting. I haven't played Celdia's hack, but I've been following this and I, personaly opinion of course, so far find it kind of underwhelming. The hack that I played recently and really liked was 'Final Fantasy Restored & Rebalanced', which was an elabouration of F&F Restored that adds a bunch of content and balance fixes. I really enjoyed it and it very much felt like a complete version of the original game if they had fixed the numerous bugs and fleshed out a post-game. It's not basically a new game like 7th king, more of a natural extension of the original.
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Jan 6, 2022 04:41
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NameHurtBrain posted:
The Heal bug is something I'm aware of happening but I have no actual idea why it happens. I have some theories and they're all based entirely inside of using FF:Restored as a base for the mod (because I loved a lot of the fixes and options available there even if it did make my project that much harder - working with an already-modified product that doesn't have any extra documentation about what kinds of modifications were done except in undetailed changelogs is a special challenge) and while I think I know what I did with Restored to cause it (It comes with an optional mod that changes how Cure/Heal calculate total HP healed) I actually have no idea how to undo it. At the end of the day I decided not to chase it down too hard because at worst it was a benefit for the player exclusively and I suppose 'critical heals' have their place somewhere. I do think experimenting some with making HEAL potions work at different potencies in and out of battle could be interesting so I'll add that to my notes. I could use a break from Honored for a little bit and going back to CRASH wouldn't be a bad use of my time. I am glad you had fun with it though.  JustJeff88 posted:I haven't played Celdia's hack, but I've been following this and I, personaly opinion of course, so far find it kind of underwhelming. The hack that I played recently and really liked was 'Final Fantasy Restored & Rebalanced', which was an elabouration of F&F Restored that adds a bunch of content and balance fixes. I really enjoyed it and it very much felt like a complete version of the original game if they had fixed the numerous bugs and fleshed out a post-game. It's not basically a new game like 7th king, more of a natural extension of the original. Oh this is just beautiful.  JustJeff88 posted:I just realised that Celdia's forum avatar is an actual photo of her. 
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Jan 6, 2022 14:32
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Celdia posted:Wait, you mean you aren't a sentient Double Dragon GBA box? I am, but I lost the instructions.
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Jan 6, 2022 17:20
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Sorry for the double post, but since I believe that the thread was just talking about PS1 emulators, how is Duckstation? I just found it existed a few days before it came up in this thread, and I've yet to find a PS1 emulator that I am happy with. PCSX2, on the other hand, does just fine for me. I just thought I'd ask while we wait for things and stuff to happen.
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Jan 7, 2022 19:14
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I tried Duckstation to play Celdia’s patch and it wouldn’t run. clear trash tier No I didn’t try other games with it, why do you ask?
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Jan 7, 2022 20:42
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It’s great, simple, and functional. Sadly it chokes on most rom hacks.
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Jan 7, 2022 21:53
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Celdia posted:Those searches would be fruitless because nothing I ever did in RPG Maker became a finished product released anywhere publicly. I've shared them with a few folks that asked specifically - via Discord or on Twitch mostly - but they weren't the kinds of things I ever felt were anywhere near to being a finished product. But, since you asked... Thanks for the links. I played a bit of GF:R but got shut down hard at the first boss; even hitting her with her elemental weakness was only doing 1 HP. What the hell?!?
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Jan 9, 2022 14:12
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Celdia posted:Those searches would be fruitless because nothing I ever did in RPG Maker became a finished product released anywhere publicly. I've shared them with a few folks that asked specifically - via Discord or on Twitch mostly - but they weren't the kinds of things I ever felt were anywhere near to being a finished product. But, since you asked... I'm a sucker for RPG Maker stuff, so thanks for the link.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:09
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Update 47: The Road to Riovanes Riovanes is a landmark battle for many reasons. For one, it's the confluence of multiple plot threads. Most recently, the Rafa and Malak storyline, but also Vormav, Wiegraf, and the Germonik Scriptures. Notably, it's the end of Chapter 3, and the end of Ramza not really knowing what's going on. As well, despite being the end of the third chapter out of four, this is only a bit over halfway through the allotment of story battles, and this disparity increases if you take into account the sidequest fights. Oh, and there's also the fact that you can get stuck here forever if your party is bad enough. I struggle to imagine a party so bad it can't beat Wiegraf and Velius despite getting this far, but it's definitely possible to have a party bad enough that you don't know how to find the way out. So, it deserves a bit of gravitas. I had originally planned on streaming my attempts at the fights, and I still might, but taking that final step of actually doing it takes effort. In the meantime though, I've done some preparation. I've come up with plans that should be both entertaining and powerful while also showing off the capabilities of our various team members thus far. And so, we come to the clip show: going through our team and talking about how they're doing and where they're going. It's also a good time to talk about strategy.  Don't we talk about strategy all the time? Sure, in relation to individual battles. Strategy is what we take in, tactics is what we do with that and the scenario we're presented. To be really pedantic, though, what I term strategy is more accurate deemed the operational level. Strategy, of course, sounds better, and the way I've been using it does better suit the scope we usually talk about. But, again, to be fully pedantic, there are generally considered to be four levels of military planning. Tactical, operational, strategic, and political. You mostly only think about the political layer in reference to it setting the goals that the strategic layer aims to accomplish, but for Final Fantasy Tactics, and indeed most any game, we have a very useful analogue in the objective of the game. Note that I say objective. Often, this is used interchangably with "goal", but the two are different. Objectives are just that: objective. A game does not care about your feelings with regards to its objective. The designers might and almost always do, but the game doesn't. It has a criteria that if you meet it, you beat the game: defeating Altima in the Graveyard of Airships. A goal, meanwhile, is chosen by the player: it could be the same as the objective, or it could be different. It's not even, strictly speaking, a hard line between the two. For example, Metroid games give different ending images depending on your completion time and/or item collection rate. My goal might be to beat Metroid Zero Mission with 9% of the items in under three hours. Is that the objective of the game? No, because I can fail at that goal and still beat the game; but also yes because the game does track an explicit pass/fail for that criteria. There's wiggle room, is what I'm saying. Why mention all this? It's not because I get paid by the word, that's for sure. The objective of Celdia's Complete Patch is to beat the game by, probably, defeating Altima in the Graveyard of Airships plus whatever bullshit Celdia felt like throwing in that day. My goal, however, is to explore all the options CCP has and doesn't have, and show it off in what I think and for some reason you all agree is an entertaining fashion, which also happens to include the nominal objective of the game. Now let's tie this back together. The political level is the level removed from the action. In this case, it's the objectives and goals set by the game and the player. Strategy, then, is where we start working with the actual mechanics of the game. Since my goal is to explore all the options (which includes the objective of beating the game) and show them off in an entertaining fashion, strategy is how I approach doing that. That's where we come to this team overview, where I'll be looking at what I've done, what I want to accomplish, and where I'm lacking.  Ramza Beoulve. It's a good thing he's such a good character in both story and gameplay, since you're forced to use him. Ramza's mostly worked with his unique Hero job while dabbling in a number of different fields. With Mageknight, however, he's finally found a niche I'm happy with, letting him live the swordskill life we all wanted him to in vanilla. In terms of showing things off, he does a wonderful job of showing off what you can do with CCP's options, fitting in a Reaction Ability from Green Mage, a Support Ability from Brawler, and a Movement Ability from Red Mage. He commonly uses Heroics as a Secondary set, but it's not the only one he uses, picking up Alchemy, Green Magic, and more depending on what I expect to need. I personally feel this shows off Heroics even better than having it on all the time does, because we can see what life is like both with and without it, and see how healthy it is for job balance. I'm very happy with how Ramza is progressing, and am looking forward to his Chapter 4 incarnation. Where he's going to fall short is that he's not going to have much room to grow further, aside from what Chapter 4 brings to Hero. He's nearly mastered Mageknight, and I enjoy Bane and Ambidexterity too much to want to switch (Bane and Ramza are practically synonymous in my mind now, despite it being an entry level job Reaction). Still, that's not the worst problem to have, and I can always just try out some other jobs for the fun of it. Or throw him in Mime. I mean, if his JP is going nowhere anyway, why not?  Rad the Ladd. Blue Mage has been a blast to play with, even if hunting them down is a pain. I don't even have that many: it's just that a skillset that includes an eight range lightning poke, a self-targetted area heal, and Self-Destruct is pretty drat fun to use. He came with a good few job levels in Bandit, and he's been using the two ever since. What R/S/M Abilities from other jobs he's picked up have been entirely through spillover, and it's no accident that they're easy ones to get. And that's fine! Rad has been demonstrating that you don't need to branch out into multiple jobs just to be usable. He's also been demonstrating the power of equipment: the Dragoon Boots have widened his capabilities immensely without affecting Blue Magic or Pillage. Going forward, I'd like to pick up one or two more Blue Magics to round out the set, and then otherwise keep Rad on hand for fights where he'd be useful.  Musashi, Brave Not-Fencer. Musashi has been the support unit from day one. Everything he's done has either been for support or debilitation, with a side of being a long range specialist. Just as Rad's been the signature user of the Dragoon Boots, he's been the wielder of the Bag of Holding. I'm not even sure it can be unequipped from him at this point. In any event, he's been the star of several different jobs: Alchemist, Cannoneer, Enchanter, and Tactician. This has led to a bit of a problem, because no matter what I'm leaving a skillset behind. Going forward, I'd like to divorce him from either Enchanter or Tactician, and give those to one of the upcoming joiners. Focusing on four different skillsets has led to lacking in other areas, and what you see equipped is basically it for R/S/M abilities to work with. Musashi has gotten by entirely on the power of his Action Ability sets, and I'd like to supplement those, and that means taking a spin in some other jobs for a battle or two.  Overlia Atkascha, Vampire Hunter. While she does come with a unique job and skillset, she's not normally available as a free party member, and so she has some leeway. Vanquisher is a fantastic job and Mystic Tools is an amazing damage dealing skillset, and they pair well with just about anything that isn't also just all damage. Holy Magic is a great choice, but you could do this with a generic and Sorcery just fine for the same effect, or bring in something else. Ovelia isn't really a demonstration of CCP. Rather, she's demonstrative of what LPs embody: the interplay and relationship between the player and the game. If she wasn't playable with a semi-unique skillset and showing up in a couple more story battles I might never have hacked her in. She was and did, though, and so she joined the party, bringing a unique touch to this playthrough. That's not wholly me, and that's not wholly CCP: it's a combination of the two, made manifest by the words of this LP. Also I got to make her an honorary Belmont, which is loving awesome.  Lavian, known as The Girl Who Didn't Get Iced On Her First Outing As A Playable Character. What, that was my fault? Sure, but it doesn't change the fact that for the first time ever Lavian has first billing, and she's going to enjoy it. Just like Musashi, Lavian is juggling more skillsets than she can bring in at a time. It's unfortunate, because Housework and Valiance have more overlap than I'd like. I'm planning on spinning off Housework to someone else who can make use of it. My current frontrunner is Meliadoul, since she's likely to have an offensively-inclined skillset as in vanilla. Other than that, Lavian does a great job of being the primary generic physical powerhouse. She doesn't get Blue Magic or Holy Sword or guns or anything. Hell, she's the only person of the team who can use Warrior right now! Neveretheless, she's got a spear and stabs things until they die. That's something I've enjoyed demonstrating with Lavian: someone who has one signature weapon type but can still go and work in a lot of skillsets. Unlike vanilla, where Spears had one job and one job only (and I mean that in both sense of the word here), in CCP they're an alternative to swords, being generally better but being incompatible with Ambidexterity (which, when nearly every weapon has a special ability, is significant!). But this isn't about Spears. This is about Lavian, who will continue to stab things and live her best life.  Angelica, The One Who Would Be Everyone's Favorite If This Were A Fire Emblem Game. She finally picked up Quick Casting. Amazing that focusing on two skillsets can still result in Never Enough JP, Never when both have sixteen wonderful abilities each. Or, well, fifteen plus Dispel and RASP. Just as Lavian has been stabbity, Angelica has been my primary magic user, and she will continue to do so. CCP has fewer "pure" casters than vanilla, which featured White Magic, Black Magic, Time Magic, Summon Magic, and Yin-Yang Magic, with a dishonorable-for-being-busted mention to Math Skill. CCP, meanwhile, has Green Magic, Red Magic, and Sorcery, and Sorcery is heavily limited when used outside its origin job. Yes, Mystic Tools and now Magic Blade are based on MA, but they don't have the cast time associated with FFT mages. Enchanter might be a mage in spirit, but it's a physical murder machine and we know it, just like how Samurai is a physical job in spirit but we all know it's a White, Black, and Red Mage standing on top of one another in a samurai armor trenchcoat. Right, strategy. Going forward, Angelica needs new Reaction and Movement abilities. Just like Musashi, she's been coasting on the power of her skillsets. Also just like Musashi, she's starting to feel the effects of that. Luckily, she's got Quick Casting now, so we'll see in Riovanes how much that helps. Given that it'll bring everything in Sorcery to 3 or less CTR and even the mighty White Wind to a respectable 4 CTR. For comparison, the famously speedy nuke of Holy in vanilla is 6 CTR. Short Charge Meteor is 7 CTR. Or, for an example closer to home, Velius's infamous Cyclops casts are 5 CTR thanks to his innate Short Charge. What I'm saying is Quick Casting will likely be enough to put her solidly back in the spotlight of "carrying the team".  Concord is a grape. Also Mantra and Dolphin Kick are disgustingly good coming from Goblin PA. Lavian has four more levels and is getting +5 PA from equipment to hit eleven PA. Plus, since the basis for Blitz damage is the same as vanilla Punch Art -- PA * (PA / 2) -- this means that Concord scales his damage exponentially. In other words, he gets increasing returns from levels, not diminishing like most characters. And that's why I took the opportunity to shove a dozen and a half levels into him off-screen, because he makes for an amazing MP battery and damage dealer, and we haven't even gotten to his prime time yet. There's other monsters in CCP, and I might pick some up to show them off, but I'm pretty happy with Concord showing the flag. Seriously, I'm not kidding about expecting him to contribute. I'm bringing him to Velius.  Boco is basically the same as vanilla, but it's so much nicer not having to smash a dozen eggs every hour because you dared to keep a recruitable story character (even if Boco does strain the definition). That said, Rad's a great example of how Chocobo Cure is always relevant, and there's one more use of Chocobos that doesn't tend to see much use in vanilla, and I'll be demonstrating it at the gate of Riovanes. Boco isn't showing anything off about CCP in specific, but the removal of eggs makes keeping Boco around to use so much nicer, so that's its own demonstration.  Mustadio Bunansa has what I consider still to be the strongest skillset in the game exclusive to him, and no amount of Sentry crashing the game will change that. On demand Haste is that good. Dispenser's a little less ridiculous now that Speeds and HP pools have gotten higher but its recurrence rate is still the same, but it's still free ranged AOE HP and MP restoration. Mustadio is here to show off guns. He's in Gunslinger mostly because it was already unlocked and I wanted some kind of secondary, and we tragically sacrificed our previous Gunslinger in a hilarious reenactment of the Hunger Games. If things had been different, Mustadio would be carrying Imbue as well. Honestly, I'm glad he's not, because that would have been just obscene. Still, if you're playing along at home and want to start breaking the game, Engineer Mustadio with a Chemist's Rifle and Imbue is going to be your best unit on the field basically every time. Making a character do everything isn't worth it usually, due to the concepts of action economy and opportunity cost. That setup, though, trades literally nothing for the privilege. Once Mustadio's done with Gunslinger, I'll probably take a trip through Enchanter just to demonstrate what I mean, and then set that combo on the bench in between vanilla Orlandu and Mewtwo.  Agrias Oaks, last only by virtue of how the internal IDs for the team works out. At first, I was trying to see how I could use an MA centric Holy Knight (it turns out, Stasis Sword is still good at middling XA), and then stumbled upon Dragoon, and figured I had a murder combo in Dragon Valor. Then oops I gave Celdia the motivation to finally implement her vision with making Holy Sword and Magic Blade MA-based, and so caused my own downfall. Shakespeare would be proud. Anyway, that doesn't matter because Holy Sword was good when it was working off a bad stat and so now it's amazing without needing a turn of setup. Meanwhile, Dragon Valor still exists as a win condition for long fights, and it's not like I've been unhappy with Dragon Skill. The plan with Agrias has always been to show off one of most used vanilla characters and see how she's been changed. You may recall when I did Agrias's job overview I remarked that there are remarkably few things that work with Holy Knight/Holy Sword, because the base package is that solid. Well, it turns out Dragon Skill works fine for that, expanding her offensive and supportive options in new directions without superceding the originals. I have no regrets about the path I've taken her down, though I want to pick up Counter Magic for her. It'll be hilarious coming off the Holy Knight's MA, and being a heavy armor job she'll actually have the HP to eat the hits. Going forward, she's not going to be doing much different. Just as Ramza has focused on Ambidexterity, Lavian on spears, and Mustadio on guns, Agrias is my sword specialist. While she's got the Runesword in the above picture due to its +1 MA, she's probably going to swap to the Lemuria until something better shows up, because her role has been and will continue to be not winning through superior firepower, but by being the most durable member of the team who by the way can also heal, revive, and kick your rear end. And turn into a dragon. That still is one of my favorite abilities by flavor. Next time, on Celdia's Complete Patch  You know that bug with Dolphin Kick occasionally stranding the user in midair? Turns out there's a similar one thanks to Dragon Form's pre-Bahamut animation jump, when riding on a chocobo.  And yes, that does qualify as a relevant teaser for the Next Time bit. Consider figuring out why as an exercise between now and my absolute most favorite battle of the game. Rosalie_A fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Feb 16, 2022 |
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Feb 16, 2022 05:50
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Bit of a short update this time, in terms of images, but I figure a chance to look back before looking forward is nice, and I realized a lot of my thoughts and plans for characters hadn't been communicated yet. Also pay no mind to the pink bits in the lower corners. Windows 11 has decided it likes rounded corners and does so in a way that confuses Irfanview and OBS when looking at the "client area". I've come up with a workaround, but I didn't have it in place when I took these screenshots, and chances are you wouldn't have noticed if I didn't say so. Except for you. Yes, you. You were going to say something. I appreciate your attention to detail.
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Feb 16, 2022 05:53
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Mustadio is an amazing debilitator. Even in Vanilla giving him Battle Skill keeps him relevant in every single battle. Letting him inflict every status under the sun with no charge time from across the field in one of like, 5 RPG's where status effects are actually useful is rightfully obscene
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Feb 16, 2022 06:28
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