Final Fantasy Tactics Community Playthrough

Flintlock

Pro Adventurer
To your last question: not really. There seems to be a pretty even split of European and US participants in this playthrough so whatever time you pick is going to be inconvenient for someone. That's just the way it goes.

As for me, I have nothing planned for tomorrow (besides watching rugby) so I can make sure to be available whenever the stream happens. I won't actually be watching the stream since I'll be playing the game myself, but I'll be there to chat, assuming there's going to be a voice call.
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
Going into tech weekend for a play! I love this part of the game though and I want to spend lots of time enjoying it :'(
 

Russell

.. ? ..
AKA
King of the Potato People
I'm no where near the end of Chapter 2 yet (Argath has just left).
And you're only giving us the weekend for chapter 3? :(
 

Claymore

3x3 Eyes
^ Just to add to that, since battles in Tactics can feel like an entire War campaign has played out per encounter, could we possibly have slightly extended times than the usual playthrough? If not, no worries, I'll catch up as I can.
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
That's up to all of you. We've found over the years a fast clip with shorter chapters closer together tends to result in more people remaining interested and going to completion, and Tactics is actually fairly similar in length to other FFs, maybe a bit longer at ~45 hours. But I would be willing to alter it as the group wants. I know we're waiting on some people to get their copy and get started yet.

So we could do every 4 days regardless of where the day falls instead of 4 days-3 days, or after every two chapters wait a full week? Or keep doing it like this, what do you all think?
 

Jason Tandro

Banned
AKA
Jason Tandro, Doc Brown, Santa Christ, FearAddict, Thibault Stormrunner, RN: Micah Rodney
I will say that the key difference is that while Tactics may have a similar play time, it is far less forgiving than your usual FF affair - and there is a lot of time figuring out formation, strategy, hat wearing, etc. I'd be for an extended playtime. At the very least I'm seeing this damned thing through to the end if it's the death of me. :monster:
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
It weird because it's only one disc and the story scenes total only a few hours. But it's the the longest game of the series imo. I spend more time in the menu than I did in FFVIII (the most menu-heavy mainline entry) and random battles go between 5 and 20 minutes.
 

Joker

We have come to terms
AKA
Godot
As an aside - I did something which maybe you can tell me if this is good or not - I trained all my units in Knight to learn "Equip Armor" and did so for my mages. Any downside to this? If it follows form I gather it might hamper their magic if I don't use "mystical" armor? Also going to do a Thief run for Move+2, and actually now a Monk run because I want all my characters to learn MartialArts, Counter and Chakra.

Holy crap, you weren't kidding when you said Chakra was insanely powerful. Free HP/MP healing in a cross? My best healer now is Ramza. I get the feeling that I could go through most of the rest of the game with team PunchSpell (monks and wizards) and pretty much dominate.
Yes; Robes as an equipment class are one of the few things that boost your MP, which (as you might be able to guess) mages need :wacky: Essentially, the Armor equipment class boosts HP significantly, and sometimes PA, but Robes are for mages and therefore boost HP (to a lesser degree), MP, and often MA. Consider this: the best armors in the game give either 200 HP or 170 and Regen/Reraise. By contrast, the best robes give 100 HP, 80 MP, +2 PA, +1 MA, and Protect/Shell. As you might imagine, one of these is wildly better than the others :P

(hint: it's the robes)

As for setting Punch Art to mages, keep in mind that as it belongs to a physical class, Punch Art is going to do damage/heals based on PA. Mages have terrible PA. In the case of Chakra in particular, it will heal for 5x your character's PA, unless they're a Monk (Monks have innate Martial Arts, which increases their PA by 50%, so the heals are stronger). It's not very efficient, in other words :P

Keep at it; your physical units will soon be able to branch into Samurai, which have an EXCELLENT healing ability (it's better than Chakra in EVERY way, other than that it doesn't heal MP), and your magic units will be able to play around with Summons pretty soon (and there is a healing summon).

As for your plans to run characters through to learn every ability (because you know you will), it is physically impossible for me to approve of this plan of action any more than I do. I do the same thing :P Just keep in mind that as an ability, Martial Arts sucks ass, and Counter really isn't that great as you continue through the game; Blade Grasp is much, much better, as you will find, because it's better to survive or prevent hits than to counter them (since avoiding a fatal attack is better than failing to counter it because U DED).

That being said, for female units, Move+2 is pretty much the best movement skill in the game. For males, it's Move+3. Some will enjoy things like Teleport or Fly (Ignore Height is pretty good!), but overall, just flat out increasing Move is preferred.
 

Jason Tandro

Banned
AKA
Jason Tandro, Doc Brown, Santa Christ, FearAddict, Thibault Stormrunner, RN: Micah Rodney
I reckon Ignore Height will come in handy during the Fort City and Gate fights, eh?
 

Russell

.. ? ..
AKA
King of the Potato People
I've got to the end of chapter 2 I think; the battle against
Argath.

Any tips? Because I remember dying on this on one alot...
.
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Well you'll start in two squads. Put your best damage dealer with Ramza in the first squad. The second squad starts kinda far fro the action so they won't be as useful. But if you have anyone with good speed they can go back there.

The easiest way is probably to just bum rush him and ignore everyone else.


As for the chapters, I hesitate to give a full week for each one just because it would really drag out the playthrough and I fear people losing interest. How would people feel about 5 full days for each chapter instead of set days of the week? That way it should still only take a little over two months, but you will have extra time.
 

Russell

.. ? ..
AKA
King of the Potato People
The easiest way is probably to just bum rush him and ignore everyone else.

Delita got in the way and then his own knights surrounded him. >_>

I need to grind, not for JP but for coin. My team are all knights now and they don't have the best equipment.

As for the chapters, I hesitate to give a full week for each one just because it would really drag out the playthrough and I fear people losing interest. How would people feel about 5 full days for each chapter instead of set days of the week? That way it should still only take a little over two months, but you will have extra time.

^ 5 days a chapter sounds good. :)
 

Flintlock

Pro Adventurer
Whoops, I accidentally completed chapter 3 already. Wasn't expecting it to be so short. I thought I'd just play a bit because I'm likely to be slower than everyone else if and when we play it together.

The third battle in this chapter has one of my favorite tracks (entitled Battle on the Bridge). What are your thoughts on the OST so far?
It's Hashimoto, thus it sounds like everything else he has ever written. :P He has such a distinctive style; many times I've said "oh, that's Hashimoto" within 10 seconds of seeing or playing a game for the first time. I already knew he had co-composed the score for Tactics before I started, but you get the point.

The good thing about his music is that it almost always fits the setting. It's very thematically consistent and never really irritates me. The bad thing about it is that I forget it almost as soon as I put the game down. Clash on the (small) Bridge? I honestly don't remember it, and I won't until I either play the game multiple times or listen to the soundtrack extensively. Then again, my memory is like a sieve...

This chapter really starts to get into the shifting or unclear loyalties/goals. What are your thoughts on the different parties' motives?
It was interesting seeing Delita again. When he left the party I thought he was destined to be a permanent antagonist, but now I'm doubting that. Screw Gaffgarion though. I'm glad to have made a habit of taking all the best equipment off my guest characters and giving them stuff that I don't mind losing in return. He went down in one hit. :P

Perhaps I missed something but I haven't really picked up on Mustadio's motives yet. He mentioned something about auracite when facing the "street dogs" which he then kept from Ramza and Agrias, but I don't know what auracite is, so I'm none the wiser. Being a Final Fantasy game, I'm expecting it to be some sort of super-powerful crystal which will become very important to the plot somehow.

If this is your first time, are you starting to gain some comfort with the game's systems? If you're a vet, are you trying some different character/job combinations?
I guess I'm half-rookie and half-vet since I know the system from TA and TA2. (I feel like I say that a lot.) I'm pretty comfortable with it now. Still learning new stuff though. TIL that if you press right on the D-pad when selecting a spell, it'll show you at what point in the turn order that spell will be cast. That's a useful feature which I was sorely missing until now. I discovered it by accident. :monster:

There was only one difficult fight in this chapter – the last one. Once again, it took me multiple tries, but I managed to beat it in the end without having to grind. My first two attempts ended prematurely when Mustadio was killed before I could even reach him. >_> On the third, he finally moved to a place where my white mage could cast shell on him. But then the white mage died before getting another turn and the whole fight was an uphill struggle of reviving and healing, which ended in defeat. After that I realised that Ramza's dialogue choice determines the mission objective and that it would probably have been easier to defeat all the enemies than keep Mustadio alive, but since I don't like things to be easy, I stuck with the harder objective. :P

The battle I ultimately won started with Mustadio getting stopped, which was a good thing, because it meant 1) his shell didn't wear off and 2) he stayed out of harm's way while my party drew the enemy's fire. Once again, the winning strategy was just to do as much damage as possible as quickly as possible and to worry about healing later. My party was made up of a black mage, a white mage with black as her secondary ability, an archer and a knight, whose job was basically to climb up on the right side of the wall (as viewed from the outside) and block the enemies from coming over that way. Pretty fun fight in the end, but as often seems to be the case with this game, you need luck on your side in the beginning or it'll be over before it's really started.
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
Chapter 3: Are you friend or foe?

The third battle in this chapter has one of my favorite tracks (entitled Battle on the Bridge). What are your thoughts on the OST so far?


I quite like A Chapel. Other then that, I gotta say it's a midtier FF OST. Tactics Ogre outshines it too.

This chapter really starts to get into the shifting or unclear loyalties/goals. What are your thoughts on the different parties' motives?

It's good that Ovelia and Agrias are around, so Ramza isn't completely surrounded by different glass half-empty philosophies. I feel Ramza and Gaffgarion being on the Northern Sky's payroll at the start of Chapter 2 undercuts the end of Chapter 1 a bit.

If this is your first time, are you starting to gain some comfort with the game's systems? If you're a vet, are you trying some different character/job combinations?

Usually I make Ramza a dualwielding Monk, which makes mincemeat of some infamously hard fight later on. Now I've turned him into a Black Mage/Summoner which has proven no less broken. My generics are cycling through Archer, Mystic and Orator the latter two being fairly new for me.
 

Joker

We have come to terms
AKA
Godot
My personal Ramza preference is Summoner with Math Skill, but that's largely because he is the only character in the game that can learn
Ultima, although actually DOING it is an asspain and a half
.

Naturally you want a lot of MA for that :P

Has anyone picked out a favorite job (thus far)? I think in the early game, mine was Monk, and then it turned into Ninja or Samurai. Summoner is also really good, though!

(and naturally my favorite character is Beowulf, so Templar as well)
 

Jason Tandro

Banned
AKA
Jason Tandro, Doc Brown, Santa Christ, FearAddict, Thibault Stormrunner, RN: Micah Rodney
Team PunchSpell (Monks and Wizards) though I suspect if Samurai is half as good as you say that'll change. I'm running Ramza through Lancer now because I mastered Monk (well semi mastered, there are some side abilities I didn't learn yet but I want Ignore Height).

Also it never occured to me to make Ramza magical. I have a grand tradition of making all my main characters fighty tankys. And Ramza just seems so fighty. But can't hurt if he learns the big one.
 

Joker

We have come to terms
AKA
Godot
Relevant to the previous,
there is an unlockable location called Deep Dungeon/Midlight's Deep that is the hardest set of enemies in the game (and contains the best loot), and at the bottom is Elidibs/Elidibus, who teaches Zodiac/Zodiark as an attack to your characters...by using it on them. Anyone who survives learns it, and it is the game's strongest summon.

After that, whether or not you choose to go through the two and a half asspains that is teaching it to the rest of your roster is up to you :P

ps fuck chocobos. fuck them up their stupid asses
 

Jason Tandro

Banned
AKA
Jason Tandro, Doc Brown, Santa Christ, FearAddict, Thibault Stormrunner, RN: Micah Rodney
Wow, this is a short chapter. I'm already up to the fort city. And that bridge fight was amazing.

Also, decided to join the crew in getting an FFT Avatar and Username (It's been a while since I confused people). But with my love of puns...
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Also it never occured to me to make Ramza magical. I have a grand tradition of making all my main characters fighty tankys. And Ramza just seems so fighty. But can't hurt if he learns the big one.

Yeah, you'll notice Ramza starts with 70 Brave AND Faith, so he has pretty great damage whether you take him down the mage or physical path. That said I do tend to make him physical, obviously with Dragoon as my favorite FF class, I'm a big fan of that. But by the end of the game it's hard to argue with Dual-Wielding Excaliburs. :monster:

As for main characters, I probably do as well, and I enjoyed in last year's FFV playthrough making Bartz primarily a White Mage, to buck tradition.

And yeah, I thought the shorter chapter would work well for the shorter length of time. But hopefully the longer spread will give some of the other participants a chance to catch up. *nudge nudge*
 
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