We've Heard This Story Before - Let's Play Final Fantasy Tactics!

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RUMBLE CHAOS CRASHDOWN: part 5


Welp, we're at the end of Chapter 1, and I'm going to try to press on without another grind session. So off to Fovoham Plaiiii-what?


Huh.




Delita doesn't charge straight for Miluda, despite being right there. Not ending the fight immediately comes with a steep price.


Ruh roh.


*bonk*


Hmm. That's a lot of spread out, friendly-fireproof damage they've got.


Miluda has Draw Out to add to the AoE damage. On the narrow pier, this is bad news.




Having Raise 2 as my only recovery spell still sucks noodles.


Yeah.

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Well, two can play at that game. If I knew where Miluda was getting her katanas, I'd have trained a Samurai already, but without a weapon and without the items they need to fuel their abilities -- which are of course the same thing -- I haven't bothered despite that being the only heavy-armor job available. But I do have some good AoE...

What do you mean Ice Rods aren't for sale yet? Shiva is usually the first summon I get for any burgeoning eidolonists, on account of ubiquitous ice weakness.


Second strategy: the one who can teleport should get the hell off the pier as soon as possible to make it impossible to hit 80-100% of my guys with one spell.




The combination of the two strategies means I can drop a summon on Miluda right away.


...that's a bit disappointing.


I'm sure that would have been enough of a damage boost that Delita could have finished the battle right here, again. But he doesn't, and gets KOed by Cross-Slash again.


I bought Thunder Rods, expecting to Ramuh the hell out of everyone. Unfortunately, most of my troops are in jobs that can't equip rods, and the one who is hasn't learned Ramuh yet and has to settle for Ifrit. Sigh.


The results are generally disappointing...


But adequate.


Gold Armor would be a get this early, except nobody can use it without having to forego using a weapon. And I haven't figured out how to unlock Monk, or whoever has Martial Arts, yet.

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When I looked at the stats for Time Mage and Ninja I didn't realize I was looking at someone who had Move+2 equipped. They have a more reasonable Move score of 3 and 4, respectively. As much as I like Teleport, the lower-than-usual Move scores on some jobs mean I'm investing JP in regular Move-boosting abilities. Now Grist can learn actual Oracle spells!


What happens if you equip Charge and Non-Charge at the same time? (Nothing. Charge ignores Non-Charge.)


Lenalia Plateau is flatter than I remember.


Either this is a map version of the giant sigil that Rofel uses to banish everyone from the bottom of the Orbonne basement library to the Necrohol, or we're fighting on the save data screen.

Maybe both, I dunno, maybe they're the same thing.


Without terrain to worry about it's pretty trivial to take out Wiegraf's support troops.


In a sharp contrast to his Mandalia Plains encounter, he does not immediately set about slaughtering everyone in the most efficient manner possible. Instead, he...


Oh, you bastard.


Well, you ain't the only cat's got Summon magic.


And magic ignores Golem protection. Get wrecked.


There's a thunderstorm inside the windmill shed, dramatically illustrating Delita's emotional state.

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Delita is coming apart at the seams again.


He can pull himself together well enough to smack Algus around, though.


Algus has Auto-Potion this time, because he's designed from the ground up to be hated as much as possible.




If Delita has Algus under control, I can make sure they can fight each other without outside interference.


The game decided Delita is female again, this time a Thief instead of an Oracle.

Trans Delita confirmed canon


DELITEDNO takes Algus down with another cut, and we wrap chapter one.

[Mazian]

That actually works out okaOH COME ON

For the true job system experience, you must also have the automated HR resume screening system experience

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RUMBLE CHAOS CRASHDOWN: part 6: Chapter 2


Ramza was present while the other four worked their way up to the 3000 JP necessary to get Non-Charge. So thanks to leaked JP he has plenty to top off his super-Squire skillset for chapter 2.


It's weird, each individual battle is more suspenseful and harrowing (if I'm not just blasting everything with Summons, I guess), but I haven't actually lost any soldiers yet. I tell Alicia, Lavian, and Rad to hit the road.


Vormav hires a ton of Onmyoji to assassinate us. It beats getting surrounded by Lancers!


By which I mean Non-charged Summons on narrow city streets have about the same effect they do on a harbor pier.

Look, there weren't a lot of good action shots in this fight, the buildings got in the way.


Starting chapter 2 means the shops have some gear that will boost our ailing MA and, to a lesser extent, PA now. Still no ninjato or katanas.


I gotta tell ya that there is absolutely nothing interesting about fighting a bunch of chocobos, all they can do is Wing Attack and I have Shirahidori. Ramza spent his two or three turns in this fight using Cheer Up for the permanent Brave boost, because there was nothing dangerous happening.

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But we're getting to the point where the scripted battles outlevel my guys again, so I need a couple of random encounters to catch up. This is about the time the game started hitting me with Leviathan last time, ya know.

As is typical for this point in the game, Ramza spends most of his grinding cheering up himself and everyone else.


Zaidyer? Isn't that somebody from Talking TIme?


The forest is a smaller map, and easier to get around, than most of them that I've run into Sekhmet before. So this one doesn't have time to Beef Up his PA to unholy levels before he starts hitting my guys. I appreciate that.


No no, the real danger in this fight is the extra Byblos, combined with my inability to hit hard enough to OHKO anything yet. Byblos has an ability that deals MaxHP - CurrentHP damage, and it has more HP than anyone in my group. For a while there it has a never-fail instakill.


Let's just make sure that doesn't happen too often.




I'll be god damned, Raise 2 worked.


Oh, right. Remember how everyone has at least a glancing familiarity with the Thief job? Everyone here is equipped with Poach.


Let's see...

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Poaches are randomized, too, so I have no idea what got turned into what.


The Pantherskin Bag is the least bad option out of this lot. Bags to semirandom damage, but with its decent PA even a low figure on its semirandom range is more damage than anyone can do with, say, a wimpy Thief dagger.


Taking a swing at what's in the desert, there isn't a midgame boss or secret extra monster or anything. Just a skeleton cruising around with a twenty-level advantage on my party.


Let's see if it can do some of the heavy lifting for us.


Just one hit before one of the Sekhmets comes over and whaps him out of Charm, but as far as I'm concerned that just wasted the turns of the two most dangerous monsters on the map. Any HP damage that got done is just gravy.


You can't Shirahidori a counterattack, so I've got to be careful to whittle down the monsters with arrows and spells before I close in for a killing strike.

Of course, you can't Shirahidori the Skeleton's anima attacks at all.


We got rid of the Sekhmet, so nothing on the field as AoE attacks anymore. Everybody bunch up for a Cura!


A monster with a twenty-level advantage must be handled with care... until the battle is basically won anyway. Then you can just mess around with it on account of getting a ton of experience every time you pilfer its pockets, or whatever.


Once everything is pretty much done, and since I don't have to worry about the Skeletons getting back up on account of having sent all of them off to the Fur Shop, I take a few minutes to pump up everyone's Brave again.


Nice, usually this is a late Chapter 4 sale item. Kind of means I wasted my money on the Pantherskin Bag, though.


Ooooh. That's a Deep Dungeon get.

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At Zirekile Falls I have to save Ovelia from a bunch of White Mages. None of them remembered to bring a sword or Summons, so... I'm not sure why she's in any danger.






Even Agrias can oneshot these guys.

See also: Bracamarte teleported into the water instead of onto the bridge, whoopsy. Guess this is another fight where my Archer doesn't accomplish anything.


Grukk is cleaning things up nicely instead.


On to Zaland, where... well, where Grukk takes up a sniping position on top of the city gate and shoots more lightning at people.


These guys spend the first couple turns going I AM CASTING PROTECT AND SHELL on each other before they join the fray.


When it comes to attacks from inside the Zaland fortress walls, I'll take Cross-Slash over Leviathan any day.


STOP DEBUFFING PEOPLE'S BRAVE I JUST GOT THAT PUMPED UP


Anyway, pew pew

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As usual, it's raining inside a building during the cutscene.

I do get a little chuckle out of Ramza and Agrias marveling at that odd contraption Mustadio uses to propel little balls of lead into people. "You used to be able to put magic inside and shoot it." Wow, really? I had no idea. Hey, how come my Chemist is my strongest attacker?


Someone took the time to train the adopted Princess in how to jump all over the damn place. Since Ovelia never participates in a battle there's no way to use this as anything but a sneak-peek at a job that I haven't unlocked myself yet.


whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Okay, I need to figure out how to get a Lancer now.

Teleport is the best move ability in the vanilla game. You can ignore terrain, obstacles, and height when you zip around, and it's guaranteed as long as you're teleporting within the distance of your natural Move. You can push the teleport a little, with a 10% chance of failure (and losing your Move action) for every panel beyond your Move score you try to go.

Teleport 2 ignores that last part. There's never a failure chance. You just zip anywhere on the map you want to go. Elmdor uses it in his battle at Limberry, then Ultima uses it in the final battle. It's so overpowered not even the Lucavi get it!


In less exciting news, Ovelia can also be an Arithmetician, which has quietly dropped the most exploitable variable in its skillset, the ability to calculate by terrain height. It also dropped all of its Reaction, Support, and Move abilities, not that those were anything special.


Here's why Agrias has been relying entirely on Summons since she signed on! Most of her skills got ridiculously expensive!

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RUMBLE CHAOS CRASHDOWN: part 7


Huh. Black Mages. If I had some of those I wouldn't have to use Summons as my primary damage output.


But I haven't and I do.


But as it turns out, so do they.


Agrias manages to proc a Stop on this Black Mage, presumably making the fight significantly easier for the first couple of rounds.


Oh no ya don't. You do not sing a Speed-boosting song when there are Thieves about.


Agrias forgoes finishing off the Black Mage in favor of zapping guys on the other side of the map with Ramuh.


This means Black Mage is able to start jammin' to the beat, and cranks out a Wiznaibus. Unfortunately, Black Mages still have crappy PA, and Dances are PA-based. So it's chip damage to everyone.


Since 3-HP Wiznaibus is the best they've got, wrapping up isn't an issue.

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It's raining inside Dycedarg's office as he reveals his jerkassery to the audience.


Surprisingly, given the state of Ivalice architecture we've seen up to this point, somebody actually bothered to put a roof on Lionel Castle.

Well, off to the swa--


--mp...


We're fighting in the little rooms where Ramza gets thrown out by Zalbag at the beginning of chapter 3, right before the fight with Zalmo.


Which is to say, a map that was never intended to see use as a battlefield, and has an obvious exploitable chokepoint.


Mustadio, please leave finishing the monsters off to the other guys who have Poach.


Anyway. Obvious, exploitable chokepoint. Wanda started charging Meteorain, targeted right at the entrance to the room she's in. I figured either I'd do a bit of damage to some monsters, or they would avoid charging into the room and getting nailed by meteors, buying me a little bit of time to soften them up with guns and bows.

Turns out Meteorain does just a shitton of damage and I end up KOing three monsters with it. I'd rather have poached them, but I mean, sure. I'll take three KOs.

(Wanda doesn't have Non-charge, because she has to use Equip Sword in that slot to use the Limit skills.)


"Wait, Grukk has a magic gun, and magic can't poach monsters. Can she still poach with her lightning bullets?"

Answer: yes.

After finishing up in the office, I wander back to Lionel, then back into the swamp to see if random encounters also use the alternate map.


Nope.


I can never tell what unlocks what anymore, so if training in Archer is what unlocks Mime, then it stands to reason Bracamarte gets it first. It's probably a weird combination of jobs to unlock and she earned it through leaked JP, though, so I dunno.

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Before going to Goug, I walked back to Dorter to check the shops. And lo and behold, they'd started carrying ninjato! And Asura katanas! I can use melee jobs now! Whoa!

At Goug: couple of Bards, bunch of Thieves.


So, funny thing about Ninja move plus Teleport, as Bracamarte pops up right in this guy's face from the far side of the fallen chimney.


She then proceeds to crit with her first hit, dropping the Thief to critical HP and knocking him back a square so that her second attack whiffs. She's just starting out at this Ninja thing, and does't really have it down yet.


A lady ending her turn surrounded by male Thieves ends predictably.


The game rerolls Mustadio when he leaves the party to investigate around Goug, then rejoins as a Guest here. So he doesn't have Equip Katana anymore, nbd... he picked up Teleport. Huh.


For each job, stats level up at different rates. Stands to reason Knight would raise PA more than Thief, and Thief raises Speed more than Knight, right?

A Degenerator trap saps one level from you, reversing the growth based on your current job. Meaning that his very first turn of being a melee job, Grist managed to stumble into a trap that dropped his PA such that it would take several levels in Time Mage or Summoner, the jobs he had been training in, to get back. Go figure.


Charm is nothing a quick rock to the back of the head won't fix, so Bracamarte gets to finish what she started. She could have two kills by now, but oh no, gotta do a critical hit and take an extra turn to KO the first guy...


Ramza unlocked Monk, by the way.


Just kinda taking guys out, right-to-left.

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Finishing Touch never misses, and always causes either Stop, Petrify, or an instant kill. In this case I got Stop, which... okay, fine.

I seem to remember Finishing Touch being... better? in Final Fantasy 7.


Thing about katanas being for sale at the local mall is that everybody goes and gets one without learning how to use it all that well.


I get dick all from eating the Thieves, but one of the Bards leaves a nice present for Grist. The other Bard was left alive to wait until the others crystalized, so I didn't get to inherit any of his training, but he was wearing a Judo Uniform that Grist managed to steal.


Mustadio if you are sore about not being used last game I can promise you that picking up abilities from Rafa is not the way to go.


I dunno where he learned Teleport, though, because it wasn't through White Mage like everybody else.

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RUMBLE CHAOS CRASHDOWN: part 8


We're transported back to a rocky valley in Fovoham for this conversation with Delita.


Then immediately... thrust into battle?


I'm fighting in Warjilis? ...what?


I'm fighting a million Zalmos in Warjilis? whaaaaaaaaat


I'm in control of a million enemy Zalmos in Warjilis? whaaaaaaaaaaaat


I'm in control of a million enemy Zalmos in Warjilis while Delita, as an uncontrollable Guest, runs around an oneshots every one of those Zalmos with his Holy Sword? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT


Seriously Delita is absurdly overpowered here. And as it turns out only one of the Zalmos is actually Zalmo, the rest just use his sprite. I think nearly every job is represented by one Zalmo.






Delita largely ignores the soul crystals the Zalmos drop, and the purpose of this fight is revealed when Ramza picks one up. Here, have a few thousand extra JP. You don't get to decide where to spend them, but beggars can't be choosers, can they?


I reload and do the battle again, respeccing Ramza to have Steal skills. I manage to nab the Yoichi Bow one of the Zalmos was carrying, but Delita ran for the Zalmo with the Kikuichimonji first thing, so I didn't get a chance to steal that one. There was a Grand Helmet and a Barette in play, but since the Thief doesn't get Steal Helmet in this randomizer seed, those were also lost. I got an Earth Clothes and a Reflect Ring from treasure box drops, and of course a couple dozen randomly-selected skills added to Ramza's skill list.

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I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is the least-interesting battle in this update.


It's just a standard fight against some Time Mages and Chemists. I'm really glad the Chemists aren't aiming for Agrias with those Mithril Guns, if that's the damage they're doing. That's more than I get out of my Blast Gun!


Agrias brought her own trump card to the fight, but needless to say she can only do it once.


Anyway, let's go walk into a trap. Then another trap. Then another trap. Ramza is really good at this heroing thing, huh?

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Trap #1: Gafgarion plus a dozen Ninja. There's some Mages on the high wall there, but it's the Ninja that are unusual to see. Ninja are so popular here I'm getting flashbacks to the eighties!


I could have gone to get a sandwich and a cup of coffee when the battle started, since it was all Gafgarion and Ramza yelling at each other followed by every Ninja getting its turn, throwing an item, and having that item Shirahidoried out of the air without hitting its target.


Getting to these guys to shut down the spell support being flung from on high is usually a hassle, but everyone already has Teleport. Teleporting across the battlefield is tough, teleporting straight up is a freebie.


All the Ninja try to keep the most distance they can for their ineffectual item-hucking, politely lining up for Ramza to Earth Slash them. They're also in prime Bushido formation!


...I broke my last katana in Baraius Valley. Damn. Well, guess Grist can swing at the Ninja in front of him...


I had higher hopes for this turn.




Eventually I start managing a few KOs, including zapping Gafgarion with a lightning bolt that takes him out of the fight.


It's kind of funny that this guy actually managed to do some HP damage by hucking a rock, where flinging knives, swords, shurikens, flails, and a big heavy book all failed.

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Not to say the mages don't manage their own KO. I'm pretty sure Wanda was killed by a Summon, and I'm like 80% sure that summon was Ramuh. It usually is.


But the Monk skillset got to keep Revive, finally giving me another option besides Raise 2.


Ho hum, dee dah, waiting for people to die and drop crystals... Most of them drop treasure boxes with crap in them so this was mostly a waste of time.


Ramza got to pump up some people's Brave, Grukk managed to boost Wanda's Faith a little, and Grist swiped a White Robe off the back of the last White Mage while we waited. Nothing to write home about.

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Trap #2: Ambush at the Lionel Castle gate. At least there's a reason for Ramza to want to open the door this time.

Unless you remember that everyone can teleport, and this whole fight becomes pointless again.


More Ninja, and a Thief.


Ninja are fast enough that this one gets a turn and can charge up a Summon spell before any of my guys get to move, so they're all in perfect Ramuh-zapping formation. Maybe I should have tried the Rubber Shoes strategy after all...


Things have gone downhill very quickly.


Grukk manages to bore herself to sleep with her charmed turn. Which is fine, I guess, somebody had to throw a rock at her anyway.


Not that it matters. Shirahidori can block one swing per attack. Most jobs only get one swing per attack, so that's fine. But Ninja dual-wield, and with everyone's Brave as high as it is, they usually Shirahidori the flail hit and take the ninjato hit full force.


Yeah, that's bad.


Gafgarion is in this fight, but he's got such a piddlingly weak sword he can't do his usual hit-and-self-heal very well.


Bracamarte had teleported inside the fort to battle Gafgarion, avoiding the fate of everyone else on the front lawn.


Ramza teleports out and immediately proves himself more valuable than all of the other troops combined... in the two turns or so he stays alive. Can Bracamarte finish this battle by herself?


(No.)

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Well, let's respec for speed instead of just bringing everyone in playing whatever job they already had.


Grist manages to teleport inside before any of the enemies move, and immediately starts singing a song to boost everyone's Speed further.




It doesn't work, as one of the Ninja still gets the drop on Grukk and KOs her, forcing Ramza to teleport out and pull her off the flagstones.


Bracamarte does one of those "might as well do this instead of just Moving this turn" things and manages to drop a Death Sentence on the Thief. She then teleports inside to avoid any retaliation.


The way I figure it, someone's going to KO Grukk before she gets another turn, so Wanda lines up a Raise 2 before also teleporting into the castle.


She actually took a flail hit for single-digit damage and dodged the ninjato, managing to stay alive long enough to also teleport into the fortress. Raise 2 whiffs.


...okay, now I need a revive. Ramza, get back up here...


*sigh*


Since I'd targeted Grukk with a Cura, she spends her Charmed turn teleporting back down to the ground to share the HP restore with her new friends.


This ends about as well as you'd expect.


Given the choice between two weapon hits to Damage Split with the Ninja who just stabbed her, she decides to deal and heal 9 damage instead of 66. Just... just poor decisions all around.