One thing that tripped me up the first time through was not switching out the main guy ever. He got leveled far ahead of my other characters who rotated and it appeared as if enemies were based on highest level in party? Anyhow I got roflstomped.
What is with Final Fantasy Tactics?
- Thread starter galdon2004
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I hated the War of the Lions 'port' even the PSN PSone original version runs better than their lazy ass port.
I never found the game to be difficult, I go through the game with Ramza and a party of Generics, no Agrias or Orlandu and it's just fine. You just can't rush in full on and the game often benefits having a party with variety.
Want to stop chocobos from running? Monk with earth slash very hard to get away from that.
Advice: whenever you go to an castle or whatever that you'll be going in, save on ANOTHER SLOT because you can't leave till you're finished with business and they have a few 'challenging' battles in those.
You may want to read up on the Velius battle and Elmdor battle as they come from nowhere.
Edit: People find this game hard? I'm no strat master, I don't play Fire Emblum and whatever because I find that game just unfair. But Tactics hard? Really? I don't even use the heroes and the game is typically a breeze as long as you're prepared for 1-2 battles.
I never found the game to be difficult, I go through the game with Ramza and a party of Generics, no Agrias or Orlandu and it's just fine. You just can't rush in full on and the game often benefits having a party with variety.
Want to stop chocobos from running? Monk with earth slash very hard to get away from that.
Advice: whenever you go to an castle or whatever that you'll be going in, save on ANOTHER SLOT because you can't leave till you're finished with business and they have a few 'challenging' battles in those.
You may want to read up on the Velius battle and Elmdor battle as they come from nowhere.
Edit: People find this game hard? I'm no strat master, I don't play Fire Emblum and whatever because I find that game just unfair. But Tactics hard? Really? I don't even use the heroes and the game is typically a breeze as long as you're prepared for 1-2 battles.
I am setting up my PS2 and putting FFT in after this. I only own/play the original, so some details/names may be different. Forewarning: Long post is long.
FFT is challenging, but deeply rewarding when you start learning more. You'll appreciate it more once you've played longer, or decide to replay the game again later. This game is very "Final Fantasy" in its balance, in that you can break the game using multiple strategies. While some people have already mentioned several, you can't do any of these unless you grind for dozens of hours so let's go a bit more basic.
It sounds like early random battles are taking you 1.5 hours, which should never happen. This leads me to believe that you're doing something fundamentally wrong with your battle approach or party setup. When starting, it's a good idea to pick 3 people for fighter classes, and 2 chemists to become your mages, as this should give you a fairly diverse party. Abilities like Gained JP Up, Move +1, and Throw Item are hugely useful for everyone, and make sure every character can heal themselves or others by equipping secondary skill sets like Item or White Magic (you can certainly bend this rule later, but as a new player I'd highly suggest it). As random encounters level with you, skills and equipment is where you'll find your edge (why JP Up is so useful).
Strategy can't really be taught in a single forum post, so let's just look at your chocobo problem. Choco-Cure heals EVERYTHING nearby, including your allies, so with proper positioning your party will benefit as much, if not more, from this skill (most abilities don't discriminate between friend or foe, exceptions being summon spells and Samurai's Drawout skills). If a chocobo runs, let it. It'll come back to attack, so finish off his allies in the meantime. You can also use this time to encircle the enemy so the chocobo can't reach it to cure. When other enemies are dead, circle the chocobo and kill it. Counter can be...er...countered by using long-range attacks, such as bows, Throw Stone, or spells. Spells can also be useful since if a chocobo just healed his allies, they're also clustered for a black magic spell.
Learning which approaches to use is the learning curve and that just comes from experience. Also ask what's the most productive thing a unit could do before making a move. Damaging enemies is good, but if you can't reach them in the current turn what else could you do? Group allies for a Protect/Haste spell? Use a squire ability to give a little buff to an ally, or at least get in range for a Throw Stone? Use a potion on yourself or nearby ally? Can you do one of these while staying outside of the enemy's movement/attack range, meaning that HE has to waste a turn getting to you instead?
Some additional tips:
-CT list is your friend. When using a spell, press left or right to see when it goes off in the turn order if you're unsure if the enemy will move before the spells casts. This also works for instant actions, like using items or squire skills if you just want to check turn order quickly.
-Squire is Ramza's best class. Seriously. His Squire is special, in that he can equip a wider variety of items than other squires, and also gains additional abilities in later chapters. If he's a squire while hit with Ultima, he learns it. You can certainly make him other classes, but unlike most characters you shouldn't forget about Squire once other jobs open up.
-Brave and Faith are important. Brave helps with many physical actions, while Faith makes magic more successful. Also, Zodiacs can strongly impact the effectiveness of skills. If the damage you deal is wildly less or more than what the pre-action numbers were, or if a cure spell has an unusually low chance of success, this is likely the cause.
-Don't advance in classes too soon. Core skills are very useful, such as JP Up, Move +1, Auto-Potion, Equip Armor, Magic Up, etc, and having people master a class can give you a very potent specialist; having a Black Mage with Flare at the end of Chapter 2 makes the boss fight fairly easy. Additionally, you may not be able to properly outfit a character depending on your funds or shop selection.
-Leveling up in a class determines what base stats are improved (Black mages get more Magic attack, Summoners MP, Ninjas Speed, etc.). Later on you can send your generic team mates out on jobs to get JP, so if there's a class you don't want to level in (Mediator) make them that class then send them out to gain JP without XP.
-Make a separate save if you're not saving on the world map. In some sections you'll have to fight several battles in sequence and depending on your party setup certain battles may become almost impossible. Always having a save on the world map allows you to go back and prepare for a battle that gives you trouble.
-There are many ways to break the game. Orlandu puts the game on easy, as does Ninja-Calculators, Dual-Wielding Blood Swords, Auto-Potion with only X-Potions in inventory, and many others. If you find yourself seriously stuck in a battle like noted above, you can have Ramza spam Scream to boost all his stats until he's 4x faster than everyone else and can 1-shot bosses. Ramza will gain several levels doing this, so use only as a last-resort, lest you be crushed by high-level random enemies. Use or avoid these sort of things depending on the difficulty that you want.
-As with "Final Fantasy Balancing", magic becomes worthless towards end-game as physical attacks deal as much damage (if not more) and take less time and effort to execute. You can counter this by equipping Short Charge to speed up powerful high-level spells, or Magic Up to power up fast low-level spells.
-Avoid Barius Hill. It can have some of the hardest randoms latter in the game, like groups of dragons/tiamats or 10 Red Chocobos. Save before crossing.
I'd strongly encourage you to stick with it. Strategies to teach a player while he plays have certainly come a long way over the past 15 years, but if you can survive that barrier to entry it's a hugely enjoyable game. It may or may not take that 10-20 hours (I mostly had a handle on the game after passing Dorter Trade city).
FFT is challenging, but deeply rewarding when you start learning more. You'll appreciate it more once you've played longer, or decide to replay the game again later. This game is very "Final Fantasy" in its balance, in that you can break the game using multiple strategies. While some people have already mentioned several, you can't do any of these unless you grind for dozens of hours so let's go a bit more basic.
It sounds like early random battles are taking you 1.5 hours, which should never happen. This leads me to believe that you're doing something fundamentally wrong with your battle approach or party setup. When starting, it's a good idea to pick 3 people for fighter classes, and 2 chemists to become your mages, as this should give you a fairly diverse party. Abilities like Gained JP Up, Move +1, and Throw Item are hugely useful for everyone, and make sure every character can heal themselves or others by equipping secondary skill sets like Item or White Magic (you can certainly bend this rule later, but as a new player I'd highly suggest it). As random encounters level with you, skills and equipment is where you'll find your edge (why JP Up is so useful).
Strategy can't really be taught in a single forum post, so let's just look at your chocobo problem. Choco-Cure heals EVERYTHING nearby, including your allies, so with proper positioning your party will benefit as much, if not more, from this skill (most abilities don't discriminate between friend or foe, exceptions being summon spells and Samurai's Drawout skills). If a chocobo runs, let it. It'll come back to attack, so finish off his allies in the meantime. You can also use this time to encircle the enemy so the chocobo can't reach it to cure. When other enemies are dead, circle the chocobo and kill it. Counter can be...er...countered by using long-range attacks, such as bows, Throw Stone, or spells. Spells can also be useful since if a chocobo just healed his allies, they're also clustered for a black magic spell.
Learning which approaches to use is the learning curve and that just comes from experience. Also ask what's the most productive thing a unit could do before making a move. Damaging enemies is good, but if you can't reach them in the current turn what else could you do? Group allies for a Protect/Haste spell? Use a squire ability to give a little buff to an ally, or at least get in range for a Throw Stone? Use a potion on yourself or nearby ally? Can you do one of these while staying outside of the enemy's movement/attack range, meaning that HE has to waste a turn getting to you instead?
Some additional tips:
-CT list is your friend. When using a spell, press left or right to see when it goes off in the turn order if you're unsure if the enemy will move before the spells casts. This also works for instant actions, like using items or squire skills if you just want to check turn order quickly.
-Squire is Ramza's best class. Seriously. His Squire is special, in that he can equip a wider variety of items than other squires, and also gains additional abilities in later chapters. If he's a squire while hit with Ultima, he learns it. You can certainly make him other classes, but unlike most characters you shouldn't forget about Squire once other jobs open up.
-Brave and Faith are important. Brave helps with many physical actions, while Faith makes magic more successful. Also, Zodiacs can strongly impact the effectiveness of skills. If the damage you deal is wildly less or more than what the pre-action numbers were, or if a cure spell has an unusually low chance of success, this is likely the cause.
-Don't advance in classes too soon. Core skills are very useful, such as JP Up, Move +1, Auto-Potion, Equip Armor, Magic Up, etc, and having people master a class can give you a very potent specialist; having a Black Mage with Flare at the end of Chapter 2 makes the boss fight fairly easy. Additionally, you may not be able to properly outfit a character depending on your funds or shop selection.
-Leveling up in a class determines what base stats are improved (Black mages get more Magic attack, Summoners MP, Ninjas Speed, etc.). Later on you can send your generic team mates out on jobs to get JP, so if there's a class you don't want to level in (Mediator) make them that class then send them out to gain JP without XP.
-Make a separate save if you're not saving on the world map. In some sections you'll have to fight several battles in sequence and depending on your party setup certain battles may become almost impossible. Always having a save on the world map allows you to go back and prepare for a battle that gives you trouble.
-There are many ways to break the game. Orlandu puts the game on easy, as does Ninja-Calculators, Dual-Wielding Blood Swords, Auto-Potion with only X-Potions in inventory, and many others. If you find yourself seriously stuck in a battle like noted above, you can have Ramza spam Scream to boost all his stats until he's 4x faster than everyone else and can 1-shot bosses. Ramza will gain several levels doing this, so use only as a last-resort, lest you be crushed by high-level random enemies. Use or avoid these sort of things depending on the difficulty that you want.
-As with "Final Fantasy Balancing", magic becomes worthless towards end-game as physical attacks deal as much damage (if not more) and take less time and effort to execute. You can counter this by equipping Short Charge to speed up powerful high-level spells, or Magic Up to power up fast low-level spells.
-Avoid Barius Hill. It can have some of the hardest randoms latter in the game, like groups of dragons/tiamats or 10 Red Chocobos. Save before crossing.
I'd strongly encourage you to stick with it. Strategies to teach a player while he plays have certainly come a long way over the past 15 years, but if you can survive that barrier to entry it's a hugely enjoyable game. It may or may not take that 10-20 hours (I mostly had a handle on the game after passing Dorter Trade city).
My standard team is one summoner with the quick cast ability and four mimes. I cast Bahamut. Battle over.
They only perma-die if you don't get to them in time with a Phoenix Down. You have 3-4 turns before anyone perma-dies.scw55 said:
I don't know how you guys thought this was hard, well except for the first Dorter battle. I hated that fight. The game has always been piss easy from the beginning. I usually trained 2 Males/3 Females up to ninjas before the end of act 1 aiming for a maximized speed stat for later when I switched to Bards and Dancers. The trick is to spend at least 2 battle grinding JP (spamming Yell or Guts works best) until I got enough to buy JP Up(Squire) and Auto-Potion(Chemist). Bam, easy mode. Only takes 2 battles. The best thing to note about grinding is that classes share 20% of their JP gain with everyone else so grinding everyone together on the same job makes it go a lot faster.
Maybe he was talking about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for the GBA or A-2 for the NDS. Personally, I haven't played the original FFT and it's remake, but I seriously enjoyed both GBA and NDS iterations of FFT.
These versions though, are certainly not forgiving, it's quite hard actually. Or maybe I'm too dumb for these games.
These versions though, are certainly not forgiving, it's quite hard actually. Or maybe I'm too dumb for these games.
You should really try the PSOne version of Tactics, I found the story to be far more moving (even with the translation) and the combat to be far more deep without the need for the dumb judge.SupahGamuh said:
I say PSOne version (even on the PSN) because it doesn't have the slowdown the War of the Lions has where moves take twice as long, sounds don't match up and drag out battles that are are already long. Plus the added content is fairly pointless.
I can 'handle' a waambulance. But it shows an element of your character that you choose to use it. It also shows something about yourself that you consider your post to be better than everybody else's. Specifically that you are prideful in a bad way.Tenmar said:Well that's your problem cause I actually gave you some of the best advice in this topic when it comes to understanding how nuanced the game is when it comes to strategy. The difference between me and you is that when I was a kid I was actually smart enough when buying that game to sit down and read the instructions and actually have an enjoyable experience instead of whining that the game is terrible because you wouldn't take the time to read. You see older games had this thing called not treating their clients like morons. Also think of each game you play as a tool, you certainly wouldn't use a power saw without reading the instructions.galdon2004 said:
Sorry but I go with the tough love approach, you can't handle something as simple as Whambulance then you need to grow a lot thicker skin.
P.S. I'm going to enjoy knowing you are going to let all the special characters in your party die
Anyways; Thank you everyone who has been trying to be helpful. I am trying to push through it since I don't have anything better to do with my gaming time since I have the game now anyway.
FE is a much easier game. Hell, a much easier series. The FE games, even if you refuse to let anyone die, will be horrifyingly forgiving and simplistic to murder through with a team of indestructible slaughter-machines.
Tactics, however, is not a terribly hard game, with a few points of exception (Wiegraf/Velius, I'm looking at you, you fat rancid bastard). The real trick is to adhere to a scorched earth policy. Let nothing live. The chocobos can only do so much if you keep your team as a wolf pack and gang up on one guy at a time.
Just...watch out for the second forest map. The ninja horde randobattle is a complete shitstorm that will end you. You have been warned.
Tactics, however, is not a terribly hard game, with a few points of exception (Wiegraf/Velius, I'm looking at you, you fat rancid bastard). The real trick is to adhere to a scorched earth policy. Let nothing live. The chocobos can only do so much if you keep your team as a wolf pack and gang up on one guy at a time.
Just...watch out for the second forest map. The ninja horde randobattle is a complete shitstorm that will end you. You have been warned.
FFT is one of my favourite games. Here are some nice pointers:
- First and foremost: there will be times when the game will prompt you to save after a battle. For the love of all things good and holy, SAVE IN A DIFFERENT SLOT THAN THE ONE YOU WERE USING BEFORE. ALWAYS HAVE A SAVE ON THE WORLD MAP. This is the #1 cause of people having to restart the game from the beginning. They get stuck in the middle of a series of battles (almost always near the end of Chapter 3) with no plausible way of winning the next fight and don't have a save from when they were still on the world map.
- Your character's experience level doesn't matter 95% of the time. Your job, abilities, and equipment have a much bigger impact. The only times your experience level has much effect on anything are random encounters and story battles involving monsters (Finath River, Balk 2, a few others). During those, their levels will match yours, and they'll get equipment to match their level, which will often be better than anything you can buy (but also gives you the chance of getting better equipment earlier)
- Some classes suck, but their abilities are awesome. Chemists suck as characters, but Item is one of the most useful ability sets in the game. Auto-Potion makes most of the game a breeze, and Item is much, much better than White Magic for healing because it is not dependent on Faith. Likewise, Samurai is a poor class, but Draw-Out is phenomenal in the hands of someone with high magic attack, and Blade Grasp is pretty much broken in the PSX version.
- Do NOT use the auto-equip function (in the PSX version, at least; not sure about the PSP version). All it does is equip you with the highest HP/attack power items it can. A hat that has +30HP and +1 Speed is better than a helmet with +60HP
- Do NOT keep a person in one class the entire game. Move them around, find abilities in other jobs that you like, then mix-and-match. This is especially true for Ramza - the second-to-last fight in Chapter 3 requires you to 1v1 the boss with Ramza, which can lead you having to restart the entire game if you just kept him in some crappy class like Knight the entire game.
- Ramza's Squire class is special. In addition to having extra abilities and higher stats, he also has a ton of equipment options. Don't neglect it just because it shares the name with the kinda crappy base class for every generic character.
- Pay attention to Brave and Faith. High Brave is desirable 99% of the time - the only time it isn't is for finding items that are hidden on certain panels on the map. On the other hand, Faith is harder to pin down. High faith means your magic power is stronger, but magic is also more effective against you. Anyone who uses Black/White/Time/Yin-Yang/Summons/elemental guns will need a relatively high faith (85 is probably a good number). Anyone you plan on healing with White Magic will probably want 50-60 Faith. Anyone else will want it as low as possible.
- Always attack from behind if possible, and attack from the side if you can't attack from behind. Your chances to hit go up drastically if you flank your enemy.
- FFT is a game that has been analyzed to death by some very smart people. Every single ability has been documented and investigated. Every single mechanic is known. If you go far enough in depth, you can account for every single factor down to things like the exact HP you'll need to survive X number of attacks. If you're interested in learning more, check out http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/3876. However, the RNG can still screw you over.
- Lastly, people have completed this game under some pretty insane circumstances, like teams of Calculators with no Math Skill. I myself have beaten it using only Ramza in the Monk class with no abilities from other classes. Regardless of how hopeless your situation is, there is probably a way out of it.
- First and foremost: there will be times when the game will prompt you to save after a battle. For the love of all things good and holy, SAVE IN A DIFFERENT SLOT THAN THE ONE YOU WERE USING BEFORE. ALWAYS HAVE A SAVE ON THE WORLD MAP. This is the #1 cause of people having to restart the game from the beginning. They get stuck in the middle of a series of battles (almost always near the end of Chapter 3) with no plausible way of winning the next fight and don't have a save from when they were still on the world map.
- Your character's experience level doesn't matter 95% of the time. Your job, abilities, and equipment have a much bigger impact. The only times your experience level has much effect on anything are random encounters and story battles involving monsters (Finath River, Balk 2, a few others). During those, their levels will match yours, and they'll get equipment to match their level, which will often be better than anything you can buy (but also gives you the chance of getting better equipment earlier)
- Some classes suck, but their abilities are awesome. Chemists suck as characters, but Item is one of the most useful ability sets in the game. Auto-Potion makes most of the game a breeze, and Item is much, much better than White Magic for healing because it is not dependent on Faith. Likewise, Samurai is a poor class, but Draw-Out is phenomenal in the hands of someone with high magic attack, and Blade Grasp is pretty much broken in the PSX version.
- Do NOT use the auto-equip function (in the PSX version, at least; not sure about the PSP version). All it does is equip you with the highest HP/attack power items it can. A hat that has +30HP and +1 Speed is better than a helmet with +60HP
- Do NOT keep a person in one class the entire game. Move them around, find abilities in other jobs that you like, then mix-and-match. This is especially true for Ramza - the second-to-last fight in Chapter 3 requires you to 1v1 the boss with Ramza, which can lead you having to restart the entire game if you just kept him in some crappy class like Knight the entire game.
- Ramza's Squire class is special. In addition to having extra abilities and higher stats, he also has a ton of equipment options. Don't neglect it just because it shares the name with the kinda crappy base class for every generic character.
- Pay attention to Brave and Faith. High Brave is desirable 99% of the time - the only time it isn't is for finding items that are hidden on certain panels on the map. On the other hand, Faith is harder to pin down. High faith means your magic power is stronger, but magic is also more effective against you. Anyone who uses Black/White/Time/Yin-Yang/Summons/elemental guns will need a relatively high faith (85 is probably a good number). Anyone you plan on healing with White Magic will probably want 50-60 Faith. Anyone else will want it as low as possible.
- Always attack from behind if possible, and attack from the side if you can't attack from behind. Your chances to hit go up drastically if you flank your enemy.
- FFT is a game that has been analyzed to death by some very smart people. Every single ability has been documented and investigated. Every single mechanic is known. If you go far enough in depth, you can account for every single factor down to things like the exact HP you'll need to survive X number of attacks. If you're interested in learning more, check out http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/3876. However, the RNG can still screw you over.
- Lastly, people have completed this game under some pretty insane circumstances, like teams of Calculators with no Math Skill. I myself have beaten it using only Ramza in the Monk class with no abilities from other classes. Regardless of how hopeless your situation is, there is probably a way out of it.
Tactics is has its fair share of difficulty spikes, most of which you'll just have to grind in order to complete. Normal battles on the world map shouldn't be too hard (with the occasional exception), but I can't stress enough how much you should save to a new file if you're going to end up fighting multiple story battles in one area. I had to restart my entire game because I saved on my first file before fighting a certain boss, and I don't believe you can escape from storyline fights (if you can, well, then I feel really silly).
So if immediately after a storyline battle the game asks you if you want to save your game, save to a new file. It will save you a LOT of grief in the long run.
EDIT: Poster above stole my bit of advice; just my luck, haha.
So if immediately after a storyline battle the game asks you if you want to save your game, save to a new file. It will save you a LOT of grief in the long run.
EDIT: Poster above stole my bit of advice; just my luck, haha.
Sometime around that Wiegraf fight, the game starts getting much easier, solely because of your access to certain classes. The Ninjas Dual Wield is hax, Dragoons are ridiculous, and your magic will be brutal by this point. And if you've been leveling up a Monk for a while, well... you'll see.
At that point the game really opens up because you suddenly have a ton of options for class combinations. The pitched battles before this point are so difficult that its hard to experiment, but you have enough room for error later in the game that you can mix up classes without hurting yourself.
For my current playthrough I'm actually taking precautions to only use classes I think are fun rather than strategically optimal, because it makes the game pretty easy. I have a ninja right now, but I mainly use him for stealing (though I can't help what happens when someone activates First Strike), and I had a Dragoon for a bit to get Polearms and ignore elevation.
At that point the game really opens up because you suddenly have a ton of options for class combinations. The pitched battles before this point are so difficult that its hard to experiment, but you have enough room for error later in the game that you can mix up classes without hurting yourself.
For my current playthrough I'm actually taking precautions to only use classes I think are fun rather than strategically optimal, because it makes the game pretty easy. I have a ninja right now, but I mainly use him for stealing (though I can't help what happens when someone activates First Strike), and I had a Dragoon for a bit to get Polearms and ignore elevation.
This is my favourite game ever.
I never played through any game as often and thouroughly as FFTWOTL.
I absolutely LOVE this game.
So much so, that I made an entire party of maxed out Dark Knights.
And one of Dancer-Ninjas
And one of Bard-Mages.
And one of Ninja-Arithmeticians.
And I just realized I spent too much time on this game
I never played through any game as often and thouroughly as FFTWOTL.
I absolutely LOVE this game.
So much so, that I made an entire party of maxed out Dark Knights.
And one of Dancer-Ninjas
And one of Bard-Mages.
And one of Ninja-Arithmeticians.
And I just realized I spent too much time on this game
My act 1 tips?
Make someone a monk, STAT. The game has squat for heavy armor early on, so if you want a knight he's going to be slow and not all that much tougher than your squires. The monk is really the first combat focused class you get that will make it worth the time. Their unarmed damage is primo early on, and their class skills are useful. (Wave fist is a great alternative to throw stone for example, and chakra can heal in a pinch). What's more, monks are fast. They can cover a lot of ground quickly, always useful if you need to get someone on target quickly.
Play it safe. The game doesn't throw many black mages and what not at you until the Dorter Slums mission, therefore don't worry about being bunched up. Let the enemies come to you. That way when they get in close you can pounce and rip those pesky enemy chemists and chocobos to shreds. Also if you're bunched up your white mage's heals can help more than one party member easily. Later in the game identify enemy casters and archers and make sure they die very very quickly.
Have goals in mind. Know what kind of party you want! Assign people with high Brave scores to melee classes, people with high faith to caster classes. My usual method is to get a white mage several different flavors of cure spells, and then the White spell (my favorite way of handling everyone's favorite Act 2 turn coat) and then train him or her up as a summoner. Summoner spells take a while, but they have large areas (the entire map at the high end) and never risk friendly fire. You can take some of the bite out of the summoner charge time with the short charge ability from the time mage class. My first time play WoL I wanted a dark knight in the worst way... the god awful requirements be damned. I even made two other black mage characters specifically to have them learn expensive black mage spells and cast them on my designated Dark Knight wannabe so she could have a chance of learning those spells without paying the JP cost. Ramza usually ends up doing a tour of all the lightly armored classes when I play. He'll eventually put in a lot of time as a rogue because some of the game's best gear can only be ruthlessly stolen. Time in the Ninja class for the two swords ability (and sometimes the crazy speed bonus skill). You want spike damage? Dual wielding two knight swords is tough to beat in that regard.
Make someone a monk, STAT. The game has squat for heavy armor early on, so if you want a knight he's going to be slow and not all that much tougher than your squires. The monk is really the first combat focused class you get that will make it worth the time. Their unarmed damage is primo early on, and their class skills are useful. (Wave fist is a great alternative to throw stone for example, and chakra can heal in a pinch). What's more, monks are fast. They can cover a lot of ground quickly, always useful if you need to get someone on target quickly.
Play it safe. The game doesn't throw many black mages and what not at you until the Dorter Slums mission, therefore don't worry about being bunched up. Let the enemies come to you. That way when they get in close you can pounce and rip those pesky enemy chemists and chocobos to shreds. Also if you're bunched up your white mage's heals can help more than one party member easily. Later in the game identify enemy casters and archers and make sure they die very very quickly.
Have goals in mind. Know what kind of party you want! Assign people with high Brave scores to melee classes, people with high faith to caster classes. My usual method is to get a white mage several different flavors of cure spells, and then the White spell (my favorite way of handling everyone's favorite Act 2 turn coat) and then train him or her up as a summoner. Summoner spells take a while, but they have large areas (the entire map at the high end) and never risk friendly fire. You can take some of the bite out of the summoner charge time with the short charge ability from the time mage class. My first time play WoL I wanted a dark knight in the worst way... the god awful requirements be damned. I even made two other black mage characters specifically to have them learn expensive black mage spells and cast them on my designated Dark Knight wannabe so she could have a chance of learning those spells without paying the JP cost. Ramza usually ends up doing a tour of all the lightly armored classes when I play. He'll eventually put in a lot of time as a rogue because some of the game's best gear can only be ruthlessly stolen. Time in the Ninja class for the two swords ability (and sometimes the crazy speed bonus skill). You want spike damage? Dual wielding two knight swords is tough to beat in that regard.
It starts off fairly difficult due to lack of classes and equipment but as you go on and get used to the game and have more customisation available to you it gets a fair bit easier, especially with certain storyline characters who join your group who pretty much overshadow your generic units by a long way (Orlandeu and Balthier to name two).
The only difficulty I had later in the game was random encounters because you can't see what you're going to be fighting beforehand and the amount of times I sent out a lower level'd group to get them some Exp and JP group against a bunch of dragons was frustrating.
The only difficulty I had later in the game was random encounters because you can't see what you're going to be fighting beforehand and the amount of times I sent out a lower level'd group to get them some Exp and JP group against a bunch of dragons was frustrating.
Sit down sonny and let me tell you a story. Back in the 90's we had this thing called challenge; games would employ this "challenge" in order to test your skills, give games replay value and get you invested in a system rather than holding your hand while you look at the pretty cinematics. Not only that but we had to walk to school everyday in blizzard conditions.....uphill.......both ways!
Runner-up snarky comment: What is with airline food?
Runner-up snarky comment: What is with airline food?
I was around in the 90s. Those games still had an upwards sloping difficulty curb. This game seems to have a difficulty curb set unusually high, and then goes DOWN as you progress for some weird reason.Chris Beck said:
