I saw a couple other people talk about trying to play through Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time in another thread and turns out that I’m in that same boat myself, so got the itch to try and play it today.
I’m playing the War of the Lions version on my Vita, which seems fine aside from the social anxiety involved with playing it while standing up on the subway. What do I have to prove at this point though.
So, the first time that I tried to play the game, I didn’t work out how to add additional characters so got slaughtered in the first battle against the street toughs. Today, I managed to add three squires and two chemists to Ramza and did fairly well in the battle, although there were some issues:
Rotating/zooming is awful rough, especially with the little canal area in that first map. Really hard to tell what you’re doing at times.
Sometimes the AI-controlled characters chuck rocks at people. I have no idea how to do that myself, which would have come in useful in a couple spots.
I wound up losing one of my squires because of a couple missed attacks and the street toughs deciding to gang up on him before I could pull him back. How much does this matter?
I also pretty much have no idea what to do other than basic attacks. Ramza looks to have some sort of special ability, which might be a heal? Hard to tell though.
Dead opponents dropped stuff. Do I need to run over and collect it before the end of battle? Does it matter who I collect it with?
Anyway, other people should play this! We’ll have a big ol’ dorky time together.
i’m really visually interested in the original game so i want to hold off until felix’s patch drops, but i’m so excited to play this and will definitely be posting about it i also want to do tactics ogre LUCT (and maybe bahamut lagoon?) at some point afterwards…
Super duper recommend Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together on the PSP. It’s definitely the best way Tactical RPGs have been done on portable, to this point. Story is really good too.
The main thing is that you can rewind up to 20 turns by clicking a trigger button and selecting what point in the past things went wrong. Holy god is that an improvement.
Would that I had the time to get back onto Final Fantasy Tactics!
To answer your questions as best as I can…
Throwinig rocks is a specific skill that you have to learn for your characters. You can learn new skills outside of battle.
I wouldn’t worry about losing one squire; you’ll be getting plenty of new characters throughout the game, and you’re given more characters than you can deploy all at once so you can take the hit.
To see what skills do, you should be able to hit the select button I think? Or maybe the square button, either way there is a button that will provide helpful information on whatever you have selected with the cursor.
If an enemy dies and drops an item, you need to collect it before the battle ends. Once you have it, you can reassign that item to whoever you want after the battle.
well I mean taking aside that the PSP version of Tactics Ogre and WOTL (not just its script) are so unbelievably bad as to substantially diminish the original work and the idea of anyone playing them, even out of convenience, fuck you, use an emulator, is so upsetting to me that it’s hard to get past to the point of being able to share tips:
black mages are by far the best spellcasters due to their good stats (magic attack power and speed). speed is incredibly important; the first-level summons (shiva etc.) on a black mage are basically the most potent early game combo you can come up with because they’re decently powerful and you avoid summoners’ low speed, you just won’t have enough MP to do more than two things in a battle with that setup until later in act 2.
conversely, chemists are by far the best healing in most cases; priests are more narrowly useful and less reliable, even factoring in the cost of items.
there’s no defense in the game, only HP, and “heavier” classes’ (e.g. knight)‘s main advantage is just being able to wear more HP-boosting gear. in the early game this can still be useful, but being able to act more often, get into range more easily, and (eventually) wear gear that boosts attack or speed instead is better 80% of the time. FFT favours offence over defence more than almost any other SRPG; you should strive not to get hit as much as possible by e.g. checking the range on enemies’ movement before you decide where to end your turn, but if you’re going to eat hits, worry more about being able to get back on your feet than tanking per se.
as other physical classes go: monks are great but too fragile early on, archers are OK but rarely better than black mages for ranged attacks, thieves are incredibly useful mostly for their speed and the ability to charm (how well you’re doing at any given time is always down to how many more currently-functioning units you have than the enemy), and eventually you’ll want ninjas, so you should feel free to cycle through loads of jobs, as you won’t regret dabbling in any of the early ones.
I’m too busy repeatedly standing up and deliberately sitting on my own balls as a means of flagellation for allowing people to have an inferior experience of SRPGs
personally i am extremely grateful that someone even more anal retentive than me is providing the optimal experience for when i do eventually play it, so thank you felix (for what it’s worth i will definitely emu the original version of tactics ogre as well, don’t worry)
i also want to do tactics ogre LUCT (and maybe bahamut lagoon?) at some point afterwards…
