[DS] Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

Is it more difficult?
Will I spend ten years in the fucking menu arranging my jobs and skills and gear in this game like in FFTA?

If you play on Hard, it's likely to be more difficult. On Normal, however, I notice that enemies right now really only do mediocre damage to my units.

As for your second question, it's very likely. I never got terribly far in the original Tactics Advance, but A2 uses nearly the same system but with more... stuff added to it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Hard mode is not that challenging, but has its moments.

~1.5x stats, but the usage of any Clan Privileges will pretty much negate the disadvantage you have, especially if you use any of the Power Up privileges.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by LeHah

I think the jury is out on if FFT was really hard or I'm just a crappy gamer. However, I think everyone can agree that both fights with Wiegraf were stupid, stupid, stupid fucking hard for no real reason. The first one at the windmill was just hard because of the way the level is set-up but the second one is just raining piss and bullshit. (You have to fight him one on one, which always results in Ramza getting his ass-kicked no matter how good you are - and then it goes straight into a second boss match with Wiegraf / Zodiac Monster and two demons.)

For the first battle, Weapon Break pretty much stops Wiegraf dead in his tracks. Weapon Break and Armor Break pretty much stops anyone who wields a sword or has any type of Sword Skill in the game.

For the second battle, Razma can just run around using Yell so his speed is crazy. Then Accumulate for 20 rounds and kill him in one hit. Chameleon Robe absorbs his lighting attacks and heals you.

FFT was easy once you figured out what attacks/skills the bosses had.

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So basically it's just a baby story stroll through the park. Blah. I'll play it in a couple of years, and just try and unlock extreme difficulty on TWEWY.

That was amusing, Lehah, but I was looking for a comparison to FFTA.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by LeHah

I think the jury is out on if FFT was really hard or I'm just a crappy gamer. However, I think everyone can agree that both fights with Wiegraf were stupid, stupid, stupid fucking hard for no real reason. The first one at the windmill was just hard because of the way the level is set-up but the second one is just raining piss and bullshit. (You have to fight him one on one, which always results in Ramza getting his ass-kicked no matter how good you are - and then it goes straight into a second boss match with Wiegraf / Zodiac Monster and two demons.)

No. FFT was hard unless you knew what you were doing from the get-go. Those Wiegraf fights were hard as hell to beat (IIRC I beat the 1v1 map by using a mage to continually buff Ramza....on my 5th try). FFTA was really never much of a challenge.

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

So basically it's just a baby story stroll through the park. Blah. I'll play it in a couple of years, and just try and unlock extreme difficulty on TWEWY.

Ugh, just ugh. Good luck on that Zephyrin. I am finding that short of going through everything on easy, the last few days of the last week are hard as hell >.>

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by xiaowei

For the first battle, Weapon Break pretty much stops Wiegraf dead in his tracks. Weapon Break and Armor Break pretty much stops anyone who wields a sword or has any type of Sword Skill in the game.

For the second battle, Razma can just run around using Yell so his speed is crazy. Then Accumulate for 20 rounds and kill him in one hit. Chameleon Robe absorbs his lighting attacks and heals you.

FFT was easy once you figured out what attacks/skills the bosses had.

Technically, anybody having Maintenance wouldn't fall for such a tactic. But I will agree that much of the difficulty of FFT came from knowing what was coming. If you weren't prepared, you were going to get fucked. On the flipside, bringing in Orlandu would end all battles quite quickly.

FFTA wasn't that good when I played it. I only played it with an emulator, so I had access to frameskip. But I'm not sure I would have stuck through it without Frameskip. Even with frameskip, it was just really slow. The laws in the first game also pissed me off, because some of those were ridiculous.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

So basically it's just a baby story stroll through the park. Blah. I'll play it in a couple of years, and just try and unlock extreme difficulty on TWEWY.

You need another pair of eyes and arms to do that. I can beat hard and some battles were pretty close.

FFTA2 does have a hard mode, but it's just 1.5 to your enemy's stats.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Well, I think TWEWY will be more fun when I REPLAY it. Upon initial play, I made the mistake of thinking the game was SKILL based, when in fact, it was just a grind like any other RPG.

That and I didn't have a grasp on what pins worked well and what didn't for me. But now I'm in post-game and everything's cake. We'll see.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Oh. One major problem with this game? No map rotation. Bitch, please.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by xiaowei

Weapon Break and Armor Break pretty much stops anyone who wields a sword or has any type of Sword Skill in the game.

That option is only really viable toward the second half of the game, since Weapon / Armor / Speed / Whatever Break has such a low hit percentile, its usually not worth trying most of the time.

Originally Posted by xiaowei

For the second battle, Razma can just run around using Yell so his speed is crazy.

What are you, some kind of sissy queer?

Seriously though - all those "building up" skills are super-duper cheap. By the end of FFT, you can have Ramza as a Knight, equipt heavy-ass armor, then equipt Squre skills with Throw Stone and Yell and Foot Up Ass skills and the double-sword skill, so you can carry two giant-ass swords, doing 300+ HP a shot.

I purposely try not to "skill stack" my characters into a battle; the lower the challenge the less interesting the game is. The only exception in FFT is really the matches where the entire fucking map is Chocobos. Get out of here with that shit. Yellow ones cast cure on the red ones (who cast flare and fire and dick-fuckery) you're trying to kill to make a hole in their offense.

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

That was amusing, Lehah, but I was looking for a comparison to FFTA.

I didn't finish FFTA so keep that in mind as I write this.

The difference between FFT and FFTA is easily described as the same difference between the movies Flesh + Blood and The Neverending Story Part 2. Anyone whos seen both these movies can see what I'm talking about.

One is a hardcore, epic slaughter involving a death of empire and kings, as women manipulate fiefdoms and knights fight for the dying and dead impulses of chivalry. It involves nostalgia and ethics and fighting for the love of the wrong woman. Slaves turn to masters as religion turns to conspiracy.

The other one involves some dork getting caught in a crappy fantasy cliche. I'm biased against FFTA and thats because it doesn't attempt to be like FFT. I suppose thats a good thing - it would be a more spectacular failure if they tried to make it too close to the original.

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Originally Posted by Magus-Cie

No. FFT was hard unless you knew what you were doing from the get-go.

I don't think you should ever assume, when assessing the difficulty of a game, that the person playing it has decided what they are doing throughout the entire game before playing it.

As for FFTA2, I have to say I'm impressed. I never made it far into FFTA the first, and the biggest reason why was the godawful menus. In FFTA they crammed what they could onto the screen, but it was a multi-screen process just to make sure all of your characters had what they needed. They very smartly made use o the top screen in the unit menus this time around, making it a lot easier to see at a glance all of the abilities and things that everyone is learning.

The bazaar feature is also nice, but there was a reason it worked in FF12: You never HAD to use it. The random luck involved with picking up the right reagants for the new weapons means that I still haven't gotten any new rods for my casters, and that's annoying.

Overall, though, I must say I'm quite impressed with how it turned out. The story isn't anything to write home about, but the game still has a great level of polish and an EXTREME amount of depth. At least, looking at it about 2 inches into the game, it looks like it's deep.

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by Gechmir

little Tommy looking for his Cripple Friend in an imaginary world or some shit, I go "wtf".

Correction: The story was about Marche and about how he was a TOTAL DICK and couldn't let anyone have any fun.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Mo0

Additional Spam:
Correction: The story was about Marche and about how he was a TOTAL DICK and couldn't let anyone have any fun.

"hay can i get on the jungle gym--"
"NO F U FAG:

How ya doing, buddy?

I welcome more games where we play as the Villain. Too few of those are around nowadays.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Started the game last night and played a little bit (two missions done, I think), and so far my feeling is... hmm. I didn't really get very far in FFTA (maybe 1/6 done) though I plan to finish it at some point. The biggest complaint I had from that game was the menus, and while A2 has the advantage of two screens and tries to incorporate them both, I feel as though it's still kind of weird. I like that the law is displayed prominently, but I wonder if they couldn't have occupied the space filled by the huge scrolling move order better.

Fitting rooms and character status in general seems a bit weird to me, so I suppose it just takes some getting used to. Ah well.

How ya doing, buddy?

No, I'm with you on the Fitting Room; they really needed to bring back Tactics' Optimize option for it. The only advantage I see to not having Optimize is that it forces you to look through the shop's selection, which ensures that you don't miss any equipment that might offer you new skills for your current job.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Generic Badass

No, I'm with you on the Fitting Room; they really needed to bring back Tactics' Optimize option for it. The only advantage I see to not having Optimize is that it forces you to look through the shop's selection, which ensures that you don't miss any equipment that might offer you new skills for your current job.

You know what TA needs to bring back from FFT? The mature, well plotted out story. The interesting game play. The feeling of depth. Optimize sort of pales in comparison to that.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Honestly, I don't mind it if a game doesn't take itself too seriously. Some of my favorite moments in Tactics were when the party took a break from Lucavi and did things like, say, activate Worker 8.

As for depth and gameplay, I really don't think you can argue that A2 is lacking in that regard. The second you bust open the menu or take a look at the Bazaar, you see the game is anything but shallow.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Generic Badass

Honestly, I don't mind it if a game doesn't take itself too seriously. Some of my favorite moments in Tactics were when the party took a break from Lucavi and did things like, say, activate Worker 8.

As for depth and gameplay, I really don't think you can argue that A2 is lacking in that regard. The second you bust open the menu or take a look at the Bazaar, you see the game is anything but shallow.

Depth of story, not gameplay.

And you and I just disagree on what we want in a game. I think the best part of FFT was keeping track of the secondary characters and the world around them. The rise and fall of nations and the literary quality they imbued into the storytelling. It was epic and wonderful.

You like robots and slapstick comedy, and that's fine. But there was no reason to turn FFT from what it was into, as LeHah called it, a fantasy cliche.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

The original FFT was early enough RPG wise that it set the fantasy cliche. FFTA, and from the sounds of it FFTA2 both are severely lacking in that department.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Depth of story, not gameplay.

And you and I just disagree on what we want in a game. I think the best part of FFT was keeping track of the secondary characters and the world around them. The rise and fall of nations and the literary quality they imbued into the storytelling. It was epic and wonderful.

You like robots and slapstick comedy, and that's fine. But there was no reason to turn FFT from what it was into, as LeHah called it, a fantasy cliche.

Well, you can see it that way, though I don't really want to debate the storyline of the original Tactics in the A2 thread. But what I like is to sometimes be able to get some good fighting in while not listening to baddies monologuing or watch as the game tries to steadily build tension during the course of a battle.

I happen to like that Luso is a bit of an assholish kid. Ramza's timidness is only tolerable for so long.

So, yeah, that's kind of why I like Robots and slapstick comedy over "Nobody wants you as king!!".

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Originally Posted by Magus-Cie

The original FFT was early enough RPG wise that it set the fantasy cliche. FFTA, and from the sounds of it FFTA2 both are severely lacking in that department.

What?

FFT was a nice self-contained story, well written and solidly executed.

FFTA starts out with a book that transports a little boy to a fantasy world. It's the Neverending Story. It's lighthearted and that's great. But that's not FFT.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Yeah, that's not Final Fantasy Tactics. It's Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

Do you have anything to contribute to A2 discussion, or is this going to continue to diverge towards why Tactics is so awesome?

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Generic Badass

Yeah, that's not Final Fantasy Tactics. It's Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

Do you have anything to contribute to A2 discussion, or is this going to continue to diverge towards why Tactics is so awesome?

Actually, how it started was me criticizing A2 for following in A1's footsteps, and how it feels cheap, and sort of see-through. Which it does. The Final Fantasy Tactics series has dissolved into a mechanics based grindfest, which is unfortunate, given its pedigree. It's like Madden 09 of the Final Fantasy series. Sure, they updated the stats and added a few new players, but its essentially the same game as the year before. And that's tragic. They could have done something interesting with Ivalice, but they seem quite content to let it languish in mediocrity. Sorry not everyone agrees with your taste in games.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Quit trying to goad me with these little one-liners at the end; it's annoying. You know perfectly well that I'm being reasonable here.

I talk about how they should have reimplemented Optimization in the fitting room and you follow up with a tirade about how they could put so many other things from Tactics in. Well, Final Fantasy Tactics is super and all, but I'm talking about the fitting room. In Final Fantasy Tactics A2. And you're not.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The original Tactics is a grindfest, actually. Most people just actually cared to do it because of supplementary surrounding world... Neverending Story Advance just doesn't exactly get my grinding boner to rise. By and large, Tactics has flaws, but I think the Judgment System just becomes the gaming level deal breaker for Advance. A2 might surprise given where it's actually taking place, I think the haste of judgment is more in the surface similarities aesthetically to Advance 1 than anything else...

That Judgment shit sounds gay as hell still, though.

There's nowhere I can't reach.