Today I caught speedruns for a couple of games that seemed like they'd be very interesting to plan out. Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy Tactics are two gameplay heavy games using the Final Fantasy job system to change what each character can do on the fly. I found the runs really interesting and it had me waxing nostalgic for my time in University. That's a little weird since a lot of my current lifestyle is very similar to my lifestyle back then... The big difference is that I now live alone and play video games by myself instead of living in a little house with a half dozen other gamers. If speed running had been a thing back in 2000, or if I'd known about it back then, I can imagine sitting down and spending stupid amounts of time with James, Josh, Byung, Tom, and a whole slew of other people who would drop into Comfy Prime while working out how to puzzle out each of the boss fights in FFV properly. I miss watching people play video games and talking about them. But people had to go and move away, and have kids, and be responsible.
Anyway, Final Fantasy V seemed particularly interesting because each of the boss fights in the game can be 'trivialized' with the right combination of job abilities on the different characters. Things like having one person wear a shield, have cover, and use defense while the other people sit at low health and can't be damaged. A bunch of the later fights were won by the interesting combination of casting level 2 old on the enemy (old slowly decreases the enemy level, level 2 old only works on an enemy with a level divisible by 2), waiting a set amount of time, and then casting level 5 death. Any even leveled boss can be killed like this if you have the timing down to hit the level 5 death when their level falls the right amount!
But it's not just a matter of figuring out the right combination of abilities... You need to earn enough job points across different characters to have access to the right abilities at the right time. I really liked how the guy I was watching had two copies of an accessory that granted auto haste and he switched what character got to wear the shoes based on which job abilities were crucial for a given fight. The thief would wear them for random encounters so they could flee faster! He also made use of the mix command to get powerful buffs for some fights, and the catch command to save up one shot attacks, and consumable rods that could be used to do high level spells without needing to actually level up black mage.
Final Fantasy Tactics was a little less interesting to watch, probably because I tuned in halfway through and the guy was at the point of winning every fight with his first action. But planning out the route to know how to win each fight right away would have been a very interesting thing to do back in the day. Things like how on some fights the only way to kill all the enemies on your first turn was to also kill yourself (you'd be using the math command and the only thing they had in common was something you'd have in common like level or height) and the solution was to bring along a second person who would live. Ramza commits suicide and random jobber stands around to collect the loot!
The guy running FFT had a counter built into his timing program to track how many times he had to reset by getting a random encounter (which you can't pre-math out and which are wastes of time even if you could one shot everything) and a second counter tracking how many times his math plan didn't one shot a fight (enemies can spawn with random health totals, random magic resist values, and a random zodiac sign which all modify how much damage they take). That's a level of detail and tracking I can get behind!
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy Tactics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy Tactics. Show all posts
Friday, February 14, 2014
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Final Fantasy Tactics: Conclusions
I finally got back into playing Tactics on the bus after giving up on the Cloud quest chain. It turns out I was only about 10 story battles from the end of the game when I diverted myself to work on Cloud which I'm pretty sure was a big mistake. The 15ish levels I gained from random encounters coupled with getting all of the math skills pretty much trivialized the end of the game. Frequently I would win a fight before the enemy even got a turn. The final boss had a couple of different stages and his final super-powerful stage didn't even get to resolve an action. Ramza got 3 actions each of which was to attack with dual-wielded Ragnarok+Excalibur for about 800 damage per round. Add in a couple mathed up holys and it was all over rather quickly.
The combat in Final Fantasy Tactics was awesome. The combat in Final Fantasy Mathed Holy was really boring. Part of the strategic interplay in the early fights was working around the different attack ranges of people and trying not to get engaged on first. With the math skill you can kill anyone from across the map in one fast action. And by fast I mean no cast delay, not in terms of time spent in the fight. It took a non-trivial amount of time to pick the right math skill (I'd one shot my own guys if I chose anything that targeted any ally) and the holy spell animation wasn't exactly fast even with the PSP hack I was running. Often random encounters near the end of a Final Fantasy game get trivial but then you just hold down the attack button and win. Here it still took time and thinking but with no real rewarding payoff.
I love job systems, and this one is definitely better than FFV or FFIII. Character power levels kept fluctuating up and down as I'd switch to new jobs and get worse immediately but with the promise of getting better in the future. You learn new jobs not at predetermined plot points but as you level up other jobs which meant different characters would be in different spots on the power curve which was nice. It also meant you couldn't just switch everyone to a single job that trivialized a fight without putting in an awful lot of job point farming.
The plot was certainly different from a core Final Fantasy game, but was still interesting. There ended up being an ultimate evil dude trying to rise to power but it was buried beneath layer after layer of political subterfuge. We're talking fake princesses, patricide, manipulated wars, and backstab after backstab. For the most part you only get to find stuff out when the main character finds out, and he's a bit of a wandering doofus so he's pretty in the dark for most of the game. I guess Delita ends up actually being the remembered hero but for good chunks of the game he seemed to be either dead or evil. (And in a scene after the credits he's actually victim of a murder-suicide by his wife, the queen!)
The ending was nice and vague like all the PlayStation era games. The ending implies that Ramza and Alma survived the final battle where the gates of hell exploded around them, in an area with no escape. But other than one brief glimpse by Orran they're never seen by anyone ever again? And the rest of my party, which featured a lot of important people, also never turned up? I feel like they're probably all dead and Orran was hallucinating when he saw them wander by. And then when Orran tries to tell the truth and gets burned at the stake by the church because it might paint them in a bad light? So good. The game had a very anti-nobility/anti-church/anti-power theme running through it and it was nice to see it pay off in the end with even more murder for the sake of power.
Side quests were a big let down. Going on the Cloud quest and doing some of the errands made me frustrated with the game. The game seemed to time out pretty well in terms of hitting peak power right at the end of the plot assuming you didn't try to power up at any point along the way. But doing the side quests meant extra powering up which skewed the difficulty of the story missions, didn't actually accomplish anything of use, and weren't challenging in any way. I actually feel like the game would have been better without the errands in the taverns. Alternatively, remove random encounters from the world map entirely. You still want a place to go to level up for people who need it, so leave a couple spaces off in the wilderness to grind random dudes, but making me fight stupid fights over and over just because I want to go from Goug to Gariland was a really bad idea.
The music was pretty good, but unspectacular relative to the core games. Nobuo Uematsu wasn't involved, which may have something to do with it. Or everything to do with it. The music did feel like it fit the mood of a lot of the game, it's just missing that extra something to push it over the top.
The played time on my saved game was over 33 hours which is the most of any game thus far in the marathon. And that number is really deflated considering just how many times I died and had to reload on some of the earlier fights. And for the most part I was having a lot of fun while playing. Especially while dying! I think intentionally keeping my level down at the start was a good idea. I lost track of that plan in the middle when I started going crazy with shouting myself which eventually lead to being too powerful when I did those extra random encounters. I think the game makes a great puzzle game where you need to figure out how to possibly beat some of the fights. Like the fight very early on where black mages first show up! Or male thieves! I want to play again with a more strict rule set in terms of what I can do to make it really hard. I read one thing about beating the game at level 1, where pretty much you have to use a secondary character to spill off monk JP to your main party and then they run the counter strike ability to kill everything without gaining experience for it!
Now the big question... Where should it fall in my ranking? This is a tough one, and one I wasn't expecting to find tough at all. It's a spin off game, how can it compete? Well, it turns out I really, really like tactical combat. The level system and combat in this game were the best of any played thus far by a mile. Sure, powering up made it too easy but that's true of all the other games too. Maybe not FFVII because it actually had stupidly challenging side bosses to kill, but the main storyline of FFVII gets really trivial if you power up at all. So while this is a strike fresh in my mind for FFT it's not one that's actually any different from other games. The character development and epic plot are weak points, though. As is the fact I had to hack my PSP to play the game without massive amounts of graphical lag. So while FFT wins in some categories that feel like they should be the important ones I think the overall picture drags it down enough to keep it below the major contenders thus far. I think it beats the last game with a job system, and therefore slots in at #4 thus far.
Next up, whatever Ehrgeiz is. I need to go out after work to the vintage video game store and see about buying a copy of it.
The combat in Final Fantasy Tactics was awesome. The combat in Final Fantasy Mathed Holy was really boring. Part of the strategic interplay in the early fights was working around the different attack ranges of people and trying not to get engaged on first. With the math skill you can kill anyone from across the map in one fast action. And by fast I mean no cast delay, not in terms of time spent in the fight. It took a non-trivial amount of time to pick the right math skill (I'd one shot my own guys if I chose anything that targeted any ally) and the holy spell animation wasn't exactly fast even with the PSP hack I was running. Often random encounters near the end of a Final Fantasy game get trivial but then you just hold down the attack button and win. Here it still took time and thinking but with no real rewarding payoff.
I love job systems, and this one is definitely better than FFV or FFIII. Character power levels kept fluctuating up and down as I'd switch to new jobs and get worse immediately but with the promise of getting better in the future. You learn new jobs not at predetermined plot points but as you level up other jobs which meant different characters would be in different spots on the power curve which was nice. It also meant you couldn't just switch everyone to a single job that trivialized a fight without putting in an awful lot of job point farming.
The plot was certainly different from a core Final Fantasy game, but was still interesting. There ended up being an ultimate evil dude trying to rise to power but it was buried beneath layer after layer of political subterfuge. We're talking fake princesses, patricide, manipulated wars, and backstab after backstab. For the most part you only get to find stuff out when the main character finds out, and he's a bit of a wandering doofus so he's pretty in the dark for most of the game. I guess Delita ends up actually being the remembered hero but for good chunks of the game he seemed to be either dead or evil. (And in a scene after the credits he's actually victim of a murder-suicide by his wife, the queen!)
The ending was nice and vague like all the PlayStation era games. The ending implies that Ramza and Alma survived the final battle where the gates of hell exploded around them, in an area with no escape. But other than one brief glimpse by Orran they're never seen by anyone ever again? And the rest of my party, which featured a lot of important people, also never turned up? I feel like they're probably all dead and Orran was hallucinating when he saw them wander by. And then when Orran tries to tell the truth and gets burned at the stake by the church because it might paint them in a bad light? So good. The game had a very anti-nobility/anti-church/anti-power theme running through it and it was nice to see it pay off in the end with even more murder for the sake of power.
Side quests were a big let down. Going on the Cloud quest and doing some of the errands made me frustrated with the game. The game seemed to time out pretty well in terms of hitting peak power right at the end of the plot assuming you didn't try to power up at any point along the way. But doing the side quests meant extra powering up which skewed the difficulty of the story missions, didn't actually accomplish anything of use, and weren't challenging in any way. I actually feel like the game would have been better without the errands in the taverns. Alternatively, remove random encounters from the world map entirely. You still want a place to go to level up for people who need it, so leave a couple spaces off in the wilderness to grind random dudes, but making me fight stupid fights over and over just because I want to go from Goug to Gariland was a really bad idea.
The music was pretty good, but unspectacular relative to the core games. Nobuo Uematsu wasn't involved, which may have something to do with it. Or everything to do with it. The music did feel like it fit the mood of a lot of the game, it's just missing that extra something to push it over the top.
The played time on my saved game was over 33 hours which is the most of any game thus far in the marathon. And that number is really deflated considering just how many times I died and had to reload on some of the earlier fights. And for the most part I was having a lot of fun while playing. Especially while dying! I think intentionally keeping my level down at the start was a good idea. I lost track of that plan in the middle when I started going crazy with shouting myself which eventually lead to being too powerful when I did those extra random encounters. I think the game makes a great puzzle game where you need to figure out how to possibly beat some of the fights. Like the fight very early on where black mages first show up! Or male thieves! I want to play again with a more strict rule set in terms of what I can do to make it really hard. I read one thing about beating the game at level 1, where pretty much you have to use a secondary character to spill off monk JP to your main party and then they run the counter strike ability to kill everything without gaining experience for it!
Now the big question... Where should it fall in my ranking? This is a tough one, and one I wasn't expecting to find tough at all. It's a spin off game, how can it compete? Well, it turns out I really, really like tactical combat. The level system and combat in this game were the best of any played thus far by a mile. Sure, powering up made it too easy but that's true of all the other games too. Maybe not FFVII because it actually had stupidly challenging side bosses to kill, but the main storyline of FFVII gets really trivial if you power up at all. So while this is a strike fresh in my mind for FFT it's not one that's actually any different from other games. The character development and epic plot are weak points, though. As is the fact I had to hack my PSP to play the game without massive amounts of graphical lag. So while FFT wins in some categories that feel like they should be the important ones I think the overall picture drags it down enough to keep it below the major contenders thus far. I think it beats the last game with a job system, and therefore slots in at #4 thus far.
Next up, whatever Ehrgeiz is. I need to go out after work to the vintage video game store and see about buying a copy of it.
Thursday, February 07, 2013
Final Fantasy Tactics: Bored of Cloud
The original version of Final Fantasy Tactics had an easter egg cameo character added in from Final Fantasy VII: Cloud Strife. I hadn't found him in previous playthroughs and wanted to see what he was all about this time around. I tried just wandering around for a bit trying to find him, failed, and looked up how to do it on the internet. It turned out to be not very complicated but it involves going to a specific set of towns on opposite sides of the map in order. I set out to do so, but it turns out when you wander all over the world you get into a lot of trivial random encounters. And unfortunately trivial in FFT doesn't mean over in a couple attacks. It means I can't lose but the fight is going to still take 15 minutes.
For a while that was fine, because I was still leveling my dudes up. But now both of my casters have learned all of the math skills. My dragoon has the best jump skills. My monk unlocked ninja and now has nowhere else to go. Pretty much all I have left that's interesting in the job system is to stumble into whatever it takes to be a dark knight and a dancer/bard. And even then that's not going to make me any better, it's just going to be a little bit of completionism.
Speaking of completionism while wandering all over the world I've been doing some of the errands in the inns. I'm nowhere near done them all, and they really don't accomplish anything. And they have the same random encounter problem.
It's gotten to the point where I'm almost done the Cloud quest chain, but I'm bored of the game. I've even stopped playing on the bus while I've been reading some illuminating books instead. I'm beginning to think that I should just abandon Cloud and get back to the plot missions. At least those ones tended to be challenging. But I have gained a lot of power since I was doing those with all this wandering around so maybe that won't even be true anymore. Regardless, I do want to see the rest of the plot. And I really want to play FFVIII. Oh, and whatever that Ehrgeiz thing is, I'm sure I want to play that too. Honest.
For a while that was fine, because I was still leveling my dudes up. But now both of my casters have learned all of the math skills. My dragoon has the best jump skills. My monk unlocked ninja and now has nowhere else to go. Pretty much all I have left that's interesting in the job system is to stumble into whatever it takes to be a dark knight and a dancer/bard. And even then that's not going to make me any better, it's just going to be a little bit of completionism.
Speaking of completionism while wandering all over the world I've been doing some of the errands in the inns. I'm nowhere near done them all, and they really don't accomplish anything. And they have the same random encounter problem.
It's gotten to the point where I'm almost done the Cloud quest chain, but I'm bored of the game. I've even stopped playing on the bus while I've been reading some illuminating books instead. I'm beginning to think that I should just abandon Cloud and get back to the plot missions. At least those ones tended to be challenging. But I have gained a lot of power since I was doing those with all this wandering around so maybe that won't even be true anymore. Regardless, I do want to see the rest of the plot. And I really want to play FFVIII. Oh, and whatever that Ehrgeiz thing is, I'm sure I want to play that too. Honest.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Final Fantasy Tactics: Shout
Two weeks ago I looked a bit at Ramza's tailwind skill which can be used to increases someone's speed by one. Using it gave up short term power for long term power but in a way that wasn't terribly action efficient. In a long fight, or if you had nothing better to do, then it was certainly good. But if you could actually go and chop someone in a relevant manner that was probably going to be a better plan. I did make one error in that post (your turn counter is not actually truncated at 100, so extra speed which results in ending up at, say 105 will leave you at 25 after taking a non-move action instead of at 20) which removed the need to hit specific breakpoints but is otherwise a fairly minor deal. Tailwind was good as a first action when the enemies are still far away, and is a great way to power level, but in terms of just winning fights it wasn't stupidly good or anything.
It turns out when you get to chapter IV in the game Ramza learns a new ability which trivializes tailwind. This ability (shout) can only be used on Ramza himself and gives +10 brave, +1 physical attack, and +1 magical attack on top of giving +1 speed. Now I can make future actions come faster and be more powerful. Does this change things in any way? Well, I've also been rotating Ramza through different jobs to see what I can unlock (I could just look it up but I mostly play on the bus and figure it'll be easy enough to unlock them all this way regardless) and I happened to have him as a black mage during a random encounter in a river. The enemies all spawned far away and slowly made their way up the river. Rather than run up to meet them I just stood around shouting at myself while my other characters cast buffs on each other for experience. After 4 or 5 shouts an enemy finally got into range, and I killed him in one shot with a black magic spell. Not just killed him, massively overkilled him. Kaboom! The next fight I was playing as a chemist, shouted 4 or 5 times, and then was able to autoattack with my gun for about 12% of the enemy's max health. Huh.
Do black magic spells scale in a stupid way with extra magic attack? Are guns just really bad? Would a dragoon scale up to one-shot land faster than a chemist? Is it worth just shouting up at the start of every fight in order to become an awesome killing machine? One thing to note is that the extra speed actually didn't help my black mage very much at all. I'd start charging a spell and then get 2 more turns before it would resolve. Taking an action during one of those turns would have cancelled the charging spell. So maybe the solution there would be to learn the really fast spells and scale up my magic attack more? Or find the ability which removes charge time on spells!
The formula for spell damage is MA*Q*{faith modifiers}. The faith modifiers are basically a reduction in damage based on both your faith and the enemy faith. Multiply the two together and divide by 10000. Since faith goes from 0 to 100 this can't be an increase and will almost certainly be a decrease. Especially for non-Ramza characters since if they get a faith of 95 or higher they quit your party and run off to join a monastery or something. Q is a constant depending on the spell you're casting. It ranges from 14 to 32 for the basic series of damage spells. Comparing Q to the charge time makes it seem like the high level spells are actually worse damage per time than the lowest level spell. Fire 4 does hit a bigger area, but that's dangerous given how long it takes to charge anyway. So if I'm boosting up my speed it seems like going back a tier or two makes sense. Assuming I use tier 2, Q will be 18. Assume I have 90 faith and my target has 50 faith and every point of magic attack will add 8 damage to my attack. So I don't really see how I was scaling so absurdly... Maybe the enemies in that fight just had really high faith, or were the right zodiac sign? I do think I was using an ice staff which multiplies my MA by 1.25 when casting ice spells, and I was casting ice 4 with the 32 Q. So I guess each MA was adding 18. It doesn't take too many 18's before you start exploding enemies with 200 health! Especially if the spell starts doing 144 on its own. Or if they have high faith.
Looking at guns the formula for damage done is WP*WP where WP is the listed weapon power of the weapon. So neither the physical attack stat or the magical attack stat are used here. No wonder it didn't seem to scale very well with shout!
Spears, on the other hand, do damage of WP*PA, so every point of PA will do an extra WP damage. My current spear has 11 WP, so this will scale better than black magic spells do at high speed values where the 4th tier won't resolve before you get another turn. Jumping does an extra 50% damage with a spear, and charges based on your speed instead of a flat value, so a dragoon seems pretty absurd with shout.
Punching, it turns out, is even more absurd. It does damage of PA*PA*{brave modifier}. Brave modifier in this case being 1 because shout maxes brave. So going bare handed will quickly scale into stupidity. For the most part it would require you to be in melee range which is worse than the dragoon but it turns out if you jump without a weapon you do PA*PA damage anyway. You do lose the 50% bonus for using a spear, though. Oh, and all the monk abilities do PA*PA damage too... And the monk heal scales off of PA. So being a shouted monk just seems really good. (It's no surprise this may be the best path to beating chapter 3 Wiegraf... There you have to use different abilities to get +1 speed or +1PA or +5brave but you can totally do it.)
But is it worth doing all this or should I just shout once to start the fight like I used to do with tailwind? Well, assuming you never move you'll be spending 80 speed every action you take. Assuming a base speed of 8 (it does go up as you level) and a base PA of 12 (just a guess) then a monk with X applications of shout will do how much damage per clock tick?
(12+X)*(12+X)/(80/(8+X))=(12+X)*(12+X)*(8+X)/80=(1152+336X+32X^2+X^3)/80
In order to use shout X times you need to spend 80*X speed worth, but the number of ticks that'll take is complicated because your speed changes as you progress and does work in discrete chunks. So I just did a spreadsheet to work out the damage done in Y total ticks given X shouts. I used increments of 10 ticks (the time to take one action with no shout stacks) and looked to see what value of X maximized the damage done for that value of Y.
Of course, some of these values are just silly. 25 stacks of shout means you're punching for 1369 damage per go. I'm pretty sure damage in this game is actually capped at 999, even! And even if it wasn't, most enemies seem to have max health in the 200-400 range. 8 stacks alone is enough to one shot someone with 400 health. And really there's not much difference, if any, between an attack that hits for 50% of the enemy health bar and one that hits for 98%. Either way it takes two hits to kill them. Getting from killing them in 2 hits to killing them in one hit is a big help though, and if I only had one character killing the enemies it probably makes sense to shout them up to that point. I do get to bring 5 people into each fight so in a sense it seems like I shouldn't only have one killer but in practice it often feels that way. Ramza is high level thanks to the Wiegraf fight but the rest of my team is pretty weak. This means the enemies tend to be able to kill my other guys in 1 or 2 hits themselves. My plan for the most part involves three people standing around casting raise spells on each other, Ramza being awesome, and a dragoon/thief who just kinda stands around and sometimes jumps for a third of an enemy's health bar. And I'm not sure what else to do at this point. I could make Ramza into a dedicated rezzer and just whittle the enemies down with someone else but that'll probably take way more time than just shouting 8 times and then killing off the enemies!
It turns out when you get to chapter IV in the game Ramza learns a new ability which trivializes tailwind. This ability (shout) can only be used on Ramza himself and gives +10 brave, +1 physical attack, and +1 magical attack on top of giving +1 speed. Now I can make future actions come faster and be more powerful. Does this change things in any way? Well, I've also been rotating Ramza through different jobs to see what I can unlock (I could just look it up but I mostly play on the bus and figure it'll be easy enough to unlock them all this way regardless) and I happened to have him as a black mage during a random encounter in a river. The enemies all spawned far away and slowly made their way up the river. Rather than run up to meet them I just stood around shouting at myself while my other characters cast buffs on each other for experience. After 4 or 5 shouts an enemy finally got into range, and I killed him in one shot with a black magic spell. Not just killed him, massively overkilled him. Kaboom! The next fight I was playing as a chemist, shouted 4 or 5 times, and then was able to autoattack with my gun for about 12% of the enemy's max health. Huh.
Do black magic spells scale in a stupid way with extra magic attack? Are guns just really bad? Would a dragoon scale up to one-shot land faster than a chemist? Is it worth just shouting up at the start of every fight in order to become an awesome killing machine? One thing to note is that the extra speed actually didn't help my black mage very much at all. I'd start charging a spell and then get 2 more turns before it would resolve. Taking an action during one of those turns would have cancelled the charging spell. So maybe the solution there would be to learn the really fast spells and scale up my magic attack more? Or find the ability which removes charge time on spells!
The formula for spell damage is MA*Q*{faith modifiers}. The faith modifiers are basically a reduction in damage based on both your faith and the enemy faith. Multiply the two together and divide by 10000. Since faith goes from 0 to 100 this can't be an increase and will almost certainly be a decrease. Especially for non-Ramza characters since if they get a faith of 95 or higher they quit your party and run off to join a monastery or something. Q is a constant depending on the spell you're casting. It ranges from 14 to 32 for the basic series of damage spells. Comparing Q to the charge time makes it seem like the high level spells are actually worse damage per time than the lowest level spell. Fire 4 does hit a bigger area, but that's dangerous given how long it takes to charge anyway. So if I'm boosting up my speed it seems like going back a tier or two makes sense. Assuming I use tier 2, Q will be 18. Assume I have 90 faith and my target has 50 faith and every point of magic attack will add 8 damage to my attack. So I don't really see how I was scaling so absurdly... Maybe the enemies in that fight just had really high faith, or were the right zodiac sign? I do think I was using an ice staff which multiplies my MA by 1.25 when casting ice spells, and I was casting ice 4 with the 32 Q. So I guess each MA was adding 18. It doesn't take too many 18's before you start exploding enemies with 200 health! Especially if the spell starts doing 144 on its own. Or if they have high faith.
Looking at guns the formula for damage done is WP*WP where WP is the listed weapon power of the weapon. So neither the physical attack stat or the magical attack stat are used here. No wonder it didn't seem to scale very well with shout!
Spears, on the other hand, do damage of WP*PA, so every point of PA will do an extra WP damage. My current spear has 11 WP, so this will scale better than black magic spells do at high speed values where the 4th tier won't resolve before you get another turn. Jumping does an extra 50% damage with a spear, and charges based on your speed instead of a flat value, so a dragoon seems pretty absurd with shout.
Punching, it turns out, is even more absurd. It does damage of PA*PA*{brave modifier}. Brave modifier in this case being 1 because shout maxes brave. So going bare handed will quickly scale into stupidity. For the most part it would require you to be in melee range which is worse than the dragoon but it turns out if you jump without a weapon you do PA*PA damage anyway. You do lose the 50% bonus for using a spear, though. Oh, and all the monk abilities do PA*PA damage too... And the monk heal scales off of PA. So being a shouted monk just seems really good. (It's no surprise this may be the best path to beating chapter 3 Wiegraf... There you have to use different abilities to get +1 speed or +1PA or +5brave but you can totally do it.)
But is it worth doing all this or should I just shout once to start the fight like I used to do with tailwind? Well, assuming you never move you'll be spending 80 speed every action you take. Assuming a base speed of 8 (it does go up as you level) and a base PA of 12 (just a guess) then a monk with X applications of shout will do how much damage per clock tick?
(12+X)*(12+X)/(80/(8+X))=(12+X)*(12+X)*(8+X)/80=(1152+336X+32X^2+X^3)/80
In order to use shout X times you need to spend 80*X speed worth, but the number of ticks that'll take is complicated because your speed changes as you progress and does work in discrete chunks. So I just did a spreadsheet to work out the damage done in Y total ticks given X shouts. I used increments of 10 ticks (the time to take one action with no shout stacks) and looked to see what value of X maximized the damage done for that value of Y.
| Number of Ticks | Optimal Number of Shouts |
|---|---|
| 10, 20, 30 | 0 |
| 40 | 1 |
| 50 | 2 |
| 60 | 4 |
| 70 | 6 |
| 80 | 7 |
| 90 | 9 |
| 100 | 12 |
| 110 | 15 |
| 120 | 18 |
| 130 | 22 |
| 140 | 24 |
| 150+ | 25 (or more) |
Of course, some of these values are just silly. 25 stacks of shout means you're punching for 1369 damage per go. I'm pretty sure damage in this game is actually capped at 999, even! And even if it wasn't, most enemies seem to have max health in the 200-400 range. 8 stacks alone is enough to one shot someone with 400 health. And really there's not much difference, if any, between an attack that hits for 50% of the enemy health bar and one that hits for 98%. Either way it takes two hits to kill them. Getting from killing them in 2 hits to killing them in one hit is a big help though, and if I only had one character killing the enemies it probably makes sense to shout them up to that point. I do get to bring 5 people into each fight so in a sense it seems like I shouldn't only have one killer but in practice it often feels that way. Ramza is high level thanks to the Wiegraf fight but the rest of my team is pretty weak. This means the enemies tend to be able to kill my other guys in 1 or 2 hits themselves. My plan for the most part involves three people standing around casting raise spells on each other, Ramza being awesome, and a dragoon/thief who just kinda stands around and sometimes jumps for a third of an enemy's health bar. And I'm not sure what else to do at this point. I could make Ramza into a dedicated rezzer and just whittle the enemies down with someone else but that'll probably take way more time than just shouting 8 times and then killing off the enemies!
Friday, January 11, 2013
Final Fantasy Tactics: Treasure Hunter
Final Fantasy Tactics has 4 different types of abilities you can learn from each job. You have active actions you use in battle, passive reaction abilities, generic passive abilties, and passive movement abilities. Each character can equip two jobs worth of active abilities (their current job and one other one) and one of the other three types of abilities. Most of the movement abilities are pretty straightforward but there's one that I've always found frustrating. Known in the original game as move-find item it was rebranded for the PSP release as treasure hunter. The basic idea behind it is when you move around on the map you have a chance of finding hidden items. Are these items worth searching for? I'm not really sure, so I'm hoping the internet will tell me.
First off, how does it work? It turns out you don't really have a chance to find items when you move around. Instead some squares on each map have been tagged as containing items and if you move specifically onto those squares you get an item. Each square has two different options (one rare, one common) and the chance of getting the rare one is higher if you have a low brave stat. Apparently this is the only reason in the game to want a low brave stat so right out of the gate trying to make treasure hunter good is going to make you worse at actual combat. (You won't have a real movement ability and you'll do less physical damage and your reaction abilities will proc less often.) Once you get either item from a square you're done and can't get the other one. So if you want a specific item, you'll need to reload if you get the wrong one.
I hate moving in general (it delays your next action), I hate walking to every square in the hopes it's an item square, and I don't have access to item maps while playing on the bus. So, treasure hunter seems like the sort of thing I should pretend doesn't exist and move on with my life. But the idea of leaving stuff behind makes me sad, especially if it isn't replaceable stuff. So I figure it's probably a reasonable idea to go searching for info on what can be found to see if I really want any of it or not.
Looking through the info in the only PSP FAQ on gamefaqs makes it clear that for the vast majority of maps the common item is a consumable you can buy in the store and the rare item is a piece of gear you can buy in the store. So rather than worry about picking those up I can just go buy them. And if I needed more money I think I'd run around using steal gil or running errands instead of picking up store bought gear in fights. It does, however, list some exceptions:
Invisibility cloak, healing staff, blood sword, materia blade, javelin II, escutcheon II, sasuke's blade, nagnarok, 15 elixirs, and loot in the challenge dungeon that I don't think I ever did. None of this stuff happens until late in chapter IV. I only just started chapter III so it's still nothing I really need to worry about. But is it something I ever want to worry about?
Invisibility cloak is the only one in the game, but you can get it by repeating fights on the map and while it is unique it doesn't seem like anything I'd miss if I didn't get it.
Healing staff can be obtained in other ways and lets you attack your friends for health. They'll still dodge/counter attack though. And as I discovered when trying to cure doom with an auto-attack today, the first strike counter-attack actually prevents the initial attack from going through when procced. So I don't know that I'd even use one of these. Nevermind that you get one for free before you can treasure hunter it. I really doubt I want two of them!
Blood sword can apparently be poached, whatever that is, and could have been stolen earlier if I'd cared. It isn't very strong so I can't see why I need to search this thing up either.
Materia blade is apparently used if you recruit Cloud to unlock his abilities. Sounds good, but you can steal it while recruiting him apparently. And you only need the one.
The next four items are all found on the same map. This seems like a good place for treasure hunter, assuming I remember, but they aren't unique. The map is Nelveska Temple somewhere in chapter IV.
Elixirs I really don't care about.
Challenge dungeon stuff I'll look into if I feel like doing it near the end of the game.
So, the bottom line is I can pretty safely ignore the treasure hunter ability. If I remember I'll try to give it to someone with low bravery before I do Nelveska Temple but even then I won't be too sad if I forget.
First off, how does it work? It turns out you don't really have a chance to find items when you move around. Instead some squares on each map have been tagged as containing items and if you move specifically onto those squares you get an item. Each square has two different options (one rare, one common) and the chance of getting the rare one is higher if you have a low brave stat. Apparently this is the only reason in the game to want a low brave stat so right out of the gate trying to make treasure hunter good is going to make you worse at actual combat. (You won't have a real movement ability and you'll do less physical damage and your reaction abilities will proc less often.) Once you get either item from a square you're done and can't get the other one. So if you want a specific item, you'll need to reload if you get the wrong one.
I hate moving in general (it delays your next action), I hate walking to every square in the hopes it's an item square, and I don't have access to item maps while playing on the bus. So, treasure hunter seems like the sort of thing I should pretend doesn't exist and move on with my life. But the idea of leaving stuff behind makes me sad, especially if it isn't replaceable stuff. So I figure it's probably a reasonable idea to go searching for info on what can be found to see if I really want any of it or not.
Looking through the info in the only PSP FAQ on gamefaqs makes it clear that for the vast majority of maps the common item is a consumable you can buy in the store and the rare item is a piece of gear you can buy in the store. So rather than worry about picking those up I can just go buy them. And if I needed more money I think I'd run around using steal gil or running errands instead of picking up store bought gear in fights. It does, however, list some exceptions:
Invisibility cloak, healing staff, blood sword, materia blade, javelin II, escutcheon II, sasuke's blade, nagnarok, 15 elixirs, and loot in the challenge dungeon that I don't think I ever did. None of this stuff happens until late in chapter IV. I only just started chapter III so it's still nothing I really need to worry about. But is it something I ever want to worry about?
Invisibility cloak is the only one in the game, but you can get it by repeating fights on the map and while it is unique it doesn't seem like anything I'd miss if I didn't get it.
Healing staff can be obtained in other ways and lets you attack your friends for health. They'll still dodge/counter attack though. And as I discovered when trying to cure doom with an auto-attack today, the first strike counter-attack actually prevents the initial attack from going through when procced. So I don't know that I'd even use one of these. Nevermind that you get one for free before you can treasure hunter it. I really doubt I want two of them!
Blood sword can apparently be poached, whatever that is, and could have been stolen earlier if I'd cared. It isn't very strong so I can't see why I need to search this thing up either.
Materia blade is apparently used if you recruit Cloud to unlock his abilities. Sounds good, but you can steal it while recruiting him apparently. And you only need the one.
The next four items are all found on the same map. This seems like a good place for treasure hunter, assuming I remember, but they aren't unique. The map is Nelveska Temple somewhere in chapter IV.
Elixirs I really don't care about.
Challenge dungeon stuff I'll look into if I feel like doing it near the end of the game.
So, the bottom line is I can pretty safely ignore the treasure hunter ability. If I remember I'll try to give it to someone with low bravery before I do Nelveska Temple but even then I won't be too sad if I forget.
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Final Fantasy Tactics: Tailwind
Speed is an RPG stat that is rarely balanced. Frequently it's practically worthless (it determines who goes first in a round of combat but you get equal numbers of turns overall) or it's stupidly powerful (it determines how often you get to act and therefore is a power multiplier). In Final Fantasy Tactics it definitely falls into the stupidly powerful camp. For the most part speed is powerful but fixed. Your characters (at least at this point in the game) have 6 speed and that is that. I just found an item in the store which adds 1 to speed so some of my people have 7 speed. Ramza can also learn an ability, tailwind, which lets him increase someone's speed by one for the rest of the fight. This is pretty great and I open fights with it when I can't reach enemies to punch, but I've been thinking... Maybe I should open with it regardless? How long does it take to recover the time spent using the ability?
First, it's important to understand how turns work in FFT. Everyone has a counter that goes from 0 to 100. if someone's counter is at or above 100 they get a turn. If no one is at 100 then everyone adds their speed value to their counter and you check again to see if anyone is at or above 100. When you take a turn your counter gets reset based on the action taken. If you pass completely your counter goes to 40. If you move or take an action but not both your counter goes to 20. If you move and act your counter goes to 0. Note that you don't get to keep any extra above 100 so if your counter was at 99 and you gain 6 it'll go to 105 and then get reset to 0 when you take a full turn. So there is rounding involved which can impact how good specific amounts of speed might be. Also, generally speaking, one of the big flaws in the AI is it likes to move and act even when it doesn't need to. It should skip moving a lot of the time to get reset to 20 instead of to 0 but it doesn't because it's bad. *sigh*
At any rate, pretend I can walk up and punch the enemy right now or I can stand still and use tailwind. What are the ongoing game states, assuming I started with 6 speed? With my counter at 0 it'll take 17 ticks to get another turn. With my counter at 20 and 7 speed it'll take 12 ticks to get another turn. Then assuming I have to move to punch going forward I'm looking at 15 ticks with 7 speed so I gain 2 more ticks every action. So after 6 full rounds of combat I've caught up to status quo and start profiting after that point. That doesn't actually seem terribly good, but one thing to keep in mind when moving faster is sometimes you get to take 2 turns in a row. Not only is this great for tempo it also means you don't need to take the move action on that round, gaining an extra 3 ticks right there.
If you happen to have good ranged attacks and never plan on moving then you're looking at 14 ticks to get a turn with 6 speed and 12 ticks to get a turn with 7 speed. That's still a gain of 2 ticks per action.
What if I don't want to move on my first turn? Compare taking no action at all to using tailwind. With no action at all I get to go again after 10 ticks. With just tailwind I get to go again after 12 ticks, plus I'm saving 2 ticks per turn. This is obviously awesome. Ramza should never skip his action phase. If he has nothing better to do he should tailwind himself (or someone else I guess) instead of waiting.
How about even higher amounts of speed? Here's the tick gain from each additional point of speed based on a full turn or a half turn:
First, it's important to understand how turns work in FFT. Everyone has a counter that goes from 0 to 100. if someone's counter is at or above 100 they get a turn. If no one is at 100 then everyone adds their speed value to their counter and you check again to see if anyone is at or above 100. When you take a turn your counter gets reset based on the action taken. If you pass completely your counter goes to 40. If you move or take an action but not both your counter goes to 20. If you move and act your counter goes to 0. Note that you don't get to keep any extra above 100 so if your counter was at 99 and you gain 6 it'll go to 105 and then get reset to 0 when you take a full turn. So there is rounding involved which can impact how good specific amounts of speed might be. Also, generally speaking, one of the big flaws in the AI is it likes to move and act even when it doesn't need to. It should skip moving a lot of the time to get reset to 20 instead of to 0 but it doesn't because it's bad. *sigh*
At any rate, pretend I can walk up and punch the enemy right now or I can stand still and use tailwind. What are the ongoing game states, assuming I started with 6 speed? With my counter at 0 it'll take 17 ticks to get another turn. With my counter at 20 and 7 speed it'll take 12 ticks to get another turn. Then assuming I have to move to punch going forward I'm looking at 15 ticks with 7 speed so I gain 2 more ticks every action. So after 6 full rounds of combat I've caught up to status quo and start profiting after that point. That doesn't actually seem terribly good, but one thing to keep in mind when moving faster is sometimes you get to take 2 turns in a row. Not only is this great for tempo it also means you don't need to take the move action on that round, gaining an extra 3 ticks right there.
If you happen to have good ranged attacks and never plan on moving then you're looking at 14 ticks to get a turn with 6 speed and 12 ticks to get a turn with 7 speed. That's still a gain of 2 ticks per action.
What if I don't want to move on my first turn? Compare taking no action at all to using tailwind. With no action at all I get to go again after 10 ticks. With just tailwind I get to go again after 12 ticks, plus I'm saving 2 ticks per turn. This is obviously awesome. Ramza should never skip his action phase. If he has nothing better to do he should tailwind himself (or someone else I guess) instead of waiting.
How about even higher amounts of speed? Here's the tick gain from each additional point of speed based on a full turn or a half turn:
| New Speed | Full Turn | Half Turn |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | 2 | 2 |
| 8 | 2 | 2 |
| 9 | 1 | 1 |
| 10 | 2 | 1 |
| 11 | 0 | 0 |
| 12 | 1 | 1 |
| 13 | 1 | 0 |
| 14 | 0 | 1 |
Note that because the base number of ticks per action is dropping the time it takes for an investment to pay off does drop as well. If you're taking full turns it's pretty big to go from 9 to 10 speed. Instead of taking 12 ticks per action you drop down to 10 ticks per action and it only takes 5 turns to make up that gap. If you don't move on that one turn it only takes 8 ticks to get the action back and therefore it only costs 4 turns to make up the gap.
In the long run this is certainly awesome, but do we actually have a long run? I feel like the answer for most fights is going to be no. Giving up a useful action in order to tailwind is going to be wrong during most fights. Use it when you have nothing better to do (and if you're trying to power level you can absolutely just stand around spamming tailwind for tons of xp/jp) but don't give up a good attack to use it.
Getting speed from other sources is silly good though. I'd skipped getting the speed hat for my mages because I wanted to keep an extra spell power and some more max mana but I now think that's wrong. I should go buy more hats when I get to a store that sells them. And when I eventually find a store selling the accessory that adds speed you better believe my whole team is getting a set of those. Acting more frequently than your opponent is awesome, especially when you're smart and don't move unless you have to and they move all the time because they can.
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Final Fantasy Tactics: Errands
Throughout the course of Final Fantasy Tactics you'll end up recruiting a lot of different characters to your team. You start with 6 extra dudes, more join from different plot points, and you can recruit extras for cash if you want. For the most part you get to use 3 or 4 of them in a fight which means you have a lot of people on your team just sitting around. Like poor Kimahri, they need experience but you can't get them into your fights. What are you supposed to do with a small army of people who can never get into fights?
Well, first off if you're in the habit of letting people die then you need some replacements on the bench. I am not in that habit. I make sure that most of my team has access to some sort of resurrection spell/ability/item in order to keep that from happening and I'm more than willing to reload if someone dies. So, I don't need extra for that.
Next, theoretically you could want different characters specialized in different roles and sub different ones in depending on the fight. But since you can only level the ones you're using at any given time and since the game uses a job system you can just change your current team into a new team if you really need to bring a different formation into a battle. So, no actual need for extra here, either.
The actual use for them unlocked for me today when I hit chapter 2. You can send extra guys off on errands in each town. The exact details are unclear but it seems you pick an errand, pay some cash, send some guys off for a predetermined amount of time, and wait. You can't use them for anything else while they're gone and they might bring back some sort of reward when they return. I know this system was used again in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 and I seem to recall it let you know who might be good at a given errand. This time there seems to be no indication of potential rewards or chances of success. This makes me sad, so I decided to turn to the internet for answers.
The first thing I discovered put my mind at ease. While you can fail these errands there is no permanent consequences for doing so. You still get a small reward for trying and the errand respawns again in a month. Some errands are only available in a given month but if you wait an entire year you can try again. (Game years, where every movement on the map takes a day, not real years.) So even if I screw things up and send the wrong people off it just costs me money, not access to rewards.
Determining success is actually pretty easy, though only if you have a guide on hand. Basically the job, level, and bravery/faith levels of the people you send help determine if you succeed or not. Rewards are always JP and gold, and may also give some random tokens with story background information. So skipping these seems like a fine thing to do, but since I have extra guys just lying around I might as well send them off for more gold. You can send 1-3 people but it seems strictly superior to send 3 since the contributions of each character add together. I only sent 2 on my first one so I bet it fails. Oh well!
I've been really appreciating the new translation on the PSP so maybe I'll try to get all the wonders and artifacts from these errands so I can read more background plot. It can't hurt to try, anyway, since I wasn't going to use these dudes for anything else!
Well, first off if you're in the habit of letting people die then you need some replacements on the bench. I am not in that habit. I make sure that most of my team has access to some sort of resurrection spell/ability/item in order to keep that from happening and I'm more than willing to reload if someone dies. So, I don't need extra for that.
Next, theoretically you could want different characters specialized in different roles and sub different ones in depending on the fight. But since you can only level the ones you're using at any given time and since the game uses a job system you can just change your current team into a new team if you really need to bring a different formation into a battle. So, no actual need for extra here, either.
The actual use for them unlocked for me today when I hit chapter 2. You can send extra guys off on errands in each town. The exact details are unclear but it seems you pick an errand, pay some cash, send some guys off for a predetermined amount of time, and wait. You can't use them for anything else while they're gone and they might bring back some sort of reward when they return. I know this system was used again in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 and I seem to recall it let you know who might be good at a given errand. This time there seems to be no indication of potential rewards or chances of success. This makes me sad, so I decided to turn to the internet for answers.
The first thing I discovered put my mind at ease. While you can fail these errands there is no permanent consequences for doing so. You still get a small reward for trying and the errand respawns again in a month. Some errands are only available in a given month but if you wait an entire year you can try again. (Game years, where every movement on the map takes a day, not real years.) So even if I screw things up and send the wrong people off it just costs me money, not access to rewards.
Determining success is actually pretty easy, though only if you have a guide on hand. Basically the job, level, and bravery/faith levels of the people you send help determine if you succeed or not. Rewards are always JP and gold, and may also give some random tokens with story background information. So skipping these seems like a fine thing to do, but since I have extra guys just lying around I might as well send them off for more gold. You can send 1-3 people but it seems strictly superior to send 3 since the contributions of each character add together. I only sent 2 on my first one so I bet it fails. Oh well!
I've been really appreciating the new translation on the PSP so maybe I'll try to get all the wonders and artifacts from these errands so I can read more background plot. It can't hurt to try, anyway, since I wasn't going to use these dudes for anything else!
Friday, January 04, 2013
Final Fantasy Tactics: Save Early, Save Often
Final Fantasy Tactics differs from other games in the Final Fantasy series in that it isn't a traditional turn based RPG. Instead it's played on a grid with relevant positioning. It is still turn based in the sense that every unit has a timer and takes actions when that timer fills up, and it's still Final Fantasy in the sense that you're choosing between fight actions or Final Fantasyesque spells and abilities. It uses an evolved job system continuing on from FFIII and FFV and does a pretty darn good job of it. It also tends to put you into actual even fights a lot of the time. 6 guys on 6 guys with comparable abilities. Where it takes two hits on either side to take a guy out. And where death is permanent if you don't raise them fast enough...
This means every fight matters in the game, even random encounters. In a normal Final Fantasy game most fights are irrelevant. They give you some experience and gold and drain some of your mana or potion supply. Bosses can be deadly but no one (except a solo thief) loses to a couple imps. In FFT the first fights are not jokes at all. I started up and lost a character in the first fight. I didn't save the game and immediately lost the next fight. I chose to defend stupid Argus and he went and charged deep into enemy lines and got taken out. Game Over. Start over from the beginning, idiot person who didn't save.
I like games that are hard. I like that all the fights matter more than in a normal game. I don't like how long it takes to reload a game, or how often I need to save. I feel like the game would be better if it used a 'try again' feature like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest did, but because it doesn't you need to save all the time. All the time. And even more often than that!
In other news, it turns out someone did put together a hack to fix the PSP animation slowdown issue. I had to find and install a custom firmware thing in order to run the hack, but it seemed to work just fine. And the fact that it was so easy for this guy to hack it just makes me more bitter at Square for having the issue in the first place. Boo!
This means every fight matters in the game, even random encounters. In a normal Final Fantasy game most fights are irrelevant. They give you some experience and gold and drain some of your mana or potion supply. Bosses can be deadly but no one (except a solo thief) loses to a couple imps. In FFT the first fights are not jokes at all. I started up and lost a character in the first fight. I didn't save the game and immediately lost the next fight. I chose to defend stupid Argus and he went and charged deep into enemy lines and got taken out. Game Over. Start over from the beginning, idiot person who didn't save.
I like games that are hard. I like that all the fights matter more than in a normal game. I don't like how long it takes to reload a game, or how often I need to save. I feel like the game would be better if it used a 'try again' feature like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest did, but because it doesn't you need to save all the time. All the time. And even more often than that!
In other news, it turns out someone did put together a hack to fix the PSP animation slowdown issue. I had to find and install a custom firmware thing in order to run the hack, but it seemed to work just fine. And the fact that it was so easy for this guy to hack it just makes me more bitter at Square for having the issue in the first place. Boo!
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Final Fantasy Tactics: Version Choice
Last summer when I went off to get a PSP in order to play Final Fantasy V on the bus Mark commented and suggested I keep my eye open for a Final Fantasy Tactics remake on the PSP. Not long after I found a copy for $10 and it's been sitting on my floor/shelf for 6 months waiting for this day to come. It's a little odd that I've had a PSP for almost 7 months but have never put in a PSP disk since everything I've played thus far has been a PSOne game downloaded off the network. I probably should have gone looking for version differences before I started playing but I figured I'd give it a go and look things up later. I played a bit, was quickly reminded of the golden rule for playing a tactics game (see if you can figure out what it is before I post about it later), and decided to look the differences up on the internet. One thing I had noticed right away is the game seemed to be lagging a lot when spells were being cast. Was this a problem with my PSP or is the game just bugged?
It would seem the PSP version is a pretty faithful remake. They added a few things in to make it a little different (2 new jobs, 2 new story characters from FFXII and FFTA2, 3 new quests) but kept pretty much everything relevant the same. The plot is the same. Combat is the same. The way you level is the same. It definitely feels like the same game and therefore it's quite reasonable to play it in this slot of the marathon and not look to play the game twice.
On the plus side they completely redid the translation. This is a very good thing since the original translation was pretty terrible. I don't remember even caring about the plot at all when I played the original version because I didn't understand it. I just went places, killed things, and leveled up. And that was great, don't get me wrong, but I'm looking forward to understanding a bit more about why I'm doing the things I'm doing.
It would also seem the original version was pretty heavily nerfed compared to the Japanese version. Square still thought at the time that the US gamer was a moron I guess. All those nerfs have been removed which sounds like it should make the game a fair bit harder. Your story characters have their stats lowered. Some bosses have their stats raised. It takes more JP to learn abilities. It takes more JP to level jobs. The job tree has harsher prerequisites. This all seems fine. They also nerfed one fight, and I bet anyone who's played the game can figure out what fight that is. The first time I played I actually had to restart from the beginning because I simply couldn't beat that fight as I was set up and there was no way to level up from where I'd last saved.
They added in some more cutscenes and added in voice acting to some of the old ones. This is the sort of chrome I like so this is pointing towards wanting to play the new version.
There's really only one downside, but it's a pretty big one. That lag I noticed isn't a problem with my system; it's a problem with the game. Apparently the Japanese version had really bad spell lag and they somewhat fixed it for the US release. This boggles my mind. Clearly that means they were aware it was an issue, couldn't actually fix it, and launched anyway. I hate this sort of thing. I'd rather have no spell animations than have jarring delays when they go off. Maybe it's worse because I played the original and now how fast these things should be? But even then the sound isn't delayed, just the graphics. I fought some enemies on the bus today which charged up a lightning attack and then zapped you. The zapping sound went off while the energy was still swirling around the skeleton and then the animation finished with no sound at all. It's really immersion breaking. Even worse is multi-target spells. I cured two people at once and had to watch the slowed down animation twice in sequence.
I want the new translation and I already bought the PSP version and not the PSN one so I guess I'm going to suck it up and give it a shot. Maybe there's a fix or hack or something that turns the animations off so I don't go crazy. Or maybe I'll get used to it. I found the tinny sounds in FFVI annoying at the start but got used to them eventually, right? (But maybe that helped FFVII pass it!)
I also wasn't sure if I wanted to do something crazy or not. A single character or single job challenge, that sort of thing. I don't think I want to put up with grinding out with the lag though, so I'm just going to go straight and narrow. I don't even think I'm going to stand around beating myself up for xp unless I reach a point where I feel I need to do so to progress.
It would seem the PSP version is a pretty faithful remake. They added a few things in to make it a little different (2 new jobs, 2 new story characters from FFXII and FFTA2, 3 new quests) but kept pretty much everything relevant the same. The plot is the same. Combat is the same. The way you level is the same. It definitely feels like the same game and therefore it's quite reasonable to play it in this slot of the marathon and not look to play the game twice.
On the plus side they completely redid the translation. This is a very good thing since the original translation was pretty terrible. I don't remember even caring about the plot at all when I played the original version because I didn't understand it. I just went places, killed things, and leveled up. And that was great, don't get me wrong, but I'm looking forward to understanding a bit more about why I'm doing the things I'm doing.
It would also seem the original version was pretty heavily nerfed compared to the Japanese version. Square still thought at the time that the US gamer was a moron I guess. All those nerfs have been removed which sounds like it should make the game a fair bit harder. Your story characters have their stats lowered. Some bosses have their stats raised. It takes more JP to learn abilities. It takes more JP to level jobs. The job tree has harsher prerequisites. This all seems fine. They also nerfed one fight, and I bet anyone who's played the game can figure out what fight that is. The first time I played I actually had to restart from the beginning because I simply couldn't beat that fight as I was set up and there was no way to level up from where I'd last saved.
They added in some more cutscenes and added in voice acting to some of the old ones. This is the sort of chrome I like so this is pointing towards wanting to play the new version.
There's really only one downside, but it's a pretty big one. That lag I noticed isn't a problem with my system; it's a problem with the game. Apparently the Japanese version had really bad spell lag and they somewhat fixed it for the US release. This boggles my mind. Clearly that means they were aware it was an issue, couldn't actually fix it, and launched anyway. I hate this sort of thing. I'd rather have no spell animations than have jarring delays when they go off. Maybe it's worse because I played the original and now how fast these things should be? But even then the sound isn't delayed, just the graphics. I fought some enemies on the bus today which charged up a lightning attack and then zapped you. The zapping sound went off while the energy was still swirling around the skeleton and then the animation finished with no sound at all. It's really immersion breaking. Even worse is multi-target spells. I cured two people at once and had to watch the slowed down animation twice in sequence.
I want the new translation and I already bought the PSP version and not the PSN one so I guess I'm going to suck it up and give it a shot. Maybe there's a fix or hack or something that turns the animations off so I don't go crazy. Or maybe I'll get used to it. I found the tinny sounds in FFVI annoying at the start but got used to them eventually, right? (But maybe that helped FFVII pass it!)
I also wasn't sure if I wanted to do something crazy or not. A single character or single job challenge, that sort of thing. I don't think I want to put up with grinding out with the lag though, so I'm just going to go straight and narrow. I don't even think I'm going to stand around beating myself up for xp unless I reach a point where I feel I need to do so to progress.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)