Some screenshots breaking up walls of text

Day 398

My blog has been lacking severely in the picture department lately--not because I haven't been taking screenshots, but because I've been too lazy or busy to upload them! Here are a few to tide you (me) over.

I've been playing Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals in 30-45 minute sessions during lunch breaks at work, but I think I do like it a lot. It is positively chock full of well-trod RPG tropes, but it does distinguish itself from the pack by featuring a wide variety of different puzzles, some of which are quite challenging. This kind of thing isn't normally my forte, but I do enjoy experiencing something a little different from the norm. It reminds me of Golden Sun in some ways, although Lufia II thankfully does not feature its pages and pages of tedious dialogue.

Of course I also finished up Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions after becoming fed up with how much time I was spending grinding out level after level and unlocking every single class and special item in the game. I should know from experience that his kind of thing will quickly burn me out on a game unless it features ridiculous amounts of content to explore. The War of the Lions does feature a decent amount of content, but much of it I've seen many times before. For that reason, I just ended up rushing it there at the end.

Next on the agenda is Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 2: Innocent Sin, a game of many subtitles. I think it's safe to say I prefer it to its immediate predecessor, but I'll be the first to admit that I miss being always accompanied by a Shoji Meguro soundtrack. The game's opening theme was a composition of his (unless I very much miss my guess) but the remainder of the soundtrack seems to be a remixed variant of the original PlayStation version. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but Shoji Meguro has a flare that really distinguishes him from other video game composers.

Like Shin Megami Tensei: Persona before it, this game allows you to assume control of a five person party of youngsters capable of communing with demons and unleashing their powers on unsuspecting enemy high school students--as well as a whole host of other demons. It is a formula I'm very familiar with by now, having played and finished three of the games in the series, but there's a vocal minority among SMT fans that hail Innocent Sin as the best Persona game. I liked Persona 3 and Persona 4 a lot, so it has some pretty high expectations to live up to. I'll say right away that I don't necessarily dig the demon negotiation system. It is largely unchanged from the first game in the series except for the fact that this game features new characters and therefore new negotiation options.

Very true.

Out with a whimper

Day 397

Well, War of the Lions is finished, but now that I'm done with it I don't have a great deal to say about it. I feel pretty strongly that I ruined my reaction to the game by grinding excessively. My intent was to unlock as much content as possible and I was relatively successful on that front--but because the new content was relatively minor, it felt like quite extensively retreading old footsteps. I still think it's a great game and War of the Lions is undoubtedly the superior version, but I can't say I enjoyed myself a great deal after about halfway through the chapter 4. My lack of enjoyment is definitely my fault, but I wanted to unlock the Dark Knight class and that takes a lot of effort to do.

I think I would have had a lot more tolerance for that level of grinding if all of the enemies in the game continued to scale with me. This already happens for random encounters, but story missions feature enemies with preset levels. By the time I reached the final encounters, my characters were pushing level 60, probably 7-10 levels higher than the enemy's average. I was able to defeat the final boss before she could execute a single action. There was some level of satisfaction gained from being so ridiculously powerful, but I definitely think I overdid it. I wish there had been a way to unlock all of those abilities I had without also leveling up much higher than my foes. I know there are ways to delevel to get around these things, but it seems like a really unnecessary process to have to go through.

I'm glad that it's done now, but I definitely rushed it once I reached the end of the game. I was originally planning to conquer the Midlight's Deep optional dungeon with my super powerful characters but I found that I just didn't have it in me. I didn't even end up unlocking the rest of the Dark Knight's skills--because it was unnecessary and because I was quickly becoming bored with the game. I was not becoming bored with it because it's a bad game, but I was becoming bored with the way I was playing it. I think I'd have infinitely more fun if I had chosen to put some kind of restriction on myself during the game--Straight Character Class Challenges or even maybe a solo run. I wanted to experience all the content the new version of the game had to offer, though, and I guess I'm glad I did. If I ever play the game again, I'll have to do some kind of themed playthrough for it to keep my interest.

Next on the agenda is Persona 2: Innocent Sin. This will be the final PSP game on my backlog, after which I may tackle the PS2 since there are a quite of few games there left to complete, including no less than three Shin Megami Tensei titles. I started Innocent Sin shortly after completing the PSP version of the original Persona title but quickly stalled out due primarily to emulation issues. Those don't seem to be a problem anymore so I should hopefully have no issues completing it. I'd also like to eventually play Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, but that is a game that will have to wait until I've gone through everything else! I should start making a list of all the games I'd like to play to make my backlog even longer. . .

It goes on and on my friends

Day 395

I am attempting to be as ridiculously thorough as possible in this runthrough of Final Fantasy Tactics because it's unlikely I'll play it again for a very long time. I want to unlock all of the abilities I've never seen before and experience any optional content I may not have done in previous playthroughs. Although I have unlocked Cloud once or twice before, I've never bothered to use him--primarily because his skillset requires a gargantuan amount of JP to master and he starts at level 1. To top that all off, he must wield a specific hidden weapon to use a single one of his Limit abilities, none of which are extremely powerful--so far. I can only imagine with significant Magic Attack investment the kind of damage these attacks would dead, but even then they require a pretty significant charging period.

Still, even though I've spent the better part of the last 20-25 hours of game time mindlessly grinding, I find that I'm enjoying myself. Like the Disgaea series, Final Fantasy Tactics boasts a pretty large variety of different skills and setups to unlock. In Disgaea, you have tons of different monsters, weapon abilities, magichange fusions, evilities, and all other kinds of cool stuff. The classes themselves differed very little as far as active abilities went. Final Fantasy Tactics instead has a huge amount of active abilities all of which are unique to specific classes. Every class has at least ten unique abilities as well as a handful of support abilities that can be used regardless of class after they've been learned.

What War of the Lions does lack is any kind of sandbox environment in which to experiment. Disgaea features endless worlds full of randomly generated levels and enemies in addition to the main story missions. Final Fantasy Tactics instead features random encounters on predetermined maps. Granted, there are a number of sidequests available at the tail end of the game, but I would personally much appreciate more ways to explore the rich world of Ivalice. Final Fantasy XII was great about this. Although I have mixed feelings about that game, I felt the worldbuilding and sense of exploration was very fully realized. There aren't a lot of games that really enthrall me when it comes to exploration and especially not when it comes to the Final Fantasy series, but I could definitely count XII among them. Of course, Square Enix decided to go in the exact opposite direction for the next FInal Fantasy but that's a tale for another day.

I can only compare what I'm trying to do here to what I did over a year ago with Baldur's Gate II. I'm revisiting one of my favorite games (although in this case it is a remake/enhanced port) and doing as thorough a run as I reasonably can. For Baldur's Gate II, I completed every single character sidequest and tried to collect all of the items and experience all of the plot the game had to offer. I really enjoyed it! Unfortunately, it did result in me stalling out when trying to play through the Throne of Bhaal expansion--which I regret to say I still haven't finished. In this case, I'm so near the end of War of the Lions (and my party is so strong) that it seems very unlikely I won't finish it. I'd like to complete the rest of the optional content as well--and I have no real reason to suspect I won't.

Of course, spending so much time on this game means I'm getting a little behind schedule on my Backlog Eradication Marathon, but that's okay. Even if I don't hit that magical 30 mark this year, that'll be fine. I'm making progress and I still feel like I have things to write about. 

This is the game that never ends

Day 394

I had a pretty good day at work today! I sold a lot of cellular devices. Honestly though, that's a pretty boring thing to talk about even if a lot of the things I write about on a daily basis aren't really that exciting either. I'm still trudging my way through War of the Lions. I've committed to using many of the game's special characters, almost all of which are recruited near the very end, so I'm doing a lot of grinding to get them up to par. I still have to find a certain weapon for Cloud for him to actually be useful. Even then, the game kindly offers him to you at level 1...

I really do wish that these special characters were available earlier on in the game. Agrias is available from chapter 3 on and she's quite useful. I'm not using her this time because I've used her plenty of times in the past--but she is completely invalided by the existence of Orlandeau, who has access to every Holy Sword skill in the game. Granted, he also invalidates every other character choice you could imagine in the game, but hey. He is one of those oft-referenced overpowered characters. There are many, many ways to trivialize the difficulty level of Final Fantasy Tactics, but none are offered up on a silver platter quite as tantalizingly as Cidolfas "Thunder God Cid" Orlandeau. His abilities are shockingly powerful and his base stats are incredibly high. His initial equipment and setup are already sufficient enough to solo a lot of maps.

War of the Lions of course also has Luso (originally from Final Fantasy Tactics A2) and Balthier (originally from Final Fantasy XII) to offer--and they're available earlier on than Beowulf, Reis, or Cloud. Luso is essentially a clone of Ramza and therefore isn't terribly interesting. Despite his calss bearing the moniker of Game Hunter, his class is essentially just another modified Squire. Of course, every unique class in the game takes the place of the Squire in the class list but at least those classes have completely unique skillsets--although they do unfortunately share reaction, support, and movement abilities.

I really do enjoy The War of the Lions' plot and dialogue, but I've spent so much time grinding that that enjoyment has been diluted somewhat. Perhaps it was unwise for me to commit to crafting a ridiculously powerful party full of special character I haven't used before, but I'm striving to stick to it. I do like Balthier and Beowulf a lot, although the verdict's still out on Reis and Cloud. I'm not particularly fond of Reis's abilities that can only be targeted on dragons. I've never been a fan of monster units in Final Fantasy Tactics and War of the Lions has done little to change my mind. I feel that Disgaea did monster units a little bit better perhaps just because they can interact with human characters in unique ways. It also helps that ten units can be deployed at any given time in Disgaea so there's a lot more room for experimentation with rosters.

Grind of the Lions

Day 391

Almost every time I've played Final Fantasy Tactics, I've fielded a full roster of generics plus Ramza. I felt like this gave me a lot more creative freedom with my characters in the end and it also felt beyond cheap to rely on Orlandeau, whose ridiculous stats and abilities trivialize the rest of the game's content. At the same time, though, I've never used any of the story characters aside from Ramza himself. The first time I ever played the game over ten years ago, I definitely recall using Agrias, Mustadio, and Orlandeau, but no one else. I'm not sure I was even aware of the existence of hidden characters like Reis, Beowulf, or Cloud until many years later--at which point the tradition of using only generics was sort of set in stone for me.

In this particular playthrough of War of the Lions, I've been attempting to make each of my characters as ridiculously strong as possible. For the majority of the game, I've used only generics, but after recruiting Luso, Beowulf, Bathier, Reis, and Construct 8, I've realized there are a lot of characters I've never even tried before and I'd like to experiment with them. The only problem with this is that I've already invested so much time into leveling up my generics. Addison in particular has Black Mage and Knight mastered in preparation for the lofty Dark Knight job and that's certainly not something I'm willing to abandon. My Mystic is somewhat less fleshed out, although I really love the idea of wielding a pole-type weapon with the Samurai's Doublehand support ability. Since poles scale off Magic Attack and Doublehand significantly increases the damage of weapons (at the expense of wielding the weapon with two hands), Mystics are capable of putting out incredibly high damage with basic attacks while still having access to a number of utility spells.

I've considered intentionally killing off a few of my generics and having one of the story characters grab their crystal to inherit their abilities--but I've heard this isn't a foolproof method to retain these abilities as it's somewhat randomly determined which abilities transfer. In addition, the story characters in question would have to have all of the same classes unlocked to inherit those abilities. It would make me feel a lot better if I just took the time to grind these story characters and come up with unique builds for them as well, but it's certainly going to be incredibly time consuming if I choose to do this.

I think I'd be more than willing to experiment if I hadn't already spent so much time on what is essentially the exact same game as what I'm playing right now. War of the Lions does feature a laundry list of improvements to the base game, but in the end the gameplay is identical. My patience only extends so far when it comes to endless grinding. There's a reason I tend to get burned out on Disgaea titles, for instance.

The War of the Lions endgame fantasy

Day 387

Man, the requirements for unlocking the Dark Knight class in War of the Lions are pretty ridiculous--and I imagine by the point I've done that I won't really need it. I could roll with my current setup for the rest of the game and I'd most likely be fine. Against certain opponents, Ramza is already hitting 500 damage per turn and attacks twice. Ninja with Brawler support ability is just as broken as ever, evidently. This is exactly why I always used to do certain themed playthroughs to increase challenge. The game's mechanics are very exploitable. Granted, I have been doing a lot of grinding.

It is a game that very much rewards it, however, so I can't even begin to fault it for that. I very much enjoy the ridiculous power level you can raise your characters to if you put in the effort to do so. It does make me wish that there was content available to warrant characters of that power level, though. A hard mode probably would have been nice, although it would make some of the early missions close to impossible. I've heard there are hacks out there that rebalance the game's difficulty and I've considered trying them. It might be something worth looking into once I've cleared through my backlog (in a few years time, likely).

Always dreaded this fight as a kid

I think if this happened to be my first time playing through this game, I'd be gushing over the intense diversity of character compositions and the broad variety of skills to experiment with. This is still true, but having a great deal of knowledge about the game tempers that enthusiasm somewhat. There are a great number of skills but if you were to attempt to maximize efficiency, there eventually become only so many abilities worth using. The vast majority of the Mystic or Orator skillsets are not really necessary at any point, for instance.

In the end, though, that is why Straight Character Class challenges exist. Each class in the game has its merits although may have decreased value when compared with other classes. There are a great variety of debuffs available through classes like the Mystic, Black Mage, and Geomancer, but they seldom seem necessary when so many ways to utterly destroy your opponents exist. Powerful abilities like Dual Wield, Doublehand, Brawler, and the shocking nature of Arithmeticks invalidate a lot of otherwise interesting strategies. It is up to the player in this case to choose to abstain from abusing these strategies in order to experience all the game has to offer.

I've played Final Fantasy Tactics a lot and despite the shiny new script and new content, War of the Lions is largely the game I know and love. For this particular playthrough, I have decided to field the most devastatingly powerful party composition I can think of. I wanted to be able to breeze through the latter stages of the game--and so far, this is definitely the case. Most enemies can be destroyed in a single shot, although my character are definitely not so durable themselves. My eventual goal is to unlock the new Dark Knight class, but considering the fact that it requires a mastery of not only the Knight class, but Black Mage as well, I might be waiting awhile.

War of mathematics

Day 385

This is an important week for me because it may well determine whether or not I keep my job. Whatever the outcome, I expect I'll be highly relieved once it's all over. Granted, getting a new job at this point is inevitably going to be a stressful experience, but the anticipation is what's killing me more than anything else. I really hope I do well and meet my quota, but if not, I'm going to try my best not  to get too down on myself. I have the skillset required to land myself another job--and I shouldn't give in to apathy and depression as I have in the past. It's highly unproductive!

The vast majority of my free time lately has of course been spent on Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions. I'm in a stage of the game where I feel compelled to endlessly grind. It's not a matter of game difficulty by any means because I've found the game to be mostly straightforward so far--a testament to my experience with the game. I'm becoming impatient to form my ideal party composition so I'm hanging around and unlocking some of the classes I'm going to need. I think I might be overdoing it a bit, though. It would probably serve me better just to move on and level up through the storyline.

I'm planning on spending a great deal of time on War of the Lions because I'd like to unlock all of the new classes as well as experiment with any endgame content it might have to offer. I was vaguely aware of bonus dungeons available in the original version of the game but I'd never bothered with them all that much because I found playing through the main game to be significantly more compelling. By the time I reach that part of the game, I may well resume that way of thinking, but it's hard to say at this point.

One class I've taken great pains to unlock is the Arithmetician, a bizarre job that uses math to target opponents (and allies) with magic. This class has access to all of the major magic spells your character has learned (although not Geomancy or Summoning spells) and is capable of casting them on multiple targets based on mathematical criteria. For instance, you might cast a Fire spell on all targets at a height divisible by 5. All targets on heights 5, 10, 15, and so on will be afflicted by this Fire spell. With the proper preparation, it is possible to target a huge variety of opponents with very powerful spells.

Unlocking all the various abilities for this class can be an exercise in frustration, but considering the ridiculous power level, that's probably fair. The Arithmetician has a base speed of 3, less than half the average of other classes. This makes it almost impossible to function in combat without abusing Haste and the spell Tailwind, which boosts speed and can be repeated as many times as necessary. It doesn't seem all that viable to actually use the Arithmetician class in real story missions, but Arithmeticks is a fantastic secondary command for any spellcasting class.

War of the Lions, a game of variety

Day 384

I would have preferred to have had significantly more time with War of the Lions tonight before writing another entry, but an especially late night at work and a flurry of posting at Fool's Gold has prevented this from happening. As a result, I haven't played a lot of it since my long entry about the game yesterday. Still, I'm certain many things will occur to me the more I play it. It's a fantastic game and I have a lot to say about it.

I'm particularly excited about unlocking the new classes available exclusively to War of the Lions. I've heard that Dark Knight in particular is overpowered, but I don't really mind. After playing Gungnir and a series of other difficult games, I'm content to play a well constructed but easily exploited game like Final Fantasy Tactics. I enjoy it because it affords the player the opportunity to become ridiculously powerful much in the same way as Final Fantasy V. Mixing and matching the best elements of various jobs together is supremely satisfying to do. For instance, I have recently trained all of my characters as Time Mages in an effort to give them all the Teleportation movement ability. This allows otherwise immobile classes to scurry around the map quite effectively, although attempting to travel too far will often fail.

One of my characters instead trained long enough to learn the Mana Shield reaction ability, which allows her to tank hits with her MP pool instead of her HP. This allows her to survive any hit so long as she has at least 1 MP left. Combine that with Manafont which allows her to regain MP every time she moves and you end up with a very sturdy unit regardless of her defensive stats. I plan on using her primarily as a Mystic because I really like the pole weapons they use. They deal pretty good damage and operate entirely off Magic Attack, meaning both her melee attacks and spells have the potential to be quite strong.

Eventually I'll be able to annihilate maps with relative ease. The kind of setup I want requires a significant amount of grinding or otherwise I'd complain the game is too easy. A player assuming a reasonable pace through the game should find it fairly challenging. Veteran players will invariably find myriad ways to boost the game's challenge in an effort to add variety. Straight Character Class Challenges are a good example of this. In such a challenge, only characters of a certain class (Knight for instance) can be used for the duration of the playthrough. No secondary command may be equipped, but Reaction, Support, and Movement abilities can be used provided they are from that one class. It's very restrictive to the gameplay, but can force veteran players to innovate new strategies.

Hopefully I'll have a more substantive entry prepared for tomorrow. For now I'd like to sit back and actually play the game! I've been eager to play it all day, but only now have I really settled down and gained the opportunity to do so.

On writing and richness of theme in War of the Lions

Day 383

Final Fantasy Tactics is unparalleled in its breadth of character development and customization even to this day. It was originally released in something like 1997 or thereabouts but it is still just as engaging today, despite some dated interface choices. It has a timeless graphical style and an excellent plot. Recently, I have been playing Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, the PSP port/update to the original PlayStation 1 title. I've completed the original on numerous occasions and still consider it one of my favorite games of all time--but for some reason I'd never finished the PSP version.

I could make the argument that it's because of the frequent animation slowdowns in combat, but after spending some time with the game, it's not difficult to become accustomed to that kind of thing. I'm pretty far into chapter 2 already, and although I still notice these slowdowns, they no longer bother me. The mechanics of the game are just so strong that I don't have it in me to nitpick about such a minor issue when instead I'd rather talk about the number of changes that have been made to the game's script.

Square-Enix wisely chose to leave the game's mechanics largely untouched. For an old fan like myself, this is much appreciated. There's not much in Final Fantasy Tactics' gameplay that I can find issue with, except perhaps for the design of a few of the game's jobs. Archers and Dragoons don't have particularly engaging skillsets, although they do feature excellent and fun reaction and support abilities. Still, the purpose of a remake is very rarely to redesign a game from the ground up, so I wouldn't have expected them to overhaul these classes that are still perfectly workable.

The largest and most noticeable change in War of the Lions is of course the dramatically reimagined script. I mentioned earlier that I felt Tactics' plot was excellent, and I still believe that to be true. However, the PS1 original certainly suffered from an amateurish and occasionally confusing translation, with such infamous mistranslations as "Defeat Dycedarg's Elder Brother!" and "Salty Rage." For the most part, though, the script was perfectly readable for the average player and conveyed the sense of the plot well. I would have expected names, both of places and persons, to be significantly tweaked in this remake to better adhere to the original Japanese. What I did not expect, however, was a complete rewriting of the entire game's script.

Don't get me wrong--the rewritten script perfectly communicates the sentiments of the original game, but the tone has changed significantly. The original localization, despite some translation errors, was written primarily in contemporary vernacular, whereas the War of the Lions translation is written entirely in (shockingly genuine) archaic language. A famous line form the first prologue mission has undergone a significant change, for instance. The original line was "Don't blame us. Blame yourself or God." I always thought this was a very straightforward and memorable line. The new version is "Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I." This communicates the same exact meaning but is written in much more flowery language. It's jarring at first, but I'm beginning to become accustomed to it.

What's so impressive about the script is that it adheres strictly to that ancient highborn linguistic style throughout the game. It never feels as if the writers slipped out of character for a moment. It really does add to the genuine medieval feel of the game, but it's certainly a change from the more direct writing from the original localization. I was initially put off by this overly verbose style but I have to admit that I like it more and more as I get further into the game.