Final Fantasy Tactics: How is There No Thread for This?

[Triaxx]

Yeah, there were two TO games, one on the SNES and one on the Gameboy... Advanced I think? Better than the first in my opinion.

[Alent]

Tactics Ogre was originally on the SNES right? Is that the game which begins with using cards or something to build your hero? I didn't even make it through the first battle, I'm pretty sure. I was super turned off at the idea of losing honor or experience or something by killing weaker bad guys.

That's Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre is OB's sequel. Once you have a grasp of the system in OB, it's pretty easy to never ever lose CF/Ali/Cha unless you want to. (Actually, it doesn't really matter all that much as long as you spread out your kills or have a designated Karma sink like a Lich or Blackguard unit.)

Ogre Battle uses the following rubics to score you: Chaos Frame represents your army's overall bent towards law/chaos. If you conquer villages with un-like conquerors, your CF goes down. If you tarry for a long time to make money, your CF goes down. If you clear battles quickly, your CF goes up. If you make "Wise decisions" your CF goes up. If you capture lawful villages with lawful units and chaotic villages with chaotic units, your CF goes up. The higher your CF the better, but not always, because some people don't like an army that's excessively lawful until after they're in it.

At the individual unit level, units had Alignment and Charisma, which would react according to the level, ali, and cha of the unit they fought. Charisma would go down if you substantially outleveled them, but it'd go up if you were prettier than they were, so once you got above a certain Charisma it pretty much couldn't drop unless you were just curbstomping people with a 10+ level advantage. Similarly, Alignment dropped when you killed units more lawful than you and raised when you killed units less lawful than you, and undead have a set ali of 0, so you can go exorcise undead in random battles to your heart's content and again, once you get above a certain ali, it will not drop... but this is also a trap, because of what I mentioned about chaotic villages. As you reach the end of the game, you'll encounter villages that are chaotic in large amounts and you'll basically need a few designated Lich/blackguard units to keep them happy.

Where Tactics Ogre didn't really use CF all that much, CF took a back seat to Denim's decisions to be lawful/chaotic/neutral at key points in the story. There were 4 clans, and you had a CF with each of them, but I don't recall that it mattered in the SNES version, but it did hugely in the PSP version since endgame some new characters on the Lawful ending who wouldn't join if you had a bad CF with their clan, and as I recall the best ending requires having a high CF with each clan. (Fairly easy to grind up at endgame, but slow.)

What's interesting is that in OB the Lawful ending is the canon ending, but in TO the Chaotic Neutral ending appears to be the canon ending.

There was also an Ogre Battle Gaiden on Wonderswan Color, which I have not played, and Tactics Ogre Advance, which was a steaming pile of garbage. (It uses forced multiplayer to gate some of the series' necessary staple items. Imagine having to play multiplayer to get half the Genji armor in a final fantasy game.)

[Triaxx]

I still think the improvements in N64's Person of Lordly Caliber are unbeaten.

[Anteros]

Chaos frame only mattered in TO if you wanted the secret ending. Basically you had to go pure chaotic, let a certain main character die, and your chaos frame would determine the ending you got. All of the other endings were purely based on choices you made or which characters lived.

[hustlertwo]

I have to disagree. I never felt like I had to grind in TO. At least not in the original. (Ok, you probably have to grind if you want the secret ending...but that's not even the good ending). The PSP port made the baffling decision to place new classes you unlock at level one, which meant you had to grind every time you got a new unique character. As far as variety went, there was definitely less variety in individual skills and ways to build a character, but far more in recruitment options and the battles themselves. You can't just faceroll your way through the game clubbing things with god-tier units like you can in FFT.

I can only assume you blocked the memories out. Tactics Ogre was the worst for grinding, because unlike most other RPG games, if you fight an enemy just 1 or 2 levels above you it is practically impossible to deal significant damage. Usually had to do a lot of training battles (which was an awesome feature, I must admit; FFT or any other SRPG would be well served to have it) or random fights to keep everyone on the same page. I still shudder at the memory of all that blech time.

[Alent]

I can only assume you blocked the memories out. Tactics Ogre was the worst for grinding, because unlike most other RPG games, if you fight an enemy just 1 or 2 levels above you it is practically impossible to deal significant damage. Usually had to do a lot of training battles (which was an awesome feature, I must admit; FFT or any other SRPG would be well served to have it) or random fights to keep everyone on the same page. I still shudder at the memory of all that blech time.

Training battles were why it wasn't that bad. Get one person +1 level by softening up everybody and do a murder wheel. Kill the now low HP +1 person from behind, level up, that person gets killed, level up, rinse, lather, repeat.

Sirens were great for this once you got the first summon spell. Kaminari the entire red and blue teams at once~

Edit: Come to think of it, Ghosts were great for this too. Crap for defense, but you could get kill EXP for them repeatedly. When leveling my Snapshot swords I used a party of ghosts in an actual battle and pinned in the last enemy with Petrocloud while I level ground in random encounters around Hell Gate.

[hustlertwo]

Everything you described sounds so boring, though. So much bloody grinding.

[LansXero]

Everything you described sounds so boring, though. So much bloody grinding.

Huh, I got through the game just fine with minimal grinding (except at the start, when you need a min. lvl to become anything but "soldier"). 1 level differences are easy to overcome, and reward you with a buttload of xp.

Also, I thought the canon ending was the Lawful one, due to being the one in the manga :o

[Bruno Carvalho]

I don't know if you follow my Final Fantasy RPG development, but a Final Fantasy Tactics Worldbook is in the oven, to be released later this year.