What is with Final Fantasy Tactics?

[Odbarc]

The game isn't really that hard (for me). It WAS when I was a noob who didn't have any abilities or such.

Here's an early-game trick that worked fine.
Turn everyone into a knight and teach them all some [breaker] (stats) move and Job XP. During a random encounter, once you're down to one enemy, surround him on all four sides so he cannot move and cut down his speed until he's at 1. You get like 50 turns in a row now so you can spam all your other breaker stats. The job XP is shared with all your other knights so you can max-level them quickly and give everyone their stat-breaker off-class skill.
It's also ridiculously powerful when you have ninja/two-hands as your stat-item-breakers will attempt twice.

Also do this with thieves to steal items (weapons, shields) to cripple enemies and get early upgrades or easy cash selling garbage you collect. In random battles, enemies will appear higher levels (if you grind) than the story giving you better items than you can buy.

BLAST GRASP is illegally over powered and EVERY character should use it. It's a Samurai skill, I believe? Or Ninja. It basically gives you 100% dodge rate when attacked with physical in the front and 75% evasion on the side and 50% evasion from your back.

Also, you can abuse the in-game AI to control your guys which gives means the AI will never attempt something it cannot do (terrain height failures, ect.)
If you do this with the Calculator class, game-over. You win the game. Matches last up to 5 turns and even if your guys die in the process, the Calculator ends the game before the die/crystalize. This is no joke. Just get holy and flare and all the stipulation skills and you'll 1~5 hit all the enemies with the strongest spells in the game every turn. Flare and Holy are usually 1-target spells so multiplying that is insanely godly. It cannot be overstated.

 

[Darthbawls77]

It can be a hard game but thats just how the dice rolls man. Its a strat game that maybe translates a little rougher then other games in the Final Fantasy series but it was also a spin off game in a sense. But anyways I got this game when I was 13 back in the 90s and it was tough but I played the hell out of the game and loved it for everything it had but multiplayer -_-.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

FFT is not for the impatient player. The Battle at Dorter Slums will make you its ***** if you didn't bring any Archers or Black Mages/Wizards. The difficulty curve is literally like running face-first into a brick wall unless you spend weeks grinding yourself to level 99, at which point everything's a snooze (usually).

 

[Splyth]

dealing with your chocobo problem. And this will NOT work against the stupid black chocobos and their flaming metor attacks: I hate those. But in the beginning the best startegy is to stick together. Or in small groups. At least till Dorter watch out for them black mages.

And the best thing I ever did was grind for a while on the Mandoria plans outside Castle Lionel. I did that until everyone had at least mastered squire (I had Ramza as a dragoon by then). Or longer if you feel the need.

Good look.

 

[ManInRed]

I never had much need for the tutorials, learn the game by playing it. If there is a learning curve its taking advantage of all the information available to you in the battlefield: you can auto-scan every unit on the field, view the entire turn order, and see what moves will result in before executing them.

Final Fantasy Tactics has very good AI, which is what keeps every random battle interesting. Random battles unlike story battles also have power based on party, which makes these equally difficult through out the game. So until you face your first random battle, you haven't actually fought a foe who has a fair chance of beating you.

Believe it or not the game is teaching you things slow: simple geography, few types of enemies and job class, with abilities limited to physical damage and healing. You should get a dozen battles like this before the game slowly introduce you more depth, either in random encounters or story order missions. And this amount of depth is the great kind of difficulty.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I always changed my mages into the classes where you can equip cross bows and axes no matter your class, then change them back to mages :X

 

[Justank]

TG Cid and Arithmeticians, oh how I love thee. I don't remember it being that hard when I played it again on PSP, but someone mentioned a patch that made it much harder so I may have finished it before that came out. Either way, if you're having trouble play through the tutorial, that's what it's there for. I actually prefer not having it integrated, it allows me to experiment and learn on my own. It gets tiring playing through the same garbage every first hour of a game =/

 

[gim73]

Yeah, tactics is hard. Here is another thing to remember: it's pretty much cheat proof. Enemies in random encounters scale to YOUR level, so even using a gameshark to give you max level will just get you creamed by a couple of chocobos. It really comes down to getting the best gear for your area. Without gear, you are SOOOO crippled.

Yeah, I remember that 'no take backs' thing was a problem as well. Battles seemed to just conspire against you. Chocobos seemed to DEFY statistics. You would attack a chocobo with a ninety nine percent chance to hit and completely miss, then he would hit you with a five percent chance and crit for crazy damage. SCREW YOU CHOCOBOS!!!

I played through the entire game back in the day. Yeah... there were some serious rage quit days there. It's well worth it because the story is top notch and it's a damn fun game. Which makes when FFTA came out all the much more a disappointment. Seriously, on a handheld? And the judges just drive the fun right out of the game.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my favorite games, and clearly the best Final Fantasy of them all. Yes, the game is unforgiving. Yes, there are no tutorials, but honestly I find most modern tutorials to be insulting to my intelligence anyway. I would rather figure things out on my own, which FFT forces you to do.

Unlike every modern RPG, FFT respects its audience as thinking human beings. Look, early on, when I first got my SNES, I realized there were two types of games: ones that required reflexes and complex button combos, and those that require strategic and tactical thinking. FFT takes the second type of game to its extreme.

Seriously though, would you rather have a game that respects me as a thinking human being that one that interrupts gameplay to tell me I need to use the left stick to move the character.

I am sorry you are having trouble with the game, but if you stick with it and think things through carefully, you will have a blast.

Pro tip, enemy levels aren't fixed, they're based on the average of your party. So if you skew the leveling in your party and make one guy super powerful and everybody else terrible all the enemies will be inbetween. So you can power through everybody using yourmost powerful person while foddering the rest.

Uber-Pro tip: this is not true in FFT: War of the Lions. it is a great strategy if you want to get killed, though.

 

[Darkmantle]

FF tactics is not a forgiving game to start with, I think you've been had.

 

[him over there]

Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my favorite games, and clearly the best Final Fantasy of them all. Yes, the game is unforgiving. Yes, there are no tutorials, but honestly I find most modern tutorials to be insulting to my intelligence anyway. I would rather figure things out on my own, which FFT forces you to do.

Unlike every modern RPG, FFT respects its audience as thinking human beings. Look, early on, when I first got my SNES, I realized there were two types of games: ones that required reflexes and complex button combos, and those that require strategic and tactical thinking. FFT takes the second type of game to its extreme.

Seriously though, would you rather have a game that respects me as a thinking human being that one that interrupts gameplay to tell me I need to use the left stick to move the character.

I am sorry you are having trouble with the game, but if you stick with it and think things through carefully, you will have a blast.

Pro tip, enemy levels aren't fixed, they're based on the average of your party. So if you skew the leveling in your party and make one guy super powerful and everybody else terrible all the enemies will be inbetween. So you can power through everybody using yourmost powerful person while foddering the rest.

Uber-Pro tip: this is not true in FFT: War of the Lions. it is a great strategy if you want to get killed, though.

Wait this doesn't work in WotL? I could have sworn it did. Thanks for correcting me.

 

[Mako SOLDIER]

(yes I know there is a tutorial option on the menu, but some amount of tutorial should always be integrated within the game it's self)

No. The game has a manual. Read it.

 

[kypsilon]

The game isn't really that hard (for me). It WAS when I was a noob who didn't have any abilities or such.

Here's an early-game trick that worked fine.
Turn everyone into a knight and teach them all some [breaker] (stats) move and Job XP. During a random encounter, once you're down to one enemy, surround him on all four sides so he cannot move and cut down his speed until he's at 1. You get like 50 turns in a row now so you can spam all your other breaker stats. The job XP is shared with all your other knights so you can max-level them quickly and give everyone their stat-breaker off-class skill.
It's also ridiculously powerful when you have ninja/two-hands as your stat-item-breakers will attempt twice.

Also do this with thieves to steal items (weapons, shields) to cripple enemies and get early upgrades or easy cash selling garbage you collect. In random battles, enemies will appear higher levels (if you grind) than the story giving you better items than you can buy.

BLAST GRASP is illegally over powered and EVERY character should use it. It's a Samurai skill, I believe? Or Ninja. It basically gives you 100% dodge rate when attacked with physical in the front and 75% evasion on the side and 50% evasion from your back.

Also, you can abuse the in-game AI to control your guys which gives means the AI will never attempt something it cannot do (terrain height failures, ect.)
If you do this with the Calculator class, game-over. You win the game. Matches last up to 5 turns and even if your guys die in the process, the Calculator ends the game before the die/crystalize. This is no joke. Just get holy and flare and all the stipulation skills and you'll 1~5 hit all the enemies with the strongest spells in the game every turn. Flare and Holy are usually 1-target spells so multiplying that is insanely godly. It cannot be overstated.

It's been forever and a day since I played Final Fantasy Tactics and I read this post and it all came back to me. This is exactly what I did when I played it all those years ago. Especially the tactic of surrounding an opponent and breaking their gear down. Ahhh...the memories. I loved that game.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Pro tip, enemy levels aren't fixed, they're based on the average of your party. So if you skew the leveling in your party and make one guy super powerful and everybody else terrible all the enemies will be inbetween. So you can power through everybody using yourmost powerful person while foddering the rest.

Uber-Pro tip: this is not true in FFT: War of the Lions. it is a great strategy if you want to get killed, though.

Wait this doesn't work in WotL? I could have sworn it did. Thanks for correcting me.

No problem. In the original FFT I believe this was a valid strategy, though it has been years since I played that. But in War of the Lions, it is based on the average level of characters in your army, or Ramza's level, whichever is higher. . . So, if Ramza is Lv 30 and everyone else is Lv 5, even if you do not bring Ramza into the battle, the enemies will be at Lv 30. . .

 

[him over there]

Pro tip, enemy levels aren't fixed, they're based on the average of your party. So if you skew the leveling in your party and make one guy super powerful and everybody else terrible all the enemies will be inbetween. So you can power through everybody using yourmost powerful person while foddering the rest.

Uber-Pro tip: this is not true in FFT: War of the Lions. it is a great strategy if you want to get killed, though.

Wait this doesn't work in WotL? I could have sworn it did. Thanks for correcting me.

No problem. In the original FFT I believe this was a valid strategy, though it has been years since I played that. But in War of the Lions, it is based on the average level of characters in your army, or Ramza's level, whichever is higher. . . So, if Ramza is Lv 30 and everyone else is Lv 5, even if you do not bring Ramza into the battle, the enemies will be at Lv 30. . .

That's weird, seems like it could be problematic if you were trying to level anybody besides Ramza because Ramza was becoming too powerful, though I suppose sacrificing an exploit in exchange for a possible game breaking is sensible in some ways.

 

[Jfswift]

Yea I agree. This game never had a great tutorial setup. I rented ff tactics a long time ago on the same day I bought my ps1 and nfs 3. I found it was pretty difficult and stopped playing it for a while. What I eventually figured out was that enemies scaled in difficulty with the main characters level only. Also ganging up on enemies (and watching the speed/ order) your team members attack by is important.

 

[Kroxile]

Final Fantasy Tactics is the best game to hold the Final Fantasy name.. since.. well.. ever.

It's challenging (at least early on), makes you think, and it has a good story to boot.

That said, there are some incredibly broken things you can do. Dual wielding monks hitting for 999 damage TWICE will make incredibly short work of anything in your way and magic is incredibly underpowered.

Oh, also, a tip from a guy who has had this backfire more times than he cares to admit: NEVER EVER EVER target a unit with meteor. lol

 

[JCrichton]

Ah, good times! Reading all this may me want to boot up the old' PSP and throw in FFT. Loved grinding though the original on PSX (I still have the original black disc/box) when I was in college. The remake only made it more fun. Only gripe would be the slowdown during some abilities and attacks. It would have been really nice to have that fixed..

As for the opening difficulty ... I can't really speak to that since I only died a little here and there until I got all the tactics learned along with the class abilities. I'm with the other folks that say to play the tutorials. Even though I already beat the game, coming back to it years later I played the tutorials to get my mind right. With a game this complex (and old), not reading the manual and taking advantage of the tutorials will just make the learning curve more harsh since the trial and error method will typically result in a brutal ass kicking until you start grinding right away.

Either way, it's a classic for a reason.

 

[EverydayHeretic]

If you want a tactics game that lets you undo mistakes and doesn't have a difficulty curve that asymptotically approaches bullshit, then I suggest getting Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. You don't even have to switch systems, as it also has a remake on the PSP. I suggest this because I had the same problem with FFT and quit about where you are, but I'm on my second play through with TO and enjoying every minute of it.