Rainbow Chara X
Impossible to gauge!
- 129
- Posts
- 9
- Years
- Shiny Hunting in Sinnoh
- Seen Feb 24, 2025
It's a whole new world and things are going to get steamy. I'll admit, I took my time because I was getting every portrait in the game so I wouldn't have to do it later.
This chapter will have a ton of meat regarding mechanics and dialogue - FFTA is a big game and I'm amazed they stuffed in as much as they did... but for now, we have an adventure to go on.
[FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Chapter 2 - Into the Fantasy[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/FONT]
Last time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the world changed from a snow-covered town to this desert wonderland. What awaits Marche in this new land?
[The screen pans over to show various NPCs going about. Marche walks forward only to collide against a reptilian man]
[Current OST: Unhideable Anxiety]
: "Watch where you're going, ssson!"
(I know his portrait here isn't the same color as in the game, but that's because he's an enemy unit. I'm not ripping recolors as there's already a lot of portraits to go around)
[Marche recoils from shock]
: "Y-you're a lizard!"
Way to go. I'm amazed because the first thing Marche does in the brand new fantasy land with magic and monsters is call someone what is essentially the ultimate Bangaa slur word. To let you know how embarassing this is, the NPCs next to us flee the scene immediately. They've seen this happen at least eleven times before, you know.
: "I, um, erp."
: "You said lizard! It takess a lot of nerve to call a Bangaa a lizard!"
To think, Marche was making friends and throwing snowballs at bullies just the day before this. Now he's going to get his face kicked in out of perceived racism.
[The Bangaa man bears down on Marche but an unknown voice calls out]
???: "Kupo! There you are, kupo!"
: "Moogle... thiss human brat with you?"
I should mention one thing about Moogles in this game: They're so fucking cute! Okay, that's not necessarily a new bit of information, but their rabbit ears, the pom-pom coming out of their heads, the bat wings and their overall fluffiness make them so AAAAAGH
: "Apologize to the bangaa, kupo!"
: "Um... uh... sorry!"
: "Please excuse him, he's not used to seeing bangaa."
He doesn't even know who Marche is, yet he still sticks out for him. That makes him a cool dude in my book.
[Marche and the Moogle move away but the Bangaa confronts them]
: "Hey, you, wait!"
: "Kupo?"
You know, for the longest time, I never understood what kupo even meant. It's just a verbal tic that they have as a species, but younger Dan thought it was like some weird term of endearment. Keep in mind, I had not played any real Final Fantasy game and only had Kingdom Hearts during that time.
: "A... soldier?"
: "Yess... Sso you wouldn't mind a little engagement?"
Oh god our apology didn't work. He is out for our blood and just wants an excuse to do it.
[A whistle SFX plays - A man clad in armor riding a bird appears out of thin air ]
[Current OST: Battle of Hope]
(One of the best songs in the entire soundtrack. It gets me pumped every time I hear it.)
: "Huh? What's going on?"
: "He's engaging you, kupo!"
This may be an upgrade compared to flinging snowballs in school, but I assure you that we're not out of tutorial territory just yet.
The first major change is that we get experience now. You get experience with every action that's not just moving or waiting, which includes using items, support skills or, hilariously enough, attacking your own allies. It's as amazing as it sounds. But seriously though, the experience thing is a neat concept, but I remember struggling to play this game during my first ever runs of it due to Marche being my only strong character.
Then again, I was never one for using my brain back in those days. I'd also argue that A2 did it better, seeing as the experience leaks to every member in that fight instead of just the ones who did anything.
Oh wait, there's more dialogue, oop:
: "Wait a second... I get it! Engage means fight!"
Genius. I'm surprised Marche is only in grade school if he has this level of sagacity already. He's practically the master of the thesaurus.
: "You sure are a keen observer of the obvious, kupo!"
Fucking savage.
: "There's the judge, and the laws for today are set."
Marche repeats the words judge and laws and I resist making a tactless METAL GEEEEEEAR joke.
: "Uh-oh, don't tell me you don't know about those! The laws today forbid the use of items, kupo! Always be sure to check the laws or you'll be sorry!"
This fine fellow is the Judge. His main job is to sit on an armored Chocobo, observe the flow of battle and enforce the law system. Laws are a major gameplay feature in FFTA that, to be completely honest, are horrendously flawed and only hold back the game instead of adding to it. On paper, it's an interesting idea as the laws are supposed to add variety to battles... in practice, it only makes things more tedious.
Right now, the law set for this fight is set to Forbidden: Items and Recommended: Status. What this essentially means is that we can't use items, but we get extra bonus points if we inflict status ailments on our opponents. If we break the law, we get hit with a penalty - either a yellow card or a red card depending on the severity. Yellow cards are merely warnings while red cards boot you straight to jail. That's right, the slammer.
Laws also have ranks - from one to six. Breaking a rank six law or knocking out an opponent with a forbidden action is grounds for immediate incarceration, so you know they're not kidding around. To top it off, if you get hit with a penalty regardless of the card color, you are stripped of your bonus points and at least one of the following will happen to you at the end of the fight:
Later enemies have unique movesets and abilities that the law system doesn't even bother to count because that would be fair and we don't want that, but they also have special ribbons that make them immune to being imprisoned.
To make things worse, there's some absolutely ridiculous ones such as Damage to Animal, which punishes anyone that harms a monster unit. This is unbalanced because you can't get monster units to begin with, but let's say you get into a map that only has monster enemies in it. You attack one and you get a yellow card, no big deal. However, any further attacks will net you another yellow card along with an instant red card regardless of severity. The map is effectively made unplayable and you have to restart the game. IT'S ALL BULLSHIT!
So yeah, I'm not fond of them. Marche adapts to his new situation relatively quickly and gets his turn.
... Personally, if I were in his shoes and all of this happened to me, this would be my only reaction:
He's certainly improved since we last saw him, but his equipment is pretty crappy. It would only really be useful for vendor trash. Everyone in Fantasy Ivalice has slightly fuller cheeks and an overall brighter color palette - fitting considering this world is more "whimsical" in nature when compared to the real world.
Oh boy, here we go. You see, as opposed to Laws, the job/class system of FFTA is easily the game's best feature. It's where the game shines, in my opinion. This is what each of the five categories mean:
Literally. Our Moogle friend is called Montblanc and, according to the Final Fantasy wikia, this is what his name means:
"Montblanc is "white mountain" in French. It is also the name of a sweet chestnut pastry popular in Japan named after Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Western Europe."
He is part of a family of Moogles, although we only see one other member in this game. Montblanc starts off as a Black Mage and he's one of my favorite characters in the game, if only because of his sharp wit and well:
Goddamn it, I can't. You're going to give me a heart attack from all this cute!
Montblanc deep-fries the White Monk that started this fight to begin with and gets awarded with a judge point. (His health also regenerates every other turn he gets, which is unique to this fight only. The power of tutorials compel him, apparently.)
: "Collect judge points! That way you can use "combos" with other clan members. It makes engagements a snap, kupo!"
: "So all I got to do is defeat my opponents? Gotcha."
Oh hey, they explained it for me. A bit too late there.
But yeah, The weird thing is that you can't get multiple judge points at the same time... even if you KO someone using a recommended action. I mean, JP isn't used for much if you're not going for combos so why not?
After a few whacks, the Warrior Bangaa runs off to a corner and uses First Aid in a vain attempt to heal himself. Yeah, a lot of your beginning abilities are pretty poopy, but you still need to learn them as they're required to unlock the better classes.
Still though, I can't help but feel bad for the two guys because they were probably having a normal day... and then Marche calls him a lizard and stabs him in the back. Kind of grim when you look at it like that.
What do you mean "somehow"? You did twice as much damage as them and you have a crazy bunny-bat person with magic powers on your side.
[Current OST: The World Starting To Move]
Are you sure that's a wise idea considering the judge just said not to use items? Sure, those second degree burns must be blistering, but that's what White Mages are for.
[The White Monk uses a potion, which causes the judge to blow his whistle]
"All violators will be sent to prison!"
Jesus, don't you think that's a bit harsh?
Judges don't care if you're bleeding to death or willing to save a burning house full of puppies - if you break a law, your ass is getting busted. You see what I mean by broken?
: "Kupo! The slammer... I hope I never get sent there."
: "The slammer... ?"
: "Yeah, prison -- they send people who break the law there. Oh, it's a dark and scary place, kupo!"
It's straight up the only real crapfest in this otherwise tries-to-be-idyllic setting. Montblanc knows people and they tell him all sorts of gruesome stories about life in jail. I imagine him sitting around with a nervous smile on his face while someone tells him about a time when they got shanked just to get a Hi-Potion.
Judge: "Perpetrator sentenced and imprisoned! Visitors are asked to go to the prison facility in Sprohm."
[The judge disappears]
You know, the funny thing is that I thought we had to go visit the guy that just got imprisoned... nope. He's rotting in jail for god knows how long. We sure made his day a mess, huh?
"What have I gotten myself into?"
WELCOME TO IVALICE!
[Current OST: Teach Me, Montblanc]
: "Never ever call a bangaa a lizard, kupo!"
: "Sorry, I really didn't know."
: "You... you have seen a bangaa before, right, kupo?"
: "Um, yes, well, no. Not a real one, at least."
Things are getting wackier by the second.
: "Kupo! Where exactly are you from, kupo? Cadoan? Muscadet?"
: "I... I don't know. I'm all confused. And to top it off, I'm talking to a stuffed animal!"
: "A stuffed animal?! I'll have you know I'm a moogle, kupo!"
: "Fine, you're a moogle. What's that?"
Marche, why do you have to be so offensive? Especially seeing as Montblanc is the one who saved your dumb ass.
: "Okay, I believe you! Let me explain: This is the town of Cyril, in the land of Ivalice."
(By the way guys, I've pronounced it as Ih-valis for the longest time, but according to Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, the proper pronounciation is 'Eee-va-lease".)
: "Ivalice? But that's the name of the town where I'm from!"
See what I meant earlier regarding the names of the two places?
: "Not my Ivalice. And there's no liz--er, bangaa there either."
secretly a racist all along
: "What about moogles? Surely the other towns have them?"
: "Nope. We just have normal things like dogs and cats."
: "But you just said you'd seen a bangaa, only not a real one! What did you mean, kupo?"
: "Well, it's just... I've seen a bangaa, but in a computer game, not in real life!"
: "Kupo?"
Montblanc has an incredible capacity for understanding if he's listening to Marche's story and not immediately claiming him as a crazy person.
: "It's called 'Final Fantasy.' It's not real. Not really. It's like a pretend world, with heroes and monsters..."
: "So you're saying here is just like your pretend world?"
: "Yeah, come to think of it, it's just like in the game!"
: "Sorry, I know I'm not being very helpful..."
: "No, this is by far the most kupo story I've ever heard!"
At least he likes it. I can't imagine pitching this story to anyone that's not as chill as Montblanc.
: "You're telling me!"
: "Of course, I'm not sure I entirely believe you, kupo."
: "I can hardly believe any of it myself. What should I do?"
: "I think our meeting like this was no accident, kupo. Stick with me and I'll help you out, okay, kupo?"
: "Thanks. By the way, my name is Marche. What's your name?"
: "They call me 'Montblanc', kupo! Come with me, Marche!"
[Current OST: At The Bar]
Pretty cool place. I'm really digging how everything is designed thanks to the whole "desert" aesthetic.
"Clans are like... groups of people who work together."
[Screen pans over to a group of people]
: "Wow... everyone looks so tough!"
Buddy, you haven't seen anything yet. Just wait until we get the stuff that breaks the game.
: "Well, our clan takes on some pretty rough jobs. Of course, the pay's good, and there's never a dull moment!"
: "Maybe someone here knows how I can get back home...?"
Excuse me, what? You want to leave? The fun hasn't even started yet!
: "You can ask around, kupo!"
: "Can I join the clan?"
: "Sure thing! I just have to introduce you and you're in."
: "Um, hello!"
The air is so thick with awkward you can cut it with a knife.
: "Me and the others will help you out! And maybe we can help you find your way home!""
: "Well, it's kind of a small clan, so no, not yet... Kupo! Why don't you give it a name, kupo?"
: "Me!?"
That's a bit sudden, ain't it?
: "To commemorate you joining the clan! Make it a kupo one!""
On second thought, Montblanc needs to dial back the eagerness just a bit.
But yes, we are allowed to name our team! It's interesting that they allow you to do this, because you can't do it for anything else in the game. Anyway, Nutsy is silly and I don't like it. We need something that can strike terror into the hearts of everything that gets in our path.
We'll paint the town red. I can imagine Marche being that kind of edgy overlord if the guys ever decide to do roleplaying games.
[Montblanc stares at him with a worried smile before nodding his head]
: "Kupo! Henceforth, we will be called 'Clan Crimson!' Okay, let's get you settled in, shall we, kupo? This is where we are now, in Ivalice!"
I can imagine everyone giving Marche a really sour look like "who the hell is this kid?" I can't blame them considering the really whacked shit we can do in this game.
"Place them to add new missions to the pub. Place them in a special order to reveal treasures. Try to find the special combinations yourself..."
Anyway, we finally get to see the overworld! As the text said, we can place locations wherever we want, but placing them in the right locations can grant us unique items that we can't get in any other way.
The Ivalician calendar has five months, with each month only having 20 days. Each month represents a specific species:
Anyway, we get to place Sprohm - it's a Bangaa mountain town that serves as the home of the infamous prison.
Now, this is where things get crazy. I'm planning on doing two seperate, concurrent playthroughs of FFTA. By that, I don't mean an entirely new thread, but instead a change in how I handle the game proper. One will be a casual playthrough where I just go along the game and cover the story, while the other is a hardcore playthrough where I use every advantage I get to break the game.
I'm excited because really, it's a good way to show off the game in its entirety and I get to be a bloodthirsty tyrant overlord at the same time. Everyone wins!
I follow a specific guide on gamefaqs that lists the secret combinations for town locations in the overworld. It was made by AstroBlue, and it even comes with a handy dandy map that notes where things should go. For the Normal route, Sprohm goes here. This combination is called Perfect Ivalice, and each of the items unlocked are unique only to the Treasure Hunt feature. It's kind of standard, to be honest, even if we get rare items here and there.
This will also makes the most geological sense as, technically speaking, regardless of where we place them, the world will still act like certain places are next to each other. (The places with amber are the most plot important because they lead into the final areas of the game, actually. I won't elaborate because I don't feel like spoiling the game this early.)
Meanwhile, in the hardcore route, Marche places Sprohm here. This will allow us to get a really goddamn busted knife for thieves early. How broken? Well, it only allows you to STEAL ABILITIES FROM YOUR ENEMIES.
No, seriously. They let us do that. That's the kind of power we're going to play with in the hardcore route. It's practically intoxicating if this is what they let you do before the game is even half way done. To top it off, the original Tactics allowed you to break the game even harder, so it's gladly carrying on that tradition.
Anyway, there's not enough differences to count for now, so let's just look around.
[Current OST: Magic Beast Farm]
Interesting that the real world used this song of all things. The Monster Bank is an interesting idea as you can capture weakened monsters using the Hunter class (an upgraded Hume Archer) and you can utilize their powers via the Nu Mou Morpher class. You can feed monsters to increase their stats, although it will cut your wallet in half because you'd have to keep buying a lot of items to get a significant increase.
Not only that, you can get a unique mission if you capture a monster... which involves you going after monsters that have escaped. I'll save that one for when we get to it.
[Current OST: Mysterious Shop]
Shops are very peculiar in FFTA. You see, they update their stocks based on how many battles you've participated in - 10 for the first upgrade and 20 for the second. After that, nothing really happens unless you start liberating areas around the map. As pretty as it looks, Ivalice is a rundown shithole with rogue clans and all sorts of evil skullduggery going down - each location in the game is in control of another clan who is likely just using it as a parking lot or something crude like that. Everything will cost 50% more as well, which is where I get involved.
The more places you liberate, the more unique items and discounts you get - up to a maximum of 50% off. Each town has unique discounts based on what weapons their population can wield. For example, as only Bangaa use spears, they have a 10% discount in Sprohm and so on.
Finally, there's the local pub/bar. These serve as "mission control" as you can hear rumors and take on missions from that fine fellow with the bitchin' turban and beard.
Rumors are essentially flavor text on the world as a whole along with various events that pop up at certain intervals. The ones marked with an exclamation point are merely recaps for things we already know, so we'll skip them. Checking rumors are useful as they can unlock missions that you otherwise wouldn't have... and throw off the story of the main game by a bit, but who cares?
"The king then established the judicial system to enforce his laws. Knowledge of the means to control the laws have been passed down the royal line ever since."
So if I'm reading this correctly, laws are magical limitations that have been part of the kingdom of Ivalice for hundreds of years. The reason judges are so stringent is because they keep things non-lethal - with no judges, people would be dying off left and right in clan battles for real. Defying what they say is pretty much spitting on the face of Ivalice's entire judicial system, which makes me really worried because the finicky nature of laws means that even innocent people get thrown in jail for petty reasons like "oh you used this attack when you had no way of stopping it".
I'm going to give the game the benefit of the doubt and assume laws are different outside of battle, but that's still pretty disturbing. It gets more complicated later on, just sayin'.
"The reason? Frequent and seemingly arbitrary changes in the laws. It's gone so far that pundits wryly say she's '... doing it to please that brat, the prince.'"
This will become important later on. I will grind my teeth to dust when we get there.
Borzoi? Isn't that a breed of Russian hunting dog raised to go after wolves? Oh well, I guess it's appropriate because we're gonna put them down.
Enough messing around though. Let's start the first real mission of the game.
Missions are easily the most addicting aspect of FFTA. There's a total of 300 in the entire game along with some bonus ones, although only a handful are required to complete the story. You can get either money rewards, equipment or quest items. Sometimes you'll be required to bring a specific item, skill or a job class depending on the mission.
Missions also have ranks, but they're used to note the difficulty. For example, the easiest are the race recruit missions, which have a difficulty of 30. The hardest is a Rank 7 mission called Thorny Dreams which has a whopping 356! That's so impossibly high that it breaks the game, because the highest the difficulty can normally get is 256. You can make it easier on yourself if you have a strong character because the game has a formula for competence, which requires rounding up all of your stats along with the strength of the weapon you currently have equipped.
The formula is so complicated that I can only sum it up like this: Let's take the Assassin Concetta from my actual Gameboy Advance copy of FFTA. Thanks to her set-up, she has a competency rating of 213 (and keep in mind this is at end-game) yet due to how things work, she would only have a... 59% chance to complete Thorny Dreams. It's pretty fucked.
The less "competent" you are (aka. your success rate is below 50%), the more the reward is multiplied, but that's just playing the waiting game.
Pubmaster man explains this, but I'll cut it down. Essentially, you can bring two quest items for any endeavor you plan to go on... even if it's not required. See, there's some special ones that give you boosts or attract certain recruits to your team. That's neat and all, but you have the choice to throw quest items away... including ones that are one-of-a-kind and can't be replaced. If that happens, you can't complete every mission in the game and you'd have to start the entire game over again if you want to do it.
I learned this the hard way when I was younger. The completionist in me wanted to die that day.
Missions that you can't cancel and stay on the job board for an infinite amount of time are story-related ones, so let's quit babbling and jump into it already.
: "Yeah, there was one that seemed easy enough."
: "When can you start, kupo?"
: "Right away!"
You know, I wish it was easy to get a job in real life. I'm just saying.
[Current OST: Different World, Ivalice]
(Pretty cool song even if I don't find it particularly rousing)
If you press L on the overworld, you can see the laws before you fight. The reason it's colored like that is because that's what the laws are going to be when we get there, which is very handy.
Pressing R on a spot reveals what you can do there. It's also handy because this way you don't have to guess where missions are and waste time hopping from spot to spot.
Anyway... our first real quest in the entire game and it's to find some medicinal plants. Not very action-packed, but we're just starting out - you know, baby steps.
[Current OST: Walking in Ivalice]
(This one isn't really epic or intense, but I still like it because of how laid back it is for a battle theme. It's also the default theme for skirmishes on the overworld)
Something I should note: if a mission has a sword icon, you're fighting no matter what. It could be as peaceful as getting the groceries, but if that sword icon is there? Blood will run through the streets. Knowing our clan name, that's probably gonna make us infamous around here.
We are an absolute team of misfits. Whether or not any of these people are permanent, even on both routes, lies all on how capable they are.
Let's get this party started.
21 / 40 / 90 / 75 / 100 / 112 / 118
We are introduced to our first monster enemies here. Sprites are part of the fairy family - their health and defense are hideously fragile, but they make up for it by having incredible speed and magic power. They might as well be floating sentient vases for how easy they are to kill.
Their tell-tale move is White Wind, which is different from normal healing spells in that it uses the same amount of current HP that you have instead of your magic power. So if you have 1 HP, you will only heal 1 HP... which is kind of hilarious considering how easy it is to bruise them.
Funnily enough, none of the monsters in this fight had any skills... which left them to lightly bump into the team for peanut damage.
32 / 12 / 100 / 100 / 68 / 64 / 102
Goblins and their stronger cousin, the Red Cap, are straightforward fodder-tier units. They only exist to punch things really hard and have a questionable level of intelligence.
41 / 32 / 110 / 100 / 80 / 80 / 105
Oh hey, it's a Red Cap. While these guys are only slightly stronger with their most valuable stat being their attack, you have to pay attention to them if you want to get 100%. You see, these guys will go extinct by the end of the game. If you plan on capturing them or learning their attacks for your Blue Mage, you better make it quick because they don't last long.
Our very own White Monk, Nobel, has this under his belt. It hits every enemy that's adjacent to him, but not for much.
Wanda (snrk) is a Viera Archer that knows Boost, an ability that increases the amount of damage you deal for one attack.
Galor is our medic. He currently only exists to heal the team because White Mages are... obviously not meant for hurting people.
Remember what I said before with experience?
Yeah, you get experience with every action even if it doesn't mean anything. This is necessary for level grinding... although you have to admit, from Montblanc's perspective that came out of nowhere.
: "Thank you...? Kupo?"
Showing off what happens when you miss someone. I think this was like a 50% chance to hit or something silly like that.
Montblanc has access to all of the first-tier elemental abilities, but that's to be expected because the normal Rod for Black Mages comes packaged with all three of them.
Those numbers are kind of high for early game, but this is also demonstrate that area-of-effect spells have friendly fire. Fire will hit both my Soldier and the Goblin in a plus, so you have to be careful about your positioning.
What is it with the criticals lately? I almost never saw this in the actual cartridge version yet they're handing them out like candy here.
Wanda releases a boosted arrow to the Red Cap's temple. Uh... not very impressive, but I'll take it.
He does the same and more just by punching her. We really need to get to work on this team, jesus.
Meanwhile, Galor breaks White Mage tradition and goes straight-out pimp on the fairy. White Mages use canes too, so it's perfect.
If you're stronger than your opponent, you recieve reduced EXP. Oh well, them's the breaks.
Okay, this judge point thing is getting on my nerves.
Thankfully you can switch it off, among other things.
God damn, Wanda took a beating. It's a good thing Galor the playa is here to lend a hand. (Not across her face because that would actually kill her.)
Since Marche got a judge point, I can use the Combo that he somehow has. They have yellow tiles instead of green and are guaranteed to hit regardless of enemy evasion, even if they do the same amount of damage as a normal attack.
Still, look at this shit:
Badass. It gets better - there's different animations for each job class, which I have to show off in the future. (Forgive me for the strange quality of that gif, it does that from time to time)
Wow, Wanda, you're not that good. Even Galor is doing a better job of killing things than you and he's the healer.
Nobel finishes things in style. I never could have imagined Whirlwind being put to practical use, but there we have it.
Kick-ass. Aside from a certain person's performance, that went relatively well.
: "Some kind of medicinal herb. Muscma... something?"
: "Muscmaloi! That grows all over the place, kupo!"
For the longest time I have had no idea what muscmaloi meant. As it turns out, it's a corruption of musk mallow, a shorthand name for Malva moschata - a real species of plant native from Europe to Spain. That's pretty neat, I suppose.
: "Huh? Really?"
: "Yeah, there's some there. And over there too! I used to pick it all of the time when I was little, kupo!"
I don't think I can handle the image of a baby Montblanc.
: "Well, it was pretty cheap, I guess..."
I mean, who's going to charge you millions of gil just to go pick some flowers?
: "That figures. Still, it's probably good to start slow. Let's pick us some herbs and head back to town, kupo!"
Good. Oh yes, this is where it comes into play - AP, or Ability Points, are earned whenever you complete a mission. They are what allow you to master moves and be able to use them even in a different job class. For example, the most inexpensive abilities to learn are only 100 like the elemental trio of Fire, Blizzard and Thunder, First Aid and so on. The game really rewards you for going into fights, so be sure to get into them every chance you get.
... Yeah, get into fights. Yes, I am a good role model.
Beating that mission allowed us to get Lutia Pass. In the Normal route, we put it right next to Cyril and Sprohm... which net us a reward.
Let's see what it is.
... Well, we can't get it anywhere else so... yay?
In the Super Optimized timeline, we place it aaaaall the way over here. Things only get more chaotic, this I promise you.
Let's go check out the prison, just to see what it's like.
[Current OST: Prison]
(Easily the most intimidating theme in the entire soundtrack. I love it.)
Those are some scary looking guards. They're huge. The overall atmosphere of this place is very foreboding, which is appropriate considering... you know, it's jail.
If anybody in your clan gets imprisoned, you can release them for a price... although you can wait it out by fighting in battles without them, so I guess if you're less patient then this is the option for you.
One major thing now that we actually have a clan is that Marche has been silently made the leader by now. You can pay to get any other member of your team out of jail, but if Marche gets a red card it's just game over. Apparently Montblanc doesn't cut it as the leader anymore, which is silly.
You can voluntarily imprison yourself to remove some cards off of your debt. If Marche goes to get himself pardoned, the entire team has to stop what they're doing for a few days. I love how this poor kid got shafted into this position where, if he gets sent to jail, nobody can save him or the clan - it's pretty gruesome when you step back and look at the bigger picture.
Since we put Lutia Falls on the map, more missions open up for us.
Dueling Sub is the first dispatch mission in the game and it's a relatively simple one at that. Sometimes you'll be required to walk for a few days (aka. go from spot to spot), beat some enemies or complete entire battles to finish these... personally, my favorites are the ones that just have you walk around because I'm a lazy bastard. For now, though?
That's all the time we have for this chapter. Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we cover some more missions and begin our conquest. See you then.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Team setup:
(Marche, level 2,
,
) - "Okay, so... who's going first on that dispatch mission?"
(Montblanc, level 4,
,
) - "Not me, kupo. I prefer to do things when I'm with you guys."
(Ardin, level 3,
,
) - "That was a good result!"
(Nobel, level 3,
,
) - [Currently flexing his muscles]
(Galor, level 2,
,
) - "Where would this team be without me?"
(Wanda, level 2,
,
) - [Shoots a dirty look at Galor]
This chapter will have a ton of meat regarding mechanics and dialogue - FFTA is a big game and I'm amazed they stuffed in as much as they did... but for now, we have an adventure to go on.
[FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Chapter 2 - Into the Fantasy[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/FONT]
Spoiler:
Last time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the world changed from a snow-covered town to this desert wonderland. What awaits Marche in this new land?
[The screen pans over to show various NPCs going about. Marche walks forward only to collide against a reptilian man]
[Current OST: Unhideable Anxiety]
(I know his portrait here isn't the same color as in the game, but that's because he's an enemy unit. I'm not ripping recolors as there's already a lot of portraits to go around)
[Marche recoils from shock]
Way to go. I'm amazed because the first thing Marche does in the brand new fantasy land with magic and monsters is call someone what is essentially the ultimate Bangaa slur word. To let you know how embarassing this is, the NPCs next to us flee the scene immediately. They've seen this happen at least eleven times before, you know.
To think, Marche was making friends and throwing snowballs at bullies just the day before this. Now he's going to get his face kicked in out of perceived racism.
[The Bangaa man bears down on Marche but an unknown voice calls out]
???: "Kupo! There you are, kupo!"
I should mention one thing about Moogles in this game: They're so fucking cute! Okay, that's not necessarily a new bit of information, but their rabbit ears, the pom-pom coming out of their heads, the bat wings and their overall fluffiness make them so AAAAAGH
He doesn't even know who Marche is, yet he still sticks out for him. That makes him a cool dude in my book.
[Marche and the Moogle move away but the Bangaa confronts them]
You know, for the longest time, I never understood what kupo even meant. It's just a verbal tic that they have as a species, but younger Dan thought it was like some weird term of endearment. Keep in mind, I had not played any real Final Fantasy game and only had Kingdom Hearts during that time.
Oh god our apology didn't work. He is out for our blood and just wants an excuse to do it.
[A whistle SFX plays - A man clad in armor riding a bird appears out of thin air ]
[Current OST: Battle of Hope]
(One of the best songs in the entire soundtrack. It gets me pumped every time I hear it.)
This may be an upgrade compared to flinging snowballs in school, but I assure you that we're not out of tutorial territory just yet.
The first major change is that we get experience now. You get experience with every action that's not just moving or waiting, which includes using items, support skills or, hilariously enough, attacking your own allies. It's as amazing as it sounds. But seriously though, the experience thing is a neat concept, but I remember struggling to play this game during my first ever runs of it due to Marche being my only strong character.
Then again, I was never one for using my brain back in those days. I'd also argue that A2 did it better, seeing as the experience leaks to every member in that fight instead of just the ones who did anything.
Oh wait, there's more dialogue, oop:
Genius. I'm surprised Marche is only in grade school if he has this level of sagacity already. He's practically the master of the thesaurus.
Fucking savage.
Marche repeats the words judge and laws and I resist making a tactless METAL GEEEEEEAR joke.
This fine fellow is the Judge. His main job is to sit on an armored Chocobo, observe the flow of battle and enforce the law system. Laws are a major gameplay feature in FFTA that, to be completely honest, are horrendously flawed and only hold back the game instead of adding to it. On paper, it's an interesting idea as the laws are supposed to add variety to battles... in practice, it only makes things more tedious.
Right now, the law set for this fight is set to Forbidden: Items and Recommended: Status. What this essentially means is that we can't use items, but we get extra bonus points if we inflict status ailments on our opponents. If we break the law, we get hit with a penalty - either a yellow card or a red card depending on the severity. Yellow cards are merely warnings while red cards boot you straight to jail. That's right, the slammer.
Laws also have ranks - from one to six. Breaking a rank six law or knocking out an opponent with a forbidden action is grounds for immediate incarceration, so you know they're not kidding around. To top it off, if you get hit with a penalty regardless of the card color, you are stripped of your bonus points and at least one of the following will happen to you at the end of the fight:
- Gil fine - They take some of your money
- Item fine - They either take an item in your inventory or off of your own currently-being-used equipment
- No reward - The judge can confiscate the reward of the mission, which is a real dick move.
- Stat change - THEY CAN PERMANENTLY REDUCE YOUR STATS!
Later enemies have unique movesets and abilities that the law system doesn't even bother to count because that would be fair and we don't want that, but they also have special ribbons that make them immune to being imprisoned.
To make things worse, there's some absolutely ridiculous ones such as Damage to Animal, which punishes anyone that harms a monster unit. This is unbalanced because you can't get monster units to begin with, but let's say you get into a map that only has monster enemies in it. You attack one and you get a yellow card, no big deal. However, any further attacks will net you another yellow card along with an instant red card regardless of severity. The map is effectively made unplayable and you have to restart the game. IT'S ALL BULLSHIT!
So yeah, I'm not fond of them. Marche adapts to his new situation relatively quickly and gets his turn.
... Personally, if I were in his shoes and all of this happened to me, this would be my only reaction:
He's certainly improved since we last saw him, but his equipment is pretty crappy. It would only really be useful for vendor trash. Everyone in Fantasy Ivalice has slightly fuller cheeks and an overall brighter color palette - fitting considering this world is more "whimsical" in nature when compared to the real world.
Oh boy, here we go. You see, as opposed to Laws, the job/class system of FFTA is easily the game's best feature. It's where the game shines, in my opinion. This is what each of the five categories mean:
- A-Action Slots - These are your special moves. For example, Marche has access to Soldier abilities due to being in that class. However, this is where things get crazy because not only can you switch to another class, you can master the abilities of that job and use them as a sort of secondary slot. Not only is this insanely cool, you can create an infinite amount of combinations. A Black Mage with White Mage healing magic, an archer with the brute strength of a Fighter, a mixed set of both magic and physical strength, etc. The secondary slot can also be used for items, which is recommended if you don't have a second job to take advantage of yet.
- You learn abilities via your equipment. I'll elaborate on it when the time comes, but I have to warn you that your stat growth depends on which job you're currently in - Marche would not cut it as a Black Mage thanks to his hideous base magic stats, so keep that in mind if you plan on playing the game.
- Reaction - Abilities that automatically activate if the character is attacked. These range from the boring-but-effective Counter, the more situational Last X abilities (activates at critical health), Strikeback (Nullifies damage and counters - the same as Bonecrusher) and so on. They're very useful to have as they can serve as a good defense towards anything the game might throw at you.
- Support - Passive abilities. It can be as simple as boosted attack/defense, but then there's the advanced shit like filtering down elemental weaknesses, so you know things will get crazy.
- Combo - An ability I never really see covered, which is a shame because it's interesting... if situational. You see, Combos are a team attack move that don't use MP but instead Judge Points, the mysterious green number that you see below HP and MP. They are always accurate when used on their own, have hella-cool animations and the base power of the Combo will increase the more people with mastered Combo slots are next to you. The downside is that Combos can only be learned if you have Mythril-brand weapons, which are randomly dropped during non-story, non-mission skirmishes on the overworld. Still, they can be a badass finishing move on their own, which nets it a plus from me seeing as I'm a power-hungry tyrant.
Literally. Our Moogle friend is called Montblanc and, according to the Final Fantasy wikia, this is what his name means:
"Montblanc is "white mountain" in French. It is also the name of a sweet chestnut pastry popular in Japan named after Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Western Europe."
He is part of a family of Moogles, although we only see one other member in this game. Montblanc starts off as a Black Mage and he's one of my favorite characters in the game, if only because of his sharp wit and well:
Goddamn it, I can't. You're going to give me a heart attack from all this cute!
Montblanc deep-fries the White Monk that started this fight to begin with and gets awarded with a judge point. (His health also regenerates every other turn he gets, which is unique to this fight only. The power of tutorials compel him, apparently.)
Oh hey, they explained it for me. A bit too late there.
But yeah, The weird thing is that you can't get multiple judge points at the same time... even if you KO someone using a recommended action. I mean, JP isn't used for much if you're not going for combos so why not?
After a few whacks, the Warrior Bangaa runs off to a corner and uses First Aid in a vain attempt to heal himself. Yeah, a lot of your beginning abilities are pretty poopy, but you still need to learn them as they're required to unlock the better classes.
Still though, I can't help but feel bad for the two guys because they were probably having a normal day... and then Marche calls him a lizard and stabs him in the back. Kind of grim when you look at it like that.
What do you mean "somehow"? You did twice as much damage as them and you have a crazy bunny-bat person with magic powers on your side.
[Current OST: The World Starting To Move]
Are you sure that's a wise idea considering the judge just said not to use items? Sure, those second degree burns must be blistering, but that's what White Mages are for.
[The White Monk uses a potion, which causes the judge to blow his whistle]
"All violators will be sent to prison!"
Jesus, don't you think that's a bit harsh?
Judges don't care if you're bleeding to death or willing to save a burning house full of puppies - if you break a law, your ass is getting busted. You see what I mean by broken?
It's straight up the only real crapfest in this otherwise tries-to-be-idyllic setting. Montblanc knows people and they tell him all sorts of gruesome stories about life in jail. I imagine him sitting around with a nervous smile on his face while someone tells him about a time when they got shanked just to get a Hi-Potion.
Judge: "Perpetrator sentenced and imprisoned! Visitors are asked to go to the prison facility in Sprohm."
[The judge disappears]
You know, the funny thing is that I thought we had to go visit the guy that just got imprisoned... nope. He's rotting in jail for god knows how long. We sure made his day a mess, huh?
"What have I gotten myself into?"
WELCOME TO IVALICE!
[Current OST: Teach Me, Montblanc]
Things are getting wackier by the second.
Marche, why do you have to be so offensive? Especially seeing as Montblanc is the one who saved your dumb ass.
(By the way guys, I've pronounced it as Ih-valis for the longest time, but according to Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, the proper pronounciation is 'Eee-va-lease".)
See what I meant earlier regarding the names of the two places?
Montblanc has an incredible capacity for understanding if he's listening to Marche's story and not immediately claiming him as a crazy person.
At least he likes it. I can't imagine pitching this story to anyone that's not as chill as Montblanc.
[Current OST: At The Bar]
Pretty cool place. I'm really digging how everything is designed thanks to the whole "desert" aesthetic.
"Clans are like... groups of people who work together."
[Screen pans over to a group of people]
Buddy, you haven't seen anything yet. Just wait until we get the stuff that breaks the game.
Excuse me, what? You want to leave? The fun hasn't even started yet!
The air is so thick with awkward you can cut it with a knife.
That's a bit sudden, ain't it?
On second thought, Montblanc needs to dial back the eagerness just a bit.
But yes, we are allowed to name our team! It's interesting that they allow you to do this, because you can't do it for anything else in the game. Anyway, Nutsy is silly and I don't like it. We need something that can strike terror into the hearts of everything that gets in our path.
We'll paint the town red. I can imagine Marche being that kind of edgy overlord if the guys ever decide to do roleplaying games.
[Montblanc stares at him with a worried smile before nodding his head]
I can imagine everyone giving Marche a really sour look like "who the hell is this kid?" I can't blame them considering the really whacked shit we can do in this game.
"Place them to add new missions to the pub. Place them in a special order to reveal treasures. Try to find the special combinations yourself..."
Anyway, we finally get to see the overworld! As the text said, we can place locations wherever we want, but placing them in the right locations can grant us unique items that we can't get in any other way.
The Ivalician calendar has five months, with each month only having 20 days. Each month represents a specific species:
- Kingmoon - Humans
- Madmoon - Bangaa
- Sagemoon - Nu Mou
- Huntmoon - Viera
- Bardmoon - Moogles
Anyway, we get to place Sprohm - it's a Bangaa mountain town that serves as the home of the infamous prison.
Now, this is where things get crazy. I'm planning on doing two seperate, concurrent playthroughs of FFTA. By that, I don't mean an entirely new thread, but instead a change in how I handle the game proper. One will be a casual playthrough where I just go along the game and cover the story, while the other is a hardcore playthrough where I use every advantage I get to break the game.
I'm excited because really, it's a good way to show off the game in its entirety and I get to be a bloodthirsty tyrant overlord at the same time. Everyone wins!
I follow a specific guide on gamefaqs that lists the secret combinations for town locations in the overworld. It was made by AstroBlue, and it even comes with a handy dandy map that notes where things should go. For the Normal route, Sprohm goes here. This combination is called Perfect Ivalice, and each of the items unlocked are unique only to the Treasure Hunt feature. It's kind of standard, to be honest, even if we get rare items here and there.
This will also makes the most geological sense as, technically speaking, regardless of where we place them, the world will still act like certain places are next to each other. (The places with amber are the most plot important because they lead into the final areas of the game, actually. I won't elaborate because I don't feel like spoiling the game this early.)
Meanwhile, in the hardcore route, Marche places Sprohm here. This will allow us to get a really goddamn busted knife for thieves early. How broken? Well, it only allows you to STEAL ABILITIES FROM YOUR ENEMIES.
No, seriously. They let us do that. That's the kind of power we're going to play with in the hardcore route. It's practically intoxicating if this is what they let you do before the game is even half way done. To top it off, the original Tactics allowed you to break the game even harder, so it's gladly carrying on that tradition.
Anyway, there's not enough differences to count for now, so let's just look around.
[Current OST: Magic Beast Farm]
Interesting that the real world used this song of all things. The Monster Bank is an interesting idea as you can capture weakened monsters using the Hunter class (an upgraded Hume Archer) and you can utilize their powers via the Nu Mou Morpher class. You can feed monsters to increase their stats, although it will cut your wallet in half because you'd have to keep buying a lot of items to get a significant increase.
Not only that, you can get a unique mission if you capture a monster... which involves you going after monsters that have escaped. I'll save that one for when we get to it.
[Current OST: Mysterious Shop]
Shops are very peculiar in FFTA. You see, they update their stocks based on how many battles you've participated in - 10 for the first upgrade and 20 for the second. After that, nothing really happens unless you start liberating areas around the map. As pretty as it looks, Ivalice is a rundown shithole with rogue clans and all sorts of evil skullduggery going down - each location in the game is in control of another clan who is likely just using it as a parking lot or something crude like that. Everything will cost 50% more as well, which is where I get involved.
The more places you liberate, the more unique items and discounts you get - up to a maximum of 50% off. Each town has unique discounts based on what weapons their population can wield. For example, as only Bangaa use spears, they have a 10% discount in Sprohm and so on.
Finally, there's the local pub/bar. These serve as "mission control" as you can hear rumors and take on missions from that fine fellow with the bitchin' turban and beard.
Rumors are essentially flavor text on the world as a whole along with various events that pop up at certain intervals. The ones marked with an exclamation point are merely recaps for things we already know, so we'll skip them. Checking rumors are useful as they can unlock missions that you otherwise wouldn't have... and throw off the story of the main game by a bit, but who cares?
"The king then established the judicial system to enforce his laws. Knowledge of the means to control the laws have been passed down the royal line ever since."
So if I'm reading this correctly, laws are magical limitations that have been part of the kingdom of Ivalice for hundreds of years. The reason judges are so stringent is because they keep things non-lethal - with no judges, people would be dying off left and right in clan battles for real. Defying what they say is pretty much spitting on the face of Ivalice's entire judicial system, which makes me really worried because the finicky nature of laws means that even innocent people get thrown in jail for petty reasons like "oh you used this attack when you had no way of stopping it".
I'm going to give the game the benefit of the doubt and assume laws are different outside of battle, but that's still pretty disturbing. It gets more complicated later on, just sayin'.
"The reason? Frequent and seemingly arbitrary changes in the laws. It's gone so far that pundits wryly say she's '... doing it to please that brat, the prince.'"
This will become important later on. I will grind my teeth to dust when we get there.
Borzoi? Isn't that a breed of Russian hunting dog raised to go after wolves? Oh well, I guess it's appropriate because we're gonna put them down.
Enough messing around though. Let's start the first real mission of the game.
Missions are easily the most addicting aspect of FFTA. There's a total of 300 in the entire game along with some bonus ones, although only a handful are required to complete the story. You can get either money rewards, equipment or quest items. Sometimes you'll be required to bring a specific item, skill or a job class depending on the mission.
Missions also have ranks, but they're used to note the difficulty. For example, the easiest are the race recruit missions, which have a difficulty of 30. The hardest is a Rank 7 mission called Thorny Dreams which has a whopping 356! That's so impossibly high that it breaks the game, because the highest the difficulty can normally get is 256. You can make it easier on yourself if you have a strong character because the game has a formula for competence, which requires rounding up all of your stats along with the strength of the weapon you currently have equipped.
The formula is so complicated that I can only sum it up like this: Let's take the Assassin Concetta from my actual Gameboy Advance copy of FFTA. Thanks to her set-up, she has a competency rating of 213 (and keep in mind this is at end-game) yet due to how things work, she would only have a... 59% chance to complete Thorny Dreams. It's pretty fucked.
The less "competent" you are (aka. your success rate is below 50%), the more the reward is multiplied, but that's just playing the waiting game.
Pubmaster man explains this, but I'll cut it down. Essentially, you can bring two quest items for any endeavor you plan to go on... even if it's not required. See, there's some special ones that give you boosts or attract certain recruits to your team. That's neat and all, but you have the choice to throw quest items away... including ones that are one-of-a-kind and can't be replaced. If that happens, you can't complete every mission in the game and you'd have to start the entire game over again if you want to do it.
I learned this the hard way when I was younger. The completionist in me wanted to die that day.
Missions that you can't cancel and stay on the job board for an infinite amount of time are story-related ones, so let's quit babbling and jump into it already.
You know, I wish it was easy to get a job in real life. I'm just saying.
[Current OST: Different World, Ivalice]
(Pretty cool song even if I don't find it particularly rousing)
If you press L on the overworld, you can see the laws before you fight. The reason it's colored like that is because that's what the laws are going to be when we get there, which is very handy.
Pressing R on a spot reveals what you can do there. It's also handy because this way you don't have to guess where missions are and waste time hopping from spot to spot.
Anyway... our first real quest in the entire game and it's to find some medicinal plants. Not very action-packed, but we're just starting out - you know, baby steps.
[Current OST: Walking in Ivalice]
(This one isn't really epic or intense, but I still like it because of how laid back it is for a battle theme. It's also the default theme for skirmishes on the overworld)
Something I should note: if a mission has a sword icon, you're fighting no matter what. It could be as peaceful as getting the groceries, but if that sword icon is there? Blood will run through the streets. Knowing our clan name, that's probably gonna make us infamous around here.
We are an absolute team of misfits. Whether or not any of these people are permanent, even on both routes, lies all on how capable they are.
Let's get this party started.
21 / 40 / 90 / 75 / 100 / 112 / 118
We are introduced to our first monster enemies here. Sprites are part of the fairy family - their health and defense are hideously fragile, but they make up for it by having incredible speed and magic power. They might as well be floating sentient vases for how easy they are to kill.
Their tell-tale move is White Wind, which is different from normal healing spells in that it uses the same amount of current HP that you have instead of your magic power. So if you have 1 HP, you will only heal 1 HP... which is kind of hilarious considering how easy it is to bruise them.
Funnily enough, none of the monsters in this fight had any skills... which left them to lightly bump into the team for peanut damage.
32 / 12 / 100 / 100 / 68 / 64 / 102
Goblins and their stronger cousin, the Red Cap, are straightforward fodder-tier units. They only exist to punch things really hard and have a questionable level of intelligence.
41 / 32 / 110 / 100 / 80 / 80 / 105
Oh hey, it's a Red Cap. While these guys are only slightly stronger with their most valuable stat being their attack, you have to pay attention to them if you want to get 100%. You see, these guys will go extinct by the end of the game. If you plan on capturing them or learning their attacks for your Blue Mage, you better make it quick because they don't last long.
Our very own White Monk, Nobel, has this under his belt. It hits every enemy that's adjacent to him, but not for much.
Wanda (snrk) is a Viera Archer that knows Boost, an ability that increases the amount of damage you deal for one attack.
Galor is our medic. He currently only exists to heal the team because White Mages are... obviously not meant for hurting people.
Remember what I said before with experience?
Yeah, you get experience with every action even if it doesn't mean anything. This is necessary for level grinding... although you have to admit, from Montblanc's perspective that came out of nowhere.
Showing off what happens when you miss someone. I think this was like a 50% chance to hit or something silly like that.
Montblanc has access to all of the first-tier elemental abilities, but that's to be expected because the normal Rod for Black Mages comes packaged with all three of them.
Those numbers are kind of high for early game, but this is also demonstrate that area-of-effect spells have friendly fire. Fire will hit both my Soldier and the Goblin in a plus, so you have to be careful about your positioning.
What is it with the criticals lately? I almost never saw this in the actual cartridge version yet they're handing them out like candy here.
Wanda releases a boosted arrow to the Red Cap's temple. Uh... not very impressive, but I'll take it.
He does the same and more just by punching her. We really need to get to work on this team, jesus.
Meanwhile, Galor breaks White Mage tradition and goes straight-out pimp on the fairy. White Mages use canes too, so it's perfect.
If you're stronger than your opponent, you recieve reduced EXP. Oh well, them's the breaks.
Okay, this judge point thing is getting on my nerves.
Thankfully you can switch it off, among other things.
God damn, Wanda took a beating. It's a good thing Galor the playa is here to lend a hand. (Not across her face because that would actually kill her.)
Since Marche got a judge point, I can use the Combo that he somehow has. They have yellow tiles instead of green and are guaranteed to hit regardless of enemy evasion, even if they do the same amount of damage as a normal attack.
Still, look at this shit:
Badass. It gets better - there's different animations for each job class, which I have to show off in the future. (Forgive me for the strange quality of that gif, it does that from time to time)
Wow, Wanda, you're not that good. Even Galor is doing a better job of killing things than you and he's the healer.
Nobel finishes things in style. I never could have imagined Whirlwind being put to practical use, but there we have it.
Kick-ass. Aside from a certain person's performance, that went relatively well.
For the longest time I have had no idea what muscmaloi meant. As it turns out, it's a corruption of musk mallow, a shorthand name for Malva moschata - a real species of plant native from Europe to Spain. That's pretty neat, I suppose.
I don't think I can handle the image of a baby Montblanc.
I mean, who's going to charge you millions of gil just to go pick some flowers?
Good. Oh yes, this is where it comes into play - AP, or Ability Points, are earned whenever you complete a mission. They are what allow you to master moves and be able to use them even in a different job class. For example, the most inexpensive abilities to learn are only 100 like the elemental trio of Fire, Blizzard and Thunder, First Aid and so on. The game really rewards you for going into fights, so be sure to get into them every chance you get.
... Yeah, get into fights. Yes, I am a good role model.
Beating that mission allowed us to get Lutia Pass. In the Normal route, we put it right next to Cyril and Sprohm... which net us a reward.
Let's see what it is.
... Well, we can't get it anywhere else so... yay?
In the Super Optimized timeline, we place it aaaaall the way over here. Things only get more chaotic, this I promise you.
Let's go check out the prison, just to see what it's like.
[Current OST: Prison]
(Easily the most intimidating theme in the entire soundtrack. I love it.)
Those are some scary looking guards. They're huge. The overall atmosphere of this place is very foreboding, which is appropriate considering... you know, it's jail.
If anybody in your clan gets imprisoned, you can release them for a price... although you can wait it out by fighting in battles without them, so I guess if you're less patient then this is the option for you.
One major thing now that we actually have a clan is that Marche has been silently made the leader by now. You can pay to get any other member of your team out of jail, but if Marche gets a red card it's just game over. Apparently Montblanc doesn't cut it as the leader anymore, which is silly.
You can voluntarily imprison yourself to remove some cards off of your debt. If Marche goes to get himself pardoned, the entire team has to stop what they're doing for a few days. I love how this poor kid got shafted into this position where, if he gets sent to jail, nobody can save him or the clan - it's pretty gruesome when you step back and look at the bigger picture.
Since we put Lutia Falls on the map, more missions open up for us.
Dueling Sub is the first dispatch mission in the game and it's a relatively simple one at that. Sometimes you'll be required to walk for a few days (aka. go from spot to spot), beat some enemies or complete entire battles to finish these... personally, my favorites are the ones that just have you walk around because I'm a lazy bastard. For now, though?
That's all the time we have for this chapter. Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we cover some more missions and begin our conquest. See you then.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Team setup: