Final Fantasy Tactics: No Orlandu

[ZargonX]

So, I've played through this game a few times over the years, and I just started through again, when it occurred to me that I'd never done it without using Orlandu through the latter parts of the game. In fact, Orlandu was usually how I got through most battles. He is, truthfully, an incredibly unbalancing character. Has anyone out there played through without using him at all once he joins? I'm going to try it this time, in addition to not using any of the "story" characters. We'll see how it goes...

[FrustratedPoet]

Since I would have loved to play this game, only it was never released in the UK, I am resentful of anybody mentioning it. I hate you.

[SnowFire]

Yeah, I've tried the "No story characters" run through. In fact, I made it even more challenging then that, because I restricted myself to using a somewhat suboptimal party (though still decent): that being the FF2/4j party. Named Ramza Cecil and made him Squire with White Magic by the end; Kain was Lancer with Item; Edge was a Ninja with Steal; Rydia was a Summoner with Black Magic; and Rosa was a Priest with Time Magic.

The thing is, the late game is as difficult as you want it to be, in some sense. Against battles with lots of regular enemies, Blade Grasp on your fighters will render them invincible (you do know the Cheer Up/Scream trick for raising Brave on Fighters, correct?). The only really nasty stuff by that point will be against Celia & Lede (both of which fights you can just suicidally attack either one of them to win, or attack Elmdor to win the second) and against Balk with his darn super-dragons (Orlandu or Meliadoul breaking his gun is wonderful in that fight, which you won't be able to do). The smart thing to do would not to use a semi-hampered party like I did; I'm quite convinced that the nastiest mage combination (without spending ten zillion years levelling up Calculator, I strategy I consider boring and cheap) is White Mage/Summoner, and in my minimum time runthrough (go immediately to the next location, no levelling up) I required 2 of them in order to get through (along with an Oracle/Black Mage, Ramza as the fighter of all trades, and Agrias for most of the game). Being able to heal your party, while tossing massive magical death in the form of fast-casted Ramuhs and Holys at your enemies, is absolutely invaluable.

Anyway, there are all sorts of fun FFT challenges you can do. My current one involves going through every battle a man down, so I'm playing with 1 fewer character than I can. If you have any more specific questions, I'll be happy to answer 'em. (I could probably write a book on various FFT strategies).

[ZargonX]

Since I would have loved to play this game, only it was never released in the UK, I am resentful of anybody mentioning it. I hate you.

Sorry, I'll try not to bring it up again

[ZargonX]

SnowFire: I've seen over on GameFAQs they have a whole list of challenge plays like that. After I complete this current game, I think I'll try to go back through and complete some of them. I think an FFV party would be interesting, and would also fufil the man-down criteria.

In my few times through the game, I actually have never gotten a calculator, oddly enough. I think it's because I'm attached to certain classes more than others, even if they aren't the best... I just can't resist having a bard around, no matter how many better things are out there...

[Richard Bruns]

I beat this game easily, and I don´t even know who Orlandu is. I never used the story characters unless I had to, they always seemed too weak. My main party was Ramza, two other Squire cadets he started the game with as fighters, and one Chemist cadet that was also in the start. Ramza and the other two squires (Spider and Ingram) all followed the same progression from squire to ninja, and the chemist (Jolene) stayed as a priest the whole game.

These four fought in almost all battles, since you almost always have to have a story character in the fifth slot. On random battles, I had the support of a black mage for the first part of the game and a black chocobo (Ausorn) for the second half.

The way that characters level up makes this an ideal build. Whevever anyone gets a JP, everyone in the party gets that many JP for that job. It took me a long time to figure that out. My guys spent a lot of time as knights before I figured out that it would be good to change jobs, which meant that Jolene was a level 6 knight IIRC, even though she never had that job.

If three people have the same job, this synergy makes them very good. It also rewards you a lot for keeping the same people throughout the game. This is because the early classes have a lot of important skills like move+1 and equip helmet, and the support characters will earn these abilities just by being around. If you add characters later in the game, they will not have nearly as many skills, and their job selection will also be limited.

But the main reason I won was that I discovered how to make super-ninjas. Ramza, Spider, and Ingram all earned all the monk skills, and then progressed to Ninja, where they equipped Martial Arts, the monk action skills, and every item that boosted strength. They were doing over 400 damage with each punch, and being ninjas, they punched twice. The monk skills like wave fist gave them excellent medium-distance firepower, augmented by the ninjs throw skills for long range attacks. These guys were insanely powerful, and IMO unbalanced. Monk attacks increase exponentially with strength, so for balance monks are barred from equipping many things like twist headband that boost strength. But ninjas can wear these, and lots more. They also seem to have stats that are inherently better than any other class.

I flew through the last part of the game so quickly and easily that I got bored. In only learned later that these battles were supposed to be hard. I killed most bosses before they even got off a single attack, and the final boss went down in two or three rounds. The only people who were even remotely challenging were knights with high armor and defense, but since earth slash has a 100% hit ratio, all I had to do was line up a couple good shots with that at the right elevation.

Of course, the result of this was that I went so fast that I missed a lot of cool stuff. I will have to play the game again, once I get back home.

[SnowFire]

RB: Considering how much you see Agrias and Gafgarion slay things in the beginning, I'm rather surprised you came to that conclusion. In any case, story characters have improved base classes over Squire that you can then mix with other classes. Orlandu's Holy Swordsman first off has high HP with good stats and can equip all the awesome Knight Swords and strong armors. Then give him access to ALL the Holy Knight, Dark Knight, and Divine Knight capabilities. So he can inflict ridiculous damage on groups from a distance, replenish his own HP or MP by damaging a single enemy, or have a 100% chance of breaking an enemy's weapon, while damaging them. Orlandu can take out entire battles by himself, if they're against standard enemies that can't whip off cheap-ass attacks quickly (like, say, Celia & Lede).

Anyway, if there's one minor complaint about FFT, it's that "their job selection is limited" for a rather short amount of time. You only have to be level 2-4 in a class to unlock the next one, generally, and I know what skills I want- why waste time learning Move+1 when I can head straight for Move+2, for instance? Considering that you get Agrias almost at the end of Chapter 2, I had her pretty much equalized with the rest of the party by Chapter 3. And Orlandu ruled too much to care he was behind in skills, same with Meliadoul.

These guys were insanely powerful, and IMO unbalanced

Oh, there's lots of horrible, unbalanced things you can do with just generic characters. Let me assure you it can only get nastier with the uniques. I will say that one weakness that party might have- especially at lower levels- is that Ninjas have some of the lowest HP in the game, and a big summoning attack can wipe several people out at once. And the Monk's revive technique only works at precisely the same elevation, so it isn't always reliable.

I think one of the more ridiculous things I've seen are Calculator combos, which I avoid due to the levelling required to make them work- but if you've got 'em, you're unstoppable. Equip Wall Rings on everybody, do massive Pray Faiths to raise lots of enemies Faith to 100, and then start tossing off Holy and other ridiculous attack spells at random, slaying enemies left and right while bouncing off your party.

[Richard Bruns]

You´re probably right. I only played the game once, and it is my policy with RPG´s to never look at any information other than what is in the game manual, the first time I play through. I switched to super-Ninja sometime in chapter 3, after spending a lot of time on other classes, so they had plenty of HP. Even then, I learned very quickly that it was good to take out Summoners ASAP.

I used battle tactics to get around the weaknesses of my characters. My priest could raise any monk that got killed, and I made sure never to move her to a square that was not adjacent to an equal-elevation square. I was surprised to read a guide that said priests were horrible classes, I used mine quite effetcively. Sometimes I would start to charge up a raise spell before someone got killed, which meant that if I timed it right he was back on his feet almost immediately, minus status ailments.

I didn´t have to do any drone leveling to make my super-ninjas work. When they used normal ninja weapons, they were doing about 110 damage a hit, which was comparable to the other classes. I was stunned when I realized how powerful the monk attacks were.

But even in the beginning, Agrias and Gafgarion were not much more powerful than my standard guys. That´s probably because my typical response to battles where I got wasted was to go off and level up for a while, and then come back later. FF Tactics is one of the few games where random leveling is actually fun. The other is Grandia, which had an excellent battle system that also involved range and movement.

Argh, now I´m getting all nostalgic. I´ve been in this country over half a year now, almost entirely cut off from computer and video games, and I´ve still got most of a semester to go.

[Frankychan]

Heck no! I love Orlandu! Him, Worker 8, and Melaindu (sp?) are my core party. I whupped the last boss in no time flat with them. Worker 8 is the best cause magic doesn't hurt him.

But I did have a non-unique character that I used the most. Made hime a Ninja that could kick (almost) any bosses arse!