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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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Final Fantasy Tactics. I always hear its praise and apparently the story is really great, but... I just can't stand it. Despite being a massive fan of its sequel on the GBA.
I've had multiple story battles end before I even got a turn it, just because the NPC I was supposed to protect walked straight into his death. And that's kinda true for every NPC, in a game with permadeath and NPC companions for a big chunk of the inital hours. Sometimes you just gotta repeat a mission several times for a single chance to actually play and win.
You want to recruit monster? Great! Now they multiply like rabbits and your whole squad will forever be clogged with monsters.
Outside of NPC suicide, a lot of the battles are stomps. Either you know how to abuse the jobs and become a literal god or you kind of suffer, since once again permadeath. Oh, but even if you struggle through, you just get the most overpowered unit for free, making the last part mostly trivial anyways.
There a literal softlocks if you save right after a mission with a mandatory follow-up without being able to handle it. Your save will just throw you into a battle you cannot win.
It just feels like a game made before proper playtesting was a thing.
I haven't played it, but it's interesting that it's too difficult.
A lot of the games I go back to from the NES era are often too difficult for me. I find a lot of them to be unfair and I wonder if the difficulty something that was brought over from the arcade games form right before it
Either that or padding to make the game longer. If that's the case, I prefer side mission padding because at least that's usually optional lol
For the early NES era, it's literally this - game devs were mostly coming from the arcade sector, and depending on the company the design mentality of trying to get them to spend more quarters died more slowly for some than others. It calms down a bit for later NES titles, especially ones that weren't in common genres for arcade games.
There's also the fact that a $40 game in 1988 would be over $100 in 2024 money.
Imagine buying a game (for you or your kid) only to beat it in an hour, and there's nothing else to do with the game.
Skilled gamers did rentals because they made sense when games couldn't be nearly as big as they are today.
Loved the GBA version. Solid game, simple but effective; would recommend to anyone.
Have fond memories of FFT but in hindsight I kept playing mostly because I was a kid and thought grinding was normal. The plot is also cool but the original translation was shit and I couldn't figure out what was going on half the time.
Also the soft locks. Sometimes it's better not to save when the game gives you the chance...
Plus most of the named characters took center stage and your team was mostly irrelevant once you got Orlandu.
Definitely one of those that needs a new release. The underlying system that continued into the Advance games is still one of the best sandboxes for fans of Final Fantasy jobs. Just not being able to undo moves feels ancient today. A lot of the rest of the jank was just how Matsuno did games, though. He's one of those that thinks players should grind a bit, even on Twitter recently defending a notoriously difficult recruitment quest in Tactics Ogre Reborn.
Unfortunately, despite the otherwise reliable Nvidia leak, it's sounded like a remaster for this one isn't coming any time soon.
Actually I'm curious about Tactics Ogre Reborn, did you play it? I initially wanted to get it but my recent experience with FFT stopped me from doing so. Would you recommend it despite my gripes?
I believe there still is permadeath, but I read somewhere that units only actually die if you let them fall in 3 missions or something like that. That would be fine, if they don't spam rescue missions and NPC companions.
I have played Tactics Ogre Reborn, yes. I think it depends on what you're looking for. The story is one of Matsuno's better ones, and the way to navigate its branches is still to this day not a device that's been used much in gaming. Parts of the gameplay are still dated, and the equipment system is on the obtuse side.
On your specific gripes, yes, the permadeath works on a "heart" system, so it's not one-and-done. That's kind of necessary too, since there are some instant death situations (mostly in the game's side areas). The good news is that everyone is qualified to use resurrection items, so the limitation for that will be money, especially early on. The game's battles--especially the story battles--have fewer rounds than FFT does. There is a generous rewind system that helps, too. Between those two factors, for the most part, it's going to be less of an issue of permadeath and more whether you can actually clear the battle.
Unfortunately, Tactics Ogre has long been notorious for NPC AI issues. It seems somewhat improved in this version but it can still certainly be a problem. Here it's not going to impede your story progress (unlike a couple of fights in FFT where it's Game Over if a guest goes down after you picked the wrong dialogue option to start the fight), but it will close the opportunity for recruitment temporarily. Rewind helps again here.
Amusingly, the game specifically warns you about softlocks, so as long as you're not accidentally deleting saves it won't be an issue. It's possible you might find yourself deep in a long dungeon and can't handle the last floors, and in that case you'll have to go back to an outside save.
Overall, I would rate the difficulty higher than Final Fantasy Tactics. As you found, FFT gets to a point where player knowledge equates to a massive power increase. Player knowledge plays a role in TOR, but not really to that degree. A solid grasp of the tactics is required, and the game does offer a far smoother difficulty curve. It's really only a certain early sidequest involving some undead that has a difficulty spike, and that's mostly because players may not realize it's a battle they can come back to later.
Yeah, I went back to finish this game after 20 years of having not beat it. It definitely has a lot of major issues. The original literally does not use the standard control scheme of X button to confirm. It was worth it to be able to say I finally beat it after all these years, but it is 100% one of those games that make you realize that some old games were not polished or refined in the slightest. And also that translating from Japanese to English was apparently just not as well-tread ground back then.
And yeah, fuck Orlandu. You spent the whole game raising up your other swordsmen? Lol get fucked