Be Excellent To Each Other

Gah! I've put about seven hours into this bloody game now and can't decide if I like it or not. Every time I decide it's rubbish it pulls me back in, every time it makes me think it's great it then turns around and flings poo at me.

Here are my blog entries, to illustrate.









Is anyone else playing it? It just makes me want to smash things sometimes, but it's such good fun when it's not BEING SHIT IN CAPS now I've got a handle on the jobs system and the interface.

WAIT!

I AM OFFICIALLY AN IDIOT!

I read the law description again, in the Clan Info, for the law about not using MP.

It was a law against NOT using MP. So all abilities that didn't use MP were banned. Hence using Moogle Lance, which doesn't use MP, broke the law.

So the games not broken, my eyes and brain are.

D'oh.

Forget I said anything.

From what I've played so far it's awesome, just like the GBA version.

You say combat is easy, well it is at first. Things will ramp up soon enough and when you factor in the Judges and rules you will need to have a pretty decent team.

Jobs & Skills, same as the GBA version but without the 'Job Wheel' screen which I liked.

Using the Bazaar to unlock weapons - Hmm, nice idea but takes ages sifting through the menus.

Overall 110%

'Fans of the original, especial Zardoz, will love it, because he has no more Advance Wars to play'

Don't swap Jobs just for the sake of it, keep a balanced team and 'learn' the skills of about 4 or 5 weapons before shifting. ALWAYS have a healer class.

I didn't play the GBA version (well, I did, but for less than an hour, I think) so it's all new and confusing to me.

I guess I just need to learn what the laws actually mean - and then actually read them properly.

Also, Beastmaster skills appear to be rubbish.

I'm playing it - 33 hours in so far, which is a bit scary (very quiet at work at the mo, so I do nip off and do a couple more missions when I can).

A couple of things - once you've got some money, you can buy weapons with more abilities for each class, rather than changing jobs each time you master something. I am a bit of a completist in this - tend to buy all the weapons for, say, a fighter, and then work through. I have still flicked some people back and forth as I've got new equipment, but not so often.

If you are looking at the list of jobs and some are unavailable, press Y (why?) and it will tell you the prerequisites - for a thief, it's two mastered soldier action abilities, I think (which means two of the 'main', weapon-given ones, rather than passive things like shield bearer and so on).

The P skills are passive - master the shield bearer one and equip it and you should be able to carry a shield whichever class you are, so long as you're carrying a one-handed weapon. That catches me out from time to time - some swords are "1-h", then you switch to a "2-h" and can't pick up a shield. Or the 2-h ones are greyed out until you unequip the shield. Some classes have a doublehand skill that lets them carry a 2-h weapon in one hand, freeing the other for a shield.

Have you been to the bazaar? Bit time-consuming if you don't do it often, but that matches up bits of your loot to enable you to buy new bits of kit. And therefore gain new abilities.

It all makes some sort of sense to me because I played the GBA one - with that one I was really in the dark, using up loads of missions until I spotted the different types of skills you could master and how to go about it. This one seems fairer - in the GBA one, breaking the rules was really serious. Here you miss out on your bonus ability and the bonus items for upholding the law. So although it's annoying when a charmed or confused character breaks it, it's not so bad. One or two missions I've not had a clue how to do without breaking the laws - kill a monster to win a clan title, and after two rounds he's reinforced - but don't do more than 50 damage? Throw the law out of the window, I say. From time to time there's a really tricky mission which is good, too - I've failed missions more often in this one already than in the GBA one.

I always put someone out with healing magic abilities. At the moment it's my original White Mage, who is now an excellent fencer, but who can heal when she needs to. I've got at least one other character who could heal with some ability juggling, too.

I change jobs whenever I've not got any skill-giving weapons for the current job and do have spare skill-giving weapons for other jobs. If you see what I mean.

Kinda. It's like an intermediate class that you need to master skills in to make things like Mage and Elementalist available. They are ZOMG.

I see your Beastmaster and raise you an animist - ooh, poison! No, wait - it affects *every* unit on screen? Sod off then!

Yeah, I use it a lot. Still haven't been able to create any new equipment with thief abilities my thief doesn't already know yet, though.

I think I only got that relatively recently - Loot v.4 (an addition to Loot v.1, and a separate skill) - maybe after 15-20 hours. I had had time to change her to a white mage, learn a couple, then to a soldier to get back the abilities to be a thief again, certainly.

I played it again for an hour at lunch time.

Just posting to confirm its aceness.

Definitely a 'Marmite' game though.

I played the original GBA game for about 40hrs (I bought the system for it).

But after the 40 hrs I wasn't really near finishing it, and I realised I wasn't having that much fun. Bascially playing the boring missions so I could have the fun of fiddling with all the fun weapons and skills. So I'm avoiding the time sink this game would be.

It was such a pretty game though...

This is prettierer.

Oh, I've just fucking had it with this game.

I was doing a "No Ranged Attacks" clan trial for about the fourth fucking time, because it's against cunts that charm you and then use ranged attacks, which counts as you breaking the law.

But not this time.

This time, though, I failed because - get this - my normal fucking attack randomly knocked back my target. How the fucking fuck does that count?

Anyway, this is the single stupidest, most unfair game in the history of gaming and I've had it.

Kill it. Kill it with fire.

I heard that the laws were toned down now, and that all you lost for breaking the law was a temporary perk, and the ability to use Phoenix Downs and resurrect spells to the end of the match.

So fuck it, arrow the bastards.

Not in clan trials. Broken laws = FAIL.

I'm glad you've changed your mind back to hate, because that previous incident you mentioned (where you're forbidden from damaging the enemy too much in one hit - what the FUCK?!) made me furious just reading about it.

Yes. I could pull all the ranged attacks off my guys by removing equipment and/or changing jobs before the battle, but that would leave me with a puny, messed-up team. The jobs and abilities system and interface are complicated enough without going down a blind alley and then trying to remember what exactly I was doing with everyone. I think, currently, I only have one or two party members without any ranged attacks.

But I take Remedies (which cure Charm) into battle and if anyone gets charmed I use them if they've got a ranged attack. Sometimes there's no time - they get charmed and then it's their turn before anyone can cure them - and that's incredibly annoying, which is why I mentioned it, but I can just about live with it. I take the loss and go back and try again a little later when I've calmed down.

But the knock back thing, no, there's nothing I can do about that one, as it's a random result of a non-ranged attack.

Basically, the game is just rolling some dice and if the right numbers come up it says "Sorry, you lost." It's just a completely random way of you losing the battle and there's nothing you can do about it. And, sorry, I was prepared to learn the quirks of the laws. I was prepared for the fact that the laws apply even to units you've lost control of, even though I think it's an appalling decision. But, no, I'm not prepared to play a game where there's a random chance of failing a battle through absolutely no fault of your own. That knock back thing is just broken and for the sake of my own sanity I'm not going to play the game any more, at least for a while.

Which trial is that? On most of them it doesn't matter if you break the laws, so it won't affect you too often. Knock back applying as a ranged attack is odd, though - I thought if the law was no ranged attacks then that only applied to archers, cannoneers and the like, not some of the other characters'. Hmm, I will have a shufti at the clan trials.

The 'general' trials give fabby clan perks and for those you can break the laws, for sure.

Negotiation I, going for the third title.

In normal battles the laws aren't so bad, you just get a bonus and get to use Phoenix Downs if you keep within the law, but for Clan Trials it's all just horribly broken.

Anyway, I brought my PSP and Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions into work today, so maybe I'll switch over to that version.

Oh yes - bit unfortunate, that. I just did Negotiation ii and nearly got jiggered by being beserked but lucked out. Try the other trials, though, if you can bear it - no such rule stipulations there, and you'll boost your abilities nicely.

That said, I only went back to them because you reminded me, so they're not crucial - though I guess that as you get more powerful clan buffs, staying within the rules (bah!) becomes more important to you, which is quite a neat way of making the law more important as time goes on.

I've switched over to the PSP version, which seems to be similar, but with messier graphics, more cut scenes, an even more open-ended job system and - hooray! - no laws.

Except I'm back on the DS version, which I've played for several hours over the weekend. Not bad for a game I've given up on in disgust.