screenshot Let's Play Final Fantasy Tactics (WOTL): The Nadir of Videogames

[maybe]

alright as dumb as that first line was with the guy announcing his feelings

i want to further mention that he says "is taken wing"

shouldn't that be "has taken"

the phrase "is taken wing" is terrible and I hate it

[Parrhesia]

well caught

[Laura]

10 hours ago, Integrity said:

please never speak about ff12, a good game, again in this thread, which is dedicated to an awful series of bad games

FF12? A good game?

 

[Parrhesia]

Update 17
In Which Some Fucking Bullshit Let Me Tell You

Spoiler

 

Goug. A city of peace.

There's just one big problem; Goug is not meant to be a city of peace. Goug is meant to be a city a shitton of templars are falling unto, ripping it apart brick by brick and Baert guys limb by limb.

I don't actually recall this tiny scene from the PS1 version at all.

Can you, though?

Anyway, we're in Goug, and that's a chance to buy another gun. Now both Selkie and Portia are carrying. Because out of every other class in the game (thief, for flavour? squire, because fuck it? archer, to make them more of The ranged class?) the only generic gun classes are chemist and orator.

Now we ca- FUCK

This isn't a new abduction, this is the old one from the Prologue.

haha who would be fooled by that and then make a big mad writeup, not this guy,

We can recap the Zodiac exposition from the Cardinal.

'Murder most foul'. Because you just couldn't fucking hold yourself back, head translator. Who was apparently a guy called Tom Slattery. Fuck you, Tom Slattery!

This is what the three buildings actually look like, by the way.

As soon as we leave Goug - or, well, try to - 

Maybe Mustadio is actually not good at things.

Fucking, wow! Holy shit, Mustadio lets us down again, the grass is green and the sky is blue, Orbonne guy shits in the woods and has apparently got a fucking open-door policy to opposing military.

fuck mustadio

Wow, I guess Musdadio must have passed down his genes of sucking and getting captured. You'd think that shit would be recessive.

Mustadio impotently clenches a fist at Ludovich for like, a second, it's great.

... Friend?

guys what do you think ludovich will do once we give him the stone

Well you're all wrong, because he's going to keep his word, after the rock is lobbed to us. As opposed to waiting for Mercurio, who lobs the stone first.

He's going to break the bargain anyway by trying to kill us, why the fuck would he make it easier on us? And Musdadio is STILL IN HIS KEEPING.

I guess they figure they don't need force multipliers when they have summoners, and, hell, they're probably right.

hahaha

We shoot our guns over the gap, and it's enough to keep the summoner on a healing tack, at least.

Their opening moves deprive us not only of all this shit, but someone's armour.

We deprive them of their summons.

We exchange blows, but right now? They've lost their two best guys, so like 3 normal guys worth of material, and we've lost a support unit and Mustadio, so a net 0 loss of material.

The current best longbow (in Solyeuse's hands still, by the by) is the Lightning Bow, which very rarely has a chance to follow up its attack with a Thunder spell.

Free of guests, we do manage to pin the last archer to the roof and loot all the bodies! The loot is all useless and the crystal gives Mercurio nothing.

he's
inside

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure this is where we broke the Geneva Convention on Swordsman.

I dunno, did you try looking at his fucking face

Yeah, just in case Mustadio got captured and dragged to That Specific Meeting Place where, by the way, it was random chance that Mercurio was just sort of looking, it's not even like it was a specific rendezvous point (all he said was 'somewhere downtown') he'd tucked a false stone. While I guess having the real stone still on his person. There's no sign the real stone was stashed down here, but even if it was, this is where Ludovich's goons tossed your guy, so it's not exactly THAT secure.

Nnnno, Mercurio, we gave them a fake. He's holding the real one.

I guess, probably.

bro seriously

Mercurio, whose established political nous by this stage is 'actually somehow less than zero', instantly figures out the Cardinal's whole plan, which is to summon Jesus' Disciples to help him rule the world.

This is, in fact, the Cardinal's whole plan.

They have never heard of boats before.

You can totally refuse to bring Mustadio, but there is no dialogue to acknowledge this. He rejoins with a completely newly-randomised set of abilities as a Machinist - now he has Leg Shot and Arm, has lost Seal Evil, and never got any of his Archer JP. When guests join you, use them absolutely in the short-term.

You can tell that the sea route will work out fine by the fact that there's two fights on the way, naturally.

what strength
seriously
I put this to a chat vote anyway, maybe some guys really like Albin idk

KILL COUNTER

i have no complaints about that map in any way honestly

 

 

[Dandragon]

You had a guy named Albin? I never noticed. Mostly because I can barely tell the difference between your guys and the enemy, sometimes.

[Parrhesia]

Albin was our Fifth Guy in Chapter 1, for random battles.

[Mage Knight 404]

The sass talk toward Mustadio saddens me.

But what saddens me even more was the sass to Tom Slattery who game me my favorite version of FFIV to play, I cannot tolerate such aboose! (actually I can this is your LP)

And of course a C A R D I N A L turned out to be not on the level, c'mon Mercurio, step up your metagame!

[The Malign Knight]

On 11/4/2017 at 1:43 AM, Princess Lore said:

FF12? A good game?

 

Don't worry, It's okay to have bad tastes ;)

Anyway, I belive that the devouted knight Gaffgarion is mocking in that dialogue with Dycedarg is most likely Agrias: the title just fits her character, since she has a great devotion towards and hell, I may even say that their relation ship is far more than a simple relation between a knight and her liege.

Also, It's funny that Dyce says "It leaves me wroth" when he will become

Spoiler

The Lucavi Adrammalech Thw Wroth

>Mercurio, whose established political nous by this stage is 'actually somehow less than zero', instantly figures out the Cardinal's whole plan, which is to summon Jesus' Disciples to help him rule the world.

Eh, this is less about Politics Itself and more about playing on the toughts and emotions of the people, which Ramza mpst likely knows extremely well due to him travelling with Gaffgarion as a mercenary in Ivalice. Or maybe I'm just stretching things idk

[Parrhesia]

Update 18
In Which GERONIMO

Spoiler

 

Delita and Mercurio have come to terms with one another. Delita's trying to break the system, Mercurio's just trying to do the right thing - one short-term right thing at a time.

Random equipment upgrades hide stat boosts. The hat a couple hats ago boosted Attack. The green beret boosts Speed and we will basically all be wearing it for a while.

Let's do a sidequest. These are the precursor to FFTA's Dispatches.

Team Evil has a meeting.

Gyazo dies and takes my screenshot with it, but the Pope tells Ludovich to shut the fuck up.

The Pope doesn't care about the kidnappers because they have nothing on him - he just wants Mustadio's rock. I don't know why he assumes Mustadio will bring the rock with him (even though he probably does).

Gaffgarion doesn't really know what the risks ARE, he just figures there probably are some.

Gaffgarion's failsafe for the plan where they use the princess as bait is to use Probably Alma? as bait. 

The blatant contempt that both dudes have towards Ludovich is hilarious, honestly.

And then the Pope kills Ludovich. I guess because Ludovich's become a liability, but let's be real, mostly it's just to show that Yes, The Pope Is Evil Because Of How Edgy We Are.

And, boom, a shitton of gil and a mediocre amount of JP. That was fun, let's do it again!

Oh. It turns out that every single Errand is just like. A: 'We set out.' B: 'Good!' A: 'We searched for the thing. It was hard. Luck smiled upon us! We found the thing. We opened the thing. The thing was full of money! 'Zounds!' C: 'That went well.'

These were notorious in the original translation for being horribly chopped up. "I got a good feeling!" and "This is the way!" are the two backup cheerleader lines everyone remembers.

We find Agrias in a spot of bother.

Agrias says no lines here. This line from Mercurio originally ended in "Geronimo!!"

This is probably the last we're going to see of Solyeuse. Cherish him and his Geomancy.

yeah sure, pal.

So yeah, that's a thing now.

They sent over a barrage. We're just about to survive it when the lightning bow procs.

Our shitty luck continues - Thurio misses finishing off his mage, Portia/Selkie can't get the sight line to finish the job and misses the 27% Entice.

BM. But it turns out I fucked up how many HP he had in the first place? Precisely how, I'm not sure.

PACE.

Solyeuse cleans up.

This thing instant-kills sometimes. I hope Agrias decides to come with it.

The very next action, Thurio was going to finish the archer off. It's not an unfair death, by any means - I made mistakes - but I'm still frustrated.

I like you, Solyeuse. I'll probably keep you around as long as I can.

In dick moves, incidentally, Agrias comes lower-level (12) than our enemies (14-15).

This fireball did just 17 to Thurio - now on 20 Faith. Mercurio has 18.

Welcome to the squad, Bertrand.

Uhh, you'll just have to trust me that he's killing their other mage. By the way, the Temple colour scheme of dominant red/secondary white/blue is probably my favourite in the game. I wish there were more colour schemes. Literally nobody uses yellow, for instance, and seperating bandits from Corpse Brigade from mercenaries could've been a thing. And there's another faction later on that uses the temple colours but IIRC doesn't quite fit.

When given the chance to Entice, I usually Entice, even when I should really just be shooting guys.

See, why would I waste a gun on Mustadio when I have these two?

This really just makes me think of Golgol Mebrahtu, who I think is playing in the Czech Republic these days.

Yes??? Obviously??

yes

KILL COUNTER

as always, knight knight archer archer black mage black mage
as always, both dudes of a class are the same sex
as always, One of the classes is female
as always, this graph is getting out of hand.

 

 

[Mage Knight 404]

The best part about this run is slowly witnessing the Kill Count graph being bent and warped, until by endgame it'll just be a white void filled with Knight capes and birbs that are not dead.

(Agrias H Y P E)

[Parrhesia]

ngl the kill counter is the best part of the LP imo

As Ike confided in me; "You've got bad graphic design down to a science."

[eclipse]

Archers seem to be an equal-opportunity class.  I like it~!

[Parrhesia]

yeah shame the women are all arbitrarily worse because mechanics lol

[Radiant Dragon]

Does their (slightly) higher MA boost the damage of Lightning Bow spell procs? I believe it does, but I'm too lazy to double check at the moment. Regardless, you'd still rather have the males' higher PA, but it is something.

[Parrhesia]

It would, pretty sure. The magic attack procs work off the regular formulas - certainly faith, as becomes apparent whenever Merc/thurio proc something and it's hilariously weak.

Still, even in that one specific best-case scenario (spell procs seem incredibly rare), the actual shot damage being higher still favours men. And they get more HP, on top of that. And it really is a significant handicap.

[Parrhesia]

Update 19
In Which WORDS
 

Spoiler

 

We do some random battles to prepare for the torrent to come, during which a berserk chicken harvests a crystal.

Shut up, Bran. God. Anyway we don't need him because the next battle is FUCK

I wonder who the man in a brown colour scheme with a white moustache is

Disguises off. Oh look it's knights and archers

god, don't remind me

Anyway, you know when you should bargain? When they think you have the princess. That's when you bargain and you get the things you want. Now you have no leverage. Jesus.

Alright, s-

Alright lads place your bets, is Mercurio dumb enough to fall for the idea that Dycedarg is an actual person with nuance or just a comic Quislingbot

This is what I say every time Sydney concedes a penalty tbh

Gaffgarion, who has shown no prior fucks given to the nobility, pictured caring for once.

This is the best line in the translation. I don't know why but I cracked the fuck up. Here's a tip, translators; folksy homespun Texan wisdom or foppish wanky bullshit dumb idiot pseudo-Shakespeare aesthetic; PICK ONE.

Well, we're done with the dialogue as he advance-

YES! YES THERE WAS! THERE WERE MANY WAYS OF AVOIDING THAT! AVOIDING ZIEKDEN WOULD HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN EASIER THAN SOMEHOW MANAGING TO STAY THE COURSE AT ZIEKDEN. ZIEKDEN TOOK A SPECTACULAR ARRAY OF BAD DECISION-MAKING FROM LIKE, EVERYONE INVOLVED.

Have you noticed yet that FFT bosses like to heavy-handedly screed at you? This feels inconsistent with Gaffgarion's established 'ruthless professional' act - it might not actively contradict anything he's said or done, but Gaffgarion was like. Milleuda and Wiglaf gave us long screeds about how nobility is evil. Argath gave us the long screed on what nobility should be and how Mercurio didn't live up to that. We'll almost definitely get more lectures on that in the future. Gaffgarion does not need to become another of those guys.

... What the fuck?

Anyway, they have eight dudes, we have five. Their dudes are all higher-level than us, control the high ground, and we're split into bite-size chunks

Anyway, we trust in blind luck - it backs us, for now. Gaffgarion doesn't have a shield anymore, which I guess is something. Welcome to the squad, Laurence.

And then, just when I think we might get through this, best compat!

Agrias has unique dialogue if you bring her - and you should bring her. She shows up not long after the game gives you another player slot and who else would fill it? If we weren't body-snatchers, we wouldn't have Solyeuse, so it'd just be one of Agrias' guards. But yeah, she's cool and good.

Anyway, that's Agrias out of commission for a bit. One of their archers fucks up and shoots their own knight in the back.

Gaffgarion's wasting his breath. I don't like the new-model speech-making Gaffgarion.

One down, one turned. Still 4.5 v 6. I should really have put Mercurio in a proper class for this.

Oh thank fuck. Chartain's another body for Gaffgarion to chew on.

Chartain can throw rocks.

Chemistry really does feel like cheating sometimes.

Hey, did you know that sword skills can fucking CRIT? By the way, he heals strictly how much he deals - it's not a proper drain. Selkie had like seven health, Gaffgarion heals the full 80. But it's okay - the knights pour a hundred damage into him. They're good boys. My friends.

Time boy down, but not before she invalidates Agrias with a Stop. Truly hoist by her own petard...

Who, your own bodyguard and a speech-writer with a pistol?

sigh

Chastain, I think I like you.

Laurence? Ehhh.

you rude bitch

And that's a wrap.

Our two new dudes keep walking.

DIALOGUE FOR THE DIALOGUE GOD

PLOT FOR THE PLOT THRONE

They're interrupted by some unwelcome guests.

Hey, it's the guy who earlier paid dudes to kill us. Including Gaffgarion who may or may not have been working for the Cardinal at that time - I've lost track.

MIC DROP FROM FOLMARV, which is another of FFT's really stupid and bad names

"Ho ho ho, we are very evil."

Translation: Ovelia's a pretender to the throne that never actually needed to go off because a son was born which fucked up the plan.

Having secured the incredibly valuable asset of someone who believes she is the rightful Ovelia, they then tell her she isn't Ovelia, thus both devaluing her and also making her hate them.

You know what good allies do? Utterly alienate their star royalty prospect.

Delita, on the other hand, knows it's better to trap a fly with honey than with vinegar or however the bullshit saying goes.

KILL COUNTER

Standard FFT Battlegroup, Variant 2

 

 

[Dandragon]

I have completely lost track of whatever plan the baddies have. I assume this is normal.

[Parrhesia]

The Illuminati (the Pope, his mercenaries Gaffgarion and the ex-Baert, and all the golden armour dudes) want to start a war so they can just wait a while and then show up with their Zodiac Stones and end it and go down as heroes. Larg/the Beowulf family/the Northern Sky and Goltanna/El Cid/the Southern Sky are the two factions. Each has a puppet with a tenuous claim they want to dump on the throne. They are ignorant of the Illuminati's existence/influence.

I don't know if you've received all this information technically yet but you're just sort of left to piece it all together so I don't really mind clarifying it as best I can.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Parrhesia

[Dandragon]

delluminati

 

Edited April 14, 2017 by Dandragon

[Parrhesia]

Update 20
In Which We Twirl, Twirl, Twirl towards Victory

This is the best update in the game.

Spoiler

 

sup Wiglaf

hahaha how'd that one work out for you

Another templar, I guess? (Yeah, it is.)

"Haha all your men died under your incompetent leadership

...

...

. . .

no offence"

hahaha loffrey? LOFFREY?

So here we have the mysterious Opposing Force taking shape within the church. Loffrey (lol) steps a bit closer.

"Two faces - just like the nobility, am I right? (haha)"

"Have you, alone, the strength to build an empire to stand the test of time?"

Wiglaf turns away, but he's hella into this.

Anyway, I have an audacious plan. We're going to fuck Lionel Castle up.

But I have a plan.

Okay, I guess this makes sense - Mercurio snuck in from the postern to open the front gate.

He didn't do a good job.

Gyazo then pops up at an inopportune but our outside dudes are surrounded.

This is dumb. Why doesn't Gaffgarion - not exactly the picture of chivalric honour - just pack another dude or two with him?

Anyway I hope you like the big red throbbing power cock

But if he won't cheat, I will.

Meet Birdzu and Birdie Sanders, our new friends.

That was one of our Green Berets, thanks guys. Thanks knights. What a great class to be like, every fucking enemy.

Alright, thank you compatibility! Thank you for the restart.

I reset but because I'm totally wrong-sighted, I manage to move them more in a bad direction, by the way the game actually orients their deployment the WRONG FUCKING WAY, which is great.

Okay, good news! The AI RNG has decided we may continue.

So why black chocobos, you ask? Monsters are terrible at fighting, and black chocobos in particular lack the yellow's Cure and are also really slow for some reason.

This is why.

Gaffgarion is too confused even to attack next turn. What the shit.

His dudes outside have no fucking idea what to do now.

So now we just smash him.

Birdie Sanders plays tag for keeps, motherfucker.

Gaffgarion, by the way, has evaded 3-4 arrows and one Mercurio, and been hit once (Birdie Sanders never misses). What a good boss!

Birdzu's extreme faith in God allows the summoner to (barely) vapourise him. He has 66 HP. Or, well, had. This is a danger - we need him to back the fuck off, since he's their only threat.

I've never seen the game bug out like this before.

OH SHIT

We get lucky. It's just the shitty summoner heal. He does it again - he presents by far our biggest danger, and it's really annoying that I marginally positioned a bird that he walked at. Gaffgarion, incidentally, is blocking fucking EVERYTHING.

Well, not quite everything.

And then he celebrates by eating his mentor.

Time to take potshots from OUR walls.

My plan was that I'd build everyone up, eventually open the gates when Mercurio was buffed to shit and then kill everyone. But, well. We don't actually need to open the gates at all.

I tire of this game. Let's make this quicker.

We get... Steal Gil, which costs Ten, and Re-equip, which is Free.

Gaffgarion is dead. Everyone is dead. The castle is ours.

We cheated. And we won.

KILL COUNTER

hahahahahahaha

 

 

[eclipse]

How many days have passed so far?  Because at the rate you're going, you'll go past 40 knights.

(I'll leave.  .)

[Dandragon]

I think we are filling up on too many knights. I don't wanna get fat parrhesia, please stop feeding me knights.

[Parrhesia]

knever

[Radiant Dragon]

That thing with the game appearing to bug out is just the cursor trying to show you the stats for two different heights on the same tile. I believe there's a setting in the options to adjust how frequently it jumps between the two. There aren't a ton of maps that have tiles with overhangs and such, and I believe most of them are story/sidequest maps anyway, which is probably why you've never seen it before. 

I oftentimes wonder what this game would be like with less knights and more diversity of other classes, especially later on in the game. There are some classes you don't see as enemies at all, for example.

[Parrhesia]

Off the top of my head I'm fairly sure there are five or fewer enemy dragoons, geomancers, samurai, white magi, orators, mystics (yes, that entire branch) and no dancers, bards or mathematicians. Also no onion knights or dark knights, the stupid bullshit WotL classes.

In fact, let me round those up!

CLASSES YOU WILL NOT BE SEEING IN THIS LP

Dark Knight

https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/c/c7/FFT_DarkKnight.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20070420194940

Doesn't want to display the image fsr.

You need to master knight and black mage, and get to level 8 in dragoon, samurai, ninja and geomancer, and kill (specifically, crystallise/chest) 20 enemies. Nobody in history has ever been a dark knight. If you do, you are Gaffgarion with a couple more abilities that are not as good as the basic ones.

Onion Knight

Onion knights have no abilities and the worst stats in the game, until you master every class, at which point you have no abilities and the best stats in the game on a unit that has access to every real class in the game. Including, in fact, dark fucking knight! They also can't gain experience, because... ... ... ... I dunno. You also need to master (or close to) squire/chemist to get the class in the first place.

Arithmeticians

https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/7/77/Calculator.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090405145306

Doesn't want to display the image fsr.

Also a really stupid class. Get level 5 white/black mage and level 4 mystic/time mage, which is rough but not outlandish. Your reward is a class that's over twice as slow as all other classes and has universally terrible stats across the board. Their perk is they get to use mathematical parametres to target existing magic - like. They'll learn statistics - Level, CT, height, etc - and numbers - 5, 4, 3 and Prime. And then use those parametres to instantly target guys with the spells they already know. So, for instance, Level 5 Fire would set everyone with a level multiplied by 5 on fire, across the map, instantly.

What this means in practice is that your mage is a liability for the loads of JP it takes them to master the parametres, and then immediately upon switching to a real class they break the game over their knee.

They do have an interesting reaction ability. Damage Split halves the damage dealt and shares it with the guy who dealt it. Hit them for 100 and it becomes hitting them for 50 and yourself for 50.

Some people have completed the game using only math boys with no spells, just hitting people with sticks. They spend literal hours grinding at the job centre until they find guys with exactly 70 bravery and exactly 40 faith with exactly one starsign, ignoring the fact that they will unlock orator in the process of grinding to arithmetician and can, you know, fix their fucking bravery/faith to those limits.

DANCERS

Dancers are actually interesting. Their deal is that their stats are garbage but they just sit around dancing, and in the process hindering the enemy in some way every turn. You unlock them by putting a woman through the physical jobs and getting level 5 geomancer/dragoon. They can learn to fly which hilariously costs 5000 JP in WOTL for some reason.

BARDS

The opposite of dancers. Awful stats, level 5 summoner/orator, male. they sit in a corner and buff your entire team.

MIME

Level 8 squire/chemist, level 5 geo/dragoon/summoner/orator and your reward is a class that learns no abilities and can equip no armour.

Edited April 15, 2017 by Parrhesia