Revier's Chronicles of Ivalice - Final Fantasy Tactics, Part 5

 The journey back to the protagonist's family castle was pretty uneventful, though I discovered a rather curious bit of information:

The tooltip for all of the knights' debuffs and equipment breaking skills implied that they could be used at range with ranged weapons. Hmm, this certainly made the prospect of training up an archer with knight skills quite interesting.

Back to the story. Dycedarg was unsurprisingly livid about the lads shirking their duty for the sake of "adventure", and would've issued stern reprimands had it not been for his superior chiming up for them and strongly convincing him to not only forgive them, but to let them join their main campaign of attacking bandit hideouts.

He reluctantly acquiesces to this, putting them in charge of attacking a small bandit fort. The intrigue deepens, as once the lads leave, both Dycedarg and his superior talk in hushed tones about how their rescue had unexpectedly aided them and that they needed to act fast because the king's condition was worsening. Hmmm.....

The castle finally served up an actual bow, alongside considerable armor upgrades, especially for the knights. I noticed that this game had a considerable number of equipment upgrades even in its currently short span of time, and that the vast majority of these upgrades were straight stat upgrades, thus encouraging a lot of trading gear upwards, so to speak.

The thief fort featured some of the classes I had been striving for, namely thieves and white mages. The latter were curious because they packed some powerful offensive magic, which almost ruined my knights. Fortunately they were poorly guarded, and made for rather easy pickings, especially since spellcasting left them extremely vulnerable to damage.

The fort was also an introduction to leader centric maps, as its objective was to defeat the fort's leader. She was better armed than her subordinates, but not significantly so, and as such, once her wizards were cut down, she proved quite easy to kill.

This map was also where the game brought its theme of classism and class warfare to the forefront, with the leader constantly entreating the lads with pleas to their humanity, and Algus ruthlessly swatting them down and outright claiming that she, and the people born in non-noble classes like her, were little more than cattle, whose sole purpose was to loyally serve their noble masters to their fullest extent. Her defeat and Algus' behavior leaves both the protagonist and Delita shaken, making the former question their deeds while the latter directly protests Algus' words, making them resent each other.

Back home, the brigands attempt to directly attack the family castle and abduct its inhabitants. It would seem that the death of the splinter faction's leader didn't stop other brigands from feeling resentment with their leadership and acting on impulse to gain whatever money they could, even if it involved extortion. Their assault decisively fails and they're forced to flee, but not before abducting Delita's sister and injuring Dycedarg considerably.

Naturally, the team is quite upset to hear about this. Dycedarg reassures them that the brigands have mostly been reduced to a single fortress, and that they're planning a decisive siege to end them there and rescue Delita's sister, though the latter point comes off as an afterthought. Delita doesn't take this well, and Algus, still smarting from Delita's words, begins acting like a full blown classist bigot, insulting him for his birth and urging the protagonist to break his friendship with him. This naturally doesn't work out well for him, and he gets beaten up and then firmly ordered to leave. He does, but not before spilling out the location of the fortress, and a path to its back entrance.

Phew! That was a lot of story indeed. The next mission involved a final showdown against the former fort's leader, as she defended the path to their final fortress. She was enraged by Algus' words, and openly berated both Delita and the protagonist for treating them like dirt and caring little for their suffering. Her screeds made them both lament killing her, and hilariously also exposed just how sheltered the protagonist was from the injustices of his society. He legitimately thought the brigands could have their concerns appeased, if only he brought them up to Dycedarg! Poor guy clearly had no idea whatsoever about economies, and how they affected hierarchies.

Gameplay wise, I attempted turning the protagonist into a thief. This required a lot of rigmarole, as the thief could only be accessed by leveling up the archer job, meaning I had to swap the roles of the three fighters quite a bit to maintain an archer and two knights at all times. The thief was certainly fast, and decently evasive, but its attacks were extremely pathetic, as knives were horrible weapons. Thankfully, this battle too was manageable once the wizards were killed, as it was their aoe spells that were the most threatening - by now, melee opponents had become quite manageable indeed, and though the leader had upgraded her equipment once again and also learnt how to counter melee strikes somehow, she was still easily isolated and taken down.

Two more battles remain ahead. I find the story a bit unconvincing as is, with the protagonist getting shaken up a bit too readily. I understand that, in the interests of storytelling, some things need to be abstracted and simplified, and it's certainly possible that his reaction is intended to characterize him as a good hearted but naive individual who was unaware of the travails of the people below him, and can't stand them now that he's heard of how harsh they are, but it still seems like an all too sudden shift in character. There doesn't seem to be much "weight" in the story of classism and class struggle, so to speak, which feels rather disappointing considering Matsuno's pedigree.

Gameplay wise, the class system is certainly interesting, and shows many signs of promise, even with me sticking to about two or three classes. On the other hand, it seems like building good characters involves a lot of class switching and deliberation in purchasing abilities. This by necessity calls for significant micromanagement, which, while enjoyable in service of clear goals, does get rather taxing when indulged in for prolonged periods of time. This is despite the sharply smaller team sizes here; so far, I'm still limited to five characters in an active team, with the fifth member only recently getting a chance to participate in fights.

The end result is that, rather than a strategy RPG, it feels like a "regular" RPG which happens to outwardly exhibit the structure of the former. This is of course neither a good nor a bad thing, and as long as it stays interesting and enjoyable, I will happily explore it, with its full share of quirks and oddities.

Alright, that does it for this session. See you all next time!