Revier's Chronicles of Ivalice - Final Fantasy Tactics, Part 7

Ramza's team, or rather, Gafgarion and the holy knight Agrias' team decide to pursue the princess' kidnapper. On their way back however, they are ambushed by a large group of assassins hired by a shady man. These assassins prove to be quite tough, and indeed, the battle ends up being a bloodbath, thanks to the two enemy wizards getting extremely advantageous positions. Were it not for the presence of the dark knight and holy knight, Ramza would've been completely and utterly annihilated here.

I'm not exaggerating in the slightest; just look at all those bodies on the ground! Sheesh!

The next battle was a fairly uneventful one, only involving rescuing a chocobo from many a goblin. Goblins were weak and frail enemies, and as such the encounter was quite the step down.

But then came the encounter after, where they finally caught up to Delita and the princess:

It turns out they had been ambushed by the protagonist's brothers' forces themselves, who wanted to kill them both! The whole thing was a frame job to get rid of an inconvenient member of royalty and simultaneously blame a rival faction for the deed, likely to weaken their political power or even overthrow them somehow. Gafgarion turns out to be in their employ, and turns on Agrias, but the protagonist refuses to join him, and takes her side, along with the rest of the party.

This fight could've been rough, but by now the new classes were starting to mature, and while the enemy team was very durable, consisting entirely of knights, it had no ranged nor aoe damage, and so could be picked off one by one. The rough terrain also played a significant role, with half the enemy force being effectively cut off from the party, and destroyed effortlessly by Delita's flashy moves. He had certainly grown substantially stronger in the interim!

 With the fight over, Delita asks for the princess to be delivered to him, as he'd be able to defend her better. He reasons that, with their fight just now, they alienated Dycedarg and Zalbaag's forces, and so now would be actively wanted in their territory. The opposing faction, meanwhile, would only be too willing to deliver them up for justice to clear their name.

While his argument makes sense, he fails to clearly specify what his alternative solution would be, and naturally the princess prefers the protection of her own entourage over that of a stranger who had tried to abduct her not too long ago. The protagonist, now lacking for direction again, decides to fall under the princess' company, and after a bit of discussion, they decide to make their way to a church controlled state, as that's the closest place that's free from the reign of either faction, with the church's authority guaranteeing them a safe haven.

On their way, they ran into the last fight of this session, where brigands were harassing a young man into handing over some sort of valuable. The party tried to rescue him, but there was a tall wall between them and him, and he was quite exposed to the enemy party, who were well armed and finished him off in short order! It didn't help that there were two wizards ready to hurl spells at him from their first turn itself!

I quickly realized that there was no way to do this with my current gear or party, and ended up looking through the various towns available for new gear, which hilariously included all the town in the protagonist's brothers' territory. Doing this, I discovered that both the archer and knight had upgrades in the form of elemental swords and bows! Well, those were certainly welcome. I also found new useful accessories, most notably one that granted extra height allowance.

Hmm...height allowance...tall wall...idea! Give my offensive attackers more jump to clear the wall and get to the enemy team!

Sure enough, that worked, though not precisely with thieves, contrary to what the screenshot depicts. I just switched to them in hopes of capitalizing on their speed and extraordinary movement allowance to take out the mages early, but they did too little damage and took too much damage in turn for that to work.

Anyhow, with the man saved, he gave some insight into why the brigands were hunting him - they were after lost ancient technology, and he was an archeologist of sorts digging up and researching said technology. He was quite well versed in it too, even his weapon, a rifle, was ancient technology excavated from the ruins of this lost civilization! He begs the party to take him in and protect him, and while the protagonist and Agrias are rather reluctant, the princess overrides them both and welcomes him in!

And that does it for this session! It's nice to see the game growing some teeth, and it's also nice seeing the new classes grow, though the knight and archer still dominate most fights. Counter attacking from the monk and White Magic from the priest in particular served me very well, with Ramza's counters adding up to a lot of damage and healing (and revival) spells giving the priest the ability to extend good support from a distance. It will certainly be interesting to see how they shape up, and what new classes show up next. Until next time!