Revier's Chronicles of Ivalice - Final Fantasy Tactics, Part 8

My knight had finally acquired enough skill points to get the armor breaking move, so I purchased it and turned him into an archer. Let's see how well he fares!

Ovelia has a brief, inconsequential moment where she regrets that people are fighting and dying for her, and that she's hunted for her status as royalty. She briefly mentions being friends with the protagonist's sister, and before they leave for Lionel the protagonist attempts to cheer her up a little by teaching her how to play the reed flute. Lol.

Anyhow, the team continued journeying towards Lionel Castle, the church's capital in the region. They were again waylaid by the brigands pursuing the young archeologist, where they quickly learnt of a new, terrifying weapon in their employ.

Summons.

These were the second level magic spells made to cover a much larger area, and the classes summoning them were quite well protected, with a formidable and hefty force holding the hill overlooking them. I was stumped for a while, and ended up with quite a few failed attempts.

Eventually, however, I figured out a solution - send two thieves, one on either side of the hill, have the archer distract the enemy forces and support the guests at the center, and have the white mage support first the thieves and later the central forces. I also optimized one of the thieves to maximize their evade, so as to make them a tempting yet elusive bait. This worked out fairly well, though the fighting was still tense, with many a potion consumed and many a cure and revive slung by the white mage.

Their arrival at Lionel castle seemed to go well, but the game then cut to Dycedarg scheming against them, claiming that he already had discreetly got the church to side against them and deliver the princess to him. It was also revealed that the assassins back in Dorter were not in his employ and had been sent by some mysterious third party, neither allied to him nor the opposing faction. Hmm...

Back at Lionel, the reigning cardinal revealed that the brigands were looking for mythical stones of holy powers, each stone corresponding to one holy warrior of the zodiac. These warriors had, in ages past, defeated a great evil and sealed him away. He reassures the party that he'll provide the princess a safe haven and send a force to punish the brigands hounding the archeologist. The party, ignorant of any wile machinations on the cardinal's part, eagerly accept his words, and the archeologist and the protagonist set out to his home city to assist the church's forces. Welp.

The shops of Lionel have several considerable pieces of gear, including shoes that straight up nullify lightning, a cloak that boosted magic alongside evasion, and buyable ethers.

The next battle was against the undead in a swamp, and, aside from the swamp poisoning units that stepped into its waters, was fairly unremarkable. One annoying aspect of the team's current composition was that the monk lost out on the physical damage bonus offered by the Headgear, as they could wear no helms! Oof. This not only made them lose out on a good chunk of HP, but also made their damage scale back considerably compared to other classes. It didn't help that a second knight had finished learning how to equip swords on other classes and had transitioned into being a thief, thus benefiting both from the swords and the headgear, and consistently tying the supposedly superior monk in damage, and sometimes even outdamaging them!

Anyhow, the two reached Goug, the archealogist's hometown, without further incident. However, they noticed something quite strange....

Goug looked completely undisturbed, with no signs of large scale violence anywhere. This was suspicious and quite unsettling. The archeologist decides to split to discreetly look into things himself.

Goug has guns, or rather specifically, the same model of gun the archeologist was using. I had got the opportunity to deploy all five possible units on the last fight, and my fifth party member was still a chemist, and so capable of wielding a gun. I bought it for her, figuring that it would do her more good than a dinky knife, and I was proven right in the very next fight.

Said fight occurred as soon as the protagonist tried to leave.

It turns out the church had indeed betrayed them, and had no intention of stopping the brigands. In fact, they had already captured the archeologist's father, and were now harassing him for his stone. He reluctantly relinquishes it to them in exchange for his release, and their leader pretends to let him go, before calling on his mooks to finish him off! Quite shameless indeed, these brigands.

The fight was essentially a halfway mirrored version of their earlier fight, with their summoners being at the center and thieves and archers taking one each of their sides. The summoners were again the biggest threat and caused me to wipe once, but on the second try I won with a more cautious approach. Reversing the positions made the formation much easier to deal with, as their core offense, so to speak, was left wide open to attack, and thieves, while certainly faster and more annoying than knights, were also considerably weaker.

Both fights also highlighted a fairly glaring weakness of the armor breaking archer - while he was effective against units that relied on heavy armor to get their bulk, the armor breaking was completely worthless against units that either didn't wear armor, or were already relatively frail. Further, having it equipped meant denying him access to items, which did get dicey a few times. I also despised that he was helpless at close range, with nothing but a tackle to respond to any assailants in melee. I hoped to find something better for him soon.

The session finally ended with a huge string of cutscenes, where the archeologist revealed that he'd somehow hidden the real stone on his person all along! Wow, these must've been some really incompetent brigands! The two, now realizing that the church couldn't be trusted, feared for the princess and Agrias, and decided to rush to her aid via a discreet back path into the castle.

On the way. the protagonist meets Delita again, who warns him against mounting the rescue and once again reassures that he can protect the princess better without elaborating on the how and why. It's cryptic and suspicious bullshit and the protagonist rightfully rejects him over his "offer".

Elsewhere, the extent of the church's treachery is revealed, as not only did they renege on their promise to the archeologist, they were in fact using the brigands to collect the stones, in hopes of invoking the power and memories of the zodiac heroes to rally the people behind them and wrest control of the kingdom. The cardinal even whisks the princess away to Dycedarg, and permits the dark knight, Gafgarion, to use her as bait. This game sure isn't holding back on its portrayal of its villains, heh.

And with that, this session comes to a close. I like how the team building and character customization mechanics have shaped up so far. The story is a bit hamfisted with both its twists and the portrayal of its villains, yet it's a decently enjoyable thriller so far. I can only hope that it can sustain this without cheapening itself too much, and that the gameplay side of things will remain as strong as ever. Until next time!