Revier's Chronicles of Ivalice - Final Fantasy Tactics, Part 9

 

Revier, the protagonist, had finally unlocked Chakra, which meant he was free to sample other jobs! Yay!

Doing so however revealed a rather silly trait of the class system - many of the class unlocks made no damn sense! To demonstrate, here's what the paths for all the classes so far looked like.

Squire →Knight→Monk→Geomancer (!)

Squire→Archer→Thief→Lancer (??)

Chemist→White Mage→Oracle (???)

Chemist→Black Mage→Time Mage (?!?!)

Yeah, uhhh...I can't make head or tail out of those progression paths at all! It seems like they tried to mesh the class system of Final Fantasy 5 with the linear class progression of Tactics Ogre, except Tactics Ogre had linear progression because the later classes were meant to be upgrades (or, at the very least, considerable sidegrades)!

That aside, I considered making Revier a lancer, but with no spears available, there wasn't much point to it. Instead, he'd just go back to donning a knight's garb, with Chakra keeping him topped off and Counter getting him extra damage in melee.

Sure enough, Revier's forces run across Agrias being pursued by the Church's forces. This leads to a rather awkward battle, where nearly half the team is consigned to a distant part of the map, separated by steep hills and a ferocious stream in between! Once again, the wizards were the biggest threat, and they were quickly dispatched by concentrated attacks, both from melee and range. Once that was done, the battle simplified itself into a slugout, though I was at a noticeable disadvantage until my thief made his way to the other side. I also had to face some rather annoying status effects from geomancy, which was a bit of a wakeup call that they would be more prominent in battles, going forward.

Thankfully, my white mage could and did unlock Esuna after this battle. I also got a spiffy new accessory that raised both physical and magical power and cancelled Slow. Of course, this, and some other pieces of equipment, would come into play soon...

Because the very next fight was a doozy, with the party being awkwardly split up, the enemy party being numerous, the bigger portion of my party being exposed to their melee attackers, and all of them being faster than my party. That last bit was exacerbated by the enemy having time mages on their side, who magnified the time gap by hasting their party and inflicting slow on mine!

I was stumped for a bit, but eventually figured out a solution - give everyone who could wear a speed hat one. This greatly helped in closing the gap, and allowed my party to act proactively rather than reactively. The second part of the solution involving minimizing exposure to attack, which was accomplished rather unorthodoxly:

Yep, I did just line all of my team on a narrow passage. Since most of the enemy's actual damage came from their melee fighters, minimizing frontage this way only made sense. This worked out brilliantly, and though the battle dragged on, in no small part due to Gafgarion's constant drain attacks, the tide decisively turned against the enemy and they were thoroughly dispatched.

Narratively, this battle was a trick designed to get the party to waste time, as Gafgarion gave false news of planning to execute the princess. Aside from the obvious bait and switch, the battle was notable for Gafgarion hilariously trying his hardest to get Revier to "see reason" and join his family back, seemingly indicating that, despite his outwardly cold and rough demeanor, he did have a soft spot for his former apprentice.

Sadly the game didn't bother elaborating much on this, and nor would it get the chance to, as there was only one more battle against him left ahead. The upside of this battle dragging out was that Revier's party had earned loads and loads of skillpoints, and so could unlock a fair few skills. The most notable acquisitions were Bolt 2 for my wizard and Wall for my white mage. I had half a mind to switch the party back to the jobs they were "training" up before the battle at the execution site, but eventually decided against it, as it would be more prudent to see what the next fights offered first.

We're briefly treated to a scene where the princess, Ovelia, is shown in captivity. Delita is revealed to be working for the church, who are presumably the third faction Dycedarg was worried about. They spill out that Ovelia is not only politically inconvenient, but also not of royal blood at all! Thus, she'd better listen to them, as she's worthless to either faction, and they know how to treat her better, allegedly. Yeah, don't know about that, lol.

It was a good thing I chose not to change classes, as the next fight was quite rude in its setup indeed, having Revier "duel" with Gafgarion while the rest of the party was stuck outside, exposed to a force surrounding them on three sides! The latter side could've gone quite bad if there hadn't been a tank and an evasive thief to keep them distracted. Fortunately they were able to outlast the onslaught, with Revier opening the gate just in time for them to regroup, recover and then destroy the enemy. The enemy party had a summoner, who was once again the biggest threat to the party. Fortunately he wasn't very well protected, and the thief could shank him before he did much nasty.

With Gafgarion finally put down for good, the party hurried inside the castle, only to discover that Ovelia had already been moved away, and there was little they could do to rescue her. The cardinal also reveals the secret of the stones - they were filled not with the holy power of the zodiac heroes, but the devilish power of demons! He transforms himself into a demon, which leads to a final climactic battle for this act! Or so I'd say, but in truth he was pretty pathetic, choosing only to spam one sleep and death sentence inflicting aoe on the same three people over and over, leaving two party members free to wail on him and finish him up. So much for the stone's power, hah.

The act wraps up with some insights on Ovelia's fate - it turns out Delita had dragged her into the rival faction's seat of power itself. This faction was headed by Goltana, and he was surprisingly quite pleased with Delita's actions. It turns out, he himself had been looking for a royal puppet to lay claim to the kingdom, and Ovelia provided him just that. Some skullduggery happens, Delita urges Goltana to move ahead and proclaim Ovelia queen before Dycedarg's faction gets to counter them, and just like that, an act ends and a civil war begins!

That shall be all for this session. It was a good session, with some entertaining fights that required a decent bit of strategizing. The story is starting to get a bit weird, especially with Delita freely betraying people with little personal consequence, but there's still a decent amount of potential for some nice conspiracy thrills, especially with a civil war breaking out. Thank you for reading, see you next time!