The endgame was imminent. I wasn't really impressed by Revier's Geomancy getup, and wanted to put him in something more satisfying. I flipped him around jobs for a bit, then recalled the advice offered about his Squire class and greatswords.
Thus, I discovered his ultimate move - Jumping on his enemies with the Excalibur! This led to predictably amazing results, as you can see here. Not only was his damage output considerably higher, he also got far more jumps, thanks to its auto-haste! He was truly a speed devil now!
My only other bits of preparation were to fill up the party's stock of x-potions, and switch the wizards to statistically better robes, reckoning that the white robes were obsolete and most threats wouldn't be tied to the three main elements anymore.
The first fight had some decent offense on the enemy's side, thanks to their monks. However, it wasn't very hard to stack up the damage and bring them down, one by one.
The next fight was against one of the few surviving cabal leaders and his posse of wizards. It was certainly an amusing fight, with spells getting misdirected on both sides and the summoners switching to a weak healing summon to desperately keep themselves and their leader alive. The black mage even got to learn Bolt 4 from a random cast! In the end it was not very hard however, with Revier's jumps and the samurai getting the better of him. He did get to break the samurai's armor, which was rather annoying, but thankfully I had a spare suit lying in my collection, so it wasn't much of a setback.
In revenge, the leader threw him, along with his team, into the sealed, accursed ruins of Murond, the former church capital in times past. To further spite him, he intentionally blew apart the way back, leaving them stranded! Of course, this was hardly a setback for Revier, who was at this point determined to see their schemes ended for good.
The next fight got a bit difficult, mostly because the next cult leader was surprisingly prudent at not using his turns frivolously, making it considerably harder to land jumps on him. Further, the ninjas stopped my wizards from acting much. The situation looked dire for a bit, but eventually the samurai and Revier found enough of an opening to attack him and do him in.
The next cult leader, the man who had poisoned Dycedarg's army, smartly placed himself past a huge chasm, and used his moves to block Revier from acting. His hydrae were very meaty, but also very lethal, launching high power multihit elemental attacks at range! On the first try my team got crushed, as they were able to flatten the wizards before they could get in range of attacking him, and Revier regained control of his senses too late to finish him off. I immediately positioned the wizards closer while keeping Revier away from his initial line of sight, and that let the team blow him up before his pets got to them!
This left their most prominent leader for last, and he was fuming that, despite the stone reacting to Alma, he simply couldn't get to summon his master. He's startled by the team's arrival, but eventually concludes that they could help him, reasoning that the master just needed some more bloodshed, and their blood would do nicely as a sacrifice!
He transformed into a lion-themed demon to fight them. His spells were certainly impressive, hitting a huge area for 210~ damage, but he too fell to the team's concentrated damage, with Revier contributing a considerable chunk of the damage!
Defeated, he decided to make up for it by sacrificing himself! This worked, and their demonic master, who was apparently the Jesus figure of this world's church, took possession of Alma's body! Unfortunately for them, Alma rejects them, and they're forced to split and take up their own body!
They had similarly powerful spells, and further, had four Ultima Demons at their beck and call. These demons did pose a threat, spamming two medium damage aoes that nevertheless did reduce two of the party members to low HP and threatened to outright kill nearly half the party! Thankfully, Revier killed them before they could do any further harm, and they then transformed to their ultimate form, wiping out all of their help.
Unfortunately they did little of interest, spending too much time idle and resorting to basic melee strikes on most of their turns. As such, this battle was little more than a glorified victory lap, and, in the end, even their final form proved no match. Unfortunately, they blew up the ship the team was on, taking them all out! The game slyly congratulates the player for beating the game afterwards, adding to the sheer irony.
But the game did indeed end, with many people mourning the death of the Beoulves. Olan muses on Delita's true nature, and somehow catches sight of Revier and Alma galloping past, looking just fine! The epilogue goes on to tell that he wrote an account of their entire story, but the church, fearing the exposure of their schemes, arrested him and burnt him at the stake! Ulp! Thankfully, the historian narrating this tale managed to retrieve it from the church's long buried records, and now seeks to spread the truth far and wide. Oh, and he was part of Orlandu's family, the Durais, all along!
Well. Okay then. So...did any of this happen? Is any of this story believable? Or is this just an account by a fringe historian trying to peddle an alternate history? Got to say, that entire ending scene felt like a copout, and was a big dampener to the plot.
Oh, but we're not done yet. We see Delita, now granted kingship, trying to offer a bouquet to Ovelia. But she abruptly stabs him, claiming that she's fed up of him betraying everyone and treating them as mere pawns. He stabs her in turn, and then, in a bit of regret, wonders if Revier gained a better fate after all.
So, on one hand, I understand this as the writers depicting his comeuppance for all of his betrayal and scheming. But on the other hand, why did it take so long? Why did we not see it backfire elsewhere? How is Delita remembered as a hero if he got stabbed, and stabbed his wife? Did he survive the stab? Did this happen years after Ramza's adventure? Who knows! Better leave things ambiguous because...I dunno. Sequel bait? Screwing with people's minds?
Bah, whatever. In any case, this truly ends Final Fantasy Tactics. On the whole, I found it enjoyable as an open ended RPG with highly customizable characters and tactical battle maps. I will admit, I was expecting something more akin to Tactics Ogre, and the game obviously didn't deliver that. I also found it rather disappointing that, come Chapter 4, meaningful character progression seemed to gradually vanish, with fights largely simplifying themselves into a matter of outputting high damage before getting taken out. The story was enjoyable as a conspiracy thriller, but the haphazard and confused ending segment ruins the payoff, making it all seem a little hollow.
Still, I consider it a good game overall, and I think that, with some better balancing and sensible restructuring, it could realize its full potential and become a very rewarding RPG, with both interesting choices and challenging fights that take advantage of the player's breath of choices. Perhaps there are mods that do this already, I will be certain to try some of them, off screen.
Alright, I think that about covers all my thoughts on this game. Thank you all for reading this to the end, and see you all next Let's Play, whenever that will be!
Comments
Post a Comment