I really thought slamming my way through Tactics Ogre would prep me for this. I'm only like eight hours in and already I have underlevelled characters I can't do anything with. I haven't even started messing with classes yet, please help. Save me, training battles.
Also why team size so small
EDIT: Why are black mages evil. Ranged lockon fire attack that kills you.
EDIT2: the best strat for black mages is kamakaze basically. They have a lot of range and can snap to targets freely, so running next to another enemy will result in their multi target fire killing one of their boys.
Yeah gonna second what everyone else is saying in that you need to grind. The way that the class system works basically necessitates it since you need to get individual characters levels in one class to unlock a new one which effectively resets their progress so you have to restart. I usually try to avoid grinding in SRPGs (because Fire Emblem elitism brain) but I realised at like mission 5 that I was going to have to. Once you get a bit ahead levels-wise you can skip grinding for a while until you add a new class onto a character. Also keep several save files, there's one or two multipart missions that will fuck you up if you aren't ready for it and you can't go back if you don't have a save before it.
The small party size is a full game thing, it's not 4 units but rather 5 for the majority of the game though. The idea was that FFT wants you to get really invested in a small number of units that you build up in the same way that you would in a normal FF game. (Although the game also wants you to have access to the majority of classes on your party so you can swap when necessary, which means more grinding. I just didn't do this barring a few particular builds in my party which made some maps harder than they should have been, but I think it was ultimately doable.)
class system works basically necessitates it since you need to get individual characters levels in one class to unlock a new one which effectively resets their progress so you have to restart.
'member in Tactics Ogre how you simply unlock classes by either story progression or having a unit hit their lil requirement? (45 kills for terror knight, etc) What the hell happened to that?
I usually try to avoid grinding in SRPGs
Me too, the average SRPG battle is way longer than a JRPG battle and cannot be automated. Tactics Ogre however had training battles for XP where the CPU could control both of your teams. Was cool, designwise grinding is still a waste of time but at least I could read or browse bearsite while Ogre was playing itself. Mission fucking five... there are NES platformers with longer runtimes than it takes to get stonewalled by FFT. Also my Tactics Ogre memcard had about eight saves and I had twelve savestates when I was done, my FFT one already has four.
The idea was that FFT wants you to get really invested in a small number of units that you build up in the same way that you would in a normal FF game.
This is really dumb n stupid! Ogre has ten-man parties, or twelve in the remakes, and already at that size splitting your party for a pincer attack or smth could be dicey, often one wing of my force ended up besieged. So far in FFT the only strat is to form up around your spawn point and let the enemy come to you. Any units split off will die, fuckin party of five...
Thank you Seryph, you have confirmed for me that this is really actually the worst game ever made and a massive step down from Tactics Ogre in every way!!! You have given me the clarity I need not to play it.
I do think the five-man partes are fine but there's a real adjustment period while you get used to it and I still would have preferred like, 8. Part of it is also that early game you really need to turtle but once you start getting the named characters (who are all stronger than any generic could hope to be and you should just use them once you can instead of bothering with leveling generics) they allow you to do a lot more since they have better damage output or survivability. In my run with the exception of one generic black mage (Joyse my beloved) all of my units by endgame were named and the only one I had ever grinded in any way was Ramza to get him into Samurai. (And also monk for that one stupid god damn boss fight)
Five is less than the modern XCom games though, smaller than Fire Emblem Awakening... They put unit caps in the TO remakes too and I hate it.
once you start getting the named characters they allow you to do a lot more since they have better damage output or survivability.
So I just have to grind forever for the game to git gud =) my feet hurt I wish I was commanding Canopus on the battlefield of Quadriga fortress, you get named party characters from the start in TO and Canopus is a flying mobile death machine.........
That sounds very lame though honestly, less than half my TO party was named characters by the end, they do not have huge advantages over generics. Why do generics even exist in FFT?
They exist because the game still has a permadeath system and the devs didn't want you softlocking. Plus they represent the way they wanted you to get invested, to take these randoms and turn them into your big special characters, like how FF1, 3, and 5 were. And I mean it works when you do put in the effort to, Joyse was a joy (heh) to level and build into my cute adorable red-but-red-doesn't-actually-exist-so-she's-really-black mage. Named characters are just the path of least resistance since they're already very good when they join and don't need investment whereas generics do. Kinda like prepromotes in FE.
Well yeah but why not make generics not suck then? Just seems weird, if they want me invested why make all generics way worse than named characters? Blegh. I liked training generics in Ogre, this sucks, my money back pls
They're not unusably bad, it's just Cid exists and breaks the game in half.
Most of the best named characters are locked behind late game sidequests that I didn't do. The others are usually better but not by so much that generics become useless. And you can't even run a full party of nameds until after the hardest boss fight in the game anyways, a fight which is hard for reasons entirely unrelated to your party since it's a Ramza solo.
There are several. All of them are Ramza 1v1s though, but very difficult ones. Also all of them can be almost softlocks if you picked the wrong zodiac. Which I did. They're still possible but way harder. It is easily the worst part of the game and it means mage Ramza is an even worse idea than mage Denam is.
Ohhh okay so like the Vice fight but terrible. Wow softlocks? This sounds really fucking unfunny.
HOWEVER I actually did main a Wizard Denam :^) I was nervous to throw him into the fray as a bruiser, so he spent a lot of time casting Meteor from a distance. It was cool I recommend it! Can always slap some Baldur plate on him if you need survivability :>