New, overwhelmed, scared, excited.

[Redimus]

I don't... What? .... WHAT!? *Hyperventilating*

Okay, let me start at the beginning; a few weeks ago I decided to boot up Final Fantasy VI and try a nice low level play through so I could play with the stat increases from magicite and just goof around. I got towards the end of the World of Balance and got a little bored because, oddly enough, low level play throughs actually require a surprisingly great deal of grind.

I'll come back to it, but now I'm all thirsty for character customization in an awesome Final Fantasy type setting. You know what had AMAZING character customization, arguably the greatest plot, and somehow managed to make grinding kind of fun? Final Fantasy Tactics. Oh man... I must have beat that game nearly a dozen times. I always get so lost in trying different job combinations, abusing the degenerator to make bad builds viable. Beating the end boss with a 'roided out generic squire was so satisfying. *Loving sigh*
I hear there's even a couple of other versions out now so maybe they'll have some bonus content.
...Yeah? The GBA one sucks and doesn't have any bonus content? Lame
Oh? The PSP version has a new characters, new missions, and new jobs? Neat!
Tsk, slow down issues? This additional content also looks pretty weak. I wonder if there are any mods
....
https://youtu.be/ZuWD-mSUtrU

I don't.... I don't know where to start. Do I dip a toe? Do I dive in head first!? War of the Gods? Final Fantasy Tactics: Kind Of? A minimalistic fan patch? I don't~ I can't~ I just! I don't know what to do!!

[Eternal]

*slaps* CALM DOWN! RIGHT NOW! BE CALLLLLM!

...ahem. Anyways, I'm really biased, but Kind Of PSP fixes the Slowdown and a bunch of other little issues as well as rebalancing things. For a first time FFT mod player, I'd really suggest it. It's very close to Vanilla while getting your feet wet in the world of FFT modding.

[Redimus]

Erm... A big reason why I'm hesitating to play War of the Lions is because I don't have a PSP and google was kind of filled with people complaining about problems with emulating it.

Seems like the sound effects are still an issue, and/or there's a massive frame rate drop with the arithmetician abilities to name two. I'm not opposed to giving it a try, though.

[Angel]

It's emulated a fair bit more playably well now, actually. Still some sound bugs last I checked, but that seems to be the case with just about anything I've tried playing. My biggest issue with WotL is and forever will be the needlessly (and often less accurately) retranslated names, but your mileage may vary.

As ever, happy to see newcomers!

[Eternal]

PPSSPP is a great emulator, but I still have graphical bugs fairly often with FFT. I'd suggest KO PSX instead if you're averse to trying to emulate the PSP version. They're more-or-less the same, albeit with the less interesting changes WotL has to offer.

[gatebuster202]

KO, + and Jot5(only if you beat Tactics.) are great places to start. If you want to mod, well, welcome and yay!

Best advice, load everything program-wise and look up tutorials. Then, ask questions. (Really wish I had done this.)

[Redimus]

Thanks. I really appreciate the advice.
Seems to me;
If the game is relatively playable on PPSSPP then "War of the Lions; Kind Of" sounds like a good starting point for me.
+ sounds more like a simple community patch with out putting in additional content, which is neat but I'm excited to try something new.
Journey of the Five sounds like a complete overhauled till it's more of a fan game than Final Fantasy Tactics as I know it. So I'll probably check that out next... and/or maybe some of the higher difficulty mods.

[Nyzer]

Journey of the Five sounds like a complete overhauled till it's more of a fan game than Final Fantasy Tactics as I know it

It's actually set up as a sequel to FFT, except the multiversal concept with Cloud and a couple others from FFT has been expanded on. It's a lot more down-to-Earth (or down-to-Ivalice in this case?) than you might expect from a fanmade crossover sequel. Ramza's position in an Ivalice ruled by an increasingly-dictatorial Delita in the wake of the War of the Lions takes up most of Chapter 1's storyline. And it's generally more difficult than FFT was.

Personally, I think Jot5 has more of a place in the FFT series than FFTA2 (the DS game) does.

Though the GBA game isn't quite as bad as you make it out to be. The worst thing in FFTA is that the penalty for breaking Laws is ridiculously overpowered compared to the benefit of following them, and there are FFTA mods that disable the Laws entirely. Beyond that, it's a much easier game with a much simpler storyline compared to FFT, but not in a terribly bad way. If you disable the Laws and don't go in there expecting a lot of difficulty, you'll probably enjoy it quite well.

[Eternal]

If you want to see the full fruits of what has been discovered and made possible in regards to modding FFT, I highly advise playing Jot5. It's literally a sequel with lots of new (and surprising!) additions.

[Angel]

We're also working hard at pushing the Chapter 1 re-release of Jot5 out to everyone, with even more new and amazing things that have never been seen before. Lots of new and fun surprises, enough that it's been hard for me to keep it all secret!

[gatebuster202]

I'd have to say that, not only is Jot5 a squeal and well-done as continuity. It also has more features then the original, and things that the original should have had in my opinion. (Synth and Marks, though Synth is new.) I'm curious to see what exactly these wonderful crazy people have produced, and hopefully the rest of us can apply these new finds and make our patches, bigger/more meaningful.

[3lric]

[skiploom188]

I'm going to sound redundant here, but FFT KO is really the patch to go if you want to start things out. Everytime I want to go back to FFT after months without playing it, FFT KO is the first thing that comes in my head.

Dome's FFT+ adds those little tweaks, balance, and little difficulty that's fun to try out.

There's also Celdia's Complete Patch that has new jobs and new stuff. Story is intact.
Those new jobs... give them a shot

And Jot5... IS A MUST TRY. I am eagerly waiting for the next release. Haven't played the patch for years now because I'm saving up for Chapter 2 like I'm saving up for marriage.

Wait what did I just say? *oops