Final Fantasy Hacktics

How does Scorpio = Giant fat grey blob with a stomach mouth
How does gemini equal whatever Zalera is?

The other ones we see are based on the animal for that sign so why the 2 completely out of place ones? Well I guess 3 as Ultima is from the virgo stone but you could argue she is supposed to look like a...virgin? Ok actually that doesnt make a lot of sense either.

Seriously does anyone have any idea? Are there like different Japanese zodiacs and one it a giant fat blobs with a tummy mouth?
I know its a game and I should chill but I just cant come up with a single reason for this inconsistency and I would love if someone could help me understand it.

Hey Myrmidon it is unrelated but I am working on a hack to give some more sprite slots and I remember you expressing an interest in more human slots available so I will send you a link when I am done with it. I will admit it might take longer than it should because I also have a few other projects I am working on.

Alright. looking forward to seeing the future release of this. If you need help I am always willing to lend a hand.

Why isn't all monsters mountable acceptable? I never have seen the AI mount any creature so I don't understand the problem.

Quote from: Zotis on October 14, 2013, 09:30:09 am
I don't think you understand the nature of evil.

One last thing. There is no real good and evil. Just morality which is all opinion based.

Oh I thought of something. What if through certain choices you could go evil in the game? Kind of like how in Growlanser 2 you can end up ditching your team and joining up with the bad guys.

Well I would suggest more dark element skills and more variety with weapons for mage types as they tend to just get short changed with a staff. You could expand on that and put in spell books, scythes, wands, tattoos for free hand casting. A customizable main character would be nice too as well as some choices throughout the game to help immersion instead of the player feeling railroaded into stuff.  Kind of like what DAO did.

Actually better planning on the Lucavi's part would not have ensured victory. It just means it would have required the heroes to actually think. Besides even when their plan succeeds they still lose because well Ajora isn't exactly tough. So even with better planning which would have made more sense they still would have failed in the end. Now
as for beating Altima/Ultima (whatever) it is really not hard and does not require Cid or Agrias. I did not use either the first time I beat her/him. Just a team of decently leveled Lancers is enough. No level up tricks or any stuff like that required. Also a demon wanting to destroy everything is very cliche. Instead of thinking "well demons want to destroy stuff because they are evil" think outside the cliche box. Why would they want to destroy the world? Do they hate the world? What is it that they hate about it so much that they want it gone? If they want it all destroyed then there would be nothing left of value so what could it possibly have to gain? Does it just want to live on earth and it feels it has to destroy people to make sure they do not destroy it? Motive is important. If you are saying that its motivation is because it is evil then that is just weak writing. Now before you try to defend the bad writing some more, think carefully and don't rely on such childish insults like "you're just jealous"

Well there is something there that does not make sense. Continuing your life via trapping your soul in a magic stone? Sure for sake of argument lets say they did that. How come then later they needlessly endanger their lives and in other cases end their lives all in order to bring back a rather weak Lucavi who wants to destroy everything? Politicians are all about profit and there is nothing profitable about that. Ultima is not very tough and he/she has goals of her/his own which seem to be about destroying the world which is not what any politician wants since then what would they be able to rule and have power over if everything is gone? Even their plan to resurrect Ultima was pretty much the worst way to go about achieving their goals as it brought tons of suspicion on them and bad planning is what caused their plan to fail. Now there could have been a reason for why they did it that way and maybe just because of time constraints they had to cut it (cutting content because of time constraints is very common in video games but even more so in the Final Fantasy franchise.) or it could just be that they did not figure most would think about it.

Nothing is above criticism. Your post starts with a strawman and then proceeds to just talk about how genius the game is even though it is full of cliches and various problems. If you think the writing was genius then you must not read much. It was not smooth nor gradual. It literally jammed in the holy stones plot point in the meeting with Draclau (basically telling the player at that point not to trust the guy since his name is just a slightly different spelling of "Dracula".) It did not feel fluid or natural.

"Obviously not a writer" - I am a writer, that is how I pay my rent (1250 a month, friggin SoCal) So clearly I am not bad at it when it is my only job and yet I make enough to pay my rent, various bills and for groceries.

I like the responses, though I do not agree with them all it is nice to see people talking about this game. Now I was going to go through and reply to all the replies but I'm kind of lazy
I think that despite our opinions on certain points however that we can all agree that this game never lived up to it's full potential, which is why I love that there are tools to mod it to allow people to try to fix up the game and they are all very user friendly too which makes it easier. Though some aspects we wont be able to change currently like more than 9 unique sprites on the field at once. All that said., still this is one of the best games of all time.

1. The story started off amazing with all this backstabbing and politics. It was great, however they jumped the shark with changing the reason behind everything to be resurrecting a demon. I wanted it to just continue to be about the war and intrigue.

2. You never get an option to kill Delita. Oh my god do I hate Delita. He is a massive prick and I remember playing this game the first time when I was about 10 and just thinking "When do get to kill that jerk already?" then the end of the game came and sure Delita got injured but that's it. Disappointing.

3. Bamalfula (probably spelled wrong but her name is a pain to remember how to spell) was
not recruitable. She was cool but playing without gameshark, you were unable to get her.

4. Generics were not able to attain special classes. Now when you got like lets say Gafgarian in your party as a guest, why can't he start training one of your knights as a Dark Knight? Or train Rad as one. I thought Rad was like his apprentice. It would have been cool for classes to be able to be learned or at least the skills from the person with the job.

5. Rad, Lavian and Alicia were immediately shoved in the background and none of them had unique sprites or jobs. The game was like "Hey look at these people! So important they are mentioned by name in a cutscene and will join you later...however after that they might as well not even exist". Maybe have Rad be a Dark Knight apprentice to Gafgarion (he was supposed to be like his apprentice anyway) and maybe he gets conflicted everytime you have to battle Gafgarion because of their former
relationship and all. Maybe he also has a thing for Alicia and that is why he stayed with your party instead of betraying you when his master did.

6. Rafa and Malak are recruitable but not Izlude. Their jobs are useless and other than adding in some more battles because of their personal issues, they contributed nothing to the game. When Malak died and was brought back I remember yelling "F****** cop out!" but then immediately thought when Ramza saw the dead Izlude with the stone nearby "Oh sweet he can bring back Izlude" but then he didn't. Jerk.

7.Not enough slots in your party menu for characters.

8. Cloud's limit breaks took charge time, No inclusion of like an otherworld Sephiroth for Cloud to fight, as well as him starting at level 1.

9. Lancers made battles too easy. A team of lancers can easily beat any battle in this game (first time through I always made everyone I used in battle either a Knight or Lancer since its not like you actually need to ever heal in this game as it is just too easy)

10. The main character is the least interesting and cool of the three brothers. Now if Zalbag was the mc then I would have actually used the mc outside of story battles where it makes you.

11. Alma. Everything about Alma annoys me.

12. You are forced to kill Miluda, why didn't Ramza just let her go like after the first fight with her? Or since she was just trying to escape, why not just let her? Don't even confront her. just back off.

13. Cid is massively OP and the part that bugs me most about that is there is no reason to like him. He doesn't get any real
character development or anything. It is just like "here is this uber powerful old dude, yeah you saw him in a few cutscenes and now we will act like he met you as a kid and now he is in your party"  meh. Agrias got more character development so you could actually form an opinion of her. Cid felt like a bad oc you would see in a fanfic, he is connected to the main character though that is never mentioned until one scene and then he never does anything after except be the fastest and strongest and have the best skills and...yeah you can see where I am going with this.

14. Not enough character interactions. Now I am not asking for like a romance system or anything here, just chances to learn more about the characters. Maybe that is what the bar could be used for. You bring some members of your party with you to a bar and depending on who is there different dialogues and all will be said. Like Reis and Beowulf would probably be all mushy and obnoxious. Cloud would probably sit alone and drink while getting admired by one of the chicks you brought (you know how people love themselves some cold loner types) Since Agrias is not a very warm person herself, she might even sit with Cloud because people tend to like to be with those that remind them of themselves.

15. Celia and Lede are apparently ultima demons who just take the form of dancer looking chicks with way better powers
than ultima demons have. I am pretty sure they were not originally supposed to be but because of whatever reason they just decided to do that to wrap up their characters and go "see now don't ever wonder about them again because they were just Ultima demons" which felt rather lame. Would have liked them to be fleshed out more. Same with the Marquis. 

16. Most of the jobs were either basically useless or there was already a better version of that class. Like Geomancer was basically a crummy version of Black mage. Mediator was pointless as was mime and calculator. Dancer was not a uesless class but it did feel like a silly class. She can dance and it can cause abnormal effects? WHAT? is it like a spell??? chemist did not need to even exist. Making you learn the "skill" for using a potion just felt like a middle finger from the game developers. "You want to use a potion? Hahaha better train as a chemist then, jerk."

17. Equipment restrictions. For instance why does a archer need a special ability to equip a sword? Is there some magical
force fields that prevents it? Or why cant a dude wear perfume?  I can understand the armor restriction for dancers since they probably could not dance in full plate armor but most of the time the restrictions are pointless.

18. You never get to use the zodiac stones though everyone else and their mom gets to.

19. After Algus and Delita seeming like friends Algus decides to randomly hate him and starts acting like a totally generic villain out of nowhere.

20. Zalbag gave the order to kill Teta just to also kill one Death Corps knight. It seems very uncharacteristic for him. Heck Ramza managed to handle every battle so far and even rescued the marquis and was about to go save Teta but nope, cant let that happen. Better just order Algus to shoot her then take out the one enemy there. Especially for someone like Zalbag who had faith in Ramza (evidenced when he basically tells you to go to Dorter to find the missing spy) to all of a sudden decide to kill his brothers best friends sister like that makes no sense. It was some lazy writing.

21. Random battles were with monsters. With monsters being that common, how do these people have time to declare wars? In fact why even need a war for enough bloodshed to summon Ultima back? just walk around a bit and kill monsters or just manipulate one side into dedicating part of their army to the erradication of monsters to make the world safe? Seems like a much smarter move as then you are avoiding suspicion since it seems everyone in the game knew there was something else causing the war.

22. Dycedarg can just take out Zalbag with one attack but can't do the same against Ramza. That makes no sense. Especially since Zalbag is a lot stronger than Ramza because of his unique job and all.

23. Vormav and the church are trying to kill Ramza before he knows whats going on. He paid those thieves in the early chapter 2 to kill Ramza and his companions with no actual good reason behind it. It is just to make sure the player knows they are the villains.

24. The ending. It did not explain ANYTHING. What happened to Cloud? Why didn't Cid let Olan know he was alive and protect his son later from being burned at the stake? Where did everyone go? Why did Ramza leave with his sister on Chocobos? Did Beowulf and Reis ever get married and start a family? What did Mustadio do after? Where did Agrias go? In fact why didn't they all just take down the church after taking down Ultima? They could have easily done so and that
would have helped out Ivalice quite a lot. How did they even escape?

25. Ramza orders milk at a bar.

However you will also have to do some scene editing as those names are still said in the scenes so you have to use easyvent to change the dialogue there as well. It's not difficult but it is tedious and time consuming.

Even if you change them to type 1 or type 2 they will still count as a monster. They will automatically come with their skills learned and will be unable to change jobs or equipment even if you use fftpatcher to mess with the job to tick the boxes for equipable items. I think this might be fixable with an asm hack.

Hmmm I see your point. Probably not the best project for me to undertake then. Especially since I tend to overlook small details that end up sometimes being borderline catastrophic.

Than you. Guess I will just have Izlude show up in another battle  after where he will join up after being a guest. I'm thinking the first Murond battle.

You can like Luso but he does not fit in this game. He is from a kids game where they refuse to have anything even remotely dark or slightly adult. He is a happy kid who runs around having fun adventures. That kind of character really doesn't fit into a game where one of the main characters murders his wife.

The Bad

1. The renaming. They seriously tried to Americanize the names more which annoys me beyond belief when that is done. Many of the names now sound way less cool. Like "Vormav" that is badass name. That gets turned to "Folmarv" which sounds more like a name that would be given to the D&D character of a kid named Marvin. They also took "Izlude" which was another pretty awesome name and made it "Isilud". were they trying to take all the cool out of the names or something? Not to mention what they did to the Lucavi names.

2. Changing things to make the game fit together with some of other Final Fantasy games.  Now I would not mind if they did that to make it fit with one of the GOOD Final Fantasy games like anything before FFX. Seems stupid to connect it to
some of the most hated games in the series.

3. Adding in Luso. No! Someone from a game made purely for young children does not belong in a game full of backstabbing, politics, and assassinations.

4. Algus coming back as a DeathKnight. It made no sense. There was no stone by him to use
to call for one to make a deal. And if everyone can just make a deal with Lucavi without one of the
holy stones to come back to life then why are we not seeing an insane amount of super powered
undead knights? I highly doubt Algus is the only one without a stone who was willing to make a deal
with a lucavi. This was not thought out at all. It was a cheap tacked on battle in an attempt to add
more battles without them thinking of a reason why that battle is actually taking place.

5. The cell shaded cutscenes with bad voice acting.

6. Bad audio

7. Slowdowns that make it feel as though I am playing it on a bad emulator when I am playing it on psp.

8. The addition to the Beowulf plot line. It turned rather sexist and cliche. (Oh look the woman is kidnapped so the man has to go save her.) Seriously when playing that part I was just thinking "My arms are not long enough for the jerk off motion in my soul."  Seriously that whole part just seemed like a bad fanfic.

9. The holy stones now being turned into Auracite. It took a lot of the importance away from them considering
that there are more than 13 pieces of auracite and others use them for just summoning magic. Kind of killed
the mystique and the kind of ominous feel that the stones used to have back when they weren't just 13 of god knows
how many stones used for esper summoning.

The Good

1. Balthier is unlockable

2. The Dark Knight class.

3. Party roster increased so you can have all your unique characters and still have room for generic ones.

4. It is FFtactics game that is not one of those more kid oriented than Pokemon games.

Yeah I noticed that they don't match up. That was what was throwing me off. Thank you for the help.

1. So which is the scene where Ramza sees dead izlude and takes the stone near him? The reason is I plan to make Izlude recruitable in that scene (I will use easyvent later to edit the dialogue to justify how he is alive)

2. what is the last ENTD with Zalbag so I can make him recruitable too? (I don't mind if its zombie Zalbag)

I thought it would be scene 135 since that is the start of chapter 4 and in the start of that chapter is the scene however that does not have Izlude listed....unless he is just a decoration of the map built into it but that seems unlikely since every other dead person is a character listed and changable with FFTpatcher including the dead knights.