Let's Play Final Fantasy Tactics Advance! (LP #???)

Before we start, can I just say that this both looks and sounds fucking gorgeous for a Gameboy Advance game? I mean take a look at that title screen and just stare at the city there. Not only that, the music has this unique charm of both being incredibly epic and whimsical at the same time - it really fits the adventure. Just hearing the title screen theme again after so long made me really emotional when I was writing this.

Color Mode allows you to change the color of the game between what it is now, a greener shade or you could change it to have more faded colors like the original Tactics. That's nice. With that said, let's start this gig.



[Current OST: Snow Dancing in the Schoolyard]

snrk

But no seriously, I had to. So the game starts off with some kids having a snowball fight... that's adorable, but at the same time this is our tutorial? There's not even a Snowball option in the later parts of the game! (Unless you count Blizzaga, but that's cheating)

[Whistle SFX, followed by the kids moving into place]



"We're just gonna lose. Where's the fun in that?"

[He moves over to the boy in the green sweater]

"Hey, Mewt. Where's your little bear today?"



Wow, okay, we're starting off with bullies that have practically no reason to exist other than bothering this one kid. I'm not kidding - all they do is badger Mewt and make him feel sad.



Keep in mind, Mewt's mother is dead. I think this is something everyone at the school knows too, so wow you three are some lovely little cunt waffles. (If you'll excuse my language there - these dumbasses are so one-dimensional it makes me flinch... even though there's kids like this in real life. Sigh.)

[The boy with the yellow cowlick stands next to Mewt]

(As much as I'd like to just write them off as Asshole Kids #1, 2 and 3, I need to use their names just so this makes sense)

Asshole Kid with green scarf (Lyle): "What's your problem, new kid?

Asshole Kid with hat (Guinness): "Leave him alone. He's not going to say anything anyway. He's like a little girl!"

Hate.



"And I know some 'little girls' who can kick your butt!"

Oh gee, here we go. This lovely pink-haired girl is called Ritz - she's a control freak fireball that's generally more trouble than she's worth, but she has her moments. As for why she has bright pink hair when everyone else has otherwise normal hair colors... we'll get to it in a bit.

Lyle: "Whoa, Ritz! What's your problem?"

: "You don't want to be on that team, right? How about we switch? Would that be better? Let's start already!"

She's sure the impatient one. Smart idea, though.

[Lyle and Ritz switch places - she glances over to the new kid]

: "You should speak up. Tell them your name, at least. You can't be the "new kid" forever!"

Oh snap, we can actually name our main character in this. What's it going to be?



As tempting as it was to keep his name as "New Kid" (because you know, his parents hated him), the canon name is Marche. He looks pretty slick, but at the same time he looks waaaay too much like Ramza from the original Final Fantasy Tactics to be comfortable with me:



Like damn, is Marche his long lost grandson or something?



: "You don't have to apologize, Mewt. You haven't done anything wrong."

Mewt is a muffin and I love him. Barring one major incident later on, I can't really help but feel bad for him. Marche, on the other hand.... hoo boy, where do I start? They're arguably the most conflicting character I've ever seen in a video game because he has a good heart but does some really questionable things as the story rolls along. Trust me on this.

: [goes quiet]

: "Okay, Mr Leslaie, we're ready to go!"

Leslaie? To be fair, I've heard weirder names during high school alone.



Awww boy, here we go.



[Current OST: Companions That Surpassed Their Tribe]

This song is one of the really good ones and is one of the ones that get used in the sequel, surprisingly enough. But yeah, our first combat encounter is a snowball fight of all things. This is silly.

: "Gotten used to the snow in St. Ivalice yet, Marche? It's much warmer where you're from, isn't it?"

Okay, this is weird. So... normally, Ivalice is a country. But in the real life version, it's... a town. It gets weird when you sit down and think about it, especially with how fantasy Ivalice is a country.

: "Yes sir, it never snowed. This is practically my first real snowball fight..."

Funny, because barring the lack of a snowball option, this is pretty much how fights work in the entire game. Marche, you're going to take up brawler vows whether you like it or not. 

: "Really? Then let me give you a few pointers."



I like that he dispenses with the most important information first, at least. Still, leave the tutorial stuff to me because I'm the one running this ship.

Essentially, combat in Final Fantasy Tactics (The original, Advance and A2 included) works as so - you individually take turns and move in a set amount of spaces. You can redo a move as many times as you want and you can see your movement range by pressing B on your character.

Speed works like this:

You have an invisible counter called clock ticks that passes between turns - it starts off at 1000 and getting your turn cuts off 500 automatically. Moving removes 200 and doing an action like attacking removes 300. The leftover CT from not doing anything allows your character to gain their turn more quickly, but even if you have double the speed of your opponent, that doesn't mean you have twice the turns.

For example, let's say Marche has 100 Speed and Ritz has 126. It would go like this before they get any time to act again -

Marche: 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000 (10 turns)
Ritz: 126, 252, 378, 504, 630, 756, 882, 1008 (8 turns)

If the number goes above 1000, it resets and still cuts it to 500. Still, this is hella important information if we plan on doing anything significant on the battlefield, because getting out attacks faster is everything in this game. They even explain this in the game, albeit without all of the "clock tick" information.



Green tiles signify your attack range. Bows and guns (yes, really) are valuable... even if you're built like a dry twig - a sad reality for most of the classes that utilize ranged combat.

After you take an action or decide to wait out your turn, you can fix where your character faces. This is important because side and back attacks are more accurate, even if they don't do more damage. I'm pretty sure nobody would want to be on the business end of a Firaga while their guard was down.



That's about it for the tutorial. I'll get more into the meat of things later on, but for now let's just enjoy our stupid snowball fight.



You can check out the stats of the kids despite it being mostly irrelevant here. Being real life elementary school kids, they're about what you'd expect. I'll put up their respective base stats for the sake of shits and giggles:

(HP) (MP) (Weapon Attack) (Weapon Defense) (Magic Power) (Resistance) (Speed)

13 / 0 / 17 / 22 /0 / 8 / 115

What makes Ritz stand out the most is her absolutely ridiculous speed. For example, the fastest playable characters are Assassins with a base speed stat of 125. This fucking elementary kid is somehow almost as fast as trained ninja killers.

I should mention that growth rates are class-based, not character-based like they are in Fire Emblem... so really the character customization is all up to you in this, which is a major reason why I adore this game.



8 / 5 / 6 / 9 /1 / 12 / 92

Mewt is the absolute definition of a cream pie - I really have to feel bad for him if this is how frail he is. The snowballs only do one point of damage and you can hit your allies, so it's conceivable to do nothing but attack Mewt during this entire section. Personally I'd rather not because the poor kid has enough against him as it is, but if you feel like enough of a sadist then go ahead.

He is also the only kid with any magic power, which is incredibly clever foreshadowing.



Leslaie is our "judge" for the battle and take a look at the three stars he has under his portrait. As we'll see later on, this tutorial battle is really wacky in the grand scheme of things, but they had to introduce game mechanics to us somehow.



Ritz takes a shot at Colin (Asshole Kid #2) and has a 50% chance of hitting... if she snuck up from the side or behind, it'd be around 80%.



Ouch! That would certainly smart if this were a normal battle.Criticals do about 1.5x the damage and knock the opponent back a space, which could be very useful if you're fighting them off an edge. See, characters have a "jump" rating - if they fall from a height greater than they can jump, they can take a crazy amount of damage.

The funny thing is that all of my guys got criticals here, which has to be telling me something regarding my luck later on.



The Asshole Kids and their Spontaneous Female Counterpart will exclusively aim for Mewt because we had to be reminded via gameplay how much they hate him for being a puss.



Positioning in action. I'm curious as to how many snowball fights Leslaie has been in to know all of this mechanics junk.



The snowball fight ends on Ritz's second turn, so I should mention this - it's important to check enemy inventories from time to time because you can find unique, one-of-a-kind items that you can steal off of them (that is, if you have the right ability). 

It's all really cool stuff, but normally it would be a hassle reserved at the end of the game... unless we abuse the system.



Colin: "But that's what Mewt does best! Hahaha!"

Do you kick puppies when you're not around Mewt? Just asking.



[Current OST: Confusion]

[All of the opposite team fling snowballs at Mewt]

I dunno what beef their lady companion has with Mewt, though. Must be the honorary Asshole Kid #4.



Lyle: "What? We're not breaking any rules!"

: "Sure! You've been aiming at Mewt this whole time!"

Preeeeetty sure that counts as griefing. I mean, they look like the type to get banned off of online games if their behavior with Mewt is of any indication.

: "Are you okay, Mewt?"

: "Yeah... I'm fine."

Guinness: "See? He says he's fine, so what's the problem?"

: "He knows you'd pick on him worse if he said anything else!"

A bit dark for an E-rated game, wouldn't you say? I'm glad Ritz addresses that because this shit is no laughing matter in real life.



: "Mewt, your forehead is bleeding!"

Oh jesus, that's pretty serious.

: "Huh...?"

: "There was a rock in that snowball!"

What the fuck?! Why would you do this?

Colin (The person who threw the rock): "Hey, I didn't throw any rocks!"

You better be glad we're not in Fantasy Ivalice or I'd beat your shit in.

Guinness: "It's Mewt's fault for being so lame!"

Lyle: "He's an easy target and we've got to get points, right?"



: "So the end justifies the means? You guys are horrible!"

Yeah, no kidding. I guarantee you that if these kids ever grow up, instead of kicking puppies, they'd be causing wars for profit.

Lyle: "Whatever you say, whitey-locks!"



Guinness: "We know you dye your hair 'cause it's really all white!"


Colin: "Yeah, just like an old grandma! Hah hah! Prissy little grandma!"

Ritz's major problem is... her hair color. Seems like a vast downgrade compared to Mewt's actual issues if you ask me. To be fair, why did she choose bright pink? White isn't even a bad hair color because it looks cool, especially with what Ritz is wearing.

: "Step over here and say that again!"

Beat the piss out of them. DO IT.

[Leslaie whistles out]



"This snowball fight is over! Lyle, Colin, Guinness -- I want you to come with me. Mewt, how's your forehead?"

You should have stepped in a bit earlier if you knew this was going to be an issue.

: "It's okay... I'm fine, really."

You know, if I got hit by a rock and my forehead was bleeding, I don't think I could be able to make any noise that wasn't muffled screaming. So personally, Mewt is taking this like a champ.

: "That's it for class today. The rest of you can go home."

[Fade to black, followed by the Asshole Trio entering the school]



[Current OST: Ritz]

"Thank you."

[Ritz turns to Mewt, which causes him to jump a bit]

: "I can't stand bullies who pick on little kids! Those jerks!"

That is an incredibly minor "blink and you'll miss it" detail, but I think it's charming.

: "So, Marche. What are you doing after this?"

: "Huh? Why?"

: "I was going to go buy this book... and I was wondering if you wanted to come along?"

A... book. Well, I'm game. After what just happened, Mewt needs friends with him.

: "Sorry, I can't."



: "Hospital? Was he sick?"

: "No, it was something he was born with. We have to take him to the hospital every now and then."

Awww. I think I know why Marche got a bit protective towards Mewt back in the snowball fight. Just call it a hunch.


: "Wow, that's rough."

A bit of an understatement, there.

: "What kind of book are you going to buy?"

: "It's about monsters and magic and stuff like that."

 

You've caught my attention.

: "Why don't you bring it over to my house? I'm sure my brother Doned would love to see it."

: "Well, if you're sure it's okay..."

: "Absolutely! Why don't you come too, Ritz?"

: "Me? Um, gee, I guess I don't have any other plans... Okay!"



Marche, how long have you been here? How do you expect them to know where your house is?

That said, they leave the schoolyard and move onto the next scene.



[Current OST: Mysterious Shop]

(Another favorite, by the way)

... Where we see some poor man getting chewed out by two other dudes in front of a cafe.



Who has an absolutely bitchin' beard.

: "Uh-oh..."

[Mewt looks down]
: "I'm really, really sorry... Please accept my apologies."

This man is Cid, as per Final Fantasy tradition to have a guy named Cid in every game of theirs. In this game, he's Mewt's father and apparently he did something really stupid offscreen. In the original Japanese version, he's a sloppy drunk and even had a different portrait sprite to reflect how he's fallen on hard times:



In the English version, he's not drunk... so I guess he must have dumped hot coffee on his boss's lap or something, I don't know.

: "Mr. Randell. We expect a certain level of performance. Regardless of circumstances..."

: "It won't happen again."

: "Don't worry, I'll fix things up here."

: "Oh, thanks, thanks!"

If I dumped hot coffee on my boss's lap and a guy had to fix the situation for me, I'd be a bit more worried about my job than Cid is.

: "Thank you for waiting. Shall we?"

[The two men walk off]



You said it, Ritz. Yeesh.

: "Mewt? Mewt, it is you!"

: "... Hi, Dad."

Said with all of the disappointment possible towards a deadbeat father.

: "School's out already?"

: "Yeah..."

: "These your friends?"



Man, the level of awkward in this scene is so high that it's amazing Ritz and Marche aren't cringing in response.

: "Ah... yes. You know, busy, busy, busy! You all keep an eye on Mewt for me, eh?"

[Cid leaves the scene]

: "He used to work at a bigger company before. When Mom died, he stopped caring. He broke down big time."

... Wow. I can't not feel bad for Mewt if this is how his life is like now.

: "He seems nice. Not many kids talk to their parents like that. I bet you used to go out on vacations and stuff a lot."

Marche, is this from experience? The vagueness towards this kid's backstory and his generally calm demeanor towards all of this tragedy makes me more and more curious about his own past. At least he tries to be optimistic. By the way, guys, if you want a good look at how Mewt's family was like before everything happened, there's this picture:



I should also take this time to mention that FFTA has a goddamn adorable art style. Like ffffff, why is everyone so cute but the backstories are so sad? If anything, it's fitting.

: "Well, I'll be at my place. See you there!"

[Marche walks down the stairs]

:"Mewt, how much do you know about Marche?"

: "Huh?"

: "I guess your family has had its problems too..."



... I'm intrigued.



[Current OST: Magic Beast Farm]

(Okay, I lied - this one is my favorite out of the whole soundtrack)

I am practically jealous of their room. That said, this young wheelchair bound boy is Marche's younger brother Doned. He is arguably the second most tragic character in the game and my favorite little shit thanks to what he does later on. (I know I talk about this and that regarding the future, but I can't help it - I'm really excited!)

: "Oh, hiya. Welcome back. You're kinda late, aren't you?"



: "A snowball fight, huh... Did they pick on you again?"

Again? This happened more than once?

: "I'm just not used to the snow, is all."

: "Yeah, you always were bad at sports!"

You can already tell he's going to be a massive mischief maker.

Mrs. Radiuju: "Marche! Your guests are here!"

Yes, their family surname really is Radiuju. We never see the missus, but the dad is supposed to be gone. He's not dead, but just... not around, which makes me question what the hell happened to make him leave.

: "Tell them to come on up!"

: "You invited over some friends?"

: "Yeah, one of them says he found this really cool book. I thought you might want to see it too. You like books, don't you? You're always reading them."



"Nothing to do but read and play games..."

Marche had to go and hit a sour note. But yeah, I can sort of relate to him there - just sitting around doing nothing all day can drive a person mad.

[Ritz and Mewt come in]



"And this is Mewt."

: "Hiya."

: "You get that book, Mewt?"

I think Marche is more interested in the book than anything else right now, to be honest.

: "Yeah, right here. But I don't know what the title is... Even the guy at the used book shop couldn't read it."

: "Wow... it looks really old! Let's see what it says. Can you see, Doned?"

[Mewt sets it down on the ground]



[Current OST: Law Card]

Now those are some fancy graphics. I'm digging it already.

[A foreign letter flies on screen and shows an image of a person]



Now, this is a very interesting scene because it serves as an introduction to the game's various races for Fantasy Ivalice. Here we have the Humes, or their word for humans in this world. Human job classes are generally average, with certain exceptions like the Fighter, Ninja and Blue Mage classes that allow them to get some pretty busted abilities. It wasn't until A2 where even cooler classes were added for Humes, but it's fine as they are.



Next we have the Bangaa, towering reptilian humanoids that are primarily bulk and brute strength barring one magic class. They speak with a lisssssp and tend to be rough and tumble carnage machines on the battlefield. Their one magical class is called the Bishop, and they hold some unique spells that none of the other normal mage classes can learn, so there's at least that going for them.

Pro-tip: Never call a Bangaa a lizard because that's practically a racial slur to them.



The frail but mystical Nu Mou hold some of the most interesting magic classes the game has to offer. They're supposed to be dog people, but I never saw it like that for some reason. From alchemy, shooting gigaflares, stopping time or even changing into monsters, their ridiculous magical variety sort of makes up for their dry twig defenses and health. 



And then there's the Viera, sexy bunny lady people that, objectively, hold some of the most broken classes the game has to offer. They're depicted as being spiritual and are generally identified by their long silver hair. They have big hitters like Snipers and Summoners, but none can compete against the Assassin - a class dedicated solely to one-hit kill moves and overall the best in terms of stat growths out of any of the other classes in the game. (They are the fastest playable class, after all)



Finally, there's the Moogles. They're cute enough to give me diabetes, but trust me when I say that if Assassins didn't exist, the Moogle classes would easily take their place. They have the most varied and the most amusing jobs out of the entire cast, ranging from magic gunmen, killer clowns, cute little soldiers and even their own Black Mage and Thief classes.

Those are about all of the classes and I intend on making full use of each one's best abilities. I am power crazed and I love it, okay.



"Maybe they're some kind of magic spell!"

: "You may not be too far off. Look, a magic circle! Maybe this is in Latin or something? And then there are some later additions... What does this say?"

You know, if my friend brought home a book that is oozing out magic with foreign language phrases and symbols, I'd probably jump to the conclusion that he bought the Necronomicon.



"It sure sounds like magic!"

Holy shit, Mewt, your one magic point might just commune with the book and give it enough force to blow up the planet. Ever consider the grave effects of reading off of a clearly magical book?

: "Wow, a magic book! I wish I could use magic..."

Ask for it enough times and it'll happen. No, seriously, the book is practically listening to everyone right now as you're speaking.

: "I knew you'd like it, Doned!"

: "Maybe if you could use magic, you'd be better at sports!"

: "That's not funny!"

I know, Marche, but that's the catch of having to deal with a younger brother.

[The kids laugh]



"Haven't you ever read a book and thought... 'What if the world in this book was the real world?'"

I like where this conversation is heading.

: "I dunno, most books are soooo boring. They're all way too predictable."

What the hell kind of books have you been reading? Vampire Hunter D is technically a novel, and it was even drawn by Yoshitaka Amano (of FF6 fame) himself! Way to shut down the conversation by being a shortsighted critic, Ritz.

: "Well, what do you like, Ritz? Comic books?"

Marche in with the save.  



: "Okay, if you could make any game real, which would it be?"

: "Now that's a good question!"

Sweet. Now, honestly, if I had to pick a game universe to live in, it'd definitely have to be either Pokemon or the Megaman Starforce universe. The former because I love Pokemon and the latter because turning into an EM wave superhero that can invade electronic devices is too cool to pass up.

: "I'd pick Final Fantasy. That's my favorite."

Oh you cheeky bastards at Square, thinking you're clever.

[Ritz stands up and Mewt picks up the book]

: "My, my, would you look at the time."

: "Yeah, me too. See you at school, Marche!"



Then the guys leave the room and leave Doned alone. I should mention that he has a skateboard near his bed, so Marche must have pulled off some crazy tricks back at the old home.



Mrs. Radiuju: "Doned! It's time for your medicine!"

: "Okay, mom!"

[He wheelchairs himself towards the door]

What kind of disease does he have that keeps him bound to a wheelchair? I'm curious.



By the way, this is essentially the title sequence only you can't skip it now. I was originally going to show it off via a gif, but it wound up taking 600+ frames so I figured "nope, we're not doing that".



We're shown around various scenes, including a car passing by, a guy on a motorcycle and puppies. The car animation is especially notable because it's the only time such a thing is ever used in the game, which I find especially intriguing for some reason.



Oh shit that's not a good thing, is it. The book is moving on its own, Mewt what have you done.



Whoa, that is crazy.

Of course the book wasn't just some ordinary "really old book with magic spells inside" thing. The real name for the book is called the Gran Grimoire - multiples exist, apparently, and they all contain a magical Ivalice world inside of them.

Personally, all you need to do is look at the damn thing and be able to tell it's not normal: 



The origins of the book are what mystifies me, because the real world is pretty much normal aside from its existence.



People transform into the various races of the fantasy world... Which makes me wonder how it's like suddenly being turned into a different species altogether.



Doned flickers and disappears... 



While Marche floats out of his bed Exorcist-style. Honestly, everything that's happening right now is spooktacular.



His clothes change to that of soldier attire and is given basic equipment. I'd go on, but that's about it for this chapter. Yes, I'm horrible for cliffhanging right as we get into the real meat of the action.

Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we visit the fantasy world, discover a ton of neat things and flesh out our understanding of the game's mechanics. See you then.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Team setup:

(Marche, level 2, , ????) - Currently waking up

Last time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the world changed from a snow-covered town to this desert wonderland. What awaits Marche in this new land?

[The screen pans over to show various NPCs going about. Marche walks forward only to collide against a reptilian man]

[Current OST: Unhideable Anxiety]



: "Watch where you're going, ssson!"

(I know his portrait here isn't the same color as in the game, but that's because he's an enemy unit. I'm not ripping recolors as there's already a lot of portraits to go around)

[Marche recoils from shock]

: "Y-you're a lizard!"

Way to go. I'm amazed because the first thing Marche does in the brand new fantasy land with magic and monsters is call someone what is essentially the ultimate Bangaa slur word. To let you know how embarassing this is, the NPCs next to us flee the scene immediately. They've seen this happen at least eleven times before, you know.



: "I, um, erp."

: "You said lizard! It takess a lot of nerve to call a Bangaa a lizard!"

To think, Marche was making friends and throwing snowballs at bullies just the day before this. Now he's going to get his face kicked in out of perceived racism.

[The Bangaa man bears down on Marche but an unknown voice calls out]

???: "Kupo! There you are, kupo!"



: "Moogle... thiss human brat with you?"



I should mention one thing about Moogles in this game: They're so fucking cute! Okay, that's not necessarily a new bit of information, but their rabbit ears, the pom-pom coming out of their heads, the bat wings and their overall fluffiness make them so AAAAAGH

: "Apologize to the bangaa, kupo!"

: "Um... uh... sorry!"

: "Please excuse him, he's not used to seeing bangaa."

He doesn't even know who Marche is, yet he still sticks out for him. That makes him a cool dude in my book.

[Marche and the Moogle move away but the Bangaa confronts them]

: "Hey, you, wait!"

: "Kupo?"

You know, for the longest time, I never understood what kupo even meant. It's just a verbal tic that they have as a species, but younger Dan thought it was like some weird term of endearment. Keep in mind, I had not played any real Final Fantasy game and only had Kingdom Hearts during that time.



: "A... soldier?"

: "Yess... Sso you wouldn't mind a little engagement?"

Oh god our apology didn't work. He is out for our blood and just wants an excuse to do it.

[A whistle SFX plays - A man clad in armor riding a bird appears out of thin air ]



[Current OST: Battle of Hope]

(One of the best songs in the entire soundtrack. It gets me pumped every time I hear it.)

: "Huh? What's going on?"

: "He's engaging you, kupo!"



This may be an upgrade compared to flinging snowballs in school, but I assure you that we're not out of tutorial territory just yet.



The first major change is that we get experience now. You get experience with every action that's not just moving or waiting, which includes using items, support skills or, hilariously enough, attacking your own allies. It's as amazing as it sounds. But seriously though, the experience thing is a neat concept, but I remember struggling to play this game during my first ever runs of it due to Marche being my only strong character.

Then again, I was never one for using my brain back in those days. I'd also argue that A2 did it better, seeing as the experience leaks to every member in that fight instead of just the ones who did anything.

Oh wait, there's more dialogue, oop:

: "Wait a second... I get it! Engage means fight!"

Genius. I'm surprised Marche is only in grade school if he has this level of sagacity already. He's practically the master of the thesaurus. 

: "You sure are a keen observer of the obvious, kupo!"

Fucking savage.

: "There's the judge, and the laws for today are set."

Marche repeats the words judge and laws and I resist making a tactless METAL GEEEEEEAR joke.

: "Uh-oh, don't tell me you don't know about those! The laws today forbid the use of items, kupo! Always be sure to check the laws or you'll be sorry!"



This fine fellow is the Judge. His main job is to sit on an armored Chocobo, observe the flow of battle and enforce the law system. Laws are a major gameplay feature in FFTA that, to be completely honest, are horrendously flawed and only hold back the game instead of adding to it. On paper, it's an interesting idea as the laws are supposed to add variety to battles... in practice, it only makes things more tedious.

Right now, the law set for this fight is set to Forbidden: Items and Recommended: Status. What this essentially means is that we can't use items, but we get extra bonus points if we inflict status ailments on our opponents. If we break the law, we get hit with a penalty - either a yellow card or a red card depending on the severity. Yellow cards are merely warnings while red cards boot you straight to jail. That's right, the slammer.

Laws also have ranks - from one to six. Breaking a rank six law or knocking out an opponent with a forbidden action is grounds for immediate incarceration, so you know they're not kidding around. To top it off, if you get hit with a penalty regardless of the card color, you are stripped of your bonus points and at least one of the following will happen to you at the end of the fight:

• Gil fine - They take some of your money
  
• Item fine - They either take an item in your inventory or off of your own currently-being-used equipment
  
• No reward - The judge can confiscate the reward of the mission, which is a real dick move.
  
• Stat change - THEY CAN PERMANENTLY REDUCE YOUR STATS!
  

Among other things. Right now we only have one law to deal with, but later on it gets as crazy as three at the same time... with even more severe results. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that the law system is completely broken. 

Later enemies have unique movesets and abilities that the law system doesn't even bother to count because that would be fair and we don't want that, but they also have special ribbons that make them immune to being imprisoned.

To make things worse, there's some absolutely ridiculous ones such as Damage to Animal, which punishes anyone that harms a monster unit. This is unbalanced because you can't get monster units to begin with, but let's say you get into a map that only has monster enemies in it. You attack one and you get a yellow card, no big deal. However, any further attacks will net you another yellow card along with an instant red card regardless of severity. The map is effectively made unplayable and you have to restart the game. IT'S ALL BULLSHIT!





So yeah, I'm not fond of them. Marche adapts to his new situation relatively quickly and gets his turn.

... Personally, if I were in his shoes and all of this happened to me, this would be my only reaction:





He's certainly improved since we last saw him, but his equipment is pretty crappy. It would only really be useful for vendor trash. Everyone in Fantasy Ivalice has slightly fuller cheeks and an overall brighter color palette - fitting considering this world is more "whimsical" in nature when compared to the real world. 



Oh boy, here we go. You see, as opposed to Laws, the job/class system of FFTA is easily the game's best feature. It's where the game shines, in my opinion. This is what each of the five categories mean:

• A-Action Slots - These are your special moves. For example, Marche has access to Soldier abilities due to being in that class. However, this is where things get crazy because not only can you switch to another class, you can master the abilities of that job and use them as a sort of secondary slot. Not only is this insanely cool, you can create an infinite amount of combinations. A Black Mage with White Mage healing magic, an archer with the brute strength of a Fighter, a mixed set of both magic and physical strength, etc. The secondary slot can also be used for items, which is recommended if you don't have a second job to take advantage of yet.
  
  
  
  • You learn abilities via your equipment. I'll elaborate on it when the time comes, but I have to warn you that your stat growth depends on which job you're currently in - Marche would not cut it as a Black Mage thanks to his hideous base magic stats, so keep that in mind if you plan on playing the game.
    
  
  
  
• Reaction - Abilities that automatically activate if the character is attacked. These range from the boring-but-effective Counter, the more situational Last X abilities (activates at critical health), Strikeback (Nullifies damage and counters - the same as Bonecrusher) and so on. They're very useful to have as they can serve as a good defense towards anything the game might throw at you.
  
• Support - Passive abilities. It can be as simple as boosted attack/defense, but then there's the advanced shit like filtering down elemental weaknesses, so you know things will get crazy.
  
• Combo - An ability I never really see covered, which is a shame because it's interesting... if situational. You see, Combos are a team attack move that don't use MP but instead Judge Points, the mysterious green number that you see below HP and MP. They are always accurate when used on their own, have hella-cool animations and the base power of the Combo will increase the more people with mastered Combo slots are next to you. The downside is that Combos can only be learned if you have Mythril-brand weapons, which are randomly dropped during non-story, non-mission skirmishes on the overworld. Still, they can be a badass finishing move on their own, which nets it a plus from me seeing as I'm a power-hungry tyrant.
  

You can get pretty creative with what FFTA has to offer you and man, it makes playing through through the game a blast. For now, we have some idiots to fry.



Literally. Our Moogle friend is called Montblanc and, according to the Final Fantasy wikia, this is what his name means:

"Montblanc is "white mountain" in French. It is also the name of a sweet chestnut pastry popular in Japan named after Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Western Europe."

He is part of a family of Moogles, although we only see one other member in this game. Montblanc starts off as a Black Mage and he's one of my favorite characters in the game, if only because of his sharp wit and well:



Goddamn it, I can't. You're going to give me a heart attack from all this cute! 





Montblanc deep-fries the White Monk that started this fight to begin with and gets awarded with a judge point. (His health also regenerates every other turn he gets, which is unique to this fight only. The power of tutorials compel him, apparently.)



: "Collect judge points! That way you can use "combos" with other clan members. It makes engagements a snap, kupo!"

: "So all I got to do is defeat my opponents? Gotcha."

Oh hey, they explained it for me. A bit too late there.

But yeah, The weird thing is that you can't get multiple judge points at the same time... even if you KO someone using a recommended action. I mean, JP isn't used for much if you're not going for combos so why not?



After a few whacks, the Warrior Bangaa runs off to a corner and uses First Aid in a vain attempt to heal himself. Yeah, a lot of your beginning abilities are pretty poopy, but you still need to learn them as they're required to unlock the better classes.

Still though, I can't help but feel bad for the two guys because they were probably having a normal day... and then Marche calls him a lizard and stabs him in the back. Kind of grim when you look at it like that.



What do you mean "somehow"? You did twice as much damage as them and you have a crazy bunny-bat person with magic powers on your side.



[Current OST: The World Starting To Move]

Are you sure that's a wise idea considering the judge just said not to use items? Sure, those second degree burns must be blistering, but that's what White Mages are for.

[The White Monk uses a potion, which causes the judge to blow his whistle]



"All violators will be sent to prison!"

Jesus, don't you think that's a bit harsh?



Judges don't care if you're bleeding to death or willing to save a burning house full of puppies - if you break a law, your ass is getting busted. You see what I mean by broken?

: "Kupo! The slammer... I hope I never get sent there."

: "The slammer... ?"

: "Yeah, prison -- they send people who break the law there. Oh, it's a dark and scary place, kupo!"

It's straight up the only real crapfest in this otherwise tries-to-be-idyllic setting. Montblanc knows people and they tell him all sorts of gruesome stories about life in jail. I imagine him sitting around with a nervous smile on his face while someone tells him about a time when they got shanked just to get a Hi-Potion.

Judge: "Perpetrator sentenced and imprisoned! Visitors are asked to go to the prison facility in Sprohm."

[The judge disappears]

You know, the funny thing is that I thought we had to go visit the guy that just got imprisoned... nope. He's rotting in jail for god knows how long. We sure made his day a mess, huh?



"What have I gotten myself into?"

WELCOME TO IVALICE!





[Current OST: Teach Me, Montblanc]

: "Never ever call a bangaa a lizard, kupo!"

: "Sorry, I really didn't know."

: "You... you have seen a bangaa before, right, kupo?"

: "Um, yes, well, no. Not a real one, at least."

Things are getting wackier by the second.

: "Kupo! Where exactly are you from, kupo? Cadoan? Muscadet?"

: "I... I don't know. I'm all confused. And to top it off, I'm talking to a stuffed animal!"

: "A stuffed animal?! I'll have you know I'm a moogle, kupo!"

: "Fine, you're a moogle. What's that?"

Marche, why do you have to be so offensive? Especially seeing as Montblanc is the one who saved your dumb ass.

: "Okay, I believe you! Let me explain: This is the town of Cyril, in the land of Ivalice."

(By the way guys, I've pronounced it as Ih-valis for the longest time, but according to Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, the proper pronounciation is 'Eee-va-lease".)

: "Ivalice? But that's the name of the town where I'm from!"



See what I meant earlier regarding the names of the two places?

: "Not my Ivalice. And there's no liz--er, bangaa there either."

[s]secretly a racist all along[/s]

: "What about moogles? Surely the other towns have them?"

: "Nope. We just have normal things like dogs and cats."

: "But you just said you'd seen a bangaa, only not a real one! What did you mean, kupo?"

: "Well, it's just... I've seen a bangaa, but in a computer game, not in real life!"

: "Kupo?"

Montblanc has an incredible capacity for understanding if he's listening to Marche's story and not immediately claiming him as a crazy person.

: "It's called 'Final Fantasy.' It's not real. Not really. It's like a pretend world, with heroes and monsters..."

: "So you're saying here is just like your pretend world?"

: "Yeah, come to think of it, it's just like in the game!"





: "Sorry, I know I'm not being very helpful..."

: "No, this is by far the most kupo story I've ever heard!"

At least he likes it. I can't imagine pitching this story to anyone that's not as chill as Montblanc.

: "You're telling me!"

: "Of course, I'm not sure I entirely believe you, kupo."

: "I can hardly believe any of it myself. What should I do?"

: "I think our meeting like this was no accident, kupo. Stick with me and I'll help you out, okay, kupo?"



: "Thanks. By the way, my name is Marche. What's your name?"

: "They call me 'Montblanc', kupo! Come with me, Marche!"



[Current OST: At The Bar]

Pretty cool place. I'm really digging how everything is designed thanks to the whole "desert" aesthetic.



"Clans are like... groups of people who work together."

[Screen pans over to a group of people]

: "Wow... everyone looks so tough!"

Buddy, you haven't seen anything yet. Just wait until we get the stuff that breaks the game.

: "Well, our clan takes on some pretty rough jobs. Of course, the pay's good, and there's never a dull moment!"

: "Maybe someone here knows how I can get back home...?"

Excuse me, what? You want to leave? The fun hasn't even started yet!

: "You can ask around, kupo!"

: "Can I join the clan?"

: "Sure thing! I just have to introduce you and you're in."



: "Um, hello!"

The air is so thick with awkward you can cut it with a knife.

: "Me and the others will help you out! And maybe we can help you find your way home!""



: "Well, it's kind of a small clan, so no, not yet... Kupo! Why don't you give it a name, kupo?"

: "Me!?"

That's a bit sudden, ain't it?

: "To commemorate you joining the clan! Make it a kupo one!""

On second thought, Montblanc needs to dial back the eagerness just a bit.



But yes, we are allowed to name our team! It's interesting that they allow you to do this, because you can't do it for anything else in the game. Anyway, Nutsy is silly and I don't like it. We need something that can strike terror into the hearts of everything that gets in our path.



We'll paint the town red. I can imagine Marche being that kind of edgy overlord if the guys ever decide to do roleplaying games.



[Montblanc stares at him with a worried smile before nodding his head]

: "Kupo! Henceforth, we will be called 'Clan Crimson!' Okay, let's get you settled in, shall we, kupo? This is where we are now, in Ivalice!"

I can imagine everyone giving Marche a really sour look like "who the hell is this kid?" I can't blame them considering the really whacked shit we can do in this game.



"Place them to add new missions to the pub. Place them in a special order to reveal treasures. Try to find the special combinations yourself..."

Anyway, we finally get to see the overworld! As the text said, we can place locations wherever we want, but placing them in the right locations can grant us unique items that we can't get in any other way.

The Ivalician calendar has five months, with each month only having 20 days. Each month represents a specific species:

• Kingmoon - Humans
  
• Madmoon - Bangaa
  
• Sagemoon - Nu Mou
  
• Huntmoon - Viera
  
• Bardmoon - Moogles
  

The funny thing is that if you have less than five units in your clan, you can get extra jobs at the pubs to recruit a member of a specific species depending on the month. I've had this game for at least four or five years and I had never known that was a thing. Believe me when I say that it will be useful later on.



Anyway, we get to place Sprohm - it's a Bangaa mountain town that serves as the home of the infamous prison.

Now, this is where things get crazy. I'm planning on doing two seperate, concurrent playthroughs of FFTA. By that, I don't mean an entirely new thread, but instead a change in how I handle the game proper. One will be a casual playthrough where I just go along the game and cover the story, while the other is a hardcore playthrough where I use every advantage I get to break the game.

I'm excited because really, it's a good way to show off the game in its entirety and I get to be a bloodthirsty tyrant overlord at the same time. Everyone wins!





I follow a specific guide on gamefaqs that lists the secret combinations for town locations in the overworld. It was made by AstroBlue, and it even comes with a handy dandy map that notes where things should go. For the Normal route, Sprohm goes here. This combination is called Perfect Ivalice, and each of the items unlocked are unique only to the Treasure Hunt feature. It's kind of standard, to be honest, even if we get rare items here and there.

This will also makes the most geological sense as, technically speaking, regardless of where we place them, the world will still act like certain places are next to each other. (The places with amber are the most plot important because they lead into the final areas of the game, actually. I won't elaborate because I don't feel like spoiling the game this early.)



Meanwhile, in the hardcore route, Marche places Sprohm here. This will allow us to get a really goddamn busted knife for thieves early. How broken? Well, it only allows you to STEAL ABILITIES FROM YOUR ENEMIES.

No, seriously. They let us do that. That's the kind of power we're going to play with in the hardcore route. It's practically intoxicating if this is what they let you do before the game is even half way done. To top it off, the original Tactics allowed you to break the game even harder, so it's gladly carrying on that tradition.



Anyway, there's not enough differences to count for now, so let's just look around.



[Current OST: Magic Beast Farm]

Interesting that the real world used this song of all things. The Monster Bank is an interesting idea as you can capture weakened monsters using the Hunter class (an upgraded Hume Archer) and you can utilize their powers via the Nu Mou Morpher class. You can feed monsters to increase their stats, although it will cut your wallet in half because you'd have to keep buying a lot of items to get a significant increase.

Not only that, you can get a unique mission if you capture a monster... which involves you going after monsters that have escaped. I'll save that one for when we get to it.

-

(Continued in Chapter 2-2)

[Current OST: Mysterious Shop]

Shops are very peculiar in FFTA. You see, they update their stocks based on how many battles you've participated in - 10 for the first upgrade and 20 for the second. After that, nothing really happens unless you start liberating areas around the map. As pretty as it looks, Ivalice is a rundown shithole with rogue clans and all sorts of evil skullduggery going down - each location in the game is in control of another clan who is likely just using it as a parking lot or something crude like that. Everything will cost 50% more as well, which is where I get involved.

The more places you liberate, the more unique items and discounts you get - up to a maximum of 50% off. Each town has unique discounts based on what weapons their population can wield. For example, as only Bangaa use spears, they have a 10% discount in Sprohm and so on.



Finally, there's the local pub/bar. These serve as "mission control" as you can hear rumors and take on missions from that fine fellow with the bitchin' turban and beard.



Rumors are essentially flavor text on the world as a whole along with various events that pop up at certain intervals. The ones marked with an exclamation point are merely recaps for things we already know, so we'll skip them. Checking rumors are useful as they can unlock missions that you otherwise wouldn't have... and throw off the story of the main game by a bit, but who cares?



"The king then established the judicial system to enforce his laws. Knowledge of the means to control the laws have been passed down the royal line ever since."

So if I'm reading this correctly, laws are magical limitations that have been part of the kingdom of Ivalice for hundreds of years. The reason judges are so stringent is because they keep things non-lethal - with no judges, people would be dying off left and right in clan battles for real. Defying what they say is pretty much spitting on the face of Ivalice's entire judicial system, which makes me really worried because the finicky nature of laws means that even innocent people get thrown in jail for petty reasons like "oh you used this attack when you had no way of stopping it".

I'm going to give the game the benefit of the doubt and assume laws are different outside of battle, but that's still pretty disturbing. It gets more complicated later on, just sayin'.



"The reason? Frequent and seemingly arbitrary changes in the laws. It's gone so far that pundits wryly say she's '... doing it to please that brat, the prince.'"

This will become important later on. I will grind my teeth to dust when we get there.



Borzoi? Isn't that a breed of Russian hunting dog raised to go after wolves? Oh well, I guess it's appropriate because we're gonna put them down. 



Enough messing around though. Let's start the first real mission of the game.



Missions are easily the most addicting aspect of FFTA. There's a total of 300 in the entire game along with some bonus ones, although only a handful are required to complete the story. You can get either money rewards, equipment or quest items. Sometimes you'll be required to bring a specific item, skill or a job class depending on the mission.

Missions also have ranks, but they're used to note the difficulty. For example, the easiest are the race recruit missions, which have a difficulty of 30. The hardest is a Rank 7 mission called Thorny Dreams which has a whopping 356! That's so impossibly high that it breaks the game, because the highest the difficulty can normally get is 256. You can make it easier on yourself if you have a strong character because the game has a formula for competence, which requires rounding up all of your stats along with the strength of the weapon you currently have equipped. 

The formula is so complicated that I can only sum it up like this: Let's take the Assassin Concetta from my actual Gameboy Advance copy of FFTA. Thanks to her set-up, she has a competency rating of 213 (and keep in mind this is at end-game) yet due to how things work, she would only have a... 59% chance to complete Thorny Dreams. It's pretty fucked.

The less "competent" you are (aka. your success rate is below 50%), the more the reward is multiplied, but that's just playing the waiting game.



Pubmaster man explains this, but I'll cut it down. Essentially, you can bring two quest items for any endeavor you plan to go on... even if it's not required. See, there's some special ones that give you boosts or attract certain recruits to your team. That's neat and all, but you have the choice to throw quest items away... including ones that are one-of-a-kind and can't be replaced. If that happens, you can't complete every mission in the game and you'd have to start the entire game over again if you want to do it.

I learned this the hard way when I was younger. The completionist in me wanted to die that day.



Missions that you can't cancel and stay on the job board for an infinite amount of time are story-related ones, so let's quit babbling and jump into it already.



 : "Yeah, there was one that seemed easy enough."

: "When can you start, kupo?"

: "Right away!"

You know, I wish it was easy to get a job in real life. I'm just saying.



[Current OST: Different World, Ivalice]

(Pretty cool song even if I don't find it particularly rousing)

If you press L on the overworld, you can see the laws before you fight. The reason it's colored like that is because that's what the laws are going to be when we get there, which is very handy.



Pressing R on a spot reveals what you can do there. It's also handy because this way you don't have to guess where missions are and waste time hopping from spot to spot.



Anyway... our first real quest in the entire game and it's to find some medicinal plants. Not very action-packed, but we're just starting out - you know, baby steps.



[Current OST: Walking in Ivalice]

(This one isn't really epic or intense, but I still like it because of how laid back it is for a battle theme. It's also the default theme for skirmishes on the overworld)

Something I should note: if a mission has a sword icon, you're fighting no matter what. It could be as peaceful as getting the groceries, but if that sword icon is there? Blood will run through the streets. Knowing our clan name, that's probably gonna make us infamous around here.



We are an absolute team of misfits. Whether or not any of these people are permanent, even on both routes, lies all on how capable they are.



Let's get this party started.



21 / 40 / 90 / 75 / 100 / 112 / 118

We are introduced to our first monster enemies here. Sprites are part of the fairy family - their health and defense are hideously fragile, but they make up for it by having incredible speed and magic power. They might as well be floating sentient vases for how easy they are to kill.

Their tell-tale move is White Wind, which is different from normal healing spells in that it uses the same amount of current HP that you have instead of your magic power. So if you have 1 HP, you will only heal 1 HP... which is kind of hilarious considering how easy it is to bruise them.



Funnily enough, none of the monsters in this fight had any skills... which left them to lightly bump into the team for peanut damage.



32 / 12 / 100 / 100 / 68 / 64 / 102

Goblins and their stronger cousin, the Red Cap, are straightforward fodder-tier units. They only exist to punch things really hard and have a questionable level of intelligence.



41 / 32 / 110 / 100 / 80 / 80 / 105

Oh hey, it's a Red Cap. While these guys are only slightly stronger with their most valuable stat being their attack, you have to pay attention to them if you want to get 100%. You see, these guys will go extinct by the end of the game. If you plan on capturing them or learning their attacks for your Blue Mage, you better make it quick because they don't last long.



Our very own White Monk, Nobel, has this under his belt. It hits every enemy that's adjacent to him, but not for much.



Wanda (snrk) is a Viera Archer that knows Boost, an ability that increases the amount of damage you deal for one attack.



Galor is our medic. He currently only exists to heal the team because White Mages are... obviously not meant for hurting people.



Remember what I said before with experience?



Yeah, you get experience with every action even if it doesn't mean anything. This is necessary for level grinding... although you have to admit, from Montblanc's perspective that came out of nowhere.

: "Thank you...? Kupo?"



Showing off what happens when you miss someone. I think this was like a 50% chance to hit or something silly like that.



Montblanc has access to all of the first-tier elemental abilities, but that's to be expected because the normal Rod for Black Mages comes packaged with all three of them.



Those numbers are kind of high for early game, but this is also demonstrate that area-of-effect spells have friendly fire. Fire will hit both my Soldier and the Goblin in a plus, so you have to be careful about your positioning.



What is it with the criticals lately?  I almost never saw this in the actual cartridge version yet they're handing them out like candy here.



Wanda releases a boosted arrow to the Red Cap's temple. Uh... not very impressive, but I'll take it.



He does the same and more just by punching her. We really need to get to work on this team, jesus.



Meanwhile, Galor breaks White Mage tradition and goes straight-out pimp on the fairy. White Mages use canes too, so it's perfect. 



If you're stronger than your opponent, you recieve reduced EXP. Oh well, them's the breaks.



Okay, this judge point thing is getting on my nerves.



Thankfully you can switch it off, among other things.



God damn, Wanda took a beating. It's a good thing Galor the playa is here to lend a hand. (Not across her face because that would actually kill her.)



Since Marche got a judge point, I can use the Combo that he somehow has. They have yellow tiles instead of green and are guaranteed to hit regardless of enemy evasion, even if they do the same amount of damage as a normal attack.

Still, look at this shit:



Badass. It gets better - there's different animations for each job class, which I have to show off in the future. (Forgive me for the strange quality of that gif, it does that from time to time)



Wow, Wanda, you're not that good. Even Galor is doing a better job of killing things than you and he's the healer.



Nobel finishes things in style. I never could have imagined Whirlwind being put to practical use, but there we have it.



Kick-ass. Aside from a certain person's performance, that went relatively well.



: "Some kind of medicinal herb. Muscma... something?"

: "Muscmaloi! That grows all over the place, kupo!"

For the longest time I have had no idea what muscmaloi meant. As it turns out, it's a corruption of musk mallow, a shorthand name for Malva moschata - a real species of plant native from Europe to Spain. That's pretty neat, I suppose. 

: "Huh? Really?"

: "Yeah, there's some there. And over there too! I used to pick it all of the time when I was little, kupo!"

I don't think I can handle the image of a baby Montblanc.



: "Well, it was pretty cheap, I guess..."

I mean, who's going to charge you millions of gil just to go pick some flowers?

: "That figures. Still, it's probably good to start slow. Let's pick us some herbs and head back to town, kupo!"



Good. Oh yes, this is where it comes into play - AP, or Ability Points, are earned whenever you complete a mission. They are what allow you to master moves and be able to use them even in a different job class. For example, the most inexpensive abilities to learn are only 100 like the elemental trio of Fire, Blizzard and Thunder, First Aid and so on. The game really rewards you for going into fights, so be sure to get into them every chance you get.

... Yeah, get into fights. Yes, I am a good role model.



Beating that mission allowed us to get Lutia Pass. In the Normal route, we put it right next to Cyril and Sprohm... which net us a reward.



Let's see what it is.



... Well, we can't get it anywhere else so... yay?



In the Super Optimized timeline, we place it aaaaall the way over here. Things only get more chaotic, this I promise you.



Let's go check out the prison, just to see what it's like.



[Current OST: Prison]

(Easily the most intimidating theme in the entire soundtrack. I love it.)

Those are some scary looking guards. They're huge. The overall atmosphere of this place is very foreboding, which is appropriate considering... you know, it's jail.



If anybody in your clan gets imprisoned, you can release them for a price... although you can wait it out by fighting in battles without them, so I guess if you're less patient then this is the option for you.

One major thing now that we actually have a clan is that Marche has been silently made the leader by now. You can pay to get any other member of your team out of jail, but if Marche gets a red card it's just game over. Apparently Montblanc doesn't cut it as the leader anymore, which is silly.



You can voluntarily imprison yourself to remove some cards off of your debt. If Marche goes to get himself pardoned, the entire team has to stop what they're doing for a few days. I love how this poor kid got shafted into this position where, if he gets sent to jail, nobody can save him or the clan - it's pretty gruesome when you step back and look at the bigger picture.



Since we put Lutia Falls on the map, more missions open up for us.



Dueling Sub is the first dispatch mission in the game and it's a relatively simple one at that. Sometimes you'll be required to walk for a few days (aka. go from spot to spot), beat some enemies or complete entire battles to finish these... personally, my favorites are the ones that just have you walk around because I'm a lazy bastard. For now, though?

That's all the time we have for this chapter. Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we cover some more missions and begin our conquest. See you then.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Team setup:


 (Marche, level 2, , ) - "Okay, so... who's going first on that dispatch mission?"
 (Montblanc, level 4, , ) - "Not me, kupo. I prefer to do things when I'm with you guys."
 (Ardin, level 3, , ) - "That was a good result!"
 (Nobel, level 3, , ) - [Currently flexing his muscles]
 (Galor, level 2, , ) - "Where would this team be without me?"
 (Wanda, level 2, , ) - [Shoots a dirty look at Galor]

We begin this chapter by reading about abnormal weather in Lutia Pass. Those kids are in for a world of trouble and they don't even know it yet.



The mission board opens up a bit more since the last time we were here. Being the person with zero chill or patience, I just choose all of them at once and do them in order.



... So someone challenged you to a duel, but you are so much of a pansy that you have to send someone in your place. What the hell happened?

At least you get a Javelin and some money. Javelins are neat because it teaches Dragoons Jump, which is a ranged physical attack... albeit one that requires a lance-type weapon, which you'll probably not keep if you keep switching classes like a maniac.



Sometimes missions will require you bring along a specific job to complete it. 



Since Ardin is our only soldier, he's the only person that can do it. I find it deeply confusing because if he wasn't a soldier he wouldn't be able to do it, like he somehow magically doesn't count as a soldier despite having the skills.

Final Fantasy is weird like that.



Sometimes towns will have specific missions such as this one right here. So... for stopping the town from burning to a crisp, you get a knife... and a sprinkler.

The worst part is that this isn't even like the craziest reward we'll get.



Kids, snow and monsters do not mix, why are you letting this happen?



Here's the story-required mission, Thesis Hunt. A guy has his teacher's essay stolen and we have to get it back. What the hell was in it that prompted thieves to take it, though?



We walk around for a bit and the mission's already done, with no fighting required!



Excellent. The most amount of AP you can get from a normal mission is 80, by the way, but those won't come into play until later.



Oh jeez, we're actually timed on this one. What would have happened if we didn't take the job?



You get this cute little "Engage!" balloon whenever you get into a fight.



[Current OST: Companions that Surpassed Their Tribe]

Oh lord. Good thing we're on the case.



Okay, something I don't understand. The Judge is here, like in every fight, to watch what happens. But the thing is... he doesn't do anything to stop the bombs. So if Marche gets jailed or if we all get knocked out, the flock of Bombs will have their way and burn down the fucking town.

Man, I knew the law system was corrupt but that's just... wow. The weird part is that you can try this mission again if you fail it, which makes no goddamn sense. To make matter worse, Judges are not just monolithic law pushers, because they do arrest people for actual bad stuff like illegal logging and so on... so what the hell kind of morally bankrupt scheme is going on here?



26 / 42 / 90 / 80 /80 / 72 / 104

Bombs are a staple of Final Fantasy. They're living fire creatures with a signature suicide explosion attack that does massive damage. Stats-wise, they're alright, but not much of a real threat if you keep a distance. They have a weakness to Blizzard because I guess Water magic wasn't fully introduced as part of the elements yet.



They all had said suicide attack, but they never actually used it. I guess (aside from just being a low-health thing) if they did, it would be awfully pyrrhic because they'd recognize that we have Phoenix Downs if someone bites it. 



To start us off, Wanda prepares a boost and dodges a Bomb.



Galor hits Marche for... some reason. I think it was to get experience, which is hilarious considering this came out of nowhere.

: "Augh, what the hell man?"

: "It was to gain experience, you see."

: "Yeah, in what? The last time I checked, you don't use the staff for whacking people over the head."

: "Touche."



Marche stabs a Bomb and Montblanc demonstrates type weaknesses.



Only for his asshole friend to come along and give him a quick fix. To give a short refresher, the effectiveness system works like this:

Absorb > Immune > Half  > Neutral > Weak

There's actually a Black Mage support skill called Geomancy that filters down the effectivness, so things that were normally Absorb are now Immune and things that normally took neutral damage are now weak to everything you have. Given how elemental resistances are non-existent for normal units and rare on monsters, that skill effectively knocks everyone down a peg and makes you even more powerful.



Pictured: Montblanc missing two Blizzards. Sure, they may be facing him, but I at least wanted to get one.



Marche slices the final bomb to pieces and we call it a day.



Good thing. Wait, other streets? Is that supposed to explain why we can do the mission again? If so, I'm still blaming the judge for not helping.



I'm curious as to what would a sprinkler do to a Bomb. It will either be hilarious or horrifying.



After a job well done, we make our way over to ye old shoppe and check out the goods. Weapons aren't the only thing that grant you powers, although equipment gives you reaction and support abilities instead. Learning A-Action abilities are the only way to proceed to a different class, so you could ignore bad reaction/support abilities to your heart's content.

Block Arrows is effectively useless as it only works against archer enemies... of which there are only two classes out of the entire game.



Catch allows you to steal a thrown item. This one is so situational that I don't even know why it was put in, seeing as the only classes that use throwing abilities are Ninjas and Jugglers... both of which are incredibly rare and are more likely to stab you than throw valuable items at you. Like come on.



While this may not be a monumental purchase, it's stronger than the sword we already have and teaches Ardin/Marche a new ability.



Blades are different than Knightswords, Greatswords and Broadswords in that they can only be used by human Fighters and bangaa Gladiators. Yeah, another thing that boggles me about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is that if you switch classes, you suddenly can't use specific weapons anymore.

Like Marche has to become an Archer just so he can use a bow again.





... Oh damn that's actually really good.

While it is nowhere near as impressive as some of the other knives in the game, stealing accessories and chucking daggers like Dio Fucking Brando is always a plus in my book. (Dagger has the chance to render an enemy incapable of doing any actions for a short amount of time, hence the fuss.) 



Staves are different than rods in that Rods are for Black Mages instead. I guess it's because staves look more saintly as opposed to a goddamn magical girl stick. 

The Guard Staff teaches Protect to White Mages (increases physical defense) and Ifrit to Summoners, which brings about a hulking fire man to attack in a 3x3 square. Pretty sure Summoners get the cooler technique of the two.



The Rising Sun fist teaches Exorcise to White Monks, which allows them to remove an undead enemy off of the field... permanently. See, when you beat an undead enemy, they're due to come back in three of their turns, although by the time that happens you would have probably beaten the map already.

I'll elaborate more when we actually get to one, though.



Guns can only be used by the Moogle Gunner class, which I feel is a wasted opportunity given how this is a fantasy setting WITH GUNS. I'd need to raise a Moogle to become Rambo Jr., and that'd take a long-ass time.



Nobel changes into a Warrior because he needs to get the skills out of the way. Warriors are essentially the bangaa equivalent to Soldiers, so they're not that good.



Wanda becomes a Fencer so she can do a specific mission. That, and I think Viera Fencers are fancy.



Remember what I said earlier? Granted, we're probably here to get the monsters out of the way first and not rescue the kids from mortal peril. But imagine how many bad parenting awards that person would get.



Keep this in mind for later. (By the way, Dark is insanely rare - only undead enemies have it as an ability and there's only really two Blue Magic techniques that utilize it... so who cares, I guess.)

 

38 / 24 / 105 / 110 /80 / 80 / 108

Panthers are an enemy that appeared in Final Fantasy IV under the name Cait Sith and are generally big cat monsters. In here, they look like a hellhound. Panthers generally pack a punch and come with moves like Poison Claw and Rend, which are as as pleasant as they sound.



This one had Reveal, which is a support ability that discovers invisible opponents. It is really strange how the game has all of these interesting abilities that never get used due to how situational they are.



Swarmstrike is a low-damage Fencer attack that poisons the opponent. To be completely honest, the only status ailments you need to worry about are Stop, Don't Act and Zombify (because you need a special item to cure that one) because Poison does peanuts in a game where maximizing your damage output is always the recommended solution.



Wanda gets murdered by a Panther for her troubles, which really highlights how bad she is as a fighter.



Oh well, we can always give her a second chan--



Damn it, this is what I was talking about. I actually forgot Forbidden: Item was in effect, so the Judge slaps us with a Yellow Card because I wasn't paying attention. Oops.



... That is Montblanc missing a Fire at 70% accuracy. A kneeling, wounded Panther somehow dodges fiery wrath by standing still. What the shit.



Oh well, we cleared it anyway.



*sigh*

Take whatever you want as long as it's not something important. I can just buy another Antidote. What makes this bad is that he has a record now - the more cards he gets, the more severe the punishments will be if he breaks the law again.

The Judges are gonna be watching him like a hawk.



The Char Bow teaches Blackout to Archers, which inflicts the Blind status. It's pretty useful because Blind also reduces their evasion, so they'll run into our swords a lot easier.



Oh, and the guys mastered some skills. Now I can equip the fancier stuff on them. With that said, let's cap off the chapter with the actual story mission.



: "Kupo?"

: "Why would bandits be interested in a thesis, anyway?"

Simple - they're gonna use the thesis to create a magical super weapon powered by Mist (aka. the FFT universe's equivalent of magic essence) or a golem-mecha the size of a skyscraper to terrorize Ivalice.

Or, you know, someone just wants to make a perpetual motion machine to get brownie points at the next science convention.

: "Kupopo? Maybe they're nerdy bandits? Some thieves are interested in more than money, kupo!"

He does have a point.

: "Yeah, you're probably right... Hey, there's someone there!"



"I want Coleman's thesis, not Dalilei's!"

Keep in mind, Coleman was the person who put up the mission in the first place... so they stole the teacher's thesis instead of the student's. *Losing horns*

: "Hey man, we got you a thesis just like you asked."

: "Well, I can only give you half of the fee, then."

: "That's not an option, gramps. Pay up!"



"The bandits just wanted the money after all!"

I can understand the thief only wanting money, but what about the Nu Mou guy who arranged this debacle to begin with? I'm really curious as to what kind of screwed-up creation he was going to make using the stolen thesis.

: "Don't worry about that! Let's get the thesis back!"

[Marche faces towards the bandits]

: "Hey, you! That thesis is stolen property!"

Way to announce that you're here, genius.



: "That's no ordinary boy! Look - he's with a clan! Coleman must have posted a reward for that thesis!"

: "Ah, so this kid is here on business! No need for me to play nice, then, is there?"

[The Thief whistles and summons his gang]

Bring it on, you pirate-looking motherfucker.



33 / 15 / 76 / 76 / 76 / 64 / 110

Thieves are practically good-for-nothing as a combat unit, so thank god for their abilities. They hold some of the most broken skills in the game, as they can not only steal gold and accessories but also experience, weapons and even other people's movesets. Even Fire Emblem doesn't let you snatch weapons.

They're also the class you need to be in to learn Counter, which is universally helpful if your guy is melee-oriented.

Maintenance is a support ability that prevents your equipment from either being stolen or destroyed, of all things. I'm pretty sure you don't want to lose your one-of-a-kind Masamune 100, now do you?



36 / 18 / 72 / 72 / 64 / 80 / 106

Archers have some neat skills, but it's their promoted class that's actually worth a damn. See, Archers are all about boosting and hindering enemies from a distance, but they're not very strong and are generally made of toilet paper for what is supposed to be a physical class.

They're the only class aside from White Monks that can purify Undead and come with a support ability that rips the game's balance right in half, but we'll get to that one when the time is right.



40 / 14 / 88 / 88 / 60 / 72 / 100

Soldiers are pretty alright. Not impressive, just average. They're the standard human class that you learn the abilities of, forget they exist and move on with your life.



29 / 52 / 57 / 73 / 88 / 84 / 108

Nu Mou White Mages are an oddity. They're the second fastest job class of the entire race and have slightly lower magic attack... even though they're healers. White Mages have access to Cure- spells, Life spells (revives fallen unit) and the dreaded Turbo MP, which uses up double the MP for twice the damage and accuracy. It's risky, but you could make something out of it.

That said, all of these losers have no chance of beating the crew no matter how hard they try.



Wanda poisons a thief while Galor uses his brand new Protect.



None of the enemies here have abilities that do direct HP damage, so instead they have MP damaging moves. They... uh... are not very useful, given how you regenerate 5 MP every time your turn comes up. Now, if this were A2 where you started every battle with 0 MP... that'd be a problem.



This sucker thought he could get the drop on Nobel... although what I'm questioning is why the AI would be dumb enough to drop a fragile healer type in the middle of all of my melee powerhouses. I guess he was so distraught by all of the thesis garbage that he decided "screw it, just arrest me".



This is the first time Counter makes an appearance in gameplay, and it complicates things just a little bit.



Thankfully, you can dodge it seeing as it has the same accuracy as a regular attack. That, and at the angle the thief is attacking from, the worst he would do is stab at Ardin's shins.



Now this is a cool ability. This is the Archer's Aim: Leg skill, which brings up this cool reticle animation and immobilizes whoever gets hit by it. They also have Aim: Arm, which functions the same way but you can't use any actions like attacking instead.

[Ardin attacks the Archer!]





Ardin was so pumped by our team's morale that he got a critical and knocked the poor guy off of the ledge too. Overkill is the only kind I'll take.



The final soldier, desperate to cling to what dignity he has left, uses First Aid in vain as Marche shivs him in the back.

In hindsight, you should be glad there's a judge nearby and for the fact they don't lock you away for beating people up.



Good, you'll have to keep it up for another 200+ missions. Nobody ever said running a clan was easy.



: "Are all of the pages there, kupo?"

: "Yup, they're all in there! All we have to do is bring this back and we're done!"

Sweet. Although... you're not gonna peek and see what they wrote? Then again, Marche is in like... grade school, so he might not understand the ridiculously complex formulas and math behind creating a [s]doomsday machine[/s] a perpetual motion device.

: "You're doing a kupo job!"

Sweet. 

: "You really think so?"

: "I'd thought it would be best to wait a little longer... But I think we're ready for the clan wars!"

Oh lord, here we go.



[s]METAL GEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAR[/s]

(i'm not apologizing)

: "It's not really a war, kupo! It's when we compete with other clans for turf. The bigger your turf, the cheaper it is to get info. And there's other benefits as well, kupo!"

Oh, well thank god then. It's not like we're swinging swords and throwing nuclear fire bombs at each other - OH WAIT.

: "Do we actually engage with other clan members?"

Why are you phrasing it like this is something you haven't done already? You've just beaten the piss out of a group of bandits!

: "Sometimes, kupo."

And by sometimes, he means every time we run into one.

[Marche glances to the left]

: "I'm... not getting in your way, am I, Montblanc?"

: "Kupopo! Not at all!"



: "It gets busier from here, kupo! Hope you're ready!"

You're both adorable.

 



Ah, sweet. This is where the game finally begins, in my opinion.



For now, we collect our totally-not-suspicious-knife and money for bringing back that thesis.



We get a new location for completing that mission. It's called Nubswood, and it's a dark forest that serves as a hiding spot for thieves. Cool stuff.



Here's the Clan menu - we can see missions we haven't already completed, along with the total number we've already done.

Report is effectively a catalog of every mission in the game, so you can check to see which ones you've already completed.

Clan Turf allows you to see a map of areas you've already liberated. Since we just started, nothing is under our influence as it is.

Mission items are the quest-important doodads that we get that don't fit in our regular inventory. You can have a total of 64 mission items and you can throw away unnecessary ones - funnily enough, doing that also neatly arranges the entire inventory so it's not a mess. A word of warning, however:

Again, there are some items that can never be replaced - if you throw those away, kiss goodbye to 100% completion. A similar thing happens in A2, to the point where I had to make a list of stuff to not throw away/sell just to get 100% completion in that game too.



Seeing as our only mission item is a sprinkler, I think we're doing just fine. So fine in fact, that I'll cut off the chapter here.

Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we take a look into the... other timeline. I can't wait to see you there.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Missions completed: 5 out of 300

Team setup:


(Marche, level 4, , ) - "I thought that went pretty well."

(Montblanc, level 4, , ) - "The Clan wars are tough, kupo! We might even get some rare mythril items if we keep it up!"
(Ardin, level 3, , ) - "I didn't see what happened with that archer, but I'm pretty sure I hospitalized him. Ouch."
(Nobel, level 4, , ) - "You really did a number on him. Impressssive."
(Galor, level 3, , ) - "It is quite interesting having Marche as a leader instead of Montblanc. They seem to work well with each other."
(Wanda, level 3, , ) - "You know, when he handed me this rapier and told me to be a fencer, my first impulse was to throw the damn thing at the enemy. I don't know why I'm like this."

We're starting off where the last chapter ended, more or less. This isn't a direct continuation but more the set-up to really kick off the Super-Optimized timeline.



When you go into the town after completing Thesis Hunt, you get a special cutscene with Marche and the bartender.

: "Pretty good, I guess... Yourself?"

Bartender: "Can't complain, can't complain! I thought you might be busy with the clan wars and all."

: "Huh, no kidding?"

Bartender: "There's a lot of clanners out there looking for fights. Everyone wants to spread their influence, you dig?"

Influence, huh?



"I'd keep your distance! If you fought every clan, you'd never get any work done. Not that all of the clans are bad... Still, be careful."

He's wrong about the "never getting any work done" thing, by the way, seeing as you have to beat a certain amount of enemies / fights just to complete certain dispatch missions. Still, I like that he's looking out for us.



We place Nubswood here...



And find some more shoes. See, I'm curious as to how the treasure hunt system works in-story. Who just leaves around old shoes and extremely rare, one-of-a-kind weapons in the middle of the forest? Oh well, one man's treasure is another man's doomsday weapon.



Skill Levels are normally not important because just going through the game is good enough to fill out each category. However, we will be required to get Negotation to at least 30 to start taking advantage of what this game has to offer.



"You can tell one by the ribbon they wear... lucky bums."

Essentially, bosses are immune to being imprisoned, so you can't just cheap them out with a law that would otherwise severely hinder them. Son of a bitch. I will be recording who has immunity ribbons, because the people who have them make no sense.



Oooh, a rod that teaches Fira. That's a step up from normal Fire, even if it will be obsolete by the time we really get things moving.



This job required a Fencer, so off she goes.



The Ancient Medal is an item for another mission here, but this is about the extent of our normal mission quest for a while.



Whenever you complete a mission, you have the chance to recruit some random unit into your team. A fair amount of them aren't very good, so I have to reject them on sight. Every rejected unit cries and that sucks, but that's how we do things around here.



After Thesis Hunt and all of the stuff about Clan Wars has been talked about, enemy clans (represented by a red soldier on the overworld) will roam around Ivalice for two to three days. They are essentially random fights and a way to get experience and money without having to do an official mission at the pub.

They are also the only way to get Mythril items, as they're randomly given whenever you complete them. There is a Mythril item for every job class and each one teaches a different sort of Combo ability, so that's cool at least.



... Well, Ardin's royally boned. Not only is he alone for some reason, he can't even defend himself.



So instead he uses the Joestar Family's Secret Technique.





You can be an absolute coward and run away from fights. The outrageous part is that this counts as clearing a battle, so...



Yeah, Wanda completes Swords in Cyril while Ardin barely escapes getting mulched by an enemy clan. The Victor Sword is just strong while the Buster Sword let whoever use it poorly mimic Cloud.

Her reward for this?

: "Thanks, but you're fired. I've got big plans for the future and that involves letting you go."



... Yes, Marche really just dismissed Wanda and she's not even that broken up about it. This will come into play soon enough.



Meanwhile, Ardin goes to complete the mission that involves the Ancient Medal.



... Which he somehow fails.

Would you believe me that he failed it twice in a row after this? I'm not joking, he really was that incompetent.





I just want you guys to imagine - Marche and pals are constantly running away from clan fights instead of winning them. That's not a good look.



Oh shit, here we go. Since we kicked Wanda out of the team, our shortage of members has forced Montblanc to put up talent search missions. Again, you get a different race depending on the month and they'll stop coming when you have six members... so choose wisely.

Every time you complete a recruit mission, you get more points in negotiation... do you see where I'm going with this?



Since applying for a mission costs money and the recruit ones don't give you money, Chocobo Help allows us to make some cash so we don't go bankrupt trying to do this... on top of giving us more negotiation points.



Montblanc just wants a moogle friend. :'(



Nobel turns out to be more of a caretaker than I originally pegged him for. Huh.

By the way, since this is just me going around for tons of in-game days and reading through the stats of different job classes... have this song while you read through.





Well would you fuckin' look at that. The first recruit I get and it's a JUGGLER of all classes. If this and the criticals from earlier are a sign of my luck for the rest of the game, then boy howdy we are in for a ride. 

Jugglers are pretty much the second best class behind Assassins, thanks to their amazing abilities and surprisingly really good growths in Speed and Attack. They also have the highest physical Defense out of all the classes, which is insane. I'll spoil you and say that as cool as Nero is, he's not permanently in... trust me, it gets even better later on. Here's the stats, in case you were wondering:

34 / 16 / 80 / 100 /64 / 64 / 108



He does Ardin's job but better, for one.



... Way to go Marche, you let the city get destroyed by Bombs. This was to show you could escape from actual missions too, but there was no reason to actually do so... so oops.



40 / 8 / 96 / 84 / 56 / 60 / 104

Okay, what the hell? Why are all of the good units flocking to me first? Dragoons are one of the two classes in the game that can use lances, and come with neat abilities revolving around jumping 50 feet into the air, elemental breath and taming dragons. They're the second-fastest and the strongest Bangaa job class, hilariously enough, which means this big guy gets to replace Nobel as our wrecking machine.

Or, at least he would if this were the right time.



30 / 48 / 59 / 65 / 92 / 96 / 92

Alchemists are an interesting if mostly ineffective Nu Mou class. They have high magic, can use Items regardless of what job class you put into the second slot and come with some crazy attacks like summoning meteors, turning people into toads, or a straight up instant kill move.

However, they suffer from poor speed, paper defenses and are generally outclassed by the Nu Mou Sage class in terms of offense... so sorry fam, you're not getting in.



26 / 22 / 56 / 76 / 92 / 94 / 98

... Chaka?

Jojokes aside, Time Mage is arguably the best mage class for Moogles. They're pretty fast (you know, for mages) and come with strong magic power, although Nu Mou do it way better. Montblanc already fills out our Moogle mage quota, so I'll pass.



34 / 30 / 80 / 84 / 84 / 92 / 100

Blue Mages are easily one of the coolest classes in the entire game for me, and not even necessarily because they're the best like Assassins and Jugglers. The reasons:

#1: The way they dress is pretty badass
#2: They use sabers
#3: They can copy the abilities of enemy monsters
#4: Balanced with no real bad stat in particular
#5: They have a unique Reaction ability called Damage to MP which uses your MP to nullify damage done to you... and it protects you even if you only have a measly 5 MP, so it's busted. It was so bad here that it had to be nerfed in A2.

Yeah, pretty much. As much as I want this guy on the team, Marche will have to do. Next!



38 / 38 / 84 / 76 / 92 / 76 / 85

Oooh, a Sage. They're a cool Nu Mou class that are pretty much an upgraded version of the Alchemist and Black Mage classes due to having a ton of offensive capabilities. However, they suffer from easily the worst speed growth in the entire game. Starting off as a Sage means you're practically a snail, not helped by your lackluster defenses.

It's better to learn the abilities and then get the hell out, even if I feel Sages have a cool design.



We ran from enough fights to unlock a shop upgrade! Now we have all of these fancy toys to play with once we're done. 

I am highlighting Apocalypse as not only is it one of the few dark-elemental weapons in the game, but also because it is symbolic of what kind of power we're going to have. Meanwhile...

: "Nobel, we have to make some space. Sorry pal, but you gotta go."



: "... Aw man, don't be like that."

Now Nobel will get to live in peace as a Chocobo farmer.



34 / 32 / 70 / 80 / 76 / 80 / 110

Morphers are a strange novelty class that prove to be one of the most interesting in the entire game. They have low magic, surprisingly good defenses and are the polar opposite of Sages in that they are the fastest Nu Mou class. But what's the point if they have middling attack on both ends? 

See, Morphers have the ability to actually change into monsters. This is why the Monster Bank is so important for them - you have to capture one with the Hunt command (unique only to humans), which nets you the monster's soul for you to use.

When a Morpher turns into a monster, they get to use all of that specific monster's attacks and the Nu Mou's stats are replaced with theirs. You can increase the stats of a monster by feeding them items... to the point where they can reach 999. It is just as crazy as it sounds, even if it is a gimmick job. However, you have to make sure that the monster can even attack, otherwise you'll have wasted your time.

All in all, they're a neat concept that can be very devastating... even if I'm not going to get them due to how restricted we are right now. 





Oh my god, it's a fucking Assassin!

26 / 18 / 88 / 68 / 92 / 72 / 125

These murder machines make Sonic of all people look slow. Not only do they have good attack and magic, they have access to all sorts of instant kill moves and are generally the best class to level up in for Viera. The only weakness they have is low health and brittle defense, but who cares when nobody can even touch them 75% of the time?

To top it off, she has a way better name than friggin' Wanda, so welcome aboard you beautiful harbinger of death.



God damn it, why is nobody sad that I'm kicking them out? They must really have faith in Marche to lead the team, jeez. It's kind of making me feel bad.



Nero visits Nobel at the Chocobo Farm and gets a very neat item for Bangaa - the Kaiser Knuckles. Not only does it sound badass, but it teaches Air Render - a ranged physical attack, essentially.



30 / 8 / 68 / 92 / 56 / 80 / 95

Gunners are one of my favorites in terms of cool factor and for their abilities, seeing as they're little bunny people that hit you between the eyes without even blinking. When it comes to actually using them, though, they're easily the worst class out there. You hop in the Gunner class to learn their ridiculous moveset and to act out your inner Rambo... but their hideous base stats and growths make it unwise to actually gain stats as one.

It's unfortunate too, because no other job class can use guns for some reason.



28 / 36 / 64 / 68 / 88 / 96 / 96

Black Mages are pretty standard magic users, with their most stand out features being their magic power, resistance and the Geomancy support skill. There's not a lot you can't do with the trio of Fire, Blizzard and Thunder, so it's boring but practical.



35 / 12 / 88 / 96 / 60 / 80 / 98

Mog Knights are the Moogle equivalent of Fighters for humans and Gladiators for Bangaa. They're tough, built like stone walls and are one of the classes that can learn the vaunted Ultima abilities (aka. triple damage at the cost of using MP). Combine Ultima Charge with the Gunner class and Concentrate (boost accuracy) and you have a magical nuke in the form of a small adorable bunny person.

That said, they're not super fast. Tough luck, buddy.



Ooh, here we go. I didn't catch it in time, but getting to 10 Negotiation...



... Nets you this neat helm for knights. It'll have to do for now.



37 / 22 / 88 / 88 / 68 / 84 / 104

Beastmasters are the class required to promote into Morphers, as evidenced by them being able to control monsters. They have the highest attack out of all of the Nu Mou classes and relatively good speed, but it's made moot by the fact that Nu Mou are primarily magic-based... so starting off as a beastmaster is a very bad idea.

Despite this, they can be very useful for teaching Blue Mages monster moves as they can direct the monster to use their attacks on them. Morphers and other Blue Mages can't teach monster abilities - it has to be from enemies, so there's that.

They also have a pretty slick design.



Oooh, here we go. The third type of mission are those that require you to liberate a spot on the map - freeing them from a clan's control or saving them from a natural disaster. They usually require defeating some enemies to be completed, so guess what we're doing?



Yep, we're actually fighting instead of running away. We also had to do this because I was running out of money.



Ganging Up is another word for Combo attacks. Instead, we'll be rewarded by repeating the same action the previous unit did... and given how this fight is just going to be us smacking the enemy around, that's a lot of Judge Points to go around.

You know, since one of our members is off on a dispatch and we're deliberately keeping a spot open to boost our Negotiation and increase the overall quality of the team... I went into this fight with only four people.

One of which was an assassin with no weapons. Good god, what have I gotten myself into?



... There was so much JP going around that people tried to steal it.



Galor takes out a White Monk by smacking them on the back of the head, which is by far the most impressive thing he's done yet.



Even with no weapons, you don't underestimate Assassins. She'll rip you apart with her bare fists alone!





The Cranequin is a bow for Hunters. It teaches Sonic Boom (thankfully, this is a good game), a ranged attack that hits in a plus that can also be used with close range weapons. I swear, it's one of the coolest animations in the game and the fact you can shoot it off with no MP cost makes it one of my favorites.



For clearing Giza Plains, we get a knife and some money. Cool.



Oh, and would you look at that? We've already upgraded the shop to the max! As much as I want to splurge and buy everything in the store, my wallet says otherwise. Damn.



At 15 Negotiation you get the Diamond Helm, which you can't even buy in the store. It offers a lot of protection for a helmet, so that's neat.



25 / 46 / 57 / 64 / 96 / 88 / 89

Illusionists stand out compared to all of the other magical classes in the game. It's not even necessarily due to their stats, seeing as they have mediocre growths and bases in everything that's not magic - no, it's what their spells can actually do.

Phantasm Skill allows them to hit every enemy on the map with no friendly fire. Add Geomancy or Turbo MP to that and you have a world-destroying attack on your hands. It's practically ludicrous what you can do with an Illusionist's skillset.



34 / 22 / 81 / 76 / 84 / 76 / 96

Red Mages are another peculiar class as they can use the magic spells of other jobs. They have a snazzy look and learning spells as a Red Mage counts towards other classes, even if their stats are... okay. Their most valuable asset, however, is something called Doublecast - aka. using two magic spells at the same time.

Doublecast is great, but comes at the cost of taking 999 AP to master. Personally, I don't mind because it's so powerful that it should be hard to learn.



Some time after you free an area, it will come under attack again. Going towards the affected area will net you a mission to save it - I recommend doing this because winning the fight gives you a hefty 80 AP every time.



35 / 20 / 80 / 96 / 80 / 100 / 90

The Gadgeteer (referred to as Tinker in A2) is arguably the worst job class in terms of what they can do. Their stats aren't half bad and boast defenses high enough to make Moogle Knights jealous, but their moveset is where they suffer.

Much like Illusionists, their moves cover the entire map... but it's a double-edged ability that applies status effects to both enemies and allies based on a coin toss-esque scenario. If you're lucky, you can get a party-wide haste or blind all of the enemies, or the opposite can happen and the enemy gets all of the buffs while you're left with poison and/or slowed down.

It sounds cool on paper, but it's horrible when actually played out.



36 / 14 / 76 / 88 / 72 / 88 / 100

An Animist is one that believes there's mystic qualities in everything that's non-human (aka. plants, animals, etc.). In terms of the job class, they're different from Beastmasters in that they don't control monsters but instead inflict status effects and buff themselves.

Stat wise they're not too hot, but that's not the point as their moveset is what makes them valuable. 



38 / 22 / 80 / 92 /72 / 88 / 98

Paladins are essentially Soldiers but better. They have access to some crazy defensive abilities and act as negotiators of the battlefield, seeing as they can do stuff like convince people to leave the fight, take damage for other units and so on. Paladins have access to the more powerful knightswords and the rare offensive Holy abilities.

Barring fairies and one boss fight later on, I can't think of anything that's inherently immune to Holy... so that'll be fun.



I'd feel bad, but we're letting them win... for now. They'll never see it coming.



Don't worry, it's just saying that because she doesn't know the moves required to actually become an assassin. (Which makes me question how she became one in the first place)

As tempting as it was to leave Delphine as an assassin, it's actually a bad idea due to lacking the skills of other classes to balance herself out. To become an assassin again, she has to learn the skills of every Viera class at least once so I guess that's fair.



42 / 6 / 88 / 94 / 65 / 72 / 92

Defenders are exactly what you'd think they'd be. They're a more intense, self-oriented version of the Paladin - they can nullify all damage done to them for one turn, cast auto-life or even blow themselves up for massive damage. They're nuts like that.

Stats wise, they're all for attack and defense, but their speed is pretty bad.



At 20 Negotiation, you obtain the Colichemarde. Magic Power Plus is a very useful support ability when used in conjunction with Doublecast and another certain job's skills later on.



To properly replace Nobel, we get this wrecking machine. 



29 / 21 / 84 / 72 / 80 / 76 / 120

Oooh, a Ninja. Ninjas are the less lethal but just as fast human cousins of the Assassins. They're more about elemental debuffs than actually hurting their opponents, which is... alright, I suppose. Their greatest utility, however, lies in the human-only support ability known as Double Sword.

Yes, dual wielding. Not only does it double your strength, you get to attack twice in one go and learn the abilities of two weapons at once. To compensate, it also takes 999 AP to learn, but again I feel it's fair because it's just that awesome. 


My friend will also be covering what the different katanas in the game signify, so look forward to that.



Galor was cool while he lasted, but he wasn't enough of a pimp to stay along. 

That should be all of Clan Crimson's original team members barring Marche and Montblanc who can't be replaced anyway.



25 Negotiation nets you a rad as fuck knife that, while it's not our main reward, is pretty busted in its own right.

To start, it's pretty damn strong. Just one slice is enough to one-shot most opponents this early in the game. Steal: JP isn't anything special, but Smile is an entirely different story. You'd think with such an innocuous skill name it wouldn't do much, right?

Wrong - it lets the user to give up their turn and allow one of their allies to move instantly regardless of how far behind on the turn counter they are. That is how we're rolling and I have zero complaints.



28 / 34 / 65 / 64 / 100 / 80 / 90

Summoners are the high point of Viera magical capabilities, and are one of the most powerful spellcasters in the entire game thanks to their skills. See, they can summon various entities to do elemental damage (which looks cool in of itself) in a diamond-shaped radius as opposed to just a plus like normal spells.

Summoners with Magic Power Plus and Doublecast equal a veritable goddess of destruction. While I felt it would be interesting to grab this summoner for ourselves (because I have a character called Diana), her poor base stats and Delphine already existing means she gets the boot.



Oh god here we go. The item I've grinded for hours to obtain. The reason Marche has spent days turning away people left and right regardless of quality...





[Theme I would use for getting the Cinquedea: Doom - Drown in Blood]

Well boys and girls, you know what time it is. It's time to wreck house.

Not only does this sexy beast allow Marche to hit for seventy damage when he doesn't even have that much health, but he can steal any ability that any of the human job classes can learn... including abilities that we shouldn't have by this point of the game.

Granted, the accuracy of Steal: Ability is kind of bad... but that's what we have sleep-inducing moves for. [Points to Animist]



By the way, Marche keeps the same appearance no matter what job class he's in due to being a main character.



As much as I wanted to keep Nero, Turner completely outshined him with their ridiculous speed. I'd gladly have them both along, but I'm still reserving a spot for the final member of the new Clan Crimson.



Sorry pal. You were fun while you lasted.



After the Cinquedea, I didn't plan on getting more stuff... but this is what happens when you're persistent in getting that certain person. Madu is the dual-edged rapier that teaches Doublecast to Red Mages, so hell yeah I'll take that.



26 / 36 / 56 / 68 / 100 / 96 / 98

Awww shit, there he is. The man himself.

Time Mages have the most powerful magic stat in the game (even if none of their spells use it) and are the third fastest Nu Mou class, so of course I had to do this. Our team is now completely balanced and we have all of these incredible end-game weapons before the third story mission.

I'm practically shivering with excitement.



Steal: Ability snatching Mug from this poor sap. Marche is now eligible to become a Paladin and he didn't even have to learn the damn skill himself.



After that skirmish, we add a sudden seventh member to our team called Parish. He may not be part of the primary badasses, but he'll serve us well as a dedicated dispatch busboy.



See, he already changed into soldier garb and won this mission for us. He's a pretty cool dude.



Marche gets to work.



However, the Archer caught onto the fact he was overpowered and charmed him over to their side. That's actually very clever for the game to do.



Lances hit two tiles ahead, so they're a melee weapon with good reach. The problem is that they damage whoever is in front, including allies, so be careful of that.



People who enter water are unable to attack for whatever reason - it was like that in the original Tactics, but simply entering water wasn't enough to make a unit useless.



34 / 18 / 80 / 76 / 88 / 76 / 104

Elementalists are the class required to become a Summoner and [s]are pretty hot[/s] have some nasty status inducing magic attacks. With that said, they're not very special.



Jump being used, only to miss this very lucky Elementalist.



Steal: Ability's glorious animation. I find it incredibly amusing that Marche stole Cupid because it's the ability that charmed him in the first place... sweet, sweet vengeance.



Montblanc finishes it by blowing this Archer up with Fira.



That should be a wrap! Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we progress more into the land of Ivalice and get even more powerful.

See you then.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missions completed: 8 out of 300

Freed Areas: 0 (Giza was recaptured)

Team setup:

(Marche, level 4, , ) - "I CAN FEEL THE POWER!" [Marche holds the Cinquedea in the air]
(Montblanc, level 5, , ) - "Marche? You're scaring me, kupo."
(Delphine, level 3, , ) - "Oh man, this is gonna be great. I haven't been part of a clan this good in a long time. In fact, I wonder how the old crew's doing now that they're the heads of the biggest Jagd out there."
(Leonard, level 3, , ) - "... Uh. Interessssting, to say the least."
(Turner, level 3, , ) - [Huddles next to Montblanc with a smile on her face]
(Raol, level 3, , ) - "Good evening. I am Raol the Mystic. I can see the heavens. Would you like your fortune told?"

(Parish, level 3, , ) - "Ooh jeez. Everyone looks really tough here. Maybe I got myself into something I'll regret."

So what have we got today?



A bounty mission where we fight some dude with a third eye...



Along with a mission where we get [s]ice, ice, baby[/s] I mean a stupid sword and shield that aren't as good as you think they are.



Clan Dip. That's the best name you could come up with? I can't help but imagine them using nacho sauce to pour tortilla chips in. Whatever badass image they were trying to go for is gone.



Ardin got slammed with Aim: Leg, which prevents him from moving. This isn't a problem if you're a mage/have ranged attacks, but the more severe one is Don't Act which completely disables you from doing anything.

Somehow, slapping a bandage on the afflicted character cures both. I don't think that's how bandages work.



... Oh dear god, I forgot to check the laws for the fight.



Well, shit, there goes my plan. I've essentially been locked into only using Montblanc for the fight and that's no good. Despite this, I still nuked everyone on the field... so that should tell you how determined I am to win a fight when I don't need to run away.

When a unit gets hit with a yellow card, you can see a little one on their profile there and all of their judge points are stripped away. I guess that's what you deserve for breaking the law?



Okay, good. Shields in this game are absolutely horrendous, with Bronze ones being the worst of the worst. The way they work is that they don't boost your defense like you think they would, but instead increase evasion and resistance. What?! How does holding a shield make you more able to dodge enemy attacks?

I have an explanation for this: In the original Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1, there was no clear cut Defense stat. Equipping armor (and therefore, shields) boosted your health and evasion instead. There was also the zodiac sign compatibility thing that affected how much damage you would do to an opponent based on opposing signs, gender, etc.

Shields in FFTA still do the evasion thing but it makes absolutely no sense here due to there actually being a defense stat. The best part is that it's not a lack of understanding regarding the mechanics because they do it in the sequel too, so...



We get a Sweep Blade for that... incredibly tumultuous ordeal (guys, it may seem like four-five screenshots to you, but it was practially an eternity in game). The Sweep Blade teaches Rush to Fighters, which both damages and pushes an enemy unit forward.

There's not much use for Rush unless your enemy is facing a cliff, so unless you feel like playing dirty...



Nobel failed this mission and we're supposed to deal with it. I don't understand why he got so mad if we can just try it again in a few minutes.



Might as well get this one out of the way.



You can only bring three units and there's only one enemy. Not sure why our team is so limited for these kinds of missions, but I have a feeling it has to do with ~game balance~ or some garbage like that.

You're also not required to bring Marche on missions where he's not pre-deployed, so if you don't want to use him then that's fine.



Short and sweet, just how I like it. Although I cannot deny that this is silly.



Nonsensical immunity ribbon count: 1

It begins. So, out of everyone that gets immunity ribbons, the chicken thief (aka. the person we came here to punish) get one so he doesn't just get Judge Dredded out of the battle. Why the fuck does he have one if he's supposed to be a burglar?

Is this proof of how corrupt Ivalice really is?



It doesn't help that he's higher leveled and comes with some nasty abilities like Counter and Weapon Defense+ to make him more durable.



We play it safe by knocking down his speed...



Instead of retaliating, he decides to rob Nobel's wallet for a measly 84 gil. The humiliation of theft is easier to handle than death, you see. The thief also has Steal: EXP and Steal: JP, which aren't as useful they seem considering how Judge Points and Experience are more of a player thing than an enemy unit thing.



He also hits like a linebacker, because one counter brought Nobel down to his knees despite all of his armor. To think, Marche in the other timeline is using one of the most powerful knives in the game and does this to people all of the time...

What a monster. That said, Thief Man is easy peasy.



He... cries out for his boss? This is going to start a chain of events, I swear.



For winning, we get another Char Bow (I forget how many we have) and a Blaze Robe that makes you immune to fire. That's nice.



Oh hey, we got a recruit that doesn't (completely) suck. Since this is the more relaxed playthrough, I took him along because why not? I need to show off Blue Mages anyway.



We also turn Wanda into a Red Mage so she can learn abilities and stuff.



This is an interesting mission in that it shows off an uncommon mechanic that FFTA utilizes - neutral units! You'll see why it's a rare sight in a bit.



We can't use items, but the forces of darkness are a-okay.

In hindsight, we should be glad there's only one set of laws that are relatively easy to handle. I can't imagine how it'd be like if there were more.



I'm curious as to how Auggie got himself in this situation in the first place. He's just walking along, minding his own business, and then all of a sudden he gets flanked by zombies and flans.

Bonus points if the zombies threw snowballs at him before starting the fight.



This is his only spell and, to be fair, it's not a bad one by any means. It's not that good for this fight, though.



14 / 56 / 83 / 320 / 88 / 49 / 90

Flans and the other two elemental based jelly monsters are... amusing, to say the least. They have awful HP and resistance but come with the most ridiculous defense stat in the game. 320 base Defense essentially means that nothing physical can touch them. Not raising any mages will definitely bite you in the ass if you fight a member of the flan family.

That said, they crumble against magic and aren't too much of a threat.



40 / 20 / 105 / 90 / 68 / 72 / 88

Zombies and other undead in the Final Fantasy universe are an interesting lot. They take normal damage from attacks (with the exception of Darkness, which is what animates them) but are also injured when you use healing magic on them. Essentially, their very existence is cursed and they're creatures of the night through and through.

Zombies are nothing compared to their more advanced counterpart later in the game, so be glad we don't have to face them yet. The wicked smile on these guys aren't exactly welcoming, though...



Drain Touch is much like Auggie's skill of the same name, but it deals Dark elemental damage instead. Absorbing works the opposite way with undead too - if Auggie used Drain, it would hurt him while the zombie gets their health restored.

Pretty screwed up, isn't it? Drain Touch is also Blue Magic, so every time I put an attack name in blue you'll know which one can be learned.



Oh yes, if you haven't noticed, the zombies in this mission are specifically named after the three bullies from the beginning (Colin, Lyle and Guinness). Given how this is Mewt's dream world, is this supposed to be payback for what they did to him?



Look at how much damage that does. That's just regular Cure! Randorf is a fresh recruit yet he's able to strike fear into the undead already.



It was enough to re-kill the zombie, but you'll see a number over their body now. When it reaches zero, the undead monster will reconstitute with all of their health. Good thing the game ends battles when all enemies are immediately knocked out otherwise they would never end.

Purifying skills like Exorcise and Burial permanently remove undead monsters off of the battlefield, but there's not much use for them if you're good at the game.



I was originally going to knock Auggie and neutral NPCs in general for being incompetently programmed, but he took out both of the flans with Drain and saved me a ton of trouble. I'm actually impressed!

... But that doesn't change the fact that the NPC AI is generally incompetent compared to enemies.



Cool. Auggie comes back later, by the way.



We get some soup after saving a professor from zombies and slime monsters. I swear, if this were any other world, all of those things would be treated with a greater deal of weight - even more so combined.



We make Ardin a fighter so he can actually use the fancy new blade we got. Helps that this is one of the most powerful human classes out there in terms of raw physical strength. 



An elixir?! That's one hell of an item to get for free.



We've also fought enough fights to unlock the first shop upgrade, so that's good. Too bad my wallet isn't quite ready yet...



"Because a greater sphere of influence means cheap items and special deals at pubs, every clan wants a piece of the action. The wars are expected to continue for the foreseeable future."

Ivalice, between the clan wars, the monsters and the judges, is a pretty messed up place.



So begins the conflict between Clan Crimson and Clan Borzoi. It may be completely optional, but we're going to show them what real justice looks like.



Tourneys, you say? We'll participate in those when the time comes.



Marche was blinded and was facing this guy from the front... yet still got him. Keep in mind, that's about a 5% chance of hitting, so wow that was incredibly lucky on my behalf.



Oooh, here's a katana. I'll let my friend describe the origins:

"Osafune find their origins in the Bizen-den line of the Great Five Schools of Japanese Swordsmithing. Originated by Osafune Mitsutada in the early 13th century, his call to fame was made when his swords exhibited most excellent, subtle, and flamboyant qualities, rivalling even the Kikuichimonji collaboration established by Emperor Gotoba; it is fact that, the more surface activity in a katana, the higher the quality should those activities be benefical. 

His legacy passed on into later successors for over 450 years, notably being Nagamitsu, Kagemitsu, and Kanemitsu, who have forged swords attaining the title of O-Wazamono, and his swords were most famous for their rarity, which was only bolstered by their admiration and impressive collection from Oda Nobunaga. Being associated with the ability Earth Jutsu, is likely much in the vein of being like the Ancient Sword, being one of Japan's oldest and prolific schools of swords."

There's a lot of history with these and I think they're really neat, even if they're not the strongest katana in the game.



We get an accessory called the Fortune Ring for saving Giza Plains. It's not too great - it just raises our defense and resistance by a little bit.



Well hot fucking damn. I don't know how this happened, but we somehow recruited a Viera that completely outclasses Wanda. She's good enough to give my soon-to-be assassin in the Super Optimized Timeline a run for her money! Yes, that good. 

I don't know what Luck God I pleased before I started this let's play but I'm grateful they have blessed me.



She gets to come along... on a mission where chivalry is banned. No being nice to girls here, apparently.



I changed Ardin to a Paladin to talk about a new ability, but due to Forbidden: Chivalry, I can't actually show it off. Oh well.



Meanwhile, Sonia blinds this Warrior. This battle went pretty smoothly with the exception of the Fencer who had a special reaction ability called Reflex, which nullifies all normal attacks done with the Fight command.

That doesn't sound like much until you remember that we have no combat techniques, so the only way I was able to win was to use Marche's Combo attack which ignores evasion. To actually defeat the Fencer, I had to revive an enemy unit and knock them out again with Marche.

Never a dull moment with this game, I swear.



Anyway, the ability Ardin was going to show off was called Parley. It has a chance of success based on how many units you have killed, so if your Paladin is a bloodthirsty monster, then you're not convincing anybody to leave and rightfully so.



Winning that battle gave us a Mythril Sword! Now anybody who can wields swords can participate in combos too, which is amazing.



I like how she was understanding in the other timeline, yet she's actually upset here. Funny how that changed.

Seriously though, how much of a loser do you have to be to be kicked out of the team in both timelines? It's even more scathing here because this is the more relaxed playthrough. Like goddamn, she can't catch a break. 

Oh well, Sonia will be a better bunny murderess anyway.



We turn Montblanc into an Animist so he can learn some cool new techs. He actually doesn't know how to play the trumpet, so he uses it to whack people on the head.



This is going to be amazing, just watch.



I've lost track of how many Char Bows we have, but that Ancient Medal is finally mine to use.



Chakra is a very interesting move for White Monks. It allows them to recover their health and removes statuses without using MP due to not being utilized by Mist but instead their own life energy, which are two entirely different things. In fact, the game implies that stuff like Air Render and Sonic Boom aren't Mist-based due to not using up MP, which is really neat.



When you initiate a Combo with more than one unit, they will chime in with their attack before the initial combo-starter takes their turn. The result?



Daaaaamn! That's a lot.

The more people, the more the damage multiplies. I remember doing something insane like 800+ on the final boss during my playthroughs on the real game, so it's obvious combos are really deadly when used effectively.



There was this guy that somehow survived with one point of health. He sure was annoying.



It's already impressive that we got one Mythril item, but two in one chapter!? Now Sonia can get in on the fun!



Speaking of Sonia, she was already good enough to become a Sniper while Nobel becomes a Dragoon. We're really moving along this chapter, huh?



You have up to 40 in-game days to complete a "free area" mission, which is good because you can take as long as you want.



[Current OST: Beyond the Wasteland]

Easily the best battle theme in the entire game barring the final boss and Battle of Hope. It really reminds me of Inescapable Fate from Fire Emblem 7, which is appropriate considering the tone of both songs.

You can only bring a maximum of four members to a "Free Area" mission, but there will only be four enemies so no need to worry there.



36 / 42 / 105 / 105 / 60 / 56 / 98

Antlions are a freaky monster (you know, being a giant scorpion-ant) that are can hit pretty hard. Their Sandstorm ability does Earth-based damage and blinds the opponent, but there's also Level 3 Def-Less, which lowers both the physical and magical defense of a target whose level is divisible by three.

Not quite fond of how math is required, but it's still fascinating that they thought of that.

I should mention that they're usually bosses in other Final Fantasy games, but here they're regular enemies. I guess they got demoted.



41 / 64 / 110 / 95 / 64 / 72 / 105

Their tougher cousin, the Jawbreaker, trades away some defense and Sandstorm for more attack, Suffocate and Level 5 Death, which instantly kills opponents whose levels are divisible by 5. Pretty scary, all things considered.



Aside from Antlions, there was this Moogle Animist who I assume was the one controlling these guys for the sake of causing a riot. The skill on screen is called Chocobo Rush, which has the farthest reach out of any attack in the game and honestly looks kind of adorable with all of these little guys running around.



Winning a "Free Area" mission are the most valuable of all due to them giving 80 AP. Sure, areas can fall under attack multiple times, but who cares when you're sitting on a mountain of experience?



Nobel shows his Chocobo caring tendencies no matter what timeline he's in.



Ha, you see, because Alchemists have a third eye marked on their hat.

... Yeah, that was lame, sorry.



Take note of this fellow with STEAL: ARMOR AND STEAL: WEAPON. He will be incredibly useful later on, but for now he's just another thug to walk over.



Nonsensical immunity ribbon count: 2

Diaghilev (pronounciation fails me) is another ill-fitting ribbon-bearer and would be absolutely terrifying under normal circumstances. See, he has 141 Magic Attack and comes with Magic Power+. The chicken thief from before only had 165 Attack and he nearly one-shotted Nobel.

This guy must be a nightmare, right?



Nope. He would be if he had any attacking moves, but instead he has Poison and Rasp (does MP damage). Bit of an anti-climax, huh?



That said, he goes down like a chump with the rest of his crew.



Next, we have the ice mission with this dude that decided to be a prick and build a super snow cone maker for evil.



I'm just trying to picture how this would have went - like you're walking along with your lady/boy friend and suddenly it starts snowing for no reason just because this one guy felt it would be a good idea to set up Blizzaga machine in the area.



The Magic Devices themselves are indeed enemy units you can attack but don't do anything themselves. The five attack is what I assume happens when you tip them over.



Oh my god, his name is literally Ice Cream in Italian. He really is Ivalice's Vanilla Ice with all of this stuff!

That said, he will serve us well in the alternate timeline thanks to a very unique mechanic that comes from stealing too many weapons in one mission.



28 / 24 / 100 / 80 / 104 / 88 / 108

Floateyes are a cool monster for what they can do even if they're not explicitly dangerous despite their high speed. Stare is a move that can confuse 100% of the time if the user and the opponent are facing each other - otherwise it fails.

There's also Devil Gaze, which silences and inflicts Blind two spaces directly in front of the Float Eye.



Air Render is a great skill and I recommend everyone put it on whatever physical unit they have. That also didn't kill Gelato, which is surprising considering he has the defensive capabilities of cardboard.



Breaking the devices clears the mission, not knocking everyone out like we usually do. You get to live this day, Ice Cream Man.



The Laglace (Laplace?) Sword is one of the most powerful regular swords in the game... not that it means much. It has a strength of 41 but is hindered by its ice attributes due to being something that ice elementals can absorb. That, and the classes who use normal Swords aren't usually that great to begin with, so... yeah, the Laglace Sword is a dud.



Sonia becomes one of the most physically powerful White Mages in history while donning the White Combo.







[Current OST: Painful Battle]

(Another favorite of mine. Despite the title, it's super energetic...)

Oh hey, we finally get to see Ritz! She looks kind of cool in the fantasy Ivalice, sort of like a magical girl.

: "Grr... don't you ever give up?"

: "If we did, we wouldn't be much of a clan, would we?"

Well said.

[Ritz looks back at her companion]

: "Shara? What is it?"



Shara is a unique Viera that serves as Ritz's Montblanc in a way. She's is also a cutie in my opinion.

: "Ritz?"

[Screen scrolls over to Marche]



: "You know him?"

: "He's from the other world..."

[Marche glances over at the enemy units]

: "They're not your friends, are they?"

: "Nah, just a bunch of bandits living around here. Don't worry, Marche. We'll take care of them."

: "I'll help! I came here get them, too."

Yeeaa, boy! We're actually fighting together, but due to how the game works, we can only bring out four units ourselves due to Ritz and Shara taking up spots on the map.



Ritz isn't too bad. She has a really nice Rapier for this early in the game and comes with the dreaded Reflex, so I feel she would have been able to handle herself even if we weren't here.

The interesting thing is that she can use Viera abilities and classes yet legally qualifies as a human. I really love that idea and wish that was more of a thing, but as far as things go, Ritz is the only one to tap into other species's classes. What a shame.



Shara, on the other hand, has the bow that teaches Aim: Leg (aka. the immobilizing one) and a hair band that protects against status ailments. It is the weakest of the status protection items, however, since it doesn't stop everything.



Ardin uses his thick strength to tear someone apart from a distance. 



: "Likewise! I'd never have expected you to be in a clan..."

: "Really? Why not?"

: "It's just, you were so... timid in the other world."

Timid? Well, yeah I can see that, given how he didn't really involve himself in the conflicts back in the real world...

[Marche stays quiet]

You hit a harsh spot, dude.



The different animations for combos are so cool.



: "It's funny for you to be worried about me, Marche. Thanks, though. You were a big help."

Yeah, her equipment is pretty gnarly even if it's practically nothing compared to the stuff we got in the other timeline.



: "I'm Marche. Pleased to meet you, Shara."

[She nods]

Nice.

: "Like I said before, he's a friend from the other world."

: "Speaking of worlds, do you know what this place is?"



"This is 'Final Fantasy" -- the game! But this is real! At first, I thought I had really fallen into the game... But this is our town, Saint Ivalice! It's like our whole town has become part of the game!"

Thank you, Ritz. In fact, Marche was the first one to realize the world was based off Final Fantasy, so... odd question there.

: "How could it have happened?"

: "I'm trying not to think about it."

: "Huh?"

... My thoughts exactly.



: "Why not?"

: "Ritz doesn't want to go back, see?"

I can't imagine her saying this in any other way than a stereotypical mafia legbreaker.

: "It's like Shara says... Why go back?"

Can you blame her for not going back? This place is awesome!... When you look past the constant fighting, the turf wars, the monsters, the abusive law system, the... (Trails off with a long list of Ivalice's problems)

: "What?! You mean you'd rather stay here?!"

: "Yeah. I like this world. Don't you, Marche?"

This Ivalice is probably my favorite, not gonna lie.



: "If you want to turn everything back to normal... Go ahead. But don't expect me to stop you. Let's go, Shara."

: "Ritz!"

: "I'm sure we'll meet again, Marche. Bye for now. I... am glad we met. Really."

[Ritz and Shara walk off]

It was nice to meet them again, but I doubt it will be just as friendly the next time. Maybe. I don't exactly remember what happens in this game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



I'm curious as to why Marche doesn't want to leave, actually. I'm more interested in that than Ritz wanting to stay.



Our rewards for plot are two Fortune Rings. Hooray, vendor trash!



We also get a new location, Eluut Sands! There's not much about this place other than it being dangerous with treasures, so I don't have much to go off of. Still, I appreciate that we get new places all of the time.



To think, we're strong enough to breeze through the game and this is just the normal timeline. What madness will we unleash next time?

See you then.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missions completed: 15 out of 300 (+7)

Freed Areas: 1

Team setup:

(Marche, level 8, , ) - "Ritz..."

(Montblanc, level 8, , ) - "Maybe she doesn't want to deal with something bad in the other world, kupo? I mean..."
(Ardin, level 6, , ) - [Breaks a rock with Air Render] "This new ability kicks ass! Thanks, Marche!"
(Nobel, level 7, , ) - "Our team seems to be coming along nicely..."
(Galor, level 6, , ) - "The call of a Black Mage is too tempting."
(Randorf, level 6, , ) - "You said it. I can't wait until we get access to the more... powerful skills."
(Sonia, level 7, , ) - [Sigh] "I wonder how my older sister is doing... It's been so long since we last saw each other. Then again, it was in a Jagd..."

I haven't shown this law off yet, have I? Missile is pretty much every ranged weapon in the game - guns, bows and greatbows. It's pretty ludicrous because I happen to like ranged combat on the sole virtue that I can play keep-away with these idiots.



Funnily enough, the reward for beating that skirmish was a goddamn Chaos Rifle. Badass purple rifle with an intimidating name, yet it's only the third one you could buy in the game. There are ones that make this look like garbage.



The shop has now upgraded to the second tier! Let's see what we have here.



The Judo Uniform and the Brigandine are the best pieces of armor we can buy in the store without a doubt. Counter is universally helpful for Melee fighters while the Judo Uniform teaches Damage to MP.

Damage to MP being the uber broken skill that negates damage no matter how much MP you have. 

I love being overpowered no matter what.



The Rondell Dagger is the closest we'll get to a Cinquedea in this timeline, so we might as well buy it.





: "Oh, um, I was just thinking about the next mission... Wondering what's in store for us.

: "Looks like you're enjoying this, kupo!"

: "Yeah, missions are kind of fun aren't they? I could never do stuff like this where I come from. I've always wanted to use magic and fight monsters... and now I can!"

Beating up people twice your size, catching bandits and fighting monsters? Yeah, that's a big leap. It's amazing that he's even adapted so well too, because he was an elementary school kid back in the real world.

I'm just trying to imagine how it would have been like if he was a professional mercenary in the real world.

: "So you should stay in this world! We could make our clan the strongest clan ever, kupo!"



Oh, you can bet that we're gonna do that. The thing is, the Super Optimized Clan Crimson is already like 4 steps ahead of you.

: "... Montblanc?"

: "You've got to be one of the nicest people I know... Were you like this in the other world too, kupo?"

: "Huh?"

: "Or... maybe you don't trust me that much yet, kupo?"



Montblanc is catching on to Marche's doubts. He's sharper than you'd expect.

: "You can be honest around me, kupo! We're friends! And I know you're still getting used to our world."

: "... When I met Ritz in the Nubswood... All I could think of was 'now I could go home!'. I was sure that Ritz would help me find a way back. But I was wrong."

Really, we can't look over the fact that as cool as Fantasy Ivalice is, Marche suddenly has to change gears from "elementary school kid" to "hardened adult". Like think about it, he has to supply an entire team of people, fight bandits and monsters day in and out, deal with the law system and all of this other stuff.

It's not that he doesn't want to have fun - it's just that the change is so massive to him and having to deal with it is overbearing. Honestly, I can't blame him for wanting to leave.

: "Marche is Marche, and Ritz is Ritz! All you can do is what seems right to you, kupo!"

: "I know that, it's just... it's hard to accept sometimes. Will I ever be able to find my way back home? What'll I do if the world stays like this forever?"

* Implying that Fantasy Ivalice is not a world of its own.

But yeah, I feel for you, dude.

[Montblanc taps Marche's shoulder]



Montblanc is a cool guy.



We're getting to work on these skills.



The different types of combos aren't just for show. Mages tend to get ranged combos, which can allow them to join combos from a distance but at the cost of being able to miss when everyone chimes in with their attack. 



Randorf puts "Learning" under his belt, which allows him to snatch the moves of monsters for his own. However, it may be disappointing to note that Blue Mages don't learn every monster attack, just specific ones.

They have to strike him so he can learn them, which sort of explains the existence of Damage to MP. They need to take a hit to be able to learn the spells, you know.



This guy needs to chill. It's just homework.



Although that Black Thread is a very convincing reason to help.



Wow, really? I can't imagine how it'll be when we actually go to help him, because he sounds absolutely kooky.

Don't worry though, we'll pimp your home to be like the Batcave.



This lady is being stalked by a Floateye, which can't be good for the nerves. I get nervous enough trying to sleep at night even without giant eyeballs with wings around.



Borzoi's up to no good? Well let me at em.



Galor scared them away with some magic tricks. In the process he got a shield made from chocobo skin and a kunai, which makes me question who was even giving these out anyway.



His efforts attracted the attention of another Black Mage Nu Mou, but I rejected them because Galor is good enough.



Nobel smashed his way through the cave and, thanks to his previous job as an interior designer, made a fancy home for that crazy guy.



He's gonna learn Counter and Air Render while he's at it. Plus, this is pretty good for his speed because White Monk is one of the fastest Bangaa classes if I'm not mistaken.



Awwww. That's so sweet.



I swear this "No Knives" thing is gonna get on my nerves. But at least Randorf gets rewarded for using his fancy new saber.



"I just have to get rid of these giant desert ants that are here for some reason!"



Goblin Punch and Magic Hammer are the moves I had neglected to mention for the Goblin family, but how convenient that they're both here.

... I'm curious. Does Steal: Ability work with monsters you can learn the moves of? Like it's pre-programmed to be part of Blue Magic, so does it count?

Probably not, but imagine if it did.



Randorf gets smacked in the face and walloped by a mystical hammer. The results?



Yep! Too bad there's only like one Blue Magic skill in the entire game that actually uses magic power. It's funny - Blue Mages are supposed to be mages, but they put more emphasis on their towering physical strength than anything else, if my favorite non-busted weapon is of any indication. (Aka. the Talwar, an insanely powerful saber made for duels)

Like it'd make more sense to raise a Fighter and give them Blue Magic just so they can benefit from the MP shield.



Sigh. I can't help it if I want to stab things!



Thankfully, No Award just takes away the money for a mission instead of everything we need.



We get... five duplicates of the Holy Grail? Nah, not really.

It removes the Zombie condition from a unit, which essentially turns them into an undead unit complete with damage from healing and three-turn revival on death. You can still control a zombified unit, which makes it all the more horrifying because they're probably still sentient.



Sonia tells the guy to stop freaking out and do their homework. In return she gets the Black Thread, which I must stress is an incredibly valuable quest item due to there being only two in the entire game.

If you throw either Black Thread away, say good bye to 100% completion.



You need some paint, huh?



Good thing Sonia was on the case. I love that you get bonus items whenever a clan skill goes up, but who is giving us all of these fantastic gifts? I guess we'll never know.



* Glares at Montblanc

A legendary Moogle's village, you say? Although how would they know it's hidden...?



If I can give shields one thing, some of them provide elemental coverage. That's neat.



We're going to root out an entire nest of antlions. Professional pest exterminators is gonna look good on our profile.



45 / 32 / 115 / 120 / 96 / 96 / 110

Coeurls are the kings of the Red Panthers and it shows. Not only are they the second strongest monster in terms of physical strength, but they have a nasty ability known as Blaster that can petrify whoever it hits. Getting petrified in this game is the same thing as death, as you can't do anything and there's no way to lift it without a Soft (petrification removing needle bought in stores).



Hastebreak slows down the opponent, which is the same thing as the Soldier's Speedbreak but removes haste from opponents. Not that great, but hey it's another spell to add to the list.

What would have been impressive is if you could learn Blaster just so you can troll the shit out of enemy units. Then again, the Assassin class already exists...



[Glares intently at Montblanc]

: "... What do you want out of me, kupo?"



We get a shiny knight's helmet for discovering a moogle village...



Meanwhile, Ardin not only killed the Floateye but he also gouged out its eye as a reward. I mean yikes, don't you think that's pretty gruesome?



We turn Montblanc into a Time Mage now that he's learned enough skills to do so.



Alright, I'm down with being a substitute.



... Excuse me? Why the hell does it have to be combat? Just what were we going to show off over there if that's the case?



Ah, there's our culprit. So a some creepy jilted guy sends off droves of winged eyeball monsters to bother women around the area.

The only answer for that is a punch to the temple.



This is the plot-progression mission, by the way.



Capture allows us to... well, capture a monster and add them to the monster bank. There are certain restrictions, though:

• It cannot be the last monster on the field
  
• It cannot be knocked out
  
• It cannot be an undead, fairy, rockbeast or a tonberry monster (we'll see them in a bit)
  
• The highest percentage you have for catching a monster is 24%, so you better pray that you get it right
  

To top it off, you have to catch at least five monsters to unlock mission #100, so that'll be fun on both timelines.



The boss is a Beastmaster, by the way. That explains how he's able to send out these guys at us at least.



31 / 48 / 105 / 90 / 112 / 96 / 112

Ahrimans outclass their lesser cousins by quite a bit. Not only are they pretty mobile (flying units can pass over any terrain regardless of height), they come with a nasty new ability called Roulette. What it does is picks a random unit, allied or not, and slams them with instant death. (Undead units fully recover when hit with instant death moves, which can't be good.)

To even learn Roulette, you have to be (un)lucky enough to let it hit you and hope you have Auto-Life because that's the only way you're getting it.



Elementalists are primarily debuffers. They cover all of the elements that Black Magic can't and more, including the rare Water, Air, Earth and Dark techniques. 

Fire Whip disables an opponent, which easily makes it my go-to for first skill to learn.



Montblanc demonstrating Haste. Haste doubles your speed, so effectively it takes less time for the "clock tick" turn counter to go by.

For example, if Sonia had a speed of 126 and she got boosted, it would only take her four turns (more or less) before it's her time to go again. It's great.



It's not like this guy was much of a threat to begin with, but okay. Beastmasters are not known for fighting.



Given the job description and what he's saying here, I can't help but imagine this guy being a crusty old perv.



Oooh, nice. The Vesper is a mace that just looks pretty and doesn't really teach any moves while the Bless Staff teaches LIFE.

By that, I mean it brings back a fallen unit and gives me a reason to put White Magic as the second slot.



Aaaay! Nice to hear it. How much of a discount do we -



You lyin' motherfucker, the prices haven't changed a bit. The 10% decrease is only because humans can wield katanas.



Anyway, let's get to katana talk. My friend says:

"Kikuichimonji - Refers to the famous imperial collaboration between Emperor Gotoba and the 13 best smiths in Japan in the early Kamakura era. Usually the first name to be mentioned regarding the history of the katana, Emperor Gotoba was not just a pivotal figure during the early warring days of the Genji and the Taira, but also a conesieuur of the arts, and especially of the sword. Summoning the best smiths in the land to honor their work, their call to the court was also done in the wishes of learning the ways of smithing. 

With such free time after having been exiled to the Oki Islands, he spent that time also wanting to create some of Japan's best swords. Blades of the Kikuichimonji are said to be the first pivotal move in establishing the Golden Age of Katana, and were said to be inspirationally and impecabbly beautiful; many of their blades are said to feature mirror like utsuri on their blades above the hamon and hardened edge, which appears to be almost holographic and gives off the impression of a morning silver lined panorama of clouds over the country as seen as atop a mountain. Being related with Metal Jutsu is something that already should be known, but is in line with bringing out the beauty and strength of steel."

Nice, nice. It helps that Kikuichimonji is a pretty good sword in of itself - Nightmare both sets the opponent to sleep and dooms them for three turns. When the counter goes down, the reaper comes to take their eternal soul.



Heaven's Cloud, also known as Ame no Murakumo, is based off of a legendary sword in Japanese Mythology that Susano'o discovered after he stole it from the tail of a vile serpent known as Yamata no Orochi. It's also one of the three Imperial Regalia used in the ritual of imperial ascension.

Unspell removes all buffs from a unit, which isn't that useful because you'd be more pre-occupied trying to attack than anything else.



Here's Kotetsu, so -

"A swordsmith who is the most lauded in the Shinto (post 1600s) era of katana. Originally Nagasone Okisato, Kotetsu was once an armorer and maker of tsuba, before the age of 50 saw him go down the path of a swordsmith; the tale behind this lies in a contest between him and another fellow swordsmith, Kiyomitsu, in which one of his helmets was to be pitted against one of Kiyomitsu's swords. His blades are most famous for being saijo o wazamono, or exceptionally great cutting swords, and such an attribute was possible due to his experience of knowing in and out the workings of armor and helmets. 

However, Kotetsu's works are said to be vastly limited- to about 31 blades- and forgeries of his name upon his fame became extremely prevalent over the 265 years of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The relation between his blades and Wood Jutsu likely stems from how it was the support of the wood post that prevented his helmet from being cut apart so easily, but also lead Kotetsu to make swords as his shame from repositioning his helmet and having sensed the improper position immediately before the cut could be landed, saw him lose face in himself regarding the craft of armor."

The veils/jutsus are much like Elementalist spells but less effective in terms of damage output. Rockseal, on the other hand, is one of the few petrifying spells you can learn in the game. It is as awesome as it sounds.



Here we have the Murasame and the Ashura. Let's cover the latter first:

"Such a name refers not to the name of a smith, but of a race of beings found in Buddhism. Finding its way to Japan, Buddhism has long been influential in Japanese society, and none more so influential than that of the samurai. May it be their own race, or a metaphor for humans lost of the path of violence and competitive egotism, Ashuras are considered as powerful beings, with as many as several arms and faces, but are plagued with jealousy, anger, and violent tendencies, with an addiction to carnal pleasures, materialistic pursuits, and fighting. 

Due to these factors, Ashuras are feared as one of the 4 Unhappy Births- The others being the life of an animal, a preta, or in hell -and come to gain this reputation from coming from a world where peace and resolution are not attainable, possible, or existent. In the context of samurai, there are two ways stressed regarding one's life as a warrior; one being the already popular and well known, and honorable way of Bushido, the other, the way of Shurado, or, the way of an Ashura. 

Though Buddhism stresses that all can be saved, even to those of criminals and murderers, most samurai nevertheless believed their karma saw them reborn as Ashura themselves. Being related with Fire Jutsu is nevertheless most appropriate for their imagery, dancing about fiery backdrops to show their intensity, or on battlefields ablaze with carnage."

... Damn, son. Fire Veil confuses the opponent instead of disabling them, which is far less applicable.

--

"A katana based on a fictional account, being that of the Hakkenden, which is one of the world's oldest pieces of literary fiction and an epic done for a fantasy tale. Named after what the other side of the world would call autumn rain, Murasame is a blade made from ice that never melts, which allows it to splash water any which way it is wielded, and summons rain itself. On a side note, this humble one has yet to read the Hakkenden, which has not been published overseas. Its relation with Water Jutsu is as obvious as the blue sky itself."

Water Veil inflicts Silence. Silence prevents mages from using their spells, but you can use Sonic Boom and all those skills just fine.



The Cure Staff teaches Cura and Kirin, the latter being a mythical hooved chimera from Chinese mythology.



Sages use Maces as opposed to rods and staves, and they're also one of the few classes that can use other elements than Fire, Ice and Thunder. The Battle Mace is the cheapest one you can buy and starts you off with servicable attacks.



Borzoi needs to learn to fear the name Crimson. That way they'll leave everyone else alone.



[Current OST: Beyond the Wasteland]

There's only three enemies while we get our entire team. This won't take long.



The thief here gets an immunity ribbon which I assume he stole/bribed off of the judge. Borzoi may be a part of the corruption, you know...



That said, he gives a generic loss quote while he and his band of idiots get blasted away.



Diamond Armor teaches Weapon Defense+ to Paladins. It's okay, it's not like I needed to be even more unkillable.



Scarabs provide defense against immobilization and Don't Act. Cool, but I think we're never going to fight an enemy that does that to us in favor of more unbalanced bullshit.



We find a new friend for Montblanc! Welcome to the team, my boy.



Sweet. I wonder, though, do the other areas exist before we put them on the map as icons? The game seems to act like they do.



Oh hey, would you look at that? My chore boy from the Super Optimized timeline made it over here. Too bad even this Marche won't show mercy to him.



It is completely possible to skip every other mission in the game and just do the plot ones, although that makes it a terribly short game in hindsight. Good thing I'm going for 100%, huh?



[Current OST: Battle of Hope]

"Maybe the monsters around here really have gone mad..."

Not much of a set-up to this one. We're just gonna fight a bunch of monsters.



16 / 52 / 87 / 320 / 86 / 48 / 88

Creams are the electric member of the Flan family. They're still rocking that sky-high defense, but their overall magic capablities are slightly less than their siblings. Oh well.



Despite being a plot-important mission, there was nothing much to the actual gameplay. The Coeurl didn't even have Blaster for pete's sake!

(Although to be honest, that would be a real dick move.)



[Current OST: Confusion]

I'm intrigued too. Mostly because monsters already seem to be hostile and territorial by default.

: "Kupo... We get jobs like this every once in a while."

: "Really? I wonder what causes it."

: "There are a number of theories, kupo. I, for one, believe in the crystal theory."

Oh god, Montblanc is gonna get all on us, isn't he?



: "They say the palace made these magical crystals, kupo! Their magic is so strong it affects the animals."

: "So you think a crystal is nearby?"

: "I don't know, kupo! It might just be a rumor after all. How could you make anything in a wrinkle in space?"

Alright now this is getting into some cosmic shit. I do not gel with this kinda talk.

Then again, Montblanc is a Black Mage (currently Time Mage) by default so maybe he's dealt with this kind of dimension shit before?



Marche forms a dastardly plan.



We get a Broadsword that nobody is ever going to use and a generous amount of cash. I guess I can't really argue.



For clearing Desert Peril, we get the Ulei River. It's the largest river in Ivalice and winds through various swamplands.

... How does it go from desert to swamp anyway? Geography is hard.



... Well I guess we finally got to the title drop of this chapter, snrk

This is cool though, because this allows Rodrigo and Galor to get combo potential too. I am curious as to how a Mythril Bell would sound compared to a normal one.



We finish off this chapter by giving Ardin the Combat Combo. Team attacks are the way of the future, don't you know?

Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the plot finally unravels before us. See you then.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missions completed: 25 out of 300 (+10)

Freed Areas: 3 (+2)

Team setup:

(Marche, level 10, , ) - "Given all of the magic stuff we've already seen and are capable of doing, I don't feel the crystal theory is too outrageous."

(Montblanc, level 9, , ) - "You have a point, kupo! Although, I can't help but feel it's something we shouldn't look into..."
(Ardin, level 9, , ) - "So Nobel... you're a chocobo farmer and an interior designer?"
(Nobel, level 8, , ) - "Ah yessss. I used to have multiple hobbies to keep me busy before I became a clan member..."
(Galor, level 8, , ) - "The idea of these 'crystals' fascinate me to no end. Perhaps we could... utilize them for ourselves."
(Randorf, level 9, , ) - "Whoa hey, don't get too ahead of yourself. We'll do just following Marche, heheh..."
(Sonia, level 8, , ) - "I am deeply uncomfortable with what everyone is talking about."
(Rodrigo, level 9, , ) - "Oi! Nice to meetcha, guys. So, when do we get to snatching things?"

This dude wants to give his idol a song he's written for her, how sweet



The Dash Boots are easily one of the most important accessories in the game as they can boost your movement rating. It's almost criminal that they're only being sold for 2000 gold.



"The crystals - pure magic in solid form - are supposed to be somewhere in this kingdom. Rumors say the palace made the crystals - rumors the palace firmly denies."

Firmly denies, huh? It's only just going to make people even more suspicious.







Incredible psychic powers that can't make things stop floating? How the hell do you expect us to help? 

You need to put that stuff to work though, my friend.



So... a guidebook on monsters? What exactly's the difference between the one that got stolen and the one they have now?

Don't tell me he hides his girly magazines in there.



Oh boy, more free experience!



Sonia used magic. I have no idea how a non-magic user would have done it other than anchoring everything down with rope.



Come on then, you big putz.



The White Thread is equally as valuable as the Black Thread, cherish it with your life.

We can't actually use the monster guide that was given to us, so that's a shame. The Shamshir is a weapon for Blue Mages, but only the Blue Saber actually teaches anything due to all of the skills coming from monsters.



Oooh boy, the Blood Sword. It has the neat mechanic of draining health from every strike, but it comes at the cost of power as it's not very strong. It'd be really overpowered otherwise and we can't have that.

You know, in the same game that allows you to get the Cinquedea before the third story mission.



Now that we have a combat rank of five, let's finally take this out.



This was a mission that's been around since chapter 2 and I've only now been able to do it. It requires a White Mage too.



Eating and running alongside casting the wrath of Zeus upon any hapless mortal. No wonder why he's wanted.



Boy, you do not want to get on my bad side.

This may be the lighter route but I will still kick your face off.



Ardin gets Weapon Defense+ because why not?



They got what they deserved - a nice spot in jail.



No, no, all wrong, you have to strike fear into his heart or the rest of your enemies will never respect you.



Jon here is arguably more threatening than Raven himself thanks to Geomancy and Thundara. Not only that, he shrugs off any magic attack you throw at him and returns in kind.

He is Easy Peasy when you bring a physical unit, though.



Raven himself has some sweet equipment, but that's not what makes him interesting.



You see, he has the vaunted holy abilities that you can only get from non-purchasable, high-end knightswords. Holy Blade in particular is so powerful that I'm drooling just thinking about it.



Saint Cross is the weaker spell of the two and acts as their variation of Whirlwind. Due to the Holy element and the animation, it is way cooler.





I'm proud of you, team.



We rocked your world, son.



Of course you won, Marche - teamwork like that is practically cheating.



The rewards aren't anything we don't already have, but it's the symbolic victory that counts the most.



Awwwww shit, baby.

The White Robe teaches Turbo MP to White Mages, which doubles the amount of MP you use but increases the accuracy and power significantly. It is one hell of an ability to learn and gives Geomancy a run for its money.



The Yoichi Bow is a rank-up reward and teaches Take Aim. Take Aim never misses but does piddly damage so really cares, am I right?

It is based off of the story of a Japanese archer named Nasu no Yoichi. Essentially, an enemy ship has placed a fan on the mast of their ship that they claim will deflect any arrow fired at them. Yoichi, despite being on horseback in a ship wobbling up and down from the waves, managed to shoot off the fan with only one arrow.

Bad-ass.



... Dolce is an intentional mispelling of dulce, which is the spanish word for candy. This game, I swear.



Turbo MP in action. As you can see, even the typical Fire-Ice-Thunder trio gets really expensive. 



That is facing from the front with just Fire. Regular ass Fire!

That is goddamn amazing.



We combo Dolce and call it a day.



Maybe you should think twice about stealing food and roasting men with Ifrit's flames.



We get a flower vase for beating up Dolce. Cute.



Battle Boots increase defense and that's about it. At least you can equip multiple accessories.



For clearing Newbie Hall, we get the Onion Sword and a flaming sword of destruction that teaches Backdraft (a powerful move that has recoil damage), Rush for Moogle Knights and Fire Sword for Gladiators.

The Onion Sword is a sword made for a recurring gag job class called the Onion Knight, who can't equip any real good equipment excluding the eponymous onion equipment. Their gimmick is that they're kind of lame until you get to level 90, where their stats break through the heavens. They can learn any spell and are generally a jack of all trades in terms of equipment in other games. I usually like it when games do that kind of lethal joke weapon thing.

Sadly, there is no Onion Knight class in this game so it's just a reference.



The Hardedge looks cool but doesn't teach anything. 

I can't help but snicker at how the word "edge" is synonymous with mockery nowadays.



Marche becomes a hunter! Now we can capture monsters for sure.



This is a mission we can't do just yet due to lacking the proper materials.



Blue soldiers on the overworld are mission-related, as opposed to the red ones that are just random skirmishes.



You literally have no idea who you're messing with, do you?



Marche, you need to work on your comebacks. They're kind of weak, son.



Sonic Boom is more than enough by itself to justify the hunter class. The whole capturing monsters bit is just the icing on the cake.



I mean look at that. That's so badass! Even more so when you realize that it keeps that range even when you equip a melee weapon, so you're literally shooting off power blasts with a swing of your sword.



Rodrigo robs this man of his clothes... while he's still wearing them. Impressive handiwork if I can say so.



Take Aim has a really neat animation where they lock on you, but the tiny damage output ruins it.



The leader of Clan Baham has some really intimidating attack power but should be no threat if you play your cards right.



That's the exact same thing the Borzoi thief from the last chapter said. How about some originality, guys?



Marche is either shaking with anticipation or trembling in fear. Either one is appropriate.



Rodrigo wears his stolen goods with pride.



Ah yes, there was a mission where we had to retrieve a ring for some lady.



Lamia stats:

33 / 48 / 100 / 90 / 96 / 80 / 108

Lilith stats:

38 / 54 / 105 / 100 / 112 / 96 / 110

Lamias and Liliths are the debuffers of the monsters, as they focus less on damage and more inflicting status ailments on you. Hand Slap delays a unit's turn (presumably because the act of bitch-slapping was too strong), they can turn you into a poisoned frog and so on.

Liliths are even worse because a kiss from them charms and dooms at the same time, charm forcing a unit to work for the enemy side. Night and Twister are the skills you can learn from these two - the former puts everyone but the caster to sleep while Twister halves HP in a purple tornado. Honestly, they're some of the better Blue Magic spells.



Whirlwind was actually used more than once, how about that?



The Lilith gets mauled in a combo of epic proportions.



Marche was actually the one who initiated it. Yeah, as long as everyone is next to the unit, they can combo it just fine.



I like that they don't have an actual cutscene for this because it's not plot important like it was with the muscmaloi from the first mission.



The Djinn Flyssa is an okay rapier that teaches Swallowtail (yet another goddamn variation of whirlwind) to fencers and Shining Air to elementalists (blinds an opponent with wind magic).



The Mirror Mail is a neat concept in that it automatically envelops the user in a Reflect state. Reflect blocks magic spells and shoots them back to the user. The problem is that it only blocks White, Time and Black magic, which make up only 30% of all of the possible magic techniques that can be learned in the game.

These cannot be blocked by reflect:

• Blue Mage (Blue Magic)
  
• Bishop/Sage (Prayer and Sagacity Skill)
  
• Elementalist (Spirit Magic)
  
• Alchemist (Alchemy Skill)
  
• Summoners (Summon Magic)
  
• Illusionists (Phantasm Skill)
  

Reflect should be really cool but it's held back by the lack of applicability. What a shame.



Blood Sword in action. The reduced damage isn't Nobel's fault, it's because of the sword.



Phantasm Skill! Keep in mind this is without Turbo MP, so it's expensive enough on its own.



He makes the sun explode and it barely does over 20 damage. I mean, come on.



For the plot mission, we have records of... spatial distortion? Dear god, this is not going to end well.



"I don't see any warping or bending at all..."

Given that the person who said that was a Time Mage Adept, aka. a person who deals with warping space and time? I would not take those words lightly.

[Marche has a chill go down his spine]

: "What...? Funny, I had a strange feeling there."

[A distortion appears in front of Marche]

: "Whoa! What was that?!"

[The distortion re-appears]

: "The river... what's going on?"

I would be losing it a lot more than Marche if I were in his shoes.



Especially if this happens, holy fuck!



[Ambient noise of something glowing]

"That black thing in the river swallowed me, and... What is this place? Am I still in Ivalice?"



[Marche looks off to the left]

: "Wait..."



Crystals are shiny and transparent. This just looks like a big ugly moon rock.

But still, this is really interesting! We seem to have wound up in some pocket dimension where the Crystals are stored.

: "A wrinkle in space! So the crystal's magic was making the river bend. The rumors were true! The warping was a way in! I have to find out what this crystal really is... But before that, I should find a way out!"

Sounds like a plan.



[Marche looks around]

: "Who's there?"

[He steps back as a blue golem-like figure materializes in front of him]



[Current OST: Prison]

"Speak your name, you who profane the light!"

The Prison theme is so fitting for these scenes that it's chilling.

: "I... My name is Marche. Who the heck are you!?"

: "I am the Totema Famfrit. I am the wielder of the power. I am the protector."

: "Totema...? Protector...?"



: "You are an intruder!"

: "Listen, I don't know anything about your crystal!"

: "I am under orders to expel all intruders!"

: "Wait! I'm telling you, I cam in here by accident!"

Aw shit. We're in for a fight now, boys and girls.

[Famfrit summons a group of Ahrimans]



: "Well, no point worrying whether I can win or not... I just have to try!"

I'm amazed he's going to fight this clearly uber strong magic golem head on. Say whatever you want about Marche but that takes balls.





[Current OST: The Road We Both Aim For]

Famfrit, the Cloud of Darkness!

This is technically his debut into the Final Fantasy series, as FFTA is his earliest known appearance. Famfrit is the first of the Totema - five powerful sentinels that stand as the guardian deities of the five core races in Ivalice. Famfrit represents the Moogles and references the Cloud of Darkness, the primary antagonist from Final Fantasy 3. 

There's also some water stuff in there but that's not quite as important. I love his appearance and the theme song used for these Totema battles are suitably epic.



Not only is the Judge a different color, he's a higher rank than normal. I assume this means punishments are more severe if we mess up.



60 / 44 / 150 / 140 / 96 / 104 / 98

Famfrit himself is a fucking beast with all sorts of crazy stats and fancy movesets that the law can't even pretend to touch. Keep in mind, he is actually the weakest totema yet he's still phenomenally powerful when compared to our individual units. What have we gotten ourselves into?

I just have to say this - I love the Totema. They're so impressive as a concept and as a fighting force that I can't help but shiver in delight every time I see one of them.



His first skillset, Expulse, is full of these impressive sounding moves. In reality, Breath of God is a Far Fist clone and Presence is Rush so whoopdy damn doo.

Lightspeed, however, is a different story altogether. It ignores an opponent's reaction ability and does damage, so something like Counter or Damage to MP won't work when he attacks. That is really cool.



Magestorm, despite claiming to use all of the world's magic, only has two techniques and Weapon Attack+ for some reason. I should note that these are Time Mage spells, which is really clever because Time Mage is a class that Moogles can use.



The first thing he does is try to slow down time for us. Son of a bitch!



Breath of God in action. It's pretty much a purple version of the Fighter's Far Fist. Really, the only dangerous thingin this battle is Famfrit due to him hitting pretty hard. If you keep your distance and wipe out the Ahrimans around you, this should be a piece of cake.



[insert badass combo because the gif I was going to use was cut short]



Actually, I like this better. It was just gonna be some stupid in-game combo.



Excuse me, you and Nobel beat him. He is our unsung hero!



"Why go to such lengths to protect it?"

: "The crystal is the thread that binds our world. The world I was born to protect! With the white ones, I was born..."

: "The white ones?"

As tempting as it is to make a really tasteless joke out of that, he means the Moogles. I mean, it's kind of hard to tell, but he does know Time Mage spells so...

: "Skilled machinists. They are the source of my power."

: "You mean... Moogles?"

Yeah, see what I mean? 

: "If they wish it, I will lend you my power..."



Nice. So defeating Famfrit won him over to our side, I guess.

[The room's colors darken, followed by a boy appearing and shaking his head]



It was Mewt? Oh boy, here we go.



"And another world will be revealed."

: "Who's there? And what do you mean 'another world"? You mean the real world?!"

[The screen fades to white]



I'm intrigued. Where are we going with this?

[Current OST: Confusion]



Apparently we're inside of a palace now. Just who are these two?



Whoa! Cid sure cleaned up his act in Fantasy Ivalice. Now he is one smug motha.

: "Papa..."

... What the hell is Mewt wearing? His hair and the numerous amounts of spikes on his clothes are a fashion disaster. It's really jarring too, because he's the only person who dresses like this in the entire palace. (If not the kingdom)

: "Babus came running into my room. He seemed quite flustered..."

: "Babus...

: "Did something happen?"

: "Papa... I just remembered something horrible! All the kids at school were throwing snowballs at me... And one of the snowballs had a rock in it!"

His memories of the real world are leaking into this dimension?

: "School...? What are you talking about, Mewt?"

: "That... that's right. I'm royalty... I'm a prince. Everyone listens to whatever I say. My word is... law."

So this is Mewt's dream world after all! He's the crux of it. Unfortunately, I think he's in the middle of a power trip...



Especially when you say stuff like this.

[Sound of a door opening. Mewt and Cid notice a woman and a Nu Mou walk into the room]



: "Certainly, sire."

This Nu Mou is called Babus Swain - he's Mewt's personal protector and funnily enough, the only Nu Mou in the entire game to actually look like a dog to me. He has his own unique class and has a feminine voice in the Radio Dramas for FFTA.

I think it's supposed to imply that he's young, which is impressive if he's a high-ranking aide to the Prince himself.

: "It's okay, Mewt, you don't have to be scared anymore. To our people, I am Queen Remedi, but always remember... To you, I am your mother and I love you very much. And your papa is the highest judge in the land! That means all of the judges will protect you."

This bombshell of a woman is Mewt's dead mother reincarnated as the queen of Ivalice. I love the dynamic going on here because technically, she's the queen. Despite this she's actually not a tyrant and only does stupid things at the expense of others for the sake of her son.

Cid, on the other hand, is the Judgemaster. He has three stars and is the leader of all of the judges, which makes him a very powerful opponent.





How dare you, you little trash child.

This is like the one thing he does that almost makes me want to revoke my sympathy for him, because there's literally no reason to do this other than to make everyone's lives miserable.

: "Of course you can! You know we'd do anything for you."

: "Your Highness, it might not be so wise to so lightly --"



Oh damn, she found us out. The change from "caring mother" to "cold, calculated diplomat" is actually really cool, even if it's for one line.

: "What?! Are you certain? ... I see. There will surely be no complaints about stronger laws, then."

Yeah, you won't complain. God damn it...

: "I leave it in your hands, Judge Cid."



[Cid walks past Remedi and leaves through the door]



[Screen fades to black as Mewt and his mother hug]

As sweet as they are, this is not good for all parties involved.



Good thing the distortion warped us back to the river or I don't know what I would have done.

: "He said the crystal was a thread. That if the thread disappeared, a new world would appear. But this world is still here... Destroying one of the crystals must not be enough. If I destroy them all, will I be able to go home?"

Marche has now changed his mindset from simply staying in Ivalice to trying to break it apart just so he can return home. This can only go well.



"I have to find the other crystals!"

He says that with the same amount of determination as a hero trying to save the world, which is pretty screwed up.





The "Totema" command actually puts Judge Points to practical use for stuff that's not combos! You see, if you get the maximum amount of JP (aka. 10), you will get the Totema command.

What it does is summon a Totema (based on the species of the person using it) to annihilate the entire map in an elaborate cutscene and do massive damage. It's easily one of the coolest features the game has and makes battles go a lot faster.



We get two swords for putting Time Mage Man's worries to rest and the plot has thickened to the point where I need a butcher's knife. 



We also get Cadoan, the city of Nu Mou! It's described as the seat of knowledge and alchemy, which gives me some interesting ideas as to what daily life in this place is like.



Holy shit that's so cool.

Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we check up on the other timeline so see what those crazy guys have been doing. See you then.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missions completed: 36 out of 300 (+11)

Freed Areas: 4 (+2)

Team setup:

(Marche, level 11, , ) - "... Wow, Famfrit did some damage. We need to do that more often."
(Montblanc, level 9, , ) - "He's no joke, kupo! As much as I don't like this crystal hunting thing, I trust you, Marche." (Ardin, level 10, , ) - "Do you think we made the right decision joining Marche?"
(Nobel, level 9, , ) - "... Maybe, maybe not. All I know isssss that we're getting mad rich."
(Galor, level 8, , ) - "So there's creatures known as Totema that represent the races... What a fascinating concept!"
(Randorf, level 9, , ) - "It's enough to make my head spin."
(Sonia, level 8, , ) - "Hmm. I'm with Montblanc on this one. But... for some reason, I can't help but feel like going along with this crazy adventure."
(Rodrigo, level 9, , ) - "Holy crap, kupo! Do you think I could have a shot of summoning Famfrit too?"

We start off this chapter by winning a fight. Get used to this sight, my friends.



Marche finally addressed the Bomb problem after letting a street get engulfed in flames.



She's got a killer smile, don't you know?





I am beside myself with emotions, because the chance of this happening is astronomical. It's one thing to be incredibly lucky, but then there's just plain magic. This shit was fated to be - the planets aligned just right so this could happen.



The sisters are finally reunited and boy does it feel good.

(plus i need to show off summoners anyway, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)



(Chapter 4)

Remember the lad who had both Steal: Weapon and Steal: Armor in his repertoire during the fight with the Three Eyes Alchemist?



Yeah they're ours now. This is such a wonderful feeling, you don't understand guys.

Delphine and Sonia are both White Mages, albeit for completely different reasons (Delphine wants to be an Assassin again while Sonia's going for Summoner)



Good thing beating ol' Three Eyes is enough to win the mission, because I did not want to deal with that.



Your payment is overdue, Mr. Ice Cream Man.

Thankfully, Steal: Weapon is far more generous in its accuracy than Steal: Ability so doing this will be a cinch.



You see, stealing from Gelato will force him to take more items out of his stock. The reason he can do this is because he currently has Item as his second A-Ability slot, which is odd considering no other enemy seems to do that in the entire game. (I mean, I never bothered to check so you know.)

I had to repeat about eight more times before I could get what I really wanted.





There it is. My reward. Not only do I have a bunch of excess Sleet Rods that I can sell off for the moola, there is this majesty of a weapon.

The Chill Rod teaches Blizzaga, folks. Yes, the third tier spell before you even fight Famfrit, a time where even normal Blizzard/Blizzara would be enough to seriously threaten someone's life. It helps that the Chill Rod gives a passive boost to Blizzard attacks, so it's even more powerful...

And now it's mine.



^ Collective reaction of every non-ice elemental enemy in the game


In an extra bit of jackassery, we shank Gelato instead of just destroying his machines. Sure the judge will keep him alive but we're spiteful sons of bitches.



Further proof of the Laglace Sword being absolute garbage. I mean you can't even compare the two!





Oh, I believe I've gone mad with power.



: "Marche, your friend just encased everyone in a giant block of ice. I'm pretty sure I'm okay."



We put Eluut here, but truth be told I think I messed up the map positioning. Oh well.



Curealls remove all normal status effects (Petrify, Poison, Blind, etc.) and will play a pivotal role in raising monsters we capture.



Turner shanked out an Ahriman's eye and left with a smile on her face. She's kind of nutty that way.



Buying the Kikuichimonji will not only give us Nightmare but also an actual weapon for Assassin Delphine to use.



Oh god damn it, Turner! You broke the Knife rule, didn't you?



He leaves the battle with a smug smile on his face because he wound up getting one of our team members imprisoned. Bastard.



Marche is sweating up a storm now that one of his team members got imprisoned.



Oh and they take our money for this mission too, great. What a disaster.



We get an even worse reward (the Thorn Bow is not a suitable replacement for the Bless Staff) and leave with no money in our pockets. What a shame.



If a character gets imprisoned, they are suspended from the team for a set amount of fights. It makes me think - so Turner broke a battle rule. What happens to the guys who get imprisoned for illegal shit or genuinely disturbing the peace?

Do things change or is it the same process?



Thankfully due to it being Turner's first felony, it doesn't take much for us to get her out.



: "Oh thank you, kupo! I don't know what I would have done if I stayed in there any longer!"



Marche becomes a Blue Mage to work on his invincibility and to study monsters.



We need another chore boy - when the three missions that require Hume jobs are done with, they're gonna get the boot.



She's ready to cause havoc again and boy is it gonna feel cathartic.



Sure her gear's a bit dinky right now, but that will soon change in a big way.



The Borzoi clan member from before will face a far more horrific fate, although not before Montblanc and Turner pick his brain dry of everything he knows.



This recovers the sleep but not the Doom. To do that, you'd need Dispel which isn't a skill human mage classes can learn. Yeah, he's screwed. (And no, Ninjas don't count because they're technically not mages.)

Death comes to all in the end.

(The Grim Reaper in this game is so goofy looking but he's amazing all the same.)



Raven, my boy, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into.



Gimme, son. I'll put it to better use than you.



Oh and we get a Blue Magic from the other dude. okay.



The reaper came for him too.



41 / 84 / 80 / 240 / 64 / 64 / 80

Oh hey. it's the monster that Matra Magic belonged to. Toughskins are the far more interesting counterpart of the Flans due to being more durable while also having some unique skills of their own. They have Matra Magic (switching HP and MP) and Resonate, which uses the sword stuck in their back to disable everyone who's wielding a metal weapon on their person.

Not only is that a really interesting move, it's also a reference to a dungeon in Final Fantasy 4 - one where you couldn't enter wearing metal equipment otherwise the magnetic forces of the cave would paralyze you and stop you from proceeding.



Rockseal petrifies, which I think is one of the few player-accessible abilities in the game that can do that.



Wild Swing is basically whirlwind for fighters. Not sure why they decided to recycle the same skill multiple times, but hey you do you, FFTA.



As a Summoner, Sonia can do a ton of damage. Learning to fight in this class is a godsend as she gets crazy magic potential growing up in it.



(Chapter 5)

Oh shit, we actually caught a monster! That's like a 20% chance of happening.



When you capture a monster, you get their soul. That's uh... more than a bit terrifying?



The Restorer allows Dragoons to know Lancet, a health-stealing attack that makes the Blood Sword obsolete by comparison.



We place Ulei here...



Montblanc got in trouble. For what, I don't remember. Still, given what he said back when we met him, he must be having the worst time of his life in there.



Hahaha yes, death and destruction await!



The last person with this kind of confidence was Raven. Where is he now? In a neverending coma.



: "Right, I'm gonna be the Red King of Clan Crimson. Nobody's even gonna know you existed, though."



Impressive animation for otherwise piddly damage. Don't worry though, growing up as a summoner will set her straight.



Bangaa Cry in action. He screamed so hard he knocked this poor man out in a single hit.



Yeah, boy! This is gonna be great.



Holy shit we get mythril items in this continuity too.



Marche is practically invincible with this alone.



Ring inflicts Stop on opponents, strangely enough. I think it's because the rings are so tight that they can't do anything, but that's a bit of a stretch. I don't really care if it stops them altogether.



Ramuh, another favorite summon of mine. Although... he's not the coolest summon in the pack. We won't see them in a while.



Restorer stealing life from some poor Animist.



We get a fancy blade that doesn't really teach anything useful but it's strong so who cares? 



Oh hey I guess he actually has one now, ba-zing!

But no seriously though, everyone learned a ton of stuff in this bit alone. It was pretty satisfying.



Our newly captured Red Panther sits in the Monster Bank... and they're not pleased. Every monster you capture will start off hating you and I can't really blame them in a sense.

You also can't catch more than one monster of the same type. So to get mission #100, you have to capture 5 different monsters. Fun.



"Playing" is feeding them items. To get any mileage out of this, you'd have to buy a ton of items for them to even like you at first. Say goodbye to your cash if you plan on doing this, and I probably will during the Normal Timeline.



Blizzaga with Turbo MP. What have I become?



Turner "pretends" to bump into someone and knocks them into their untimely doom.



Oh snap we caught a Lamia. 



oh fuck the laws said no knives what have I DONE

Although it's hilarious that stabbing someone with a knife when we're not supposed to is what sends Marche to jail instead of all the other shit he's done.



... Now I have to do all of that over again. Sweet christ.



A million hours later, we get back to where we were and better.



Hey look at that, we get discounts for being good people.



I never checked to see if you could sort items, so this makes me happy. I love being organized, you see.



Miss Turner can throw knives with deadly accuracy.



Oh hi, Famfrit. 



"Intruder or not, here I come." [Brandishes katana]



Damn. Looks like I'm just gonna have to demonstrate it on someone else.





Perfect.



Sonia is coming around with her magic.



Oh yes the skill he didn't get to show off last time.



Yikes that looks like it really hurts. It also makes a cool sound.



Aw shit here we go.









Oh hey look, it's the gif we didn't get to see the last time but 10x better now that Marche is a Ninja!

He just ravages Famfrit from every angle.



After the battle, Montblanc and Turner have a nice picnic only to be interrupted by enemies.



Thankfully Famfrit was there to help because he owes us a solid.



Now they can continue their date.




You remember what I said about the normal timeline being more combo-oriented? That was a fat crock of shit because now the combo potentials are leaking into this timeline too.

It is gonna be great.



The Kwigon Blade is nice, but Petalchaser is the real treasure here. It is the katana that teaches Last Breath to Assassins, aka. an instant kill move. There is no turning back.



Morphers are the only people that can use these for obvious reasons. you could punch using a monster's soul too, which sort of makes me worried for the monster themselves if this ever got destroyed by an enemy sniper.



That said, Clan Crimson is now incredibly powerful and we're barely getting started.

Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we continue the main plot! See you then.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missions completed: 37 out of 300 (+29)

Freed Areas: 4 (+4)

Team setup:

(Marche, level 10, , ) - "Heh. I could get used to being a ninja..."
(Montblanc, level 9, , ) - "Those were some killer sandwiches, kupo!"
(Delphine, level 8, , ) - "I'm so happy to finally be reunited with my sis! I thought she died in a Jagd somewhere."
(Leonard, level 10, , ) - "... What's a Jagd? You keep sssssaying that but I don't know what it means."
(Turner, level 11, , ) - "Thank you Montblanc, kupo! It's made with love~"
(Raol, level 9, , ) - "Mmmm. All of these greenhorn Black Mages and Alchemists don't know who they're dealing with."
(Parish, level 4, , ) - "I... Uh... Erp."
(Sonia, level 10, , ) - "I know, right? What are the chances? Well you see, Jadgs are..."
(Chad, level 5, , ) - "... How did I get a spot on the legendary Clan Crimson?"

Last time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we filled out another spot on the map with Cadoan - the seat of alchemy in Ivalice. Let's pay a visit, shall we?



It's not immediately noticable, but each town has a different layout/design than the rest. It's a detail I can appreciate.



Oh? The laws are fast-acting, apparently. 



: "I swear the queen takes pleasure in watching us squirm!"

: "Hey, watch what you're saying! You never know who might be listening..."

Wise advice, especially when the law can appear at any moment. This trio of bumpkins are recurring NPCs that appear throughout the game. They're always around when a big new development happens from now on.



"Hah! Pretty soon, laws will be nothing but a bad memory!"

[Current OST: Law Card]

(Great theme here - it gives of an air of intrigue and fits a certain character perfectly. We've also heard it before back in the real world.)

Huh? Who's this guy? I've seen many alchemists in my day, but none of them purple.

: "Huh? How can you be so sure? I thought laws were everything in Ivalice?"

: "True... but there's a way around everything, my boy."

Gee, it's almost like he's some sort of anarchist.



: "You mean about Ezel Berbier and his antilaws?"

: "It's hard to believe anybody can nullify a law!"

: "Yeah, but if you could, just imagine!"

: "Nullify a law?"

Wait, so... In Ivalice, the laws are magical? I know this is probably some giant "no shit" moment given what was already explained, but you can remove them? How does that work? Wouldn't the judges notice that one of the notches are suddenly blank now?



: "And Ezel Berbier figured out how to do it?"

: "He certainly did... But if you want to meet him, forget it. He's a busy man, with many admirers shall we say."

: "You seem to know a lot about him."

[Marche gives purple alchemist a hard glare]

: "Fame has always fascinated me, you see. Ah, sorry, have to run. I've an appointment to keep."

[He walks offscreen]



Yeah, there's pretty much no ambiguity that purple alchemist man was actually him. Come on, Marche.



"According to information just released, crystals exist in special folds in space called seams. The report goes on to state that "as the crystal's magic is beneficial to all Ivalice, special means are being employed to protect them."

Well, damn. We really kicked the palace into action if they're going to reveal all of that info and knock up the law system by another notch. I feel something's building up here but I am not at liberty to reveal it yet.



"The reason given for this latest strengthening of the laws is "to maintain public order." This is likely a reaction to the recent surge in clan warring."

From their perspective, they don't know it's Marche breaking the crystals. They just assume a random clan member broke the crystal somehow and well, I guess making the laws stronger would hinder them from doing it again? I don't know!



Something very important that I should mention: Going directly to the pub doesn't activate the story mission for this one. I can tell because Oasis Frogs can be cancelled, so what's the deal with that?



I know I can't really do this one, but that description is amazing. I'm contemplating who to send and what their statue might end up looking.



Bandit clans, huh? Let's show them how we ride.



Wait so, you're going to enlist the help of [s]the most ingenious, the powerful clan in Ivalice[/s] a clan just so they can get your diary back? That's like hiring a SWAT team to recover a stuffed doll.



So for thawing out a spring, we find a dragon's skull? What kind of grisly murder happened there?



Ah, voodoo dolls. Always an interesting plot point.



Aaaaand Randorf figures it out in like half an hour. He probably saw the maid jamming a needle into a doll and reacted accordingly.



Trying to profit off of Clan Crimson is the easiest way to get yourself knocked out.



Thanks to Mewt and Remedi deciding to make everyone's lives horrible, there's two laws in effect now. To top it off, there's more restrictions than before that wouldn't have appeared if it was only one law.

This is what passes off as difficulty in this game and I do not like one bit of it, no sir.



If this were any other clan then just maybe that could be considered a threat.



If anything, we'll pocket from yours and call it a day. Do you think Marche tries to come up with cool lines to say but because he's not good at them they come out as these?



Take this as an example of what not to do when confronting Clan Crimson and its band of powerful goody-two-shoes.


Quarter is a Time Mage ability that does... well, a quarter of the enemy's health. It's honestly not that impressive and is practically useless, especially compared to the other Time Mage skills.



A White Mage got a critical on Montblanc. Bask in this moment because it might never happen again in our lifetime.



Idiots thought they could beat me.



For winning we get... an old sword and spiked boots. Sure.



Walking back to Cadoan unlocks this interesting cutscene... that I didn't expect. I should probably tell you that there was an "engage" balloon when we stepped in here, so oh boy here we go.



[The purple alchemist man runs ahead only to be stopped by clan members]

[Current OST: The World Starting To Move]



"Why don't you just turn yourself in quietly?"

: "No, I've never been good at sitting in one place for long."

[Ezel jumps down the ledge]

Two things: Wow, the human Illusionist class is effeminate. I guess you could say that for every human class, but these guys straight up look like girls. I guess the point is that they're androgynous enough to be male or female so who really knows?

Also holy crap, Ezel just jumped down a ridiculously high ledge. If he tried to do that in gameplay his legs would snap in half.



"You've overestimated your ability to escape this time, 'genius!'"

: "Well, these things happen. Life wouldn't be any fun if you always won!"

Holy crap this man is so nonchalant it's amazing. He just does not care.

: "Seize him! And feel free to break whatever you want! Just keep his head in one piece!"

: "Please, take it easy on me! I'm a sensitive man, you know!"

I can just tell that he's being snide as hell throughout this entire scene. The face he's making is proof of this.



Jump into action to save Ezel? Of course! It's not like we're going to ask questions or anything, you know.

[Current OST: Undefeated Heart]



The Ninja will try to use Water Veil on Ezel to silence him, but it doesn't work because he's just that cool.



Ezel also has Block Arrows as protection, which helps quite a bit when it comes to saving his dumb ass.



26 / 38 / 60 / 64 / 92 / 84 / 89

Human Illusionists are a very flawed class. Nu Mou don't fare any better, but when your whole gimmick is hitting the entire screen for piddly damage then you better make some improvements.



28 / 60 / 50 / 50 / 114 / 114 / 92

Ezel, on the other hand, is a far more interesting case. He has his own unique class, Hermetic, which has its own stats and lets him use special skills that no other class can use. His physical stats aren't too impressive, but his magic is fucking empowered.

I mean just look at it! You'd expect him to have some crazy strong alchemy under his sleeves, right?



The high magic power is where the positives end, sadly. Hermetics may be a unique class, but it's also the only one Ezel can use. He's stuck in it, and he can't learn any offensive skills to compliment his genius-level magic power. To say this is a letdown would be the understatement of the year.

Ezel himself looks like a donkey with how he's colored, with his name meaning seperation in Hebrew or donkey in Dutch. His last name, Berbier, is Greek for barbarian. Astonishingly appropriate for how he's like.



We start off this match by Montblanc getting his face smashed in by Air Render. Yowch.



: "Ah well, I guess the moogle's out of the bag."

What an odd phrase in this sort of world. Are you implying Moogles are cats?

: "Who are these guys? Why are they after you?"

: "Just a little misunderstanding about a job... I ask for 100,000 gil and they call me a gouger!"

: "100,000 gil?!"

Holy shit! That's highway robbery!

To put it in perspective, even with all of the missions we've done so far, we only have around 50,000 gil. 



[Marche is stunned quiet]

What a character, huh? Marche is quietly regretting that he jumped to save him.



Azoth has one hell of a cool animation and serves as a variant of the Lamia's Night ability without the friendly fire. Incredible move, I just wish it wasn't the only one Ezel can learn.



The Illusionist used Freezeblink, the ice elemental Phantasm Skill. It didn't kill Montblanc and actually healed Ardin, so way to go genius.



Yep, Ezel's dead. It's not like you get a game over if he gets knocked off, so thank god for that.



As punishment, Marche steals this man's armor from right under his nose.



Quarter in action. You'd expect being squished like that would do more damage, but nope.



The Ninja threw a goddamn Jack Knife at me. Out of everything he could have thrown, he threw the weakest knife.

This rabble will play a more important part later on, as they will have fancy items to be stolen by the Cinquedea-wielding Marche and crew.



: "I seem to be all here. Thanks for your help, eh?"

He says as he lies in a pile of his own electrified blood and filth. Good job.



"I'm Ezel Berbier, at your service."

: "Yes, yes, I know who you are. I'm Marche."

So sassy.

: "Had I more time, I'd love to thank you properly... But as it is, I must be off!"

: "Someone else after you?"

Well if you had to save him from getting mulched from a clan, then of course.



"It's hard when everyone thinks of you as a genius."

???: "I've heard that the Nu Mou call you an eccentric loony."

Burn.

: "... They only say that because they are jealous! This, too, is a burden we geniuses must bear."

He sure thinks highly of himself.

[Cid and three Templars enter the scene]

[Current OST: Confusion]

This might as well be the palace's theme.



: "The judgemaster himself! I'm honored."

You know... when you're so much of a problem that you bring the attention of the highest judge in the land, I think you're too far down shit creek at that point.

: "Hunh? Mewt's dad is the judgemaster?"

I like that Marche says that like it's a big thing yet nobody pays any attention to it because it's common knowledge.

: "Might I ask you to come with me? I'd like to hear more about these antilaws of yours."

: "I must respectfully decline. Sorry, but judges rub me the wrong way!"

Polite trash-talking. I love these two.

[Cid pulls out a card and holds it up in the air]



: "Ah, an advanced law! Only the judgemaster can use those. If I use any ability at all, it's the slammer for me! I'm practically shaking in my boots!"

Christ, Cid as the Judgemaster doesn't mess around! He means business.

: "Ah, I'm glad you are familiar with advanced laws. Saves me the trouble of explaining them to you. And I do so dislike violence..."

Combine what he said with that smirk and you can tell he's done this song and dance a hundred times.

: "Ezel!"

: [sighs and shrugs shoulders] "I was hoping to avoid this..."



"Behold, the antilaw!"

Aw snap, baby! What's it gonna do?

[Ezel holds it up in the air. It lets out a blinding wave of light]



Oh, so it's a nuke that nullifies laws? Kickass!

... That's not what it actually does.

[When the light clears, Marche and Ezel are gone]



"Hmm... maybe he's smarter than I thought. Back to the palace!"

[Cid and his Templars leave the scene]

So... after he applied the antilaw, did he use Azoth and put them to sleep long enough so that we could escape? That's the only explanation I have for what just happened.



[Replay Law Card]

: "Sure was! It nullified the judgemaster's law, allowing me to use whatever I wanted!"

So when you remove a law from the notch, the judges literally can't do anything to stop you or enforce the rule any more? I would think you would get in even more trouble, but it's cool I guess.

: "Wow... that's really something."

: "Yes, you might say that I'm really something. But to receive a visit from the judgemaster!"

It's almost like you have something on your hands that can threaten the foundation this country is based on.

: "Ezel, are you sure you're not getting in over your head?"

Marche is being the reasonable one here. You should probably listen to him.



"Making all of their laws without asking us what we think. Besides, annoying the judges with antilaws is fun! That reminds me, I should tell you about my store."

I'll admit, I can't help but root for Ezel because what they're doing with the laws is really obtuse and only makes my job more annoying, but he's still kind of a crazy asshole.

: "Your store? You run a store?"

: "For trading law cards, yes! It's still hush-hush. If there's a card you're looking for, drop on by!"

Wait, we can get law cards of our own? Nice.

: "Sure thing! Thanks, Ezel."

Despite all of the weird things that's just happened, Marche has made a powerful ally.



For winning, we get more old swords and an R2 Antilaw. Antilaws and Law Cards are a game-changing prospect that changes the shape of FFTA's law system. Antilaws remove a law you don't like, so you don't have to deal with them for the rest of the battle.

Law Cards, on the other hand, add a law onto the notch. This seems counter-productive unless it's a law that deliberately hinders your opponent from doing anything, so you can pull some really trollish stuff on the game's opponents with them. You just have to be careful not to shoot yourself in the foot.



"So you want me to use my Moogle Knight powers to help you find... a diary, kupo?"

Rodrigo gets some Loaded Dice and a Bless Staff for helping this kid find their diary. Loaded die are specifically rigged to land on a specific side when you throw them, so using them is pretty much cheating. I don't know where the Bless Staff came from.



Saving Ezel was the story mission, believe it or not, as evidenced by this new area. Aisenfield is a really cool sounding place and the random skirmish clan that pops out of there are even called the Aisen Ghosts.



Saving Ezel unlocks his shop for us. What does he have?



Nice place you got here. This is the only place in the game where Law Card will play, which is a plus in of itself.

How this place works is that you can trade Law Cards and Antilaws for no money charge at all. The deal is that you have to match them up to their respective trading value. Like a card that's worth 6 will require the same amount in return, even if it means trading multiple cards to get it.

It's easier to do than say, that's for sure.



It's so secret that everyone knows about it now. Not exactly the sneaky type, are you?



Alright, which one of Clan Crimson's masterminds will be sent to tutor this poor kid?



Rock turtles, huh? I got your "shellout" right here.



We go to complete Oasis Frogs while the guys come back with completed missions.



Nobel, despite his towering herculean physique, is actually quite the sophisticated fellow. 



"I... found a dragon skull underneath the lake. I'm not sure what to make of it."





The Rubber Suit is a female-only equipment item that nullifies lightning damage because rubber doesn't conduct electricity. Imagine someone like Sonia or Ritz wearing this thing, though. It would be hilarious.



Showing off the Water Sagacity Skill. It's actually one of the cooler animations in the game to me just because of how it traps enemy units.



Holy crap that is a lot of MP. Better be worth it.



Randorf breaks the earth!



... To be honest, that's not bad considering that hits every enemy on screen with boosted accuracy. He just needs to work on his magic stat a bit more.



Giza Plains will never truly be free as long as that stupid Moogle keeps coming back.



Borzoi never learns!



A ghost that steals food? Oh, we can't have that! *cracks knuckles*



This is the plot-progression mission. Two in one chapter - what a concept.



So... when you get turned into a poisoned frog by a Lamia, that means they're going to eat you? That's pretty grim.



Oh hey, I bagged one! It's not because I kept reloading to capture them, no sir.

(I totally did because I'm not going to trust a 24% catch rate.)



The funny thing is that he's not in trouble for kidnapping... but instead because he used a greatsword to capture the Lamia. Ensnaring sentient monsters is all well and good, but if you use a weapon you're not supposed to then your ass is going to the slamma.



There were only three Lamias and they went down pretty quickly.



The Hero Gaol! It unlocks a neat set of missions when observed from Mission Items, so I'll be sure to cover that in the future.



"I gave that ghost a mean glare and that they gave up, kupo!"

They gave Rodrigo a katana and a cup as a reward for being the best ghostbuster ever.



Ah yes, the metal discovery missions. Adamantite and Materite are based off of... well, exactly what they're called. Adamantite is a recurring precious metal in the Final Fantasy universe that's touted as legendary as it's generally used to create powerful end-game equipment.

Materite is based off of materia, magic stones that give certain abilities when equipped. They were introduced in Final Fantasy 7 and one of the ultimate weapons in this game is even called the Materia Blade.



Are we really gonna get rich like the mission report said?



I swear that I didn't cut anything out. It just jumps straight into a fight against monsters and I have no problem with that.



53 / 24 / 114 / 118 / 76 / 60 / 84

Say hello to the dragon family - they act as some of the most imposing monsters in the game. Not only do they look cool, but they come with tremendous physical strength and a lot of health to intimidate you.

They have elemental breath, but their true calling are the blue magic skills you can learn from them. Icedrakes in particular can teach Mighty Guard, which increases your defense and resistance for one turn. It makes them really formidable to fight, so you better be on your A-game if you come across one.



Randolf blows up the sun, but actually gets some results as he kills the Flan without even trying.



The Bomb shoots some fire at the guys but it doesn't even leave a scorch mark.



I don't know who's attacking here, but they sure did a ton of damage to that poor dragon.



Rodrigo was doing some work too. I'll admit, he was working against my favor because I wanted to capture the monsters, not kill them. It's the Pokemon paradox, you see.







No. Not yet. That's too much power to waste on a rabble of monsters.



Not only do we reach a monster catch quota, we take out the final one. The dragons are the only dangerous part of this fight, so as long as you bring Fire magic you should be fine.

This fight sort of feels like a fever dream, because Marche and the guys kill/capture some monsters and the most he can say about it is "sure is rainy around here."



"But I guess--"

[A sparkle falls down from the sky, which catches Marche's attention]

: "...? What was that?"

Huh. What's the deal?



"It disappeared... What could it have been? It wasn't snow... Maybe this rain does have something to do with the crystals..."

[Fade to black]

... Okay? What was the point of that? That was unusually light for a plot-progression mission. You could cut out Diamond Rain from the rest of the plot and nothing would really be changed.



We get a lot of cash though. I can't complain with that.



Oooh, a thief hat! Now we're gonna look fancy.



For beating Diamond Rain, we get Roda Volcano. I guess they have to fill out the areas somehow. 

Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we do some volcano-related errands before fighting another special person! See you then.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missions completed: 48 out of 300 (+11)

Freed Areas: 5 (+1)

Team setup:

(Marche, level 12, , ) - "The diamond rain wasn't even real. I'm disappointed. At least we got to meet that crazy Ezel guy, huh?"
(Montblanc, level 10, , ) - "Yeah, kupo! Who knows what kinds of stuff we can do with antilaws!"
(Ardin, level 11, , ) - [Is sneaking around trying to look cool]
(Nobel, level 11, , ) - "... Ardin, sssstop. Nobody is impressssed."
(Galor, level 11, , ) - "Ezel Berbier, huh? You mean that lunatic that kept boasting about how he was expose the judges for their corruption? Preposterous."
(Randorf, level 11, , ) - "He managed to stop the judgemaster's advanced law card, so it must really work! I'm not saying anything bad about him after seeing something like that!"
(Sonia, level 10, , ) - "Right? Personally, I just hope we don't get into trouble with the law..."
(Rodrigo, level 10, , ) - "Aw, it'll be fine, kupo! We're not the only people fed up with the laws anyway, so..."