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The Honor and Duty… of Fanboys.
[The serious downtime between articles has been a result of a very busy few months for me, particularly due to my new responsibilities volunteering at the RSPCA and, moreso, the death of a family member. I apologize for the delay since my last article post, but hope you all understand. -Fuzz]
I spend a decent amount of time on the internet nowadays, as most people do. I tend to spend most of that time participating in online gaming or gathering information. Information is power, and an endless diversity of information can be too much to pass up.
There are few things on the webbersphere that can get me truly frustrated; I even find humour in the trolls and various idiocies, but sometimes a point of view will escalate to a full-blown meme that everybody claims as their own. One that simply doesn’t deserve to be considered a valid basis for any opinion in the first place.
Everybody’s opinion is their own, and I can respect that. If all opinions were right there would be no debate or taste and, through that logic, little-to-no distinct creativity. Parrots who hear one argument and mimic it over and over again simply to defend something intangible though (Your validity as a gaming consumer, for example)? I wish every one of you would go headbutt a bullet.
There are two particular examples lately which simply demoralize anybody with any rationality. The first culprit isn’t really related to games, so I will skim over the details.
There was a flood in Australia around Christmas time, but it was far enough back that it’s no longer a very sensitive subject anymore, so people are trying to point fingers regarding who’s fault it was for the flood. Was it the fault of the officials who decided which areas would be settled in… on an island continent with a limited locational supply of water? No. Was it the people in charge of the dams? Maybe if they had whipped out some hoses and a few buckets and got to work on it themselves?
It was rain. Follow my lead here.
It rained a lot. There was water, then there was more water. When there was too much water, it went places. Places flooded.
I'm sure there's an inappropriate League joke in here somewhere.
This isn’t just my response to some internet parroting either; I heard debates about it on the radio and watched a few on television, and by ‘watched’ I mean ‘sternly frowned at for a while til something else was on’. I mean, I didn’t even suffer much from the flooding and I’m still pissed off about the debates; the water only reached high enough on my property to soak my lawn a bit. I came home after the evacuation and thought “Well, this is a bit anti-climactic.” then ended up with muddy water soaking into my socks. Travesty abounds! Uncomfortable squelching noises!
*Slaps dust off of hands* Subject dropped! Let’s move on and make this about gaming again.
There is another thing which has been giving me the Freddy Frowns; fanboys. In particular, Call of Duty fanboys. Yes, the Modern Warfare series is great. Yes, it bares some similarities to the timeline of the Medal of Honor franchise. No, Medal of Honor is not a slap-dash cash-in copy of Call of Duty.
For the past few years I can’t experience a conversation regarding different games in the ‘unnamed soldier’ niche without this coming up, but this broken-record is so dumbfounding-inaccurate that it’s just rather sad: “EA are such shameless bastards. Look at what they keep trying to do with Medal of Honor. They are trying to copy Modern Warfare”. No Nancy, they aren’t.
When Medal of Honor was announced the entire industry was intrigued. It was a game that was created by, and would also be directed by, the film director Steven Spielberg. At the time, a famous director getting involved in a video game release beyond a movie tie-in was just unheard of. The original game was released in 1999, then in 2002 Battlefield 1942 came out and was its damned schmexy self. It was a smooth and delicious palette cleanser for the market. You were thrown into an open world with a basic kit and told ‘Here are your orders. Now, go.’ It was probably the real protogame from which the sandbox gameplay style developed, and proved to consumers and developers everywhere that a large-scale multiplayer environment could exist, which was quite a big thing back then.
So everybody was kung-fu guerrilla fighting in Medal of Honor and turning tides in Battlefield 1942, then *pop*! Out of nowhere a year later in 2003, Call of Duty comes out and… wait, it’s actually a good game?
Yes, that was the exact response of the gamer everyman. We had our immersing survival wartime FPS in Medal of Honor and the completely nameless feel of Battlefield 1942. The common consensus was that Call of Duty was only being made to jump on the bandwagon, gripping strongly on the coat-tails of EA.
Epic Beard Man on a bad day.
It sounds really wierd doesn’t it? EA published two good games that everybody loved, and another company (at the time, Activision) saw some dollar signs and decided they could do things better? It’s funny how the circle comes around, isn’t it? So when Call of Duty came out and it wasn’t a completely crappy cash-in game, people were surprised. The game itself was a happy accident; it was another company’s attempt at doing a better job of providing a deep wartime experience, but it mainly came through thanks to a completely different company altogether.
Call of Duty was build upon ID Software’s Quake III Arena engine, which was a lead competitor in the multiplayer FPS core engine market that successfully rivalled the Unreal engine. This is important; modifying an engine with roots in deathmatch play to suit a wartime epic series ended up causing a strange effect: the multiplayer mode worked. It was crisp, clean and fun. It offered variety for map design, weapon implementation and graphical settings. To put it simply, people finished the single player campaign, got on multiplayer to give it a go, and were hooked.
Suddenly Call of Duty had their own fanbase, which they continued to cater for with each release in the franchise; while they strive to continue with their vision of making a better wartime experience for the player, they understood why they were successful and made an effort to maintain the clean multiplayer experience.
The Medal of Honor franchise has still been steadily releasing new games in its series to this day, and has taken its step into different wartime events, mostly due to having specifically built game releases around World War II campaigns for a while and needing new content. The series has still been primarily focused on the giving a truly heroic feel, where you step into the shoes of a soldier of the time to follow his misadventures and do your part for the greater good…
…but you know what, fanboys? You probably don’t know half of the history behind these two games, if any of it at all. All you do is spout of your comments in an attempt to put Call of Duty on some kind of pedestal and proclaim that somehow Medal of Honor is trying to take the podium. The games may have had similar roots (which, funnily enough, came from the opposite of what you believe) but they have evolved into two completely different experiences.
Call of Duty wants you to have fun, Medal of Honor wants you to feel proud.
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Fuzz Goes off in a Tangent:
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This type of pointless, stubborn fanboy behaviour is not limited to internet randoms or certain genres; it could just as easily be regurgitated by somebody you know about a game from a genre you wouldn’t expect. Allow me to portray one of my regular experiences with it first-hand.
I’m a big fan of all genres, but I’ve always had a soft spot for RTS games. I own and play the whole Command & Conquer franchise, the Dawn of War games, Blizzard’s productions, the Supreme Commander series, and many more different releases. Well, except Command & Conquer 4. I bought and played some of that, then almost facepalmed myself into a coma.
Some days I just really feel like playing a particular game, so I will get on my Ventrilo server and or take a trip to a local gamer’s hangout (like a LAN centre or hobby shop) to chat to people. There will be people talking about messing around on MMOs, playing FPS, RPGs; you name it. Unfortunately, many of these gamers have their foundation built from Blizzard games.
This poses to be quite the dilemma. Here’s a sample Ventrilo conversation that covers about 3/4 of the conversations I have when trying to drum up an RTS game.
“Hey, anybody wanna play some RTS?”
“Starcraft 2?”
“No thanks. I’d like to play some Dawn of War/SupCom/Red Alert 3/etc right now.”
“[Insert fanboy lingo here that dismisses the ENTIRE RTS GENRE unless it is made by Blizzard]“
No, I’m not joking. One of the biggest hurdles to make it over when playing a game with friends comes forward in the RTS field. Blizzard fanboys are like rabid bears, with Blizzard games being their caves which they shelter within to protect them from having a bad experience. Don’t step into their cave and confuse them with things such as ‘new concepts’ or ‘interesting gameplay mechanics’ or they might attack you with their fragile viewpoints and maul of inconsistencies.
“Starcraft 2 is the best RTS available. Nothing competes with it. There’s no reason to play anything else.”
“Comparing SupCom to Starcraft is a mute and pointless argument. They only share genre; they are completely different. They are fun for unique reasons.”
“I don’t care.”
Eventually it spirals downwards with me being accused of being the real fanboy of whatever RTS game I want to play at the time, despite playing all of them. Starcraft 2 is a good game, and most of Blizzard’s steps into the RTS genre share that trait, but for Pete’s sake people, play a different bloody RTS game you insecure twats.
So Blizzard fanboys, let’s put this into perspective:
By your logic, I shouldn’t have played and enjoyed Borderlands because I like FPS games made by Valve, or should never have played any of the Donkey Kong Country series because I should only have experienced platform games made by Shiny. Sure, Shiny only released 3 platform games in the last 15 years, but that wouldn’t stop you, would it? I mean, Blizzard has only released the RTS games Starcraft, Warcraft III and Starcraft 2 in the last 15 years, right? Though to throw your mind for a loop, I might not have ever played Earthworm Jim or Wild 9 if I was going by your logic, because I would still be playing Sonic the Hedgehog games.
Why should we even limit that logic to games? It’s so diverse!
You remember when you had some of your grandma’s jam on toast as a kid? Well, why aren’t you eating that every day for breakfast? Hell, don’t even worry that your roommates are sitting across the table enjoying crisp and spongy waffles. Is your toaster broken? Don’t risk it; stay away from that cereal in the cupboard and wait for lunch. You never know; the cereal might not be satisfying. Never mind that your friend Bob went out to the Diner with you and ordered some bacon on eggs. You’ve got jam on toast, right? You know that jam on toast is good, because it’s never let you down. You don’t need their fancy bacon, convenient cereal or sweet-smelling waffles.
In conclusion: Buy Borderlands. It’s cheap now and, after still playing it on-and-off for so long, I can safely say it’s worth the money. Plus, it gives them more incentive to go all-in for the production of Borderlands 2. Good stuff.
PvP.net hacked; League of Legends Unsafe
At this time I am reporting that League of Legends’ PvP.net client was hacked.
Although some believe it to be a simple DDoS attack (crashing the servers), many players have experienced spam messages from the culprits within the game client.
As I report this, the PvP.net chat system has been brought down. Riot has yet to comment whether they are even responsible for its downtime, but one would guess it to be the case since messages included links which directed to various unsafe websites.
Some speculate that this is another lulzsec hacking, while others point out the mention of ‘NoS’ (a brazilian hacking group, if I remember right) in the spam messages. In my opinion, it is probably some random messing around while hacking is ‘the in thing to do’. Hell, it might even be a script-kiddy (or ‘skiddy’, a pseudo-hacker who uses tools and programs a real hacker created to mimic them); there’s a fair amount of resources floating around on the internet right now.
Many of Riot Games’ clients are worried and paranoid thanks to several of the messages mentioning (in an almost cryptic fashion) that an excess of people have been exposed to keyloggers.
One of the more interesting side-effects can be found on the League of Legends 5×5 rankings page. I do not recommend going to Riot’s website for the time being, but I did so myself out of suspicion and grabbed you all a screenshot of my discovery:
Oh aren't you just the special children!
It wasn’t hard to guess that they would hit the site rankings after considering past hacks against gaming websites. Hopefully very few others thought to check this page and, again, hopefully it’s clean.
Luckily this is occurring on the afternoon of the 4th of July for American clients, so at least they are guaranteed to have a better use for their time.
I will edit this article as/if the story develops, but for the time being I recommend that all League of Legends gamers avoid the Riot Games website and game client for at least a few hours.
Update 1: It seems that Riot was responsible for bringing down PvP.net.
“Summoners! We’ve had to temporarily disable our chat system due to technical difficulties. This means you can currently not see the online status of your friends, talk to them, or queue up with them. We realize how disruptive this is and we do apologize. We’ll have the chat system back up as soon as possible.” ZenonTheStoic
It’s difficult to manoeuvre around the Riot Games’ site at the moment. This announcement wasn’t even linked in the forums or on the main page, I had to stumble across it. Either the site has been hit decently or their offices are in a bit of disarray.
Update 2: Somebody using the handle ‘Neonir’, seemingly stolen from an already existing member of the League of Legends community, has claimed a level of responsibility for the hacking.
Attempts have been made by this person to market the tools used, but capable individuals have pointed out that the program was probably created by somebody else. It’s currently assumed that the individual is using a RAT (Remote Administration Tool) and is using keyloggers to grant himself access to victims’ computers.
Update 3: A posting by Pendragon
“Summoners!
As you are aware we recently had issues with our chat services. Rest assured that we have no reason to believe any billing information has been compromised. Any impacted accounts will be fully restored.
Please always exercise caution when visiting any third party websites.
We will keep you updated with additional information as it becomes available” -Pendragon
Final Word: If you didn’t access any websites linked to you through either PvP.net or the Riot Games website, you should be fine. If you are suspicious, run a scan using an anti-malware program to hunt down any threats.
There are 3 programs which I recommend: Malwarebytes, Spybot Search & Destroy and AVG AntiVirus. One of any of those 3 should do the job, though I encourage you to use anti-virus software at all times. If they come up clean and you are completely convinced that you have been hacked, turn off your internet connection and wait out a few days to discourage RAT access, update your scanners’ definitions and scan again.
Overpowered Tactics A2: Broken Combinations
Welcome to the second installment of Overpowered Tactics A2.
The first article dealt with ways to work around the judges and laws in Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift; extremely useful knowledge for anybody who plays the game (at least, if you want to gain the additional benefits of judges).
What about the more fun aspects of the gameplay? Well, there’s certainly a lot of variety to be seen in Tactics A2. The game features 7 playable races (8 if you count Cid, who is a Revgaji with the Bangaa skillset), 57 jobs and literally thousands of different abilities and items, most of which serve a different purpose in the game that can be combined in interesting ways.
Many of the different aspects work together as you would expect, such as having a Black Mage using White Magic as its secondary ability set, but there are many more… subtle and interesting ways in which some jobs, items or abilities suit each other.
This time I’ll be teaching you:
Another article about this game?
The 5 Most Broken Combinations in FFTA2
First of all, allow me to explain a little about how jobs affect how your units mature in Tactics games.
While your units won’t gain XP (experience) without participating in quests, they still gain JP (job points) when they sit on the sidelines. This means that you can custom-build most of the features of your unit without even taking it into combat, then continue its practical growth at a later time.
[Note: In the original Final Fantasy Tactics you gained XP and JP as you took each turn in battle, making its system some-what unique to Advance and A2]
Jobs change your stats in 3 direct ways:
- Your unit will have access to different items depending on its job
- Your unit’s base stats will dynamically change as you switch jobs
- Your unit will gain stats based upon its current job when it levels
Let’s elaborate.
You can examine a piece of armor or a weapon to see what jobs can use it. In addition, certain items are gender specific, and almost every case of gender specific items side with females. These limitations can be manipulated by certain Support abilities. For example, you can equip Shields on a Soldier but not on a White Mage, but you can also equip a Bronze Shield on a Soldier for a while to learn the Support ability ‘Shieldbearer’ and equip the ability. While the ability is equipped you will be able to use Shields as any job, so long as you aren’t using a two-handed weapon such as a bow or greatsword.
Remember that you have access to abilities learned from equipped items even if you are still learning them, so long as you still have the item equipped. So you can equip a Ragetsu-Denbu to gain access to Dual-Wield, equip Dual-Wield as your Support ability, then throw another sword in your offhand.
Your unit will have different statistics depending on which job class it currently is. You will notice immediate changes if you switch a unit’s job from Soldier to Thief (In this case, it would lose brute strength but gain speed and mobility), but those changes will revert if you decided to switch back to Soldier, or would just change entirely if you chose to make the unit a Black Mage. These stats make a notable difference early in the game, but are less important as you gain higher levels.
While itemization and base stats affect your unit greatly, neither affect your character as much as its stat growth.
When your unit levels it gains some stats, and the job in which it is currently employed when it levels determines where these stats are allocated. This process is called growth. Many players will argue that you should min-max this, but I believe that over-specialization breeds weakness, particularly when it comes to manipulating CT (The time it takes for your character’s speed to fill its AT gauge, so that it may have its turn). My personal recommendation is that you simply choose a path: Physical or Magical. Once you choose, then try to stick to one or the other with that unit and you’ll be fine.
To put it simply: a unit that has spent its whole life as a Mage might know how to do battle as a Fighter, but it certainly won’t be very good at it.
Now that you understand growth and how important its role is in world of Ivalice, we can continue.
5- Scratch and Boom!
Moogle Fusilier
Building what I like to call a ‘Scratchboom’ can take a little bit of effort, but it can be a fun and interesting unit to bring to battle.
First of all, you’re going to need either a Bangaa or a Moogle. Level whichever you obtain as a caster if you can, but you can also simply recruit one who is a caster from the start. A Trickster is a fine choice for the Bangaa, as is a Black Mage Moogle.
Once you have your caster, you need to keep it out of battles. While this sounds counter-productive, you need to teach it a rather strange job. You need to learn either the Gladiator skillset for Bangaa or the Moogle Knight job for mogs.
Every race (except Seeq) has its version of Ultima. If you have played a Final Fantasy game in the past, you know what I’m talking about. It’s essentially a giant explosion of non-elemental magical damage, meaning that nothing is resistant to or weak against it. It’s a reliable attack that is capable of dealing obscene amounts of damage.
These two races have access to it through melee strikes, specifically Ultima Charge and Ultima Sword. What the spell doesn’t openly show is that its attack range is based upon your weapon and the damage is based off of your magical prowess. Note that many of the abilities those two jobs have can also be cast at your weapon range.
Particular fun can be had with Rush or Moogle attack, which allow you to poke a target with a ranged weapon for around 30 damage but send them spiraling off of a cliff.
Now that you have mastered these two jobs, switch either the Moogle to a Fusilier or the Bangaa to a Trickster. Note that Fusiliers and Tricksters use weapons which have incredible range and that both are capable of inflicting a variety of interesting status effects.
Scratch an enemy from across the map with your weak weapon attack invoking Ultima, then laugh as the enemy explodes instantly.
For best results use either ‘MP Channeling’ or ‘MP Efficiency’ as your Clan Privilege. Also note that Moogles tend to deal more damage since they have more magically pure classes to gain growth in, but Bangaa can learn Halve MP as a Bishop from the Luminous Robe. Halve MP combined with either of the MP privileges allow a Bangaa of this build to fire an Ultima attack every round.
I suggest you go with whatever you think is the most stylish: Gun-toting bundles of fluff, or card-throwing lizardmen gamblers?
4- No Cost, Double Trouble
Viera Red Mage
Red Mages have always been a thing of debate. A lot of the difficulty in Final Fantasy games has come from how well a combination of specialized allies works, and the Red Mage always had a tendency to throw a wrench in that whole puzzle.
The Red Mage is the poster-child of those who are versatile; a jack of all trades. While they cannot cast the more powerful versions of spells that other jobs have access to, they have access to several schools of spells at the same time. In Tactics A2 they are unique to the Viera race, and they can cast Black Magic, White Magic, Green Magic and their own special Red Magic.
This alone wouldn’t be a real issue, since the whole problem would be balanced out by stat growth to prevent an all-powerful melee unit that can cast almost anything, as well as the ability for offensive casters to choose defensive magic as a secondary skillset anyway. What makes a Red Mage so devastating is Doublecast. Doublecast is a spell unique to the Red Mage. Using it is simple. You cast Doublecast, then pick a spell and the target, then pick another spell and it’s target. The unit will then cast both spells in one turn.
Doublecast is designed around the idea of burst. You save up mana by using the Red Mage’s considerable melee strength, then spend it all in one hit. However, this concept falls flat when you introduce the Spellblade’s Support ability ‘Blood Price’. Blood Price converts the mana cost of spells cast to cost health instead, equal to double the cost of the spell. A Doublecast throwing out Fire for 8 mana and Thunder for 8 mana, which would cost 16 mana (2 turns worth of mana) instead costs 32 health.
Now here’s where it gets broken: Introduce items which absorb certain elemental attacks. Say you have a Red Mage wearing a Flurry Robe, which absorbs Ice, walk up into a group of enemies and Doublecast 2 Ice spells so that they cleave onto itself?
You could even step it up and use Doublecast on Summoner spells. Hell, Doublecast even works on Spellblade attacks, meaning that you can strike a target for two melee hits with two chances to cause status debuffs. Fun.
3- Ultimate Specialist
Hume Parivir
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a melee unit specifically built to be capable of decimating anything thrown at it?
You can. It’s called a Geomancer Parivir.
This build is effective since your unit will still be powerful if you allow growth as you work your way up the job tree, making it an ideal choice for Luso (your main character). The extra health and speed gained from levels in Soldier, Thief and Fighter compliment the build well, to the point of which it’s recommended that you gain a few levels in Ninja to boost the Speed benefit a little further.
Once you can choose the class Parivir, you do. You level in it, and you almost never stray. Parivirs have incredible growth and access to a variety of elemental attacks which can do Fire, Ice, Lightning or Dark damage, depending on which skill you use at the time, as well as inflicting a status effect. They also have a few non-elemental attacks, including a desperation strike that deals half your attack damage but sometimes instantly kills a target.
As soon as you can, you learn the Black Mage’s Support ability ‘Geomancy’. Geomancy works by increasing the enemy’s weakness to a particular attack by a notch, with the order being Absorb>Immune>Half Damage>Normal>Weak. For example, This means that if you strike an enemy with a spell and they would take half damage, they would take full damage instead.
The Parivir has access to several different elemental attacks. These attacks will strike with your weapon twice for the element of choice, meaning that if you would melee a target for 75 and you choose to attack with Skyfury Blade, you would strike for 150 Lightning Damage, which then would be modified by Geomancy.
So let’s say you walk up to a Malboro and slash him with an elemental attack which would do normal damage. Instead of slashing him for 75, you would strike it down with a respectable 225 damage. I will also note that I am being modest with these numbers; you will see incredible attacks at later levels, and the best part is that it doesn’t feel that cheesy. There’s something to be said about roaring around a battlefield slaying foes up close.
Another great thing about Parivir/Geomancy is that you are open to choose whatever secondary skillset you want without any real repercussions. Blue Magic is a solid choice to use while you level, and many will switch jobs to Paladin if they ever hit the level cap and keep Parivir as the secondary skillset instead, allowing access to more powerful Knight Sword weaponry. Mix it up and socket whatever secondary job you want!
2- Wise Itemization
Scholars are one of those jobs many don’t take a second glance at, but they can be shockingly effective when in the right hands.
Nu Mou Scholar
Similar to Illusionists, the Scholar’s main attacks strike map-wide. There’s a twist in their spells however: they do not discriminate between friend or foe!
This leaves the player open to three different methods for using them. You can always take the normal route and try to selectively use them and mitigate the damage (such as using their natural selection ability to target a specific race), but that’s not overpowered is it? The other two options both involve, you guessed it, items that absorb certain elements. You can go about this two ways.
The first and easiest method is to simply equip all your units to absorb a certain element, then have the scholar only cast that school of spell. If you can use the right Clan Privileges, Support abilities and supporting units (such as a unit on MP restoration duty) you can do very well, constantly and cleanly pummeling your enemies for damage while simultaneously healing all of your allies.
The third and more interesting method comes down to planning. You start by bringing at least 2 Scholars to the battle, but instead of having them absorb the spell you simply equip to have them take reduced damage. Why? Well, you socket in the Absorb MP ability and presto! Every time one of your Scholars hit another with a Tome ability, it will gain MP equal to the spell’s cost. Throw in a support healer (maybe a Doublecast White Mage) and you’re all set.
If you want to be really cheap about it, you could even bring 4 Scholars into a fight with a Doublecast White Mage. Have them all stand in a cross formation, have the Viera cast Shell/Curaga on its first turn, then simply heal through the damage. You win. If it wasn’t for the preparation work required to use this combination, it might just have been more overpowered than…
1- Map-Wide Frenzy
Hume Seer
There’s a reason why this unit setup is on the top of the list. To put it simply, I don’t recommend you use this. It’s blatantly overpowered to the point of which I feel sympathy-shame whenever I even hear about somebody using it.
It’s the Illusionist/Seer.
Humans are pretty amazing in Tactics A2, but giving them access to such a ridiculous combination was just asking for trouble.
You start by casting Magic Frenzy from the Seer skillset. Magic Frenzy allows you to choose a specific spell to cast, then causes your character to leap to whatever the spell hits and physically attack it. Next, you cast an Illusion spell. For best results, most who use this combination cast Stardust, since it’s non-elemental.
Oh, but it gets better. Before doing any of this, make sure your character is dual-wielding.
The unit will smack every enemy on the map with a spell and two physical attacks in a single round. That’s not the most broken part either; since the damage is split between physical and magical damage, you don’t even have to care about stat growth.
Certain combinations are capable of breaking this build (particularly units who use invisible or units ‘tanky’ enough to outlast the damage output) but they are rarely encountered, and are usually accompanied by enemies that would die from the flurry of attacks before they could even make their move.
This setup is the pinnacle of cheese.
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There you have it. Before I go, let me say that everybody has their own style of doing things, especially when it comes to tactical RPGs. Don’t take any of these as suggestions; play to enjoy. If you don’t, then what’s the point in gaming at all?
Overpowered Tactics A2: Bending the Laws
It’s been a little while since my last article; thanks to a combination of hectic days, weird internet problems and writer’s block. Today I found myself determined to put the fingers to the keyboard and come up with something interesting, so I decided to write about what would be considered a rather niche topic.
One of my most used pieces of gaming hardware is my Nintendo DSI. Finding a good game on a Nintendo hand-held nowadays can be a challenge; we don’t all want to know what Mama’s been cooking or randomly tap a screen at an animal like the world’s most negligent fish owner. One of the gems from the rough is a game called Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift.
Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Surprisingly more playable.
It’s no secret that I really enjoyed (and still go back to enjoy) the original Final Fantasy Tactics. Tactics was a complicated, well-written and fun masterpiece. Unfortunately they made a sequel named ‘Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance’. Many people enjoyed the game, but almost anybody who had played the original found themselves outraged.
Tactics may have had rather simple graphics, but the story involved conspiracies, murders, heretics, religion, myths, lineage, war, demons… I could go on. The sequel was a game where you played as a child in a world where nobody dies and, to be frank, nothing interesting ever happens. They even introduced Judges, which even fans of FFT:A to this day cannot defend.
Judges were a good concept. They threw a spanner in the works of a player’s optimization, forcing you to think about different strategies, jobs and itemization. Unfortunately the concept was far overshadowed by a failure of implementation.
I am not even kidding you here: There are laws which forbid certain in-combat actions that are not affected by the several common status ailments that cause you to lose control of your character. Think about that. Yes, you would be punished if the computer told your berserked/confused/charmed character to break a law. Yes, if you did critically strike on a normal attack and by chance the attack knocked back a target, it was considered a ‘knockback’ and you would break that law. Yes, if there was a law limiting the damage you can deal with an action you could easily, accidentally critically strike and break the law.
Is it any surprise that Tactics A2 was so easily overlooked?
I love this game. It’s still a little childish, but at least stabbing somebody in the face kills them half the time. It’s also great that the main character isn’t a completely coddled child (he borders upon having a blood lust sometimes) and, the best part of all, the laws are a bit more refined and following the judge law is an optional choice in most missions. Follow the law and you get a little more loot, can resurrect allies mid-battle and maintain a privilege.
I heard that the story for the main character was supposed to be that he survived a plague which wiped out his whole town, but Nintendo considered it ‘too dark’ and the plot was instead granted as the back-story for another character named ‘Adelle’. Oh well, people make mistakes sometimes. All things considered, I’m just happy that his age is in the double digits.
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Now that you understand what’s to enjoy about this game, I’d like to announce a small series I will be doing about Tactics A2 which I’m calling ‘Overpowered Tactics A2′. For the first installment:
The Top 3 Ways to ‘Bend’ Judge Laws
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3- Traps, traps and more traps.
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Rangers are one of the more interesting job classes in Tactics A2, and they are unique to the Seeq race (brutish pig barbarians). They have 2 main features as a class: they are amazing at using items due to being capable of making them twice as effective (and can even reverse their effects, making a Remedy quite the hilarious offensive choice) and they lay traps; the same traps that plague you on the battlefield.
As soon as you lay a trap it’s effectively part of the scenery. You are no longer responsible for the trap and, funnily enough, you have to avoid stepping on it yourself. Due to this, you can run a Ranger or two around the battlefield dropping traps all over the map, killing off enemies with direct damage or charming them with the traps so that they kill each other.
Traps will bypass almost any law you can think of, even the limited damage laws, since according to the game you aren’t responsible for the damage. You still gain experience and items for killing the enemies, but essentially the Judge doesn’t care who laid what traps or what happens when they trigger.
This tactic is best employed by having a Viera (the bunny girl race) on field as a Sniper/White Mage, sneaking around resurrecting your Seeq Rangers should they die. If you can have all the non-Rangers invisible it’s a great advantage. Note that enemies are usually most tempted to attack from behind your characters. Use this to your advantage!
That's cold, mate.
2- Doom and Poison. Poiseidoom?
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Poison is just amazing in Tactics A2. Poison (or Regen) in this game do not have a limited duration. Poison all the enemies on map and watch as their health slowly and reliably ticks down by 10% per round. For best results, utilize the Blue Magic spell ‘Bad Breath’ (Only Humes can be Blue Mages) which can be learned very early in the game. Bad Breath will attempt to Silence, Blind and Poison enemies in a T-shaped area (cone), which is just fantastic. While Silence has a limited duration, the target won’t be able to cast healing spells while afflicted.
Need to kill something that’s healing, but can’t break a damage cap? Doom is your friend. Doom is one of the more difficult spells to cast on an enemy: not only does it usually only have a 40-50% chance to hit, but most of the effects which cause it require high-level weapons and often do damage simultaneously. Fortunately, Blue Mages once again come into play here, using the Blue Magic spell ‘Doom’ for a measly 8 mana from a fair distance away. The best part? Doom technically doesn’t do damage; it inflicts the KO status effect. You’re killing somebody without, as far as the game is concerned, even hurting them.
Avoid slowing or reducing the speed of your enemies when utilizing either of these status inflictions, since they both tick with each of the target’s turns rather than with what the game considers ’rounds’. Also note that inflicting a negative status effect on an enemy directly (without using a trap) is considered ‘harming’ them, and will still break laws which forbid harming specific targets.
I really hate the Judges.
1- An Opportunity to Counter!
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Reaction and Opportunity abilities are your friend. Unless a law specifically states that Reaction or Opportunity abilities are forbidden, they will never break laws.
Opportunity commands are pretty noticeable. Your unit’s turn will begin with it bracing and saying a quote “Time to take off the gloves” style, then an additional small menu will be available above the standard commands, listing which Opportunity ability it would use.
This ability will change if you move the unit into a different square. For example, standing by yourself will make the unit cast Protect/Shell on itself, standing near two or more allies will cast Haste on all of you and, more importantly, walking up to an enemy will allow you to strike it (or them, if more than one is adjacent to you) with a flurry of attacks. Flurry is best used dual-wielding, as you can potentially strike a single target 4 times and be completely safe from breaking the law.
As efficient as Opportunity commands are, the greatest method for bypassing laws is definitely Counter. While many Reaction abilities offer different effects (such as Strike Back dodging an attack then Countering) Counter is the most reliable, since it triggers off of almost any ability an enemy might cast, so long as it is in an adjacent square.
It just goes to show that even in the world of Ivalice, the Judge will let you go if you can justify self defense.
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I hope you’ve made use of the tips provided in this article, and thanks for reading.
Nukem has gone gold!
Duke’s gone gold! The game discs are being manufactured and shipped as we speak! [Source] [Source]
Gearbox making fun of itself.
You may remember my post a fair while back which mentioned that Duke Nukem: Forever was shaping up rather nicely. I’ve been looking forward to this game for a long time now. (You can view the older article here, though the page formatting has mixed things up a bit).
It’s scheduled for release on June 10th (June 14th for the USA). The game looks like it’s ridiculous fun, and why wouldn’t it be? Any game with over a decade of production behind is certain to have witty moments pouring out its ears.
If you haven’t seen it already, here’s the trailer [Warning: Harsh language]:
There’s another couple of videos you might want to see, but I’ll avoid clogging up your browsers. You can find an interview here, and a ‘mockumentary’ here.
The gamer in me is anticipating a probably-awesome experience, while my inner businessman just really wants to see the sales figures a week after it comes out; on the game, sunglasses and, of course, bubble gum. Even if the game turns out to be a failure (gameplay-wise, since we all know it’s going to sell) it’s still worth giving it a spot on your shelf just for the weird factor.
