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1: L i t t l e m a g i c

'Sup, and welcome to this totally rad challenge run of Final Fantasy Tactics. Which is a great game, but it's been years since I played it, so I'm not sure how this will go. But hey, I'm fresh off Fire Emblem Binding Blade, so that's got to count for something, right...? Anyway, since I'm kind of rusty, I'm just going to do the normal version of the challenge, no funny business.

The challenge is inspired by the FFV Four Job Fiesta. The TL;DR version of the run is that at the start of every chapter you randomly pick one new job, and in every battle thereafter, at least one of your characters must use said job. For chapter one, the possibilities are Knight, Archer, Priest, and Wizard. I drew

Wizard

which is a class and skillset I've never used much since I've found the fact that enemies keep getting faster while your cast times get longer kind of offputting. Still, at least it's not archers! I'm not allowed to hack them to have good stats this time around, so that would make me sad.

It's not really what FFT is famous for, but I want to hand out a big shiny gold star for all the touches of extra effort. They didn't have to animate these little gestures, but they did, and I appreciate that.

We're skipping the intro, because it goes the way it always does. If you haven't memorized it by now, tough... Don't blame me. Blame yourself or god.

(Agrias went with the latter.)

I didn't even play this fight, just mashed through the dialogue, skipped the cutscenes and set Ramza to autobattle and "save fading life" and let the AI handle things. This is how long it took it. I'd like to say I could have done better.

Oh yeah, and as you can see, I'm keeping his name as Ramza. The images of ~~Bartz~~ Butz and Ramza are too firm in my mind to let me swap their names around without confusion.

Some might say the old translation is bad. I think it's pretty great.

I didn't play this battle either. Save fading life on every character, crank up the frame rate, watch funny cat videos for 10 minutes... it works. Then I buy five rods. They're pretty weak, but it's the only weapon we have that wizards can equip right now, so the alternative is punching. Wizards are not good with punching. They're also quite cheap, 200 bucks each, so it's no big loss.

The rules call for dismissing your initial characters and hiring new ones, but I'm not going to name them after the FFV crew so I'm keeping four of them. Not this guy, though. He's getting the boot.

I've used ~~FEditor~~ FFTPatcher to remove the requirements from all jobs, so I won't have to grind to unlock anything... though I make no promises when it comes to beating the game. That'll probably require some. Hell, every time I play this I end up grinding to 99 because I'm having so much fun running around killing shit. I'll try to avoid it this time around!

To get serious for a minute, it's actually very easy to make this edit - just run FFTP, select "New PSX patch" from the file menu, then go to the "Job Levels" tab and zero everything out. Then click PSX in the top menu and patch your _{personally ripped from your legally purchased FFT disc} iso. Or do the same thing with "PSP" instead of "PSX" if you play the portable version like a scrub.

And then, on to meeting Algus. Of course, we pick the option that gives us brave, because Algus is a dick.

Speaking of, he starts out in the most Algus fashion, stabbing people in the back.

I auto-battle this one, too. Ramza is already a wizard, but all my generics are chemists because the challenge allows Item as a secondary ability for Potion and Phoenix Down (only), but none of them have the JP for the latter (should have set its jp cost to 0 when I was modding, but...). I was hoping it would be enough, but none of them managed to hit the necessary 90 jp, so I fought a random battle here too. End results: we've mastered (for our purposes) Item, everyone's a level 2-3 wizard with Item as their secondary, and we're ready to take on the challenge proper. First, however, let's introduce the cast.

Ramza is Ramza is Ramza. It's hard to go wrong with him regardless of what kind of jobs you want him to take on, though I'll note that the initial generics can actually start with better brave and faith.

For our purposes, both Eliza...

...and Jessica are actually better than him right now.

Nancy is a bit of a coward, though, but it's okay, she got Algus' boots to make up for it.

This guy was initially named something else, but I used the ASM hack that lets the soldier office rename generics so I could change it because it's kind of a tradition for me to name one of my dudes after the only good character in Chrono Trigger. (Fight me, nerds.) As usual, male characters who are not Ramza start with +1 PA and -1 MA compared to female ones - Alf is the weakest link right now, at least until we unlock something that uses PA at all.

Delita is... Delita, I haven't done anything with him. He can just do whatever he feels like.

algus are you ok

the fuck, you don't even know any summon magic

...

Well, he had the JP for Moogle so I guess he can play with that if he feels like it. I'm thinking I'll murder everything before he gets the chance

Nothing but the truth.

And now, where the challenge begins for real: Sweegy Woods. After this point, all challenge rules are in effect, meaning I'm not allowed to change anyone's class until I reach chapter 2... if I reach chapter 2.

All right, so. Wizards.

Wizards (obviously) get the Black Magic skillset, which is relatively powerful, but requires charging. The damage formula for magic relies on your MA and faith, but also the target's faith. A 0-faith enemy is invulnerable to magic. This cuts both ways - so a good wizard is also quite vulnerable to magic. (This is why powergaming assholes tend to reduce their party's faith to 3 and ignore magic in favour of just punching or swording things to death.)

Wizards get the passive ability Magic Attack Up, which basically raises your magic damage by 1/3. It costs 400 JP, which is mid-range as far as support abilities go. This is going on the entire party, possibly before the end of the chapter.

Wizards get the Magic Counter reaction ability, which... counters... magic. Yeah. Not every magic-type attack can be countered, but a fair number can. When hit by a counterable spell, there is a BR% chance that you will cast it right back at the attacker. You still have to pay the necessary MP for it, and it can't activate if you don't have enough. It costs 800 JP, which is quite steep. It could be useful occasionally, but is not a priority.

Wizards do not get a movement ability.

Since it's all we have to play with, there's really not much to say about it. We're going to magic everything that stands in our path.

You'll do nicely.

Pictured: Everything that is wrong with Black Magic summed up in one picture. Turn 10? Everyone is going to move before this goes off. And 6 MP may not sound like a lot, but Ramza isn't getting off more than three of these before he runs out.

However, since even the weakest spells have an area of effect and deal a respectable chunk of damage, it will be enough.

For comparison, that's what Delita can do with his sword right now.

Ramza kills a goblin and weakens the cat.

And that takes care of the cat, too.

Algus, meanwhile, plays the role of Bait admirably.

Goblins are weak against ice. It can lead to even low-level characters approaching triple-digit damage. This, unsurprisingly, kills both of them.

Leaving only a single bomb, which is easily dispatched. I wasn't expecting much from this fight - it's still early, and it isn't even one of the tougher ones in the chapter. The next one... I'm not so sure.

Figuring that we'll need all the help we can get, Ramza's party heads back to Gariland to stock up. This isn't a very impressive upgrade, the MP we gain from a new hat and jacket doesn't add up to a single spell - but at 24 MP, that makes four shots.

More interestingly, they sell boots which increase movement by 1. I've had two pairs up until now - now I have enough for everyone, and they will be staying on for a long time since I don't have access to movement-boosting abilities.

Well then, let's get it on. Dorter is usually considered the first stumbling block. We'll see how the party fares.

These sprites.

Look at these fucking sprites.

Ramza is not impressed.

Delita and Algus generally head up on the building to the left of the starting position - there's an archer up there who'll be raining arrows down on you until taken care of, and they NPCs really hate that archer.