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Update 1: Orbonne Monastery
And so our tale begins.
Right off the bat we can see a difference: it appears Rad is dressed like a Blue Mage. Could that be because he's a Blue Mage?
Spoiler alert: Yes.
We begin the battle proper and can notice a few differences. For one, the lineup appears to be a bit different: there's only two enemies. Secondly, Alicia and Lavian have gotten a bit of a makeover. Lastly, Gafgarion is now a "Mercenary".
Oh and we can control him. I guess that's a thing too. From what I can tell, this appears to be a global change: in the next battle, we're able to control Delita, so I imagine all Guests will be under our control.
As we can see, there's a whole new set of equipment as well. I won't be going through it all because that's boring for everyone involved (and I won't remember any of it anyway), but I will look at some abilities.
Some. I don't believe any original job remains in CCP, and so there's a lot to see. I'm only going to focus on what we can use immediately and learn about the others as we encounter them.
Mercenary is basically a reskinned Dark Knight. Heartseeker Blade and Soulseeker Blade are just Night Sword and Dark Sword but with an MP cost, and so still really good. As befitting their names, they still require a sword (or, according to the tooltip, a sword or magic sword, whatever those may be).
Venom Strike and Gunk Bomb are a bit more interesting:
I'll be transcribing or summarizing most of these, but it's worth showing that these all have new and complete descriptions. A quick refresher on what you're seeing here:
Range is the number of tiles away from the caster, and "Weapon Range" means the range of the equipped weapon: 1 for swords and such, 2 for spears, a lot for bows and guns. While in vanilla FFT weapon range attacks were limited to Battle Skill, Charge, and Snipe this obviously isn't necessarily the case here and so it's worth tracking to identify potential synergies.
Effect is the number of tiles outward from the target that are hit. An effect of 1 means a single target attack. For reference in vanilla FFT, a normal spell had an effect of 2, while lower tier summons had an effect of 3. Higher tier summons and Meteor had an effect of 4, which is why they were so awesome. The exception here is a range of Auto, which self-targets. In that case, just pretend Effect is one less (so 1 is self, 2 is self and adjacent tiles, and so on).
Finally, the important one: Speed. Speed is represented here as a value that gets added every tick until it hits 100 and fires, but it's worth noting this isn't how FFT represents it internally. As far as the code is concerned, Venom Strike has what's referred to as a CTR (Clockticks Till Resolution) of 3, so when everyone's CT has increased three times, Venom Strike will fire.
On a given clocktick, abilities fire and then units get their turn (it's a bit more complex than that), and so figuring out when a slow ability was safe to use would be difficult if the game didn't do those calculations for you for everything.
Everything except Jump, that is. I have no idea if anything else is going to be stuck in Jump's horrifically user-unfriendly limbo, and so I'm making sure we all understand how this stuff works so there's no need to info dump later. Most importantly, I'll be judging abilities based on their CTR, not their listed speed, so it's good to know how that will work.
At a CTR of 3, Venom Strike is amazingly fast, but it being a slow ability means this speed is mostly wasted on a fast character like Gafgarion, since in those intervening clockticks, chances are the entire enemy team will get a chance to move until late in the battle when CTs get more staggered after various partial and full waits.
Meanwhile Gunk Bomb is just Throw Stone's nerdy cousin. On demand instant cast chance of Slow is really nice, except that this is in Gafgarion's moveset so we won't get to really enjoy it much.
With a new class comes a new description. I'd say that this is an accurate description for Gafgarion.
Similarly, here's the description for Ruthlessness, the Mercenary job command.
Gafgarion also has Green Magic, but Green Magic doesn't have Night Sword Heartseeker Blade and so it's boring (we'll see more on it later).
By the way, just as in vanilla, the "special" jobs have only a unique action ability set: the reaction, support, and movement abilities are all the same. I'll cover them when we get to Ramza.
Agrias is unchanged on the surface. Her skillset, however, isn't. Holy sword still has Stasis Sword and Holy Explosion, though both now have MP costs and elements. Stasis Sword is now Ice and Holy elemental, and Holy Explosion is now Holy elemental as well. In vanilla these were assigned elements for the AI's use but the abilities themselves took on the element of the caster's equipped weapon; thus the well-known exploit of using a Chameleon Robe on Wiegraf: he wouldn't use Lightning Stab because the AI thought it was Holy element despite his sword being non-elemental. Stasis Sword being Ice is, if monsters stick to their vanilla elemental affinities, amazing anytime Goblins pop up.
She also has Crushing Blade, a renamed Crush Punch, now Holy and Earth (!!) elemental. I imagine this was to make it clear the move required a sword if one didn't look at the tooltip. Given that I know of at least one hack that removed Crush Punch's sword requirement in order to match the name, I appreciate the textual consistency. Earth is interesting. It was a fairly rare element in vanilla, without many things caring about it. I look forward to seeing how relevant it is here.
She also picks up Mustadio's Seal Evil, now with an MP cost and range of 5 isntead of a weapon range.
Finally, Holy Sword gets rounded out with Aura and Lay on Hands, what appear to be a renamed Cure and Revive, although with a much needed point of vertical reach in the latter's case.
(Vanilla monks: invincible and all powerful provided you never fought on hills, staircases, or vaguely uneven cobblestones)
Given Agrias's position in vanilla as a worse Cid who got ribbons, perfumes, and about twenty story battles more screentime (and who managed to be worse even with that), I rather like rounding out her skillset with some flavorful utility. She can lay down the hurt, offer support, and slaughter undead, all in one skillset, leaving a secondary open for other options. While we won't get to use her for a bit, I think I'll be happy when she does join.
Lavian and Alicia are as generic as ever. So generic, in fact, that I only took a picture of one of them. Their class is Champion, described as "Holy warriors that stand tall on the battlefield. their skills let them terrify foes into sumission and bolster allies", which is pretty snazzy sounding.
Champion appears to be the Knight with an actual moveset, containing a renamed Chakra and an array of supportive moves including the ability to grant Reraise (!!). Being a generic job, I'll cover this one in more detail when I can make use of it myself.
That's right! Rad finally has something to distinguish him apart from a complete lack of personality or relevance. As FFT had Blue Mage style learning built into it (most notoriously with Ultima and Zodiac), this is a pretty natural addition. Making it a special job helps limit some of the attendant insanity of trying to teach things to multiple characters, while also keeping it from being a worry during Chapter 1 when there's so much else to deal with and learn.
Choco Cure and Self-Destruct, renamed. It's not the most impressive start, but poles are all the offense you'll ever need for a while, at least from a vanilla perspective.
Train Beast is Invitation for monster units only, with a range of 4 and a matching CTR. Decently fast, but I have no idea on its hit rate. If it's anything like vanilla Invitation, it's probably hilariously and painfully low.
And I'll use it anyway.
But let's face it. All of these jokers aren't going to matter until Chapter 2. No, who we're really here for is...
RAMZA! Character-wise, one of the best protagonists in the series, and indeed a lot of gaming. The hack's creator seems to agree:
Prologue Ramza is actually a different character from the one we end up controlling later on, which is why none of his levels or learned abilities end up mattering, and we don't get his equipment. It also means we get awesome 70/70 Ramza instead of the 60/59 Brave and Faith we have here. I guess in flavor seeing Delita renews his spirit or something? Or maybe he just eats all his gear and that buffs him up. Who knows?
Ramza here is a Virgo, my IRL Zodiac sign. It's what I first used for him out of habit, but then it become my preferred general usage sign: you get Neutral compatibility on just about every difficult boss in the game, keeping you from being locked into any sort of strategy.
Ramza's equipment options are broad. While we still don't know what a Magic Sword is (though we'll see a Whip soon), that is indeed every class of armor in the game. In vanilla heavy armor and helmets were horribly outclassed by hats, robes, and clothes due to the stat boosts and special abilities of the second group being far more useful than the raw HP of the first. I don't know how true that will hold here in CCP, but it doesn't matter! Ramza gets it all!
In vanilla my preference for Ramza was as a healer/supporter, but with him having a new special class I'll likely be leaning on that as I go forward.
Not that I expect doing so to be difficult. Ramza's Heroics skillset doesn't have a new description and talks about these strange creatures known as "Squires". His skillset is pretty basic, too. Chakra is, from the description, vanilla Chakra and Cleanse is Basic Skill's Heal if it was actually good: two more Range and a bunch more statuses healed at a brisk CTR of 3.
I wasn't kidding about a lot more statuses.
Vigor and Ardor are Accumulate on crack: for the price of two clockticks of charge time, you get +2 PA or MA, respectively. This alone, I think, will justify the price of admission on Heroics. You get two useful supportive abilities that if you don't need mean everything's going well, and whatever your plan with your secondary is you can boost it.
With Ramza we'll now cover the generic set of Reaction/Support/Movement (R/S/A) abilities replacing the Squire's set.
For a Reaction ability we have Counter. True fact: Nine out of ten FFT players agree that Counter should have been the Squire's in the first place, with Counter Tackle relegated to the garbage pile. The tenth disagreed with my unscientific approach to polling.
For Support we get Equip Shield and Grey Soul. The first is identical to vanilla, while the second removes all weaknesses and resistances to elements. Since elemental properties are not progressive (you either are/are not weak/resistant/nullifying/absorbing) this appears to be an odd way to get around the downsides of some equipment. Without knowing what I'll be putting on I can't say how useful it'll be but at 200 JP it's hardly a pain to keep on hand.
Notably absent is Gained JP UP, which was a pretty terrible ability from a design standpoint. Before anyone yells, that reason you're yelling? That's why it was bad from a design standpoint. Forcing the already overburdened Support ability slot to choose between current power or future growth was never a fun choice.
Finally our Movement ability is a renamed Jump+1. It exists, I suppose. Move+1 was always the "one right choice" of the early game movement abilities, so I shall not miss it in favor of making actually interesting decisions.
All in all, the Hero seems to be solid and a worthy successor to the Uber-Squire of vanilla.
Our foes are only two in number, showing off some of what we have to look forward to. Lezales is a Champion just like Lavian and Alicia.
It's only just now I noticed both his and Fukes' very solid 10% Character Evasion, so I went back and checked everyone else's. Rad, Alicia, and Lavian also have 10% (which seems to be the standard, but still more than the baseline 5% of vanilla), while Gafgarion and Ramza have 15%, raising the Hero in my estimation.
Agrias has 25% C-Evade. That's, at bare minimum, a 25% chance to dodge any physical attack from the front. That's a Holy Knight buff I can get behind.
Right, our enemies. Lezales looks to be fairly vanilla, with the Demagogue's Speechcraft as a secondary (which we'll examine in more detail when we train up one of our own). He's also a Pisces. As a male Pisces he's got Worst compatibility with the male Virgos Ramza and Gafgarion, so that pile of HP is going to live even longer.
Fukes is a Green Mage. Green Mage isn't new to Final Fantasy per se, being introduced as a skillset in Final Fantasy 12 with it becoming a class proper in Final Fantasy Tactics: A2. Green Mage is intended as the Red Mage's more frontline-inclined sister, with an emphasis on supportive and status spells. Where the Red Mage's signature style is flinging Fire and Cure from the backlines with the ability to stab things as needed, the Green Mage stands just behind the fighters with Protect and Poison and proceeds to smash things with a hammer.
Green Mage here, just looking at Fukes, is a bit less smashy. That said, that Whip he's carrying looks pretty snazzy:
6 power and 4 range. I don't know which damage formula it uses, but I'd imagine either the standard PA*WP or the knife/bow fomula of ((PA+SP)/2)*WP. That's either a base of 24 or 30 damage: not bad for a ranged attack. Pretty nice weapon, I'd say. In addition to Green Mages, the Whip can be equipped by Alchemists, Vanquishers, Butlers, and Homemakers.
Not making that up, by the way. I have no idea what those latter two entail but they're either going to be really awesome or really terrible. Time will tell.
I'll examine Green Mage more when I can actually use one, but I feel pretty excited for it. White Magic and Black Magic were amazing skillsets in FFT that got horrifically gutted in the transition to Tactics Advance, so if the already solid Green Magic gets that treatment in reverse I'll likely be in love.
Those are the only two enemies. Which, let me tell you, is a welcome change from when I first tried FFT 1.3 and needed ten tries to get past this map. CCP seems to instead want me to play the game, which is an approach I approve of.
After all that setup, the battle proceeds about how you'd expect when it's a 5v2.
We still have spell quotes. I didn't see it on this run, but in my test to make sure the hack didn't crash horribly, Gafgarion got his quote for Heartseeker Blade, and the name was changed properly. It's a minor thing, but I appreciate it. The programmer in me appreciates that changing Night Sword into Heartseeker Blade in an already built game is likely non-trivial, so props go to either the hackers or the original FFT coders (depending on how the quotes were originally implemented).
Both Rad and Lezales have Speechcraft as a secondary. So when Lezales does a thing and most of the board ends up like this:
...then investigation is in order. Speechcraft appears to be a set of nondiscriminatory AOE status abilities that continually fire in some demented combination of vanilla's Draw Out, Treant monsters, and Song/Dance.
Which by the way when I put it like that, sounds really cool.
Lezales unleased this one here, Power Word: Stun. I see the author is a D&D fan and-HOLY SHIT THAT'S LOCALIZED GALAXY STOP!
That would be insane except for that slight downside of blowing yourself up with it.
Yep. If you look back, Lezales nailed himself with Stop (thus preventing more Power Words from firing) and his buddy with Don't Act. 
From there, victory is even more of a foregone conclusion than before.
Which I speed along by Stasis Swording two of my allies in an attempt to burn Lezales down. Well, it's okay, it's not that much da-
-mage. Right. Well, we weren't gonna need Gafgarion anyway.
In fact, I do it a second time.
With the predictable results of Stopping Ramza. Poor Lezales also gets his own Stop refreshed.
Since clearly I'm just addicted to murdering my own allies, let's do it a third time.
At this point, poor Rad is nearly on death's door, and I get an idea.
ooh, right, we had a job we were doing. That's not gonna be good for our annual evaluation.
Sounds like you've got your mind made up. Really though, blame Rad. He blew up half the people who were supposed to be guarding her.
NEXT TIME, ON CELDIA'S COMPLETE PATCH:
Middle-aged Cadet Listens to Rumors, But Still No One Listens to Him