Final Fantasy Tactics OR4M Part I

As I wrote just two days ago, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles was released earlier this week. I took some personal time and sacrificed a bit of sleep to play it, which frankly felt really good. Games are my favourite way to make my brain relax, and it's much more effective when I'm not streaming! Plus, time is at a premium right now and playing FFT on my Switch makes it really easy for me to pick it up and play regardless of how much time I've got, when I can be interrupted (which happens a lot!) or which other systems my kids think they need to use. Consequently, after starting to play it mid-day yesterday, October 4th, I was actually able to put in a few hours before bed last night.

There's a poster on the Final Fantasy Tactics board on GameFAQs - where I'm not particularly active - named wpot, who is at least mildly obsessed with a challenge called MR4M or OR4M. This stands for "Mediator/Orator Ramza 4 Monsters", where Ramza plays the role of the "beastmaster" and leads four different monsters at all times. wpot's posts have caught my attention a few times, and I do mean a few times because I've found discussion of the challenge from May 2013, October 2016, November 2016, February 2017, October 2017, January 2024 and November 2024. Not every one of these topics was created by wpot, but most were, and it's not like having a monster-focused party wasn't explored before May 2013! That quantity of separate board topics is also probably a bit inflated and silly-looking because the FFT PlayStation board used to be separate from the FFT PSP board, and now they're merged. I don't consider wpot to be completely unhinged with regards to this challenge.

wpot eventually created a posted guide to the OR4M challenge for the War of the Lions version of the game. It's great!
My intent is to follow wpot's established rules for O4RM during my inaugural playthrough of this new version of the game, even though with some of the balance changes it may have differences in terms of difficulty, strategy... or perhaps whether it's even possible or not.

Mostly pulled directly from wpot's guide, here are the rules, the way I'll be following them - which ignores the optional rules:

Rule 1:

Upon reaching the Slums of Dorter battle in Chapter 1 your party must consist of ONLY monsters and Ramza.  Guest humans are allowed while they are mandatory guests – they are mandatory, after all - but nobody else.  

Reis the Holy Dragon is a monster and may be used [...]. Reis the human, however, is human and cannot be used [...]. Construct 8 and the Byblos are 'demons', not monsters, and may not be used.

Rule 2:

All of your units (both Ramza and the monsters) must remain at or below level:

•      10 during Chapter 1
•      20 during Chapter 2
•      30 during Chapter 3
•      50 during Chapter 4

The challenge gets easier as these limits are approached; I would suggest not leveling intentionally at all until you find that fights are becoming too difficult.  

Rule 3:

Only one monster from each family can be used at a time. The challenge isn't very interesting if you simply use four Chocobos for every battle.  There are a lot of other quality monsters out there and the idea is to use as many as possible!

Rule 4:

High-tier monsters cannot be used early in the game. This helps to further ensure people are mixing things up and preserves the challenge of the early Chapters. Specifically, only the following may be used:

• Tier 1 monsters during Chapter 1
• Tier 1 & 2 monsters during Chapter 2
• All available monsters during Chapter 3 EXCEPT the Red Chocobo, Red Dragon, Cockatrice, and Behemoths
• ALL monsters (except the Tiamat and Greater Hydra) during Chapter 4

 
Rule 5:

Ramza must act as a "beastmaster" during the challenge. [...] Ramza must be modeled into a beastmaster by using him as an Orator. Orators are relatively normal humans who have Beast Tongue innate and they can therefore naturally 'Entice' monsters [...].  To make Ramza more functional in his support role he is also allowed to learn and equip some skills from the starter jobs: both Item and Mettle are allowed, as are the Squire Reaction/Support/Movement skills. 

However, the Chemist Reaction/Support/Movement skills are NOT allowed as they are somewhat too powerful.  No Auto-Potion!  

 

To be specific, Ramza:

• Must ONLY fight in the Orator class during story battles. During random battles he may fight as a Squire or Chemist to gain JP (or other jobs as needed to open Orator in the first place). 
• May ONLY equip Mettle or Item as a secondary skill. [...]
• May only equip Squire or Orator Reaction skills. Yes, this means only Counter Tackle or Earplug (should even you bother learning them). No Auto-Potion!
• May only equip monster-themed Support skills (Beastmaster or Tame). JP Boost is only allowed during random battles to avoid gaining too many levels. No Throw Items!
• Must only equip Squire or Orator Movement skills. So: Move+1 it is! Be glad you have it.

 

Rule 6:

Ramza can equip whatever he likes with the exception of the elemental guns, the Stoneshooter, and the Ras Algethi (they’re too powerful and/or don’t fit the theme).

Rule 7:

Ramza cannot use Entice on humans; a true beastmaster wouldn't want humans on his team [...]. More practically, Entice can make a big difference in some battles and we don't want Ramza to be the star.

Rule 8:

Bravery and Faith modification ARE allowed. Raising a monster's permanent Bravery to 80 or higher is prohibited, however. This affects the challenge level to a degree and, even more importantly, it's boring and it discourages you from allowing monsters to die...which is part of the fun.

---

And that's the end of the rules! There are two optional rules that generally make things easier or allow more choice, but I'm not going to use either of those.

As I said, I'm intending to follow these rules as strictly as reasonably possible. I don't agree with every aspect of them, like the Stoneshooter being overpowered - I think it's got a good enough tradeoff. I also find the Chapter 3 monster restrictions a little on the arbitrary side, but I respect the intent so I'll go along with these rules as written.

When you start Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, you get a choice of playing the "classic" version of the "The Ivalice Chronicles" version. I wanted to see the new stuff and spot the differences, so I went with "The Ivalice Chronicles".

When it describes the version differences, it mostly sounds like modernization and quality-of-life improvements... but it does say "optimized game balance" and that does make me wonder if there will be an impact on the gameplay related to this challenge.

There's also a difficulty selection.

I went with "Knight", for something close to the traditional difficulty and balance although I don't know the specifics of how any of these work. I didn't want to be too casual, and I didn't select "Tactician" because I worried that my dependence on monsters was more likely to render the game unwinnable on a higher difficulty setting. At wpot's advice, I picked a Pisces birthday: February 19th.


This new version of the game has very nice presentation. The voice acting all sounds pretty same-y, and maybe a little monotone in places where the actors struggle to deal with the weird choice of words, but on the whole I like it. The little animated mouths are fun. I didn't skip too much... especially when I saw a bizarre word or phrase that I really wanted to hear.

For the introductory battle at Orbonne, I literally just had Ramza sit still and wait every turn while my OP friends slaughtered everyone.

The new features like the combat timeline were really cool - this is much better than viewing the AT list. Whereas in older FFT, you spend a lot of time pressing select to view help menus and lists and such, most of the information is now onscreen. I wasn't used to this at first, but I sort of came to like it. It doesn't feel too crowded.
 

For the next two plot battles, at Gariland and Mandalia Plains, I had to get Ramza moving toward the orator class. The requirements for orator are level 2 chemist to unlock white mage, level 3 white mage to unlock mystic, and level 3 mystic to unlock orator. The formation screen is really nice compared to the original, and I was able to change Ramza's job (and that of some allies) to chemist before the battle started.

This enabled me to unlock white mage right away in Gariland.

I'd use the forced plot battle in Mandalia Plains to grind a bit to unlock mystic (née oracle) and a second random battle there to unlock orator! I got it all done in these few battles, as wpot had prescribed.


The version difference presented itself in a few minor ways this early in the game. For one thing, Reequip/Equip Change now cost 50 JP to learn, whereas in the original FFT it was a completely free ability.

For another, a chemist is now able to find items as if they have Move-Find/Treasure Hunter without learning or equipping the ability. This actually happened to me twice on Mandalia Plains by total accident.


Anyway, I unlocked orator for Ramza at the low, low level of 4, and learned Entice.


I did two more random battles in Mandalia Plains before heading to Eagrose. In the first one, I recruited a Chocobo and a Goblin and in the second I recruited a Red Panther.
  
It was very fun that my first Entice ever was successful, and with 28% odds.
 
Now that I had three monster allies, plus Delita and Argath, I didn't really need so many humans anymore. I'm not really sure how the rules handle carrying generics around to do propositions later so I just kept the humans around barely equipped and unused.

This version of the game sort of still has random encounters; if you're on a combat space and you select it, you can choose for a fight to happen at all... and if you cross a space and a random battle pops up, you've got the option to just leave. This ended up being somewhat abusable to keep my levels low enough for chapter 1 without the awful, time-consuming process of resetting the original FFT game.

I did Sweegy Woods/Siedge Wield with my new monster squad and my guest characters. There were Bombs, but I failed to recruit them before my team slaughtered them and Ramza didn't have Item on.

I did a second battle here immediately thinking it would be an asset to get a Bomb on the team, and instead in the random battle there was... nothing useful. I had noticed in the pause menu that there was an option to exit the battle and return to the world map, so I tried that out. It's literally just a cost-free escape option. Amazing. I had been worried as I don't believe I'd saved before this low-reward battle popped up.

With another crack at it, I got a battle in Siedge Wield that included Skeletons and a Wisenkin/Minotaur! Now that's useful. I was able to recruit both, although this battle ended up quite on the chaotic side. At some point I guess my Chocobo died? But it had laid an egg so I didn't even notice until later. I realize now, from these screenshots, that the original Chocobo died in the previous battle. I guess I hadn't grown very attached yet.
  

Now Ramza had a Goblin, a Skeleton, a Red Panther, a Chocobo, and a Wisenkin as allies before the first real battle of this (or nearly any other) challenge format for this game. I was level 6 though, so I knew I'd need to do fewer random battles to stay under the cap.

Time for Dorter! While this is often sort of a wake-up call fight in this game, it wasn't too hard for us. Our Chocobo and Wisenkin allies were both very tough. I knew I could take advantage of the Chocobo's mobility... and in fact, since you save quite a bit of money by not outfitting humans and fighting multiple random battles I had bought Delita and Argath both some Battle Boots, so crossing the battlefield was pretty easy.

Speaking of Delita and Argath though, here's a funny thing about this game version: You cannot change a guest character's job or equipped job ability. Delita and Argath are both squires with Item no matter what. It doesn't matter too much, but it's a change I noticed.

The Chocobo used its mobility to climb up toward the archer, supported by Delita and Argath, while the Wisenkin, Skeleton and Ramza crossed the bottom. The Skeleton got hit with Fire eventually but otherwise it was very manageable.
  

This takes us to the sand ra-a-a-a-ats. It was a good fight - on the easy side. The Chocobo supported Delita and everyone else blocked up the door where Argath starts. It was great.


Next up, Thieves' Fort or whatever it's called. This one actually took me three tries. Milleuda was pretty mean on a few occasions with Rapid Fist/Pummel. Ramza had been saving up to learn Mimic Darlavon as his second Speechcraft ability, so it was fun and useful to put some of the enemy thieves to sleep. The victory was a bit squeezed-out, though, with Ramza dead and the Chocobo and Wisenkin ganging up on Milleuda to end the fight with about one round of leeway.

I happened to learn during this stormy battle that my Skeleton's Thunder Anima wakes up sleeping opponents. I was under the impression that it behaved more like a magic spell, so this was disappointing.

I stripped Argath before he left. In Lenalia Plateau, Mimic Darlavon was again sort of the MVP move. Keeping some of the enemies down managed the threat level and allowed my Wisenkin and Chocobo to do their best work. The first Mimic Darlavon came in clutch stopping a Fira spell that Milleuda's black mage friend was aiming at us.
  
I don't know if it's the translation or the voice acting in this new version of the game, but I find the plot easier to follow and the characters easier to understand. The ones the game wants you to like, like Milleuda, feel more likeable, and the despicable ones, like Dycedarg, feel more despicable. I've been enjoying the general presentation a lot.

Next was the windmill battle at Fovoham. This one didn't go well at all. I believe I needed four runs at it, and after the first two I actually adjusted my formation a bit to make my monsters more effective.

It generally started out well enough, but Wiegraf had a nasty habit of targetting Ramza with a Cleaning Strike/Split Punch that did more damage than Ramza's max HP. This happened in three battles. There were also an annoying number of times that my Wisenkin ally was insta-killed by Northswain's Strike/Crush Punch.

Each time, with Delita being unable to learn Phoenix Down, the only option left is for every monster to full-out attack Wiegraf to see if they can end the fight. Eventually this exact methodology is what worked, with my Skeleton bringing Wiegraf into critical HP and ending the fight. This is one of those scenarios where the in-battle dialogue will bring a character from 0 HP to 1 HP, I think, but this battle was already over.


I thought carefully about options before heading the next fight at Fort Ziekden. After all, after Ziekden I'd lose access to some of these areas. I'm glad I did this, because there are Dragons in Lenalia Plateau! I escaped one fight where there were no useful enemies and then recruited a new Dragon buddy.
 
I also did one extra battle in Fovoham and there were squid fellas and eyeball guys. I got a new eyeball guy but I'm not sure whether it'll be useful or not.

Anyway, onto Ziekden! I had one false start where I quickly realized I had left Ramza in the squire class after the random battles I was just doing. I won on the second try, but there were a lot of close calls! We had some good luck with putting the enemies to sleep, in some cases cancelling some nasty spells! Others were less avoidable.
I did a move here a few times where Ramza was being targetted with a black magic, so he would use his recently-learned Enlighten ability to lower his faith and then stand beside the caster, who would substantially damage themself while Ramza survived. Then my Chocobo would go over to him and use Choco Cure. It was great.

This is also the first battle where Ramza's Beastmaster ability mattered, at least somewhat. My Wisenkin was able to use Beef Up, and my Dragon used Tail Whip a few times which did pretty great damage on at least one occasion.

It was the Dragon who eventually took Argath down.


With that... we're all done chapter 1 already! Wow, this sure seems to be moving along a lot faster than my last Final Fantasy Tactics playthrough! We didn't violate any rules, although many of us were around level 9.

This is pretty fun so far! I'm appreciating the differences between the different monsters and I can see how their varying expendability is going to change the way I play. It's still possible that the rebalancing in this version will throw me a nasty curve ball, I suppose.

Here's the team thus far:


Index | Next >