Final Fantasy Tactics Classic Jobs Part I

[freshfeeling]

After my first few "Classic Jobs" runs on Final Fantasy I, V, and III, I knew that Final Fantasy Tactics would be the next-most-natural fit. There isn't really any required hacking to make this work, although it's a bit more convenient - and maybe fun? - to force the party into a state where Ramza and some generic characters are in their knight, thief, white mage, black mage personae from the outset. So that's what I set up!

I went ahead and applied some patches from ffhacktics.com . I generally like that site and community though I've only really lurked in the distance while occasionally planning and assembling a few little personal hacks that don't go anywhere.

There were a few clear bugfixes, like disabling the JP scroll glitch, and the other changes I made were as follows:

• Ramza is now a female. This was kind of just for fun/flavour, since her name is Faris.
• Ramza now starts as a thief.
• The only generics who join the team at the beginning are a male knight (Bartz), a female white mage (Krile), and a female black mage (Lenna).
• Almost all guest characters are chemists by default, with no equipment (or at least no weapon). This is mainly so they can't carry the team, but it also allows my "core four" to gain a small amount of chemist JP via spillover through the game.
• I turned on the "anything that breaks shows up in the fur shop" patch.
• It's now impossible to learn abilities via enemies who turn into crystals.
• There is no permanent in-battle brave and faith modification.
• I made one change for the express purpose of making the mid-game Wiegraf battle easier: I removed the white knight's inherent Maintenance/Safeguard ability so Wiegraf's sword could be removed.

Ramza/Faris the thief, Bartz the knight, Krile the white mage and Lenna the black mage will all never change jobs, and will only have access to reaction, support and movement abilities from their assigned job... with the sole exception of being allowed Item as a secondary action ability set (I'm sure this could be seen as contentious but it's how it works in all the other Final Fantasy games). They will only ever have access to items that they can learn about from their starting JP or the tiny bit of spillover JP that guest characters might provide, which I'll have very little control over.

And that's that! This game has had its limits stretched by a very dedicated bunch of weirdos to such an extent that it might not be suitable to call this a challenge. People have won under limitations a lot worse than using four characters with relatively balanced jobs! Thus, this is pretty much just for fun, as usual.

This session was played on January 2, 2018.

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Beyond the first battle at Orbonne, the first Gariland battle was a really good one. Usually, you only have chemists and squires for that battle, which made the white mage and black mage seem oddly overpowered even in the game's first battle.


In Mandalia Plains, Algus ended up in trouble at the beginning as he often does, but as a poorly-equipped chemist he was able to use a potion on himself and then the rest of the fight went quickly. We had a few semi-wasted actions here, like the white mage using Shell when the enemies have no magic attacks, just to try to get our characters to level up; this run will have a lot of that, perhaps unfortunately.

Toward the end of the fight, one squire named Nigel gave us a bit of a headache, knocking out Delita, then Lenna, then Algus. I had been beating on my own characters in the interest of gaining experience a bit too much, and consequently made Nigel's job a bit easier. We managed to take out Nigel eventually.

On Zalbag: "[Zalbag] doesn't get enough exposure in the game to be, in my opinion, especially memorable. But then he's got 'bag' in his name. If my name was Kylebag, everyone would remember me! They would say, 'Remember Kylebag?', and everyone would say, 'Yeah, dude has bag in his name.' That's how it would go."
 
In Sweegy Woods, I made a pretty dumb targeting decision early in the battle. It was mostly simple regardless, but I made a miscalculation with Lenna striking a goblin and getting countered and then beaten shortly after. Fortunately, Faris knows how to use a Phoenix Down.

At the end, I still drew it out intentionally to some extent. The last goblin standing knocked out Faris/Ramza, who used the "feminine scream" sound effect which is the first real hint that I was successfully able to swap his gender.

After Sweegy Woods, we did a bit of shopping hoping to trigger a random battle before the wake-up call that is Dorter. We found a random battle in Mandalia Plains; it was just against some panthers and a goblin. My team hit each other quite a few times to gain experience and whatnot. As this battle wrapped up, Faris used Steal Heart to charm the final goblin and waste a bit more time as we tried to squeeze out a bit more experience. This battle allowed Lenna to earn Bolt 2.

Then it was on to Dorter! This is usually this game's big wake-up call. There were a few lucky and/or well-planned events really early in this battle, like Algus and Delita not having enough movement to get up the big wall to the left of their starting position. My black mage went up and was able to aim a spell at the elevated sniper to defeat him immediately, which is great. I wanted female Ramza/Faris to use Steal Heart on some of the enemies, which would've been exciting, but it didn't happen to work right away.

There was a point where Ramza/Faris' Caution counter went off after getting hit by a knight, that allowed him to evade a subsequent crossbow shot. I don't think I've ever really used that ability, much less seen it make a difference! But I'm convinced it did.


Shortly after, an enemy wizard incinerated Delita and Algus. I was still trying Steal Heart with Faris with no real success. Faris was knocked out eventually, but Krile was able to bring him back, and our offense was solid enough that we won without issue. Steal Heart happened to work on an enemy archer toward the end of the battle, which really had little effect overall but was nice to see. At the end the single archer I had charmed had been affected by Speed Break twice and was really useless. Overall, Dorter wasn't nearly as bad as it sometimes can be.

We entered the Zeklaus Desert with the elusive sand ra-a-a-ats. Algus got killed immediately, and the people rejoiced. Delita got killed before anyone else on my team acted, too. Faris charmed a monk early in the battle, and we managed some very favourable positioning for both Krile's buffs and Lenna's offensive spells. Although I think my decisions were fairly good, we also benefitted from some luck, and that made this one really easy.


As this first play session wrapped up, we started to see a level differential among my team. It's really easy for Krile, for example, to take a concretely effective action each turn in battle than Faris, since Faris only has Steal Heart for ranged actions and it's unreliable. Faris had just earned level 4 while the others were level 5 and 6. I think that'll continue in the near future.

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