Final Fantasy general

I find Retaliate completely pointless, outside of Advantaliate stuff (where it's rarely useful when actually needed anyway), and they both serve the same main purpose in the team. Zack's stats are slightly higher though, and with several Spellbladers available to cover other realms, I have literally zero reason to use him, unless I get stuck with his weapon.

On the opposite, I dislike Advantaliate which became a trump card to solve any challenge the game proposed, but I like Retaliate as a way not to have a character become completely useless once it exhausts its abilities, except for hitting for 50 with a staff. It saved my life a couple of times on some tanky bosses since I don't have a single native 5* staff which limits the damage output of my mages.

Meh, I never used Retaliate and I'm progressing just fine. :P I liked balanced, realm-synchronized teams. I'm lucky for the fact that Cloud was already one of my favorite characters (and I love spellblade), so I have no problems with using him often.

Speaking of Cloud, this made me laugh.

@ Bhujerba: The loss of airship technology probably didn't happen all at once. And Bhujerba was where the stuff used to keep airships afloat was mined. People could probably have jerry-rigged something to get down to the surface, if anyone was living there at all by that point.

We don't know what caused the total collapse of the empires in XII and left the world in the state we seen in Tactics. There's thousands of years in between.

edited 16th Oct '15 3:55:30 PM by Zendervai

Also there is that guy that fell from Bhujerba and survived. He is amnesiac, sure, but he isn't dead.

I still think declaring Tactics the future of Ivalice was a huge misstep on SE's part.

Does this mean that moogles, seeqs, nu mou, etc. are all extinct? Because that would be as depressing as (hypothetically) the Lifestream killing off humanity at the end of Final Fantasy VII.

Given the fact the Summons you get in XII become the Lucavi in Tactics, and that Zodiark really didn't care for his brethren in Tactics...

The message I took from this is that Zodiark became an ally of the party, and learnt / experienced that they cracked the Sun Cryst, broke the hold the Occuria had on the world, and then dealt with Vayne Solidor.

Zodiark is an impressionable young creature at the time, so the lesson he learned is "Screw the Occuria, they have no right to command the world from on high. People deserve to choose their own fate."

So when his brethren far, far later basically become mostly the same as the Occuria they rebelled against except far more direct and nasty, Zodiark instead said Screw You Guys and went underground.

And considering that Zodiark as a summon in Tactics can be learnt by being hit by it, it can be said that Zodiark allies with the party in Tactics after his old host body perished. Deigning, thus, to go from Screw You Guys I'm Out, to Screw You Guys I'm Helping Ramza Stop You Because You've Become The Same As The Occuria.

Yep. Only humes are left.

We don't know that they're all extinct. The only ones explicitly stated to be such are Moogles, but than when summoned they use the Moogle designs from FFVI, so we don't even know if this is the same species.

It's entirely possible that all the non-hume races emigrated to different countries. Ivalice was already a fairly racist place, and things might of gotten really bad once lack of resources and other major issues started straining race relations during and after the cataclysm.

edited 16th Oct '15 7:43:28 PM by Hashil

Me and some other guys in another forum having far too much fun jokingly discussing Aerith's viability as a party member:

She's great, but she has a limit break that doesn't even work. It's got like, the Crusader thing where it hits everyone.

I just form my own head canon and move on.

Tactics Ivalice is so depressing. TA 2's is my favorite.

Eh, I love Tactics Ivalice. The world feels...alive with all the lore and events that take place.

Ivalice with humes only is like a Pizza with only the dough and no cheese, tomatoes or ham.

Especially the ham.

....I'll see myself out.

edited 17th Oct '15 9:50:49 AM by FFShinra

Tactics Ivalice felt "alive" in terms of a well-fleshed plot, but there was precious little to do outside the main plot. By contrast, TA 2 was teeming with NP Cs, hidden lore, enemies and allies, and a billion quests and subplots that really made it feel full.

Which was useful, as the actual main plot wasn't as developed.

I so wish we could've got an entire game focusing on the Duelhorn plot, or the story of Frimelda.

Corroborating Tactics and Vagrant Story's Ivalice as the same one seen in XII and A2 was a pretty bad idea. I could see them retconning it as some kind of alternate bad future if they ever decide to revisit Ivalice.

Ivalice is actually part of Hydaelyn, and Tactics's timeframe was an Umbral Era

I'd have shot for it being Ivalice's dark and troubled ancient history, myself. Flip the timeline on its head and things kinda work.

Well, mostly. The Lucavi/Espers are the big weak link there. In XII, the Espers are mostly sealed away where the Occuria put them, or somewhere that someone controlled by the Occuria put them. In Tactics, the Lucavi are sealed within the Zodiac Stones which don't appear to be anywhere as big as the ones in XII. Otherwise, though, the timeline flip does appear to work. All you have to do is assume that there were two periods in Ivalice's history where airships where used.

@ffrk: the Bonus Battles of Terra's event are completely wrong from a difficulty scaling POV. Basically, if you pass the Boss Rush, the rest is a breeze. But this rush, ARGH! Infuriating.

For example when Deathgaze starts the fight by killing Terra (6 medals instantly evaporate).