Final Fantasy Tactics

[Tonberry]

[Sarah]

Yes, Meliadoul and Agrias were very useful in battle.
My final-final party (the one I used during my last playthrough-- which must have been the 1,000,000th one...) had no more than one non-story character (a chemist), the rest were main characters like Orlandu and Ramza.

I always prefer to keep all the main characters, even useless ones like Rafa, mainly because they just die when you let them go (I tried it once), and that doesn't feel right.
It's fun recruiting new characters, but when I think about it, I never 'really' needed them.
(..One of my memories as a mediator-Ramza is turning an archer into a chicken while trying to invite him. It was odd... I later found out that it happened because I kept on lowering his bravery level to get him to join. Go figure...)

[cutie_bunnie]

Well I played through with the story charactes, but then I went back and decided to just do it with an entirely customized party and didn't recruit anyone else. So after the intial battle at Gariland I just booted everyone out of my party and bought all new soldiers that had a specific astral sign and a certain combo of brave and faith points. It's been a while though, I really wanna play it now because I'm playing FFXI and I want to set my spell macros to have my character say the same things the characters in tactics randomly say when casting a spell. :D

Also, as a side note, I didn't really like FFTA. Not because it seemed kiddie, but because it seemed kind of limiting. If I wanted to be this job class I had to be this race and then I couldn't use this because only the job class of this race can use this, but you can use this other thing here... not fun to me at all....
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[St. Ajora]

[Wataru]

I prefered story characters to generics. They can do anything a generic can do (with the exception of the four Squire abilities) and almost alwys have better stat growth. You want to see a death machine? Level up Reis to 99 as a Dragoner and then switch her to anything. She has insane growth in all areas, including MA and SPD, which are rare to find positive growth in. Reiss as a black mage with math skill, Wizard Robe, Flash Hat, Wizard Rod, Magic Gauntlet and Magic Attack Up kills everything. She's almost as bad as Orlandu. Her prime class is awful, but her stat growth is unbelieveable!

Orlandu is broken, but not as bad as all that. In the 10 uber-monster battle, I've had him get KOed many times.

Monk is my favorite generic class. Super attack, great PS and HP growth and a skill set that can heal HP and MP, revive the dead and attack close-up and ranged. There is no dowside except for their poor MA multiplier. Lancers are OK, but I never got the timing on Jump down (damn not showing up on the AT list!). Samurai have good abilities, but they have the dubious distinction of being one of the worst classes at their own skillset. Put Draw Out on a mage class or Beowulf for some real fun!

My super party:

Ramza - Squire with Steal
Blade Grasp, Martial Arts, Move +3
Chaos Blade, Gold Estucheon, Thief Hat, Rubber Coastume, Sprint Shoes

Agrias - Holy Knight with WHite Magic
Blade Grasp, Magic Attack Up, Move +2
Save the Queen, Kaiser Plate, Ribbon, Maximillian, Chantage

Orlandu - Holy Swordsman with Punch Art
Blade Grasp, Attack Up, Move +3
Excalibur, Venetian Shield, Genji Helm, Genji Armor, Bracer

Beowulf - Temple Knight wth Draw Out
Blade Grasp, Magic Attack Up, Move +3
RUne Blade, Crystal SHield, Grand Helm, Robe of Lords, Genji Gauntlet

Reis - (see setup above)

I know Beowulf's Brave is a little low for Blade Grasp, so I use Abandon sometimes for him.

BTW, you wanna see broken? Forget Orlandu or Reis. Try inivisble Ramza with four women, each with Ribbons and Chantage. The party is totally immortal!!!!
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[Zeik Tuvai]

I decided to look this thread up before posting something new on it... Good thing I did! Anyway, awhile ago, I was messing around with some of the monster classes and found out something nice... Mind Flares and de-level your characters!

Why is this great? Because they actually keep their stats. That's right! A level 99 Knight will keep his/her stats if he's reduced to level one. It takes forever and a day, but you can actually max out your characters stats without using a cheat device. Yes, this is really twisted, but it makes every character outragously powerful.

This is what you need:
A Mind Flare (highest class Pisco Demon)
A character with the Monster Skill ability equipped
A lot of free time.

Enter a battle and let the Mind Flare delevel everyone, then level them all back by attacking the Mind Flare or using skills like Accumulate or Talk Skills, stuff like that. Or, because you'll already be pretty far, get into a battle and let your level one demon-band kill everything in sight for some nice exp.

I also reduce everyone but Ramza's faith to next to nothing, while maxing out their brave. With a maxed magic attack stat, low faith still provides you with damage and healing. Plus the gobs and gobs of MP you have... This works on generics as well as non-generics like Ramza, Orlandu, etc. It's harder with monster classes, but still doable.
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Those who stray from the path of justice,
Are those who have no courage...
But under the wing of a strong leader,
Cowardice cannot survive.

[Hibicus]

Ahh, FFT. This game is a very old addiction of mine, back when I used to frequent the GameFAQs forums. Actually, I think I might know at least one of you from back in the day.

[GallantWarriorGeddoe]

Whenever I play Final Fantasy Tactics I can never bring myself to get rid of the story characters. I found most of them decently useful except Malak and Rafa were pretty useless. Orlandu, Beowulf, and Agaris were useful. Worker 8 was also a useful character.

[Justice Johnny]

Mitchell, that's a very interesting um... method (i didn't want to use the word 'cheat')!!! I should give it a try sometime, if only I could find my disc. :(

I played this game again about a few months ago after four years, and gosh... have I forgotten a LOT!!! And you know... I just realized how many people have died during the game. It's just sadistic. Anyway, my last save game was outside Deep Dungeon. I believe I was trying to get through that.

My party was usually Ramza, Mustadio, Beowulf, Reis and Agrias or Cloud (or both, if the game allows). I don't use Orlandu... at least I didn't use him after I got tired of him. He's so cheap. :( A poster above mentioned that Orlandu is only for battle-controlling purposes, but I think Beowulf is a better battle controller, with his Magic Sword skill "Chicken" (-50 Brave... always fun to turn your enemy into a chicken). Plus, it doesn't damage the enemy, unlike Orlandu's skills.

Mustadio... I don't know why but I just love this guy. I gave him Snipe and Knight skills (I forget what they're called). Arm Snipe and Leg Snipe are very useful for most of the game, but for added measure, I had him learn all the Knight's break skills. Armor Break from a distance = pwnt.

The Heaven and Hell Knights, Rafa and Malak are pretty damn useless in battle. However, I find Rafa has a pretty good use, which is to hunt treasures with Move-Find. Her very low brave stat helps in getting rare items. Whenever I'm hunting for treasure, I give her the Secret Clothes, I think... so that enemies won't spot her while she's hunting for treasure. As for Malak... well, I never found a use for him.
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"Oranges can't fit into circles because rectangles are made of cheese."

[RedCydranth]

Its widely considered that Malak is the worst character in Final Fantasy Tactics. His Hell Knight skills never work as well as they should, as they're random, and even if they did, they hardly do the damage that the other characters do with their skills. Rafa suffers a similar fate, but her use, like Highwind said, is her ability to Move-Find-Item. Any generic can be de-braved to the point where Move-Find-Item is great, but Rafa already has the low brave, and it just takes one decent brave lowering talk skill hit to make her a move-find-item goddess.

I fing Mustadio to be one of the most useful units in the game. You have him early on, and his ability to Snipe arms and legs is very valuable. Add the fact that the skill is long ranged and you have yourself a battle contorller. You can delay the more powerful enemies with Leg Aim, and take on the weaker. Also, there are a fair amount of battles, random and storyline based, that have undead creatures. One hit with Seal Evil and they become petrified. Nothing is cooler than a 1 hit KO on those Skeleton types (I abhor the Aqua Soul skills and such).

Another really great character, as mentioned before, is Beowulf. He is what the Oracle should be. A powerful unit with status altering effects. Some are stupid, like Blind but for the most part his skills come onto great use. Petrify, Chicken and Shock are great skills. Shock, moreso if he's taking hits, but you can't deny the ability to tuen opponents into chickens with ease is really sweet. Also, he weilds swords which do massive damage. He makes the besat Geomancer in the game, in my opinion. I always get the secondary effects of the Geomance to work with Beowulf.

I find Cloud to be a waste of time, but I get him for completion sake. All of his decent limit skills take forever to build up with the charge time. Even IF you can manage to get it off, it will not do decent damage because he has to be equipped with the crappy Materia Blade for them to work. He's actually worse than a generic unit because he can't even Accumulate.

Not mentioned since the revival of this thread is the outstanding Worker 8. He's as powerful as Orlandu, but he's slower. Additionally he can be used as a stepping stone to reach higher places (Use him in the Worker 7 Battle, with Rafa as a lancer with M-F-I to get the Javelin II and Eshcuteon II) which I can't say for any other major unit in the game. His powerful commands hurts him when he uses them, but his HP is so high it doesn't even matter. He can't ever get hurt by magic because Robots are incapable of faith. Since I rarely use heal magic (Monk's Chakra is superior, IMO) I never have to worry about him getting magically hurt.

My usual Powerhouse team is Orlandu, Worker 8, Mustadio, Ramza and Beowulf. Ramza as a knight with two swords ability and Calculate as his sub-command. I know there are better set ups, but I like this one personally.

Agrias and Meliadoul aren't bad, but because Orlandu is both of them rolled up with Gafgarion, he takes their place. I think Meliadoul would get more use if she were obtained earlier in the game. By the time you get her, you don't really need those skills. And by the time you level them all up to be used, you have Orlandu already and he comes with Night Sword, which is vastly superior to any attack Meliadoul or anyone else for that mater, can rattle off. Agrias has use in the beginning of the game and throughout the middle but by the end, she isn't as useful as others. I'll occasionally swap her with Beowulf if I'm going for pure damage and not fun with toying with the opponents.

And I can't leave out Reis. She's a unique character who I seldom use, basically because Agrias, Beowulf, Mustadio and several Generics are better. She's fun to toy with, but her dragon skills aren't anything too spectacular.

I love FFT and know almost everything. I know about the Leveling trick with the Mind-Flares or De-level traps. Also there's the 9999 JP trick and the free item trick, but those are cheap. Besides, if you can't do well with the normal level 99 characters you should go back to playing Donkey Kong Math or Pac-Man. Not to dis Pac-Man any....
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I'm sorry and I apologize are the same thing.
Except at a funeral.

Fantasy Football (NFL) Sign Ups in Sports Forum!

[Sawyer]

What was the point of the zodiac signs i never understood that part. Is it just me or were some enemies super hard to kill.

[Valec]

It was effectiveness. If you look in the Brave Story menu ( I think that was it ) there is a circle of the signs. Certain signs give bonuses against other ones. It was in the tutorial .

I beat the game my last time with Ramza and Cloud at 99. I'll give you all good advice. Learn all of Clouds abilities and get his level up. Also, learn the time mage's short charge ability. It lets you pull off Braver and Cross Slash immediately. ( Most of the time) It also cuts down the wait time for Omnislash and Cherry Blossom to 5-7 turns instead of the usual 12. Just a very good character. He has all around high stats, some higher than Ramza. Give both auto potion and fill your inventory with x-potions and you hardly ever heal.

[Falcon Critical]

First time i played through Tactics I was told by my friend to ignore the special characters and just make generics as dual wield knights with the strongest knight swords ( duped ). I did that but got interested in the non-standard characters as well and as soon as I finished the game I restarted immediately using the likes of Mustadio and Agrias every battle. Here's what I thought of them all:

Mustadio
Not the strongest character by any means but insanely useful. When you're levelling up characters the easiest way is to hit your own units ( just make sure they cant block evade or counter ). To do this you need an enemy to remain on any given map and since enemies like to attack you its a constant battle to keep them alive... unless you have Mustadio. If you have him you can "Leg Aim... Arm Aim... Leg Aim" from the other side of the map, leaving the enemy helpless to do anything but wait you out. The other benefit is that every time Mustadio lands either leg or arm aim he gets xp and jp, meaning every time you're working on one character you're also working on Mustadio. He was the first of my characters to master every class. The great thing is also that his techs dont need a gun to work... sword, spear, bow. book, carpet, handbag whatever you weild it works! ( i know carpets and handbags are female only ;p )
END SETUP: Chemist/Engineer

Agrias
Powerhouse from the second you get her. Lightning Stab is the only ability you'll ever need on her, she tears through anything and I personally class her as the most indestructible of all the Tactics characters. Equip her with Chantage and she's literally immortal, plus she has instant cast ranged moves that just cut through enemies. I maxed her brave up for that little extra damage. I set her up to be unstoppable very early in the game, with 15% chance of being hit at best ( Blade Grasp/Shield )... only to have a theif "Steal Heart" and watch in horror as she tore my team apart because I couldn't hit her. Ribbon is a must ^_-
END SETUP: Holy Knight/Monk

Rafa/Malak
Personally I hated the skillsets and appearance of these two so hardly touched them. A bit of careful shouting at her and she can find anything.
END SETUP: Non existant or just move-find and low brave

Meliadoul
Like Agrias she has great ranged sword magic, however unlike Agrias Meliadoul's abilities are not used enough to really make her worth the effort. If an enemy has an item equipped strong enough for you to need to break it, you'll probably want to steal it instead. Plus the abilities dont even work on monsters so 70% of your battles her techs are useless.
END SETUP: Divine Knight... holder for mediocre equipment

Beowulf
Named after a norse legend but personally not worth the time. His oracle-sword powers were interesting sure, but why bother putting darkness or frog on an enemy when you can demolish them in one hit just as easy? Could be useful for controlling mobs while you hit each other, but you'd either need to keep healing the mobs or risk killing them with his moves.
END SETUP: didn't bother

Reis
While her breaths are not as strong in her human form as when she was a dragon she's hardly a weak character. Since all her breaths are the same power you can exploit elemental weaknesses with her, then equip her with a ribbon, chantage and a handbag and watch her HP fly up. She is the only character i've managed to have survive a zodiac summon without lowering her faith ( which i normally try to get pretty high ). Make her a summoner or black mage later in life for a crazy MATK boost and her breath and HP just tear enemies apart. She has the "holy breath" ability too which is basically a guaranteed 999 damage if it hits. In the right circumstance this is awesome and if you can cast it so half the area that would be affected is off the side of the screen you can generally get it pretty accurate. Instant cast breaths I've found to be just as powerful as the high level magics but you dont' need to wait for casting or anything.
END SETUP: Summoner/Dragoner

Worker 8
He's useful in that he has 0 faith and is therefore immune to magic, but that also means you can't heal him. Add to that his strong moves hurt him, and I found he's not worth the effort.
END SETUP: he doenst' learn anything

Orlandu
The "All Swordsman" and most overpowered character in all FFs... With Lightning Stab and Night Sword he's basically unstoppable, the only weakness he has compared to Agrias is the lack of chantage equipability means if something manages to KO him before he can use his Night Sword skill he's not gonna get up for free. With a little tweaking he can be doing 999 damage every hit, and when he can drain that much from enemies they know he's not to be messed with.
END SETUP: All Swordsman/Chemist

Cloud Strife
Most of clouds limit breaks are useless, he needs to use that average sword to do them and they have insanely long cast times. The only one I used and found useful was "Finishing Touch" which has a high chance of casting death, petrify and/or something else. Anyhow it has a fast charge time and often KOs multiple targets. Other than that I just had him trying to catch up with everyone else.
END SETUP: Soldier/Thief
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[Br4ve]

[Valec]

Falcon Critical, Cloud is not as bad as you say. I leveled him to 99 and gave him the following:

A-Ability [Limit]
A-Ability [Item]
R-Ability [Auto Potion] Learned in Chemist class
S-Ability [Short Charge] Learned in Time Mage class
M-Ability [Move +, Jump +, Fly, Teleport] Any works, really.

With these on him, simply use Finish Touch then Omnislash or Cherry Blossom if the enemy wasn't immediately blown away. All you have to do is have your inventory filled with x-potion and no other type of potion. This way, it takes quite a bit to wipe him out.

Main strategy:

Wait around midfield for enemies to come within range. Once in range, target a limit technique on your enemy and move out of their movement range.

Weak against: Long range characters. He'll tear apart any close range attackers, though...


I have a good way for fast leveling as well. Simply have Ramza use yell over and over while he stays out of enemy reach. He will get more turns every few times you do it. Once speed is maxed, use accumulate and scream until the stats they raise max. I averaged about 20 levels a battle doing this. Then to raise other characters, simply have your lowbies like Cloud level 1 attack him. They will gain about 60 experience or so a hit.



I used most of the special NPC characters, but Rafa and Malak did suck. I couldn't even level the very well because of their low defense and offense and magic and... They just had low everything.