Also I didn't elaborate on it because I thought I was a weirdo.
But the Wiegraf battle is why I never finished FFT. I've never been crushed and devastated by a game that I loved so much.
I bred a group of red chocobos to win that battle. One of my less rational strategies but it worked dammit!
I figured they were talking about the battle where it's just Ramza vs. Wiegraf/Velius. The other Wiegraf battles are simple.
The fight following that is just as infuriating and that's the one I'm talking about. The solo fight can be pretty simple if you kept your gear upgraded and just made sure you had the proper immunities going in. It was getting enough damage on the transformation to get him down before his cronies destroy you that had me hung up. All proof that holy knights are cheese.
On your first playthrough, you wouldn't know what immunities you needed. And if you happened not to have them, and saved inside the castle, then whelp, you're fucked.
That was my main problem with FFT and other games around it; they had these parts where the game balance goes completely bonkers and you run the risk of botching your save. As much as I love these games, I have terrible luck with them in this regard. The other example I have of this is the 2 x GBA fire emblem games which have ended with me getting to around the 3rd-last map and having a boss one-shot half the team (I remember one game where every character I had would die from the counter-attack while only doing like 5 points of damage). Turns out I didn't do enough reading before playing the game and made too many bad choices.
I loved Jeanne de Arc (can't remember the spelling) on the PSP although I remember stopping once the turn limits got in the way of the fun (Had to defeat levels in only 12 turns or else ALL IS LOST... like every stage).
Tactics Advance 1 and 2 I loved the heck out of. When I was explaining them to a friend, I just called them "FFT without the bullshit", even with the judge system I found it easier to play and more enjoyable.
Overall though, the games that I had the most fun with and still go back to is Shining Force 1 and 2. It doesn't even feel like a game that should be part of the same genre as the above but it's great at not hassling me:
- Party member just died? No sweat bro, just res them at the next town.
- Need some grinding done? All cool, just kill everyone on the map until the boss remains and then teleport back to town - you'll keep your gold and XP and start the fight again (XP scales though, so you'll have to progress eventually).
- Worried about breaking your save? It's all good, you can't do that unless you go out of your way to drop all your weapons and burn all your cash... even then weaponless characters and magic users can probably mean you can fight back from that.
But the Wiegraf battle is why I never finished FFT. I've never been crushed and devastated by a game that I loved so much.
Fucking Wiegraf.
He absolutely destroyed me so badly in my first run with FFT, and in front of my little sister! (Who was like, "What are you playing?" and I was like, "Just some stupid fuckin' game..." and then she was like "Hahaha aren't you supposed to be good at those?")
After that, I restarted the game and completely cheesed-out my crew, powerleveling right on through to Monk/Ninja/Lancer/Samurai and 98 Brave as soon as I got the Focus skill (you can do this by the 2nd or 3rd battle in the game), fought through to Wiegraf, saved the game, then went and clowned him 10 times in a row to settle my vendetta against that fucking cartoon.
And then I was obliterated, cheese be damned, during the bullshit rooftop battle with Elmdor, and I hated all things, especially 'Stop Bracelet'.
That was my main problem with FFT and other games around it; they had these parts where the game balance goes completely bonkers and you run the risk of botching your save. As much as I love these games, I have terrible luck with them in this regard. The other example I have of this is the 2 x GBA fire emblem games which have ended with me getting to around the 3rd-last map and having a boss one-shot half the team (I remember one game where every character I had would die from the counter-attack while only doing like 5 points of damage). Turns out I didn't do enough reading before playing the game and made too many bad choices.
Yeah. I love FFT, but it's definitely not balanced and is full of new player traps. You can put together a perfectly fine team that clears fights no problem, and then you run into specific encounters that are outright unbeatable without particular immunities. Wheeeee, 90s game design!
To answer the OP's question: I love tactics game, but it needs to give me an economy to manage. I don't care if the 'economy' is just Job Point farming or some kind of weird animal husbandry minigame, but I will just get bored if the game focuses only on the fighting. As great a game as the new XCOM is, I got bored of it after one playthrough because building satellites/satellite uplinks is not my idea of economy management.
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That was my main problem with FFT and other games around it; they had these parts where the game balance goes completely bonkers and you run the risk of botching your save. As much as I love these games, I have terrible luck with them in this regard. The other example I have of this is the 2 x GBA fire emblem games which have ended with me getting to around the 3rd-last map and having a boss one-shot half the team (I remember one game where every character I had would die from the counter-attack while only doing like 5 points of damage). Turns out I didn't do enough reading before playing the game and made too many bad choices.
I loved Jeanne de Arc (can't remember the spelling) on the PSP although I remember stopping once the turn limits got in the way of the fun (Had to defeat levels in only 12 turns or else ALL IS LOST... like every stage).
Tactics Advance 1 and 2 I loved the heck out of. When I was explaining them to a friend, I just called them "FFT without the bullshit", even with the judge system I found it easier to play and more enjoyable.
Overall though, the games that I had the most fun with and still go back to is Shining Force 1 and 2. It doesn't even feel like a game that should be part of the same genre as the above but it's great at not hassling me:
- Party member just died? No sweat bro, just res them at the next town.
- Need some grinding done? All cool, just kill everyone on the map until the boss remains and then teleport back to town - you'll keep your gold and XP and start the fight again (XP scales though, so you'll have to progress eventually).
- Worried about breaking your save? It's all good, you can't do that unless you go out of your way to drop all your weapons and burn all your cash... even then weaponless characters and magic users can probably mean you can fight back from that.
Fucking Wiegraf.
He absolutely destroyed me so badly in my first run with FFT, and in front of my little sister! (Who was like, "What are you playing?" and I was like, "Just some stupid fuckin' game..." and then she was like "Hahaha aren't you supposed to be good at those?")
After that, I restarted the game and completely cheesed-out my crew, powerleveling right on through to Monk/Ninja/Lancer/Samurai and 98 Brave as soon as I got the Focus skill (you can do this by the 2nd or 3rd battle in the game), fought through to Wiegraf, saved the game, then went and clowned him 10 times in a row to settle my vendetta against that fucking cartoon.
And then I was obliterated, cheese be damned, during the bullshit rooftop battle with Elmdor, and I hated all things, especially 'Stop Bracelet'.
Yeah. I love FFT, but it's definitely not balanced and is full of new player traps. You can put together a perfectly fine team that clears fights no problem, and then you run into specific encounters that are outright unbeatable without particular immunities. Wheeeee, 90s game design!
To answer the OP's question: I love tactics game, but it needs to give me an economy to manage. I don't care if the 'economy' is just Job Point farming or some kind of weird animal husbandry minigame, but I will just get bored if the game focuses only on the fighting. As great a game as the new XCOM is, I got bored of it after one playthrough because building satellites/satellite uplinks is not my idea of economy management.