I had my party built around being able to rush spellcasters. I never got nukes or summons to work. I think I didn’t understand black magic itemization, the damage dealt was always underwhelming for the time it took. I remember trying a calculator and being shocked at how 5 turns would pass and he’d go once.
Most of my summons would go off and there’d be no one caught in them.
I might try it again this go around.
From what I recall, my Ramza was a glass cannon, and my big problem was that he would get wrecked by Gaf if he didn’t succeed in stealing the weapon within the first few turns. I had similar troubles with the demons later.
All the female characters I’ve met have been very different from Tifa in that respect
I’m playing a remastered version that seems to only have new character models, and it looks good enough to me. Graphics seem like a big step up from VII even without the remaster. The cut scenes from the train heist were pretty well done.
demons are so easy for me in the riovanes fight after wiegraf, due to all my holy + calculator i can 1 shot that map if calculator acts first
however i got annoyed on first phase and just lowered difficulty. ramza can 1 shot wiegraf but only if he doesnt wear a chameleon robe to force him to use his non holy attack, so then without wizard robe i was literally like 20 hp away on a flare from killing him and if id cheesed zodiac just for this fight (which people) i’d have killed him how i always have with a flare. but nope 20 hp. didnt wanna level cheese so just lowered difficulty for that fight. dont feel bad about it at all lol it’s just one of those “welp i just barely cant beat this and im not starting over.”
The gafgarrion fight was not like that for me, it always felt totally doable
I read through all the tutorials at Squall’s desk at the beginning like a nerd. There were so many references to “junctioning” your “GF” before I got to the part that explained what a GF was. I was pretty confused.
also for calculator they have like an innate speed that is 1/3rd of everyone. you never go calc in a fight. you use errands to learn all their abilities, then you literally just stay black mage the rest of the game for the A magick scaling and they are faster than the other casters by 1 speed. my calculator is the fastest on my team other than the ninja. then a lot of fights are soooo easy but you’ll notice funny math things that fuck you sometimes in certain maps so it’s very random feeling but really fun. you learn to despise certain numbers like 14. I like that you need to understand math to play a class called a calculator.
Most people go mediator/mystic because those arent arithmetick castable but i like the scaling of the wizard too much, once you learn every castable spell you feel like an unstoppable wizard god.
get a mime going with that, and maybe another late game calculator, it’s kind of cheese. the chemist is just there to rez (you’re constantly killing your own teammates) and for the good times, then i will have a ninja. its how i always played the original and it works
The junction system is really complicated and min maxy. I loved it but a lot of people hate it.
Zell can unlock infinite combos limit break earlyish that one shots every boss. dont worry about min max and just do what feels good
FF8 has the best card minigame of any rpg ever (yes even gwent, i think gwent stole from this game) and you can easily spend 20 hours on it alone. it unlocks good rewards too.
ff8 if anyone has never played it, it’s not very hard at all. it’s more of a story title. some parts still make me cry. it’s very cheesy and a lot of people hate the ending. It’s my favorite title though behind 4 and tactics, and 9/10 arent too bad but this always holds a special place for me. the amount of side quests and stuff you can find in the game is a lot larger than the story would suggest and it’s easy to miss stuff
Before poker (I’m old) I used to play on a 3rd party triple triad multiplayer website got to the top rank too. Out of like 500 people lol but still. And we played for ante like real men.
entering chapter 4 in ivalice chronicles which is the last chapter but if i remember has as much stuff as the previous chapters combined. also it seems like most of the worst hard check fights are behind me.
Ramza is just a magic damage pumper and I’m maxing out his faith and scaling black mage. it is really basic but it gives him a lot of ability to take out big enemies 1 on 1 really easily. I’m eventually going to pair it with gallant knight secondary for magick ap boost secondary and ditch summoning.
then I have, a samurai/chemist who’s just kind of an all arounder and has good magick and attack scaling, the uber female calculator who i got lucky and has zodiac chemistry with ramza, who now can’t die, also is my mediator cheese in leveling faith/brave, a ninja/dancer with fly, and a summoner. it’s squishy but due to mass reraises and all the support/debuff spells i think it’ll do
need to prep to steal masamune but other than that I think the build’s done
I finished disc 1 of FFVIII. There are sections that remind me of old point-and-click games where you have to walk all over the room pressing the action button until something happens. I seem to be missing a couple summons, so hopefully there’s a way for me to get those later.
I had issues with the mages up on the walls until I realized that I could hit them from the ground under the gate with the holy sword technique. Made it significantly easier for me.
I can see that, with my team, everyone under the bridge has like 45 faith stat so they dont care about casters. was more my squishies in the corner getting obliterated by gaffgarion.
ch 4 is so much more fun. i dont know why they added so many hard checks early/mid game to the original - at least in this one saving is easier, you can back out to world map to farm, or lower the difficulty.
the original thus felt more rewarding though. I restarted that game 20+ hours in because i got stuck/locked at least 5 times before i beat it. but when youre a kid you have that kind of time i guess.
team is still feeling super squishy but first round golem + carbuncle solves a lot of problems not a lot of enemies can punch through
Finished Disc 2. Cerberus was the first boss that I found challenging. I had to fight him several times before I won, and even then I needed to get lucky on what attacks he used. But I managed to triumph despite, as it turns out, having severely misunderstood the junction system. Here’s how stupid I am. I just thought it mattered which magic was junctioned to each stat, and didn’t realize that stats also scaled with how many of that magic are in the character’s inventory. I only figured that out after I searched to see if others found the Cerebus fight difficult. That seems like a mechanic the game could have explained better; maybe it’s in the manual.
As far as plot goes, it turns out almost all the main characters grew up in or worked at the same orphanage, but they don’t remember it for reasons. All I can say is that seems like a very Final Fantasy thing to happen.
Finished Marvel’s Cosmic Invasion. I was feeling a bit nostalgic for an arcade punch 'em up and this scratched that itch. It was interesting that there were about 12 characters and all have the same general move set but still each one was very different within those constraints.
Still it was more of a short one time deal. I don’t have any desire to go back and play it once I beat it
I kind of had to cheese the fight at the end of Ch 2. My ninja Ramza was getting rocked. Luckily I had to change him to a knight, and move a lot of higher hp armor to him. I then gave him the walking restores hp skill, and critical restore.
Chapter 3 has been ugly. Every fight involved tossing multiple phoenix downs and praying to Saint Ajora that I could I get off enough attacks with people who were one hit away from going unconscious again to win.