Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles

Rajaah · Sunday at 3:46 AM

My main "early memory" of FFT was getting it to begin with. It was my second PS1 game. The system came with the "Squaresoft on Playstation" demo disc, and considering I bought the system for Squaresoft games, I was all over that demo disc. FF7, Bushido Blade, FF Tactics, Saga Frontier. Finally got FF7, played it for several months.

After that I wanted the other three things on the demo disc, and got them as soon as they showed up in stores. First up was Bushido Blade. Got it, played it for a day, found that it wasn't as amazing as the demo made it seem, and there really wasn't much to do after beating the game a few times. Returned it (this was back when you could just return a game) after one day and got FF Tactics instead.

Biggest trade-up I ever made. Took the bus home from the mall (too young to drive), spent the entire 30 minutes or so reading the manual cover to cover. So I knew what to do right out of the gate. Also remember it was pouring rain out, and I liked the cover art for FFT a lot. Chocobos running through water, which is what I had to do when I got off the bus, run through a bunch of puddles.

Few months later I got Saga Frontier. It was aight. FFT ended up being the crown jewel of those four, well above SF or even FF7.

Fogel · Sunday at 9:52 AM

We didn't need tutorials back in the day. You learned to git gud real quick cause it was probably also the only game you had at the time as well.

Hateyou · Sunday at 10:29 AM

Arbitrary said:
I first borrowed the game from my cousin. I couldn't beat the first fight. How am I supposed to win 2 versus 7? I tried over and over and over and it just didn't make any sense. I could get part of the way (at best) but that was it. On my third day of attempts I finally figured out your roster was more than Ramza and Delita and how to add them to the battle.

Reading manuals ain't a bad idea.

This would have been a better story if you took a couple days to finally beat it with two characters.

Arbitrary · Sunday at 10:32 AM

Hateyou said:
This would have been a better story if you took a couple days to finally beat it with two characters.

I got better as I went and have tried since but it's just not a thing.

Something I was eventually able to pull off was failing on purpose the mostly scripted story fight that the game opens with.

turbo · Sunday at 10:46 AM

FFT is one of the greatest yet tragic memories of my childhood. I grew up in the middle of no where poor as fuck and my only info on gaming came in the form of nintendo power and later on Game Informer (?). When I heard about FFT first I was so excited, I had bought myself a PS1 and TV working 70 hrs a week that summer (think it was summer between 8th and 9th grade) and had enough money to get a game. .

No internet/computers so I remember reading about FFT and ordering it for $120, it took like 3months to get there. I had to go through a consolate of some sort but I didn't care, i could just tell this game was designed for me and just me!! Well the fateful day arrives....I took 1 of the only 2 days off I had the entire summer (worked 7 days a week at steak house 1PM - 11PM) so I could play this bad boy.

And....

Boom, game starts, music is amazing....but what is this??? What are those symbols where my menu should be?? After blindly clicking through I finally got to seem like a start and something in gibberish kept coming up to what I eventually deciphed to be an error message of some sort. After an agonizing two days waiting to call the people I ordered it from since they weren't there on the weekends I finally talk to someone and realized I had out smarted myself. I thought I was so clever getting the game before any of my local stores had it!!!!

My dumb ass had ordered the japense version which was out, the NA was not released yet. They wouldn't refund my $120 and my ps1 wouldn't play it. I was fucking heart broken. That day taught me a very valuable lesson that I still remind myself even today about...somethings that feel too good to be true usually are and "desire" alone can not manifest success.

When I finally did get the NA version the wait was worth it, still one of my top 3 gaming experiences in 38+ years of gaming relative to joy I got from playing it.

Fogel · Sunday at 10:54 AM

turbo said:
FFT is one of the greatest yet tragic memories of my childhood. I grew up in the middle of no where poor as fuck and my only info on gaming came in the form of nintendo power and later on Game Informer (?). When I heard about FFT first I was so excited, I had bought myself a PS1 and TV working 70 hrs a week that summer (think it was summer between 8th and 9th grade) and had enough money to get a game. .

No internet/computers so I remember reading about FFT and ordering it for $120, it took like 3months to get there. I had to go through a consolate of some sort but I didn't care, i could just tell this game was designed for me and just me!! Well the fateful day arrives....I took 1 of the only 2 days off I had the entire summer (worked 7 days a week at steak house 1PM - 11PM) so I could play this bad boy.

And....

Boom, game starts, music is amazing....but what is this??? What are those symbols where my menu should be?? After blindly clicking through I finally got to seem like a start and something in gibberish kept coming up to what I eventually deciphed to be an error message of some sort. After an agonizing two days waiting to call the people I ordered it from since they weren't there on the weekends I finally talk to someone and realized I had out smarted myself. I thought I was so clever getting the game before any of my local stores had it!!!!

My dumb ass had ordered the japense version which was out, the NA was not released yet. They wouldn't refund my $120 and my ps1 wouldn't play it. I was fucking heart broken. That day taught me a very valuable lesson that I still remind myself even today about...somethings that feel too good to be true usually are and "desire" alone can not manifest success.

When I finally did get the NA version the wait was worth it, still one of my top 3 gaming experiences in 38+ years of gaming relative to joy I got from playing it.

Should of got gud and learned japanese just to play it

Zaide · Sunday at 10:56 AM

Caeden · Sunday at 4:47 PM

turbo said:
FFT is one of the greatest yet tragic memories of my childhood. I grew up in the middle of no where poor as fuck and my only info on gaming came in the form of nintendo power and later on Game Informer (?). When I heard about FFT first I was so excited, I had bought myself a PS1 and TV working 70 hrs a week that summer (think it was summer between 8th and 9th grade) and had enough money to get a game. .

No internet/computers so I remember reading about FFT and ordering it for $120, it took like 3months to get there. I had to go through a consolate of some sort but I didn't care, i could just tell this game was designed for me and just me!! Well the fateful day arrives....I took 1 of the only 2 days off I had the entire summer (worked 7 days a week at steak house 1PM - 11PM) so I could play this bad boy.

And....

Boom, game starts, music is amazing....but what is this??? What are those symbols where my menu should be?? After blindly clicking through I finally got to seem like a start and something in gibberish kept coming up to what I eventually deciphed to be an error message of some sort. After an agonizing two days waiting to call the people I ordered it from since they weren't there on the weekends I finally talk to someone and realized I had out smarted myself. I thought I was so clever getting the game before any of my local stores had it!!!!

My dumb ass had ordered the japense version which was out, the NA was not released yet. They wouldn't refund my $120 and my ps1 wouldn't play it. I was fucking heart broken. That day taught me a very valuable lesson that I still remind myself even today about...somethings that feel too good to be true usually are and "desire" alone can not manifest success.

When I finally did get the NA version the wait was worth it, still one of my top 3 gaming experiences in 38+ years of gaming relative to joy I got from playing it.

I ordered both FF4 and 6 on SnES via mail when nowhere around my tiny town had them. Even our babbages or KB that were an hour away sold out.

My buddy ordered his SF2 that way when it dropped and also got a Japanese cart but they exchanged it.

Fogel · Sunday at 4:48 PM

I had to shell out 125$ for a used copy of the SNes Ogrebattle, couldn't find that fucker anywhere. I think that game topped my /played for the SNes era.

Rezz · Sunday at 9:19 PM

Fogel said:
I had to shell out 125$ for a used copy of the SNes Ogrebattle, couldn't find that fucker anywhere. I think that game topped my /played for the SNes era.

I'll fully admit that I almost just kept the game the year before I got it as a Christmas present when renting it from Blockbuster. It was impossible to find otherwise. I'm surprised it even lasted that long at Blockbuster without someone just holding onto it. The fee was like whatever the game cost. Really strange how that one stands out as one of the hardest games to find during the SNES era.

edit - looked it up; only 25k carts were released into the US market. No wonder that shit was hard to find haha.

Siliconemelons · Sunday at 9:24 PM

Of odd memories, and Tactic RPGs and oger battle, it was so rare, that in my memories - it was a japan only game. My friend was a spoiled rich kid, he had EVERY GAME - shelves and shelves of carts, it was insane.. anywho - he didn't have it and even he was like *again vague memories of back in the day* - oh its a japan game lol

I did just get my PSP working with a new battery, maybe time to spin up that tactics wotl UMD

turbo · Sunday at 11:34 PM

Fogel said:
I had to shell out 125$ for a used copy of the SNes Ogrebattle, couldn't find that fucker anywhere. I think that game topped my /played for the SNes era.

Fuck ya, Ogre Battle was definitely one of my favorite games of all time. I had the Atlus guide that was the size of a college text book lol, game had so many endings. I always got to greedy and tried to build a few super powerful units that would wipe the map and then fuck up my alignment and not be able to upgrade them to the right class so i'd restart. Played that soo much and Ogre Tactics (about murdered my little brother when he got mad at me and deleted my save of like 150 hours on Tactics Ogre.

Gavinmad · Sunday at 11:48 PM

turbo said:
Played that soo much and Ogre Tactics (about murdered my little brother when he got mad at me and deleted my save of like 150 hours on Tactics Ogre.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

You definitely should have murdered him for that.

mkopec · Sunday at 11:59 PM

I was a bit older than you youngsters when this hit. I remember getting my PS1 right when it came out when I was at the Ford Kentucky plant for a truck launch for six months. They were giving us $80 per day for food and shit, so I cheated the system with my expense reports and pocketed the moneys, ate cheap shit and bought the PS1 and all the games they had at release. I think it was R type, Battle Arena Toshinden, and some golf game. Then all the dudes I worked with were coming over my apartment and we would have Toshinden fights and golf tourneys. To be honest I was sick of going out every night and eating bar food and drinking. So this was great way to spend time NOT doing that.

When FFT came out it was a few years later, I remember getting that big ass guide for it too when I got it. I remember at work sitting on the crapper reading it all, lol.

Rezz · 2025-06-23T00:00:38-0400

Ogre Battle (maybe it deserves its own thread~) was a game where I tried to play it like a normal strategy game and the respawning unit stuff became a huge problem. Then... I turned Warren into a Lich and summoned some ghosts and used him to basically turn off the enemy stream on every map. Then had my super virtuous main character guy walking around the map liberating all the cities as the savior. Got all the special characters (this was years before Gamefaqs) and I think I got the best ending maybe? Entirely through trial and error... mostly error, on the first few maps. Just watching the meter thing on the right side go down when my MC group was butchering stuff, and thinking "Oh, I am doing this wrong."

Fogel · 2025-06-23T07:44:08-0400

Yeah, alignment was such a weird and annoying mechanic for an otherwise great game. Also wish the enemies had more AI instead of just mindlessly rushing your base in a single column. I'd set up all my units in a stack and carefully inch them forward so the battles were spread out and they all leveled up evenly so I had max alignment.

Rajaah · 2025-06-23T08:52:32-0400

Hateyou said:
This would have been a better story if you took a couple days to finally beat it with two characters.

Got my own vaguely similar story, went through nearly all of Link to the Past with just the Master Sword the first time through. Had no idea there were two higher tier swords that do way more damage. Ended up finding the Red Sword at some point really late in the game (like right before rhe final boss) and no Gold Sword at all. Beat the game (barely). Found the Gold Sword on my 2nd or 3rd playthrough.

I'm guessing there were other similar situations back then too. Like I beat FF6 with a wildly-underleveled party that never got any esper bonuses. I'm talking like "1500 HP" underleveled.

Hatorade · 2025-06-23T09:24:26-0400

Fogel said:
We didn't need tutorials back in the day. You learned to git gud real quick cause it was probably also the only game you had at the time as well.

Jet moto did this, hundreds of hours to beat that game getting perfect lines through that chunky ice level etc. went back to play it years ago and couldn’t make it above 3rd place. Git gud indeed.

Rajaah · 2025-06-23T09:34:29-0400

Fogel said:
I had to shell out 125$ for a used copy of the SNes Ogrebattle, couldn't find that fucker anywhere. I think that game topped my /played for thunderdeveloped.

Never could get into Ogre Battle as much as I wanted to. It's appealing with all the characters and endings and hidden things. Every fight always ends up just being my one or two super-groups mowing everyone down, though.

While we're on SNES memories:

My white whale game on SNES was Breath of Fire 2. Never played that one. It's probably the only major outside-Japan SNES RPG that eluded me.

Nearly went all-out to get Star Ocean from Japan at one point. Can't remember how much it was but it was a lot. In Nintendo Power it looked like a Chrono Trigger sequel in everything but name, so I had to get it. Never came together, thankfully, cause it probably wouldn't have worked and even if it did, wouldn't have been able to read it.

I could say off the top of my head what my most-played games were in every era:

SNES - FF6 (about 90 hours across 3 playthroughs)

PS1 - FFT (about 40 hours on a failed run and then 99:59:59 on my real go...I finished up at about 97 hours and let the clock run out to see what would happen, so altogether about 140 hours)

PS2 - FF12 (the streak of FFs continues, somehow had 230 (!!) hours on this over one playthrough)

PS3 - This one I'm not sure, cause I was in school during this era and not paying much attention to the system or playing many things on it, but I think it was the 65 hours I put into Fallout 3)

Wii - Xenoblade 1 (also 65 hours)

PS4 - Bloodborne (315 hours over six playthroughs, which is also the most playthroughs I've given anything since I was a kid, AFAIK)

PS5 - Elden Ring (around 370-400 hours over 3 playthroughs)

If you're wondering how I remember all this, my most-played games stand out like a sore thumb because these are all abnormally high numbers for me. I speedrun everything and usually spend 60-70% of the average HLTB time on any given game. So when something goes long, I remember it. Any systems not listed aren't listed because they had nothing that I played extensively.

FFT was the first game I ever ran out the clock on. Really wanted to see what would happen. No earthly clue how I got to 230 hours in FF12. All in one run-through no less. I know I did absolutely everything there was to do, and it would have been a plat if those existed yet.

Same guy did the soundtrack for both FF12 and FFT (and Vagrant Story) and those soundtracks are tremendous. Just gems across the board.

Squaresoft was my primary gaming focus for many many years before Fromsoft came along and dominated.

Gavinmad · 2025-06-23T10:59:21-0400

Rajaah said:
Like I beat FF6 with a wildly-underleveled party that never got any esper bonuses. I'm talking like "1500 HP" underleveled.

The game always seemed to be balanced around not paying attention to esper leveling bonuses. I remember in early days when I didn't really know shit about the game mechanics beyond vanish-doom (which I rapidly banished to WoR xp grinding only) the game was still fairly challenging aside from Kefka being a wet fart. Once you learn how much of a difference focused esper leveling makes it becomes incredibly easily to just steamroll everything. If you stack some extra magic levelups on top of Terra and Celes's already high base magic they hit (and heal) like freight trains. Finding out Sabin's blitzes scale off of magic is a real game-changer for him power wise. Edgar's best tools (auto-crossbow and drill) were already good but hit so much harder with some strength (vigor) levelups.

I think FF4 DS is still my favorite FF game in terms of being challenging but not excessively tedious.

Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles

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