xyzzysqrl: A moogle sqrlhead! (Default)
[personal profile] xyzzysqrl
Y'know, a lot of the yammering I've been doing about Final Fantasy 12 has been related to the game mechanics, not so much the plot. That's because so far the plot has shown up in short little bursts, while the game mechanics have been easy to alt-tab away from (EMULATION FOREVERRRR) and type up a little derp in my .txt file. However, before we're formally introduced to what it is, I want to muse on the nature of Magicite. What is it? What is its purpose?

What we know about the magicite so far is that everyone desires it. Vaan wants it, for he rightfully stole it. Balthier and Fran broke in to steal it. Penelo now holds it for the moment. The Empire kept it in a secret room, it was so important to them. Ashe and our mysterious rugged beardyman broke into the palace under airship bombardment presumably to steal it (or maybe to kill somebody I dunno).

Remember now the words of acclaimed scholar, poet, and Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, who said "What I got, you got to get it; put it in you." Now, what is "It"? Faith No More speculated that "It's it", however that is a tautology. I prefer to turn to Sublime, who confessed "Lovin' is what I got. I said remember that." From this we can deduce that the magicite is a rock of pure concentrated love.

Now obviously with Penelo and/or Vaan in possession of such strong love, the mechanics of the game will turn from endless fighting and battling and more towards a dating sim setup. Balthier's approach will be grandly romantic, operatic and theatrical. Fran will likely have a more straightforward and down-to-earth approach. Penelo/Vaan are of course uniquely suited to be each other's Hopeful Childhood Friend, an archetype to itself in such matters. As to other candidates, we know little about them except that I'm pretty sure if "Amalia" loses, she's going to try to stab someone. Violent girl, that.

So that's MY prediction for the future. Let's go back to prison now! I'm sure I will be vindicated.

...okay, I wrote that and then fell asleep. Looking back up at it... what the HELL was I on, eight hours ago? Let's... just move on.

As I'm poking the menus, a further indignity becomes obvious. DUDE. They took all my COOL STUFF. I was saving that stuff! Oh well. I am now naked and in prison. Let's explore!

Vaan instantly walks into a gang-beating, where a group of seeq (large pig-men) are beating the utter hell out of a group of bangaa (lizardmen). He is promptly clonked on the head and dragged into an arena. Because THINGS CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE. Luckily, Balthier shows up, and we go into fistfight mode. Naturally the fistfight draws a crowd. Which draws the guards. The guards bring with them a dude Balthier seems to recognize: a pierced, masked bangaa bounty hunter named Ba'Gamnan. Ba'Gamnan is a legendary bounty hunter famed for his cruelty, and he seems to have no respect whatsoever for the imperial rank-and-file. Who does he respect? The Judges.

The Judges are dudes in big elaborate armor and dark helmets. One shows up for the express purposes of being imposing and grumpy at Ba'Gamnan. Luckily Fran -also- shows up to tell the boys that her sharp nose found a way out. Since due to certain graphical limitations her nose is literally sharp, I have no reason to doubt her. Off we go to the Oubliette.

Luckily on the way we find all our equipment. Whew. Man, that forced no-equipment section was lengthy.

Inside the oubliette are more guards than prisoners. I could try to stealth-section my way through this, but every guard I do -not- kill and/or steal from is one guard who is not giving me experience points and treasure. The party cuts down EVERYBODY. XP FOR THE XP GOD! Anyway. Down further, Judge Helmet is unsealing the door to Maximum Security. Since this is where the exit Fran smells is, the party slip after him. (Her nose is -very- sharp.)

Who is in MaxSec? Why, it's Basch, who was accused of killing the king, murdering Vaan's brother, etc etc. He has been persona-non-grata for several years and assumed to be dead. Who is under the Judge helmet? Why... it's ALSO Basch! TWO BASCHES. DOUBLE BASCHE ACTION. How can this be?

Well, y'know. Plot. Basch and NotBasch sneer at each other for a while, then Judge Basch leaves. The party approaches Basch's hanging cage and, after Vaan shouts at him a lot, Fran spin-kicks the release lever and they all ride the cage into the pits below, presumably to freedom. Basch joins the party as a guest here, but I do know he's the last playable character, so for the sake of planning ahead I assign him a job here and now:

BASCH - TIME MAGE.

Well... that, uh. Okay. Admittedly Time Mage in FF12 IJZC is, in the Japanese, called "Spacetime Warmage". They wear heavy armor and tote crossbows and sometimes big swords as well as doing the buff/debuff thing. So this is ACTUALLY pretty badass, IMO... except I kind of hate spending time buffing and debuffing in RPGs. Maybe I will learn to do it properly! Maybe I will stick Basch in a box. I don't know. WE WILL FIND OUT.

Makes the final roster: Archer, Red Mage, Time Mage, Lancer, Samurai, Hunter. I had better buy a crapload of potions.

But that's for later. Right now Basch is job-classed as "Guest who is a half-naked hairy guy". So, uh... on with the dungeon. There is a switch! It doesn't work. Balthier declares the fuse has blown and they decide to find a new one or fix the one that's busted. I dub thee "goal". There's also a dude down here who sells me armor and spells and stuff. I dub thee "incredibly helpful".

He also hands over a fuse, making this the shortest fetch quest on record. The way this dungeon works is, the power station has a limited charge it can pass before the fuse blows and you need a new one. So you have to min-max your opening of doors to keep the charge high enough to go where you want and so on and... oh, ALSO little "mimic" enemies will SUCK THE POWER CABLES and eat electricity. Fuuuuuu-- Okay, so SOP is KILL EVERYTHING. Good to know.

Lots of fighting. Fran gets something called a "Battle Harness" which... A, no comment, and B, enables auto-counter most times she's hit. Suddenly her damage output is way up. Excellent. Balthier, meanwhile, finds something called a "Mage's Habit" which gives him a defense of 22 where most of my characters have single digits, and a "Pointy Hat" boosting him even further. Therefore, Balthier is now taking straight-up ZERO damage from anything around here. He is just... solo-tanking this dungeon and giving no damns about any of it.

SAMURAI PIZZA TANK, DEPLOY WITH EXTRA CHEESE.

Further into the dungeon, Basch stops to loot some equipment and Vaan goes into the "You killed my brother!" routine again, which... be fair, is a defining event in a young man's life. Basch explains via flashback that it was not him who killed the king and Vaan's brother and plunged the country into war and eventual Imperial rule, it was his twin brother. This would be shocking and unexpected except for the guy who looks just like Basch upstairs. Vaan still chooses not to believe this, but... eh. Dude'll come around. Balthier doesn't much care who did what. "What's past is past." he shrugs, and the group rolls on.

Augh. Then there is a QUEEN MIMIC. It is HUGE and SPIDERY and HORRIBLE. That turns out to be okay, because nothing she does can hurt Balthier, Basch has ridiculous damage output with his looted sword, Vaan snipes her offspring which forces her to respawn them instead of attacking, and when the boss drops her enormous "Shoot Lightning Everywhere" superattack, Fran blocks it.

She BLOCKS lightning. With her spear. For zero damage.

I feel like the party composition is really clicking together, guys!

The boss flops over and hits a load-bearing pillar and the dungeon collapses so we're not going back there any time soon. Basch is all "WOW AIR TASTES GOOD" and the group decide to roll back to Rabanastre. Before heading there, I pause at a small town nearby and scrape up nearly all my money to get the "Hunter's Monograph". 18,000g might be expensive as hell, but it opens up a new loot-drop table for certain kinds of beasts. It'll pay for itself in no time, I'm sure.

What follows is a little embarrassing. I tried to walk back overland, and then I got distracted chaining wolf battles together for bonus loot. It got to the point where just picking up loot was giving me healing boosts. I got really distracted by this and wandered all over the map for like an hour. EVENTUALLY, though, I got back to Rabanastre.

Once back in town, Fran and Balthier tip their hats and walk off. So does Basch, although he leaves to hook up with the Resistance. Once more, the Lone Vaan Vaans Alone. Before he does, he pulls the Magicite out of his pocket... okay, I was wrong about the hankerchief thing... and sighs at it. "What should I do?" he asks it. "Can I trust Basch?"

The Magicite does not reply.

"...I gotta get rid of this thing." Vaan decides. Yes, that might be best. Before you name it or something. First, though, he decides to go wave his shiny at Penelo, so she'll know it wasn't a TOTAL waste, breaking into the palace like that. Penelo, however, is nowhere to be found. Huh. Weird. Vaan putzes around looking in shops and taking marks for a bit, then heads down to the Condescending Old Guy to inform him that Vaan is AWESOME.

On the way I talk to one of the people who posted a mark. It seems a ghost, a deadly wraith, has been seen in the lower waterways! It was likely drawn there to avenge the murder of scores of rats and bats... a-heh. *ahem* Well, uh... We'll put that on the pile for when we get a real party again.

The old fellow asks Vaan to please deliver a "Sword of the Old Order" to a particular man as a "reminder". This seems like a pretty clear -signal- to me. Still, I run that across the map. Surprise, it goes straight to what appears to be Resistance HQ. Basch is of course there, in the middle of an argument. Most people at the Resistance seem to feel they can't trust him, either because of what he's alleged to have done or because even if he's telling the truth, his brother is a Judge and that makes him inherently untrustworthy. Basch throws up his hands and storms off, claiming he'll rescue Amalia on his own if he has to.

Vaan sort-of follows, and Basch apologizes to him for being such an annoyance, popping up everywhere Vaan happens to go. It's cool, Basch. That's the trouble with being connected to the plot. Basch continues to annoy by asking if Vaan can take him to Balthier. Vaan surprisingly agrees. After all, he needs to return the favor. What favor? Well, they really couldn't have gotten out of prison without Basch's help.

The second I get control I push Basch into being a SPACETIME WARMAGE. This is probably the biggest mistake I will ever make in this game. OH WELL. Random chance. ... Actually I really love the element of random chance so far. My equipment, my party strength... it's all been pretty random so far, dependant on drops and the whims of chests. Live or die depends on what I scavenge and what methods I approach a battle with, and that's really feeling good to me.

Let's see. Meet Balthier. Where would he be... awesome sky pirate. Sky pirate. Big town. The... the pirate man... pirate... THE PIRATE MAN KNEELS BEFORE BEER. He's in the bar!

On the way, Vaan and Basch pass a bunch of orphan kids, playing around in the street. Vaan explains that there's a lot of orphans in town because of the plague, and the war. His own parents were already dead, so he lived with Reks. Then he lived with Penelo, and her family. After the war, though, Penelo didn't have a family either... Basch can only apologize again. Vaan turns him down, though. "It's not your fault. The war isn't your fault. It was the Empire. And the Empire killed Reks, too. You didn't."

I like this bit, too. Vaan's been paying attention, he's seen that the man he blames for his brother's death and the dude who wants to charge off and rescue Amalia single-handedly less than a day after he gets broken out of jail are -not- the same guy. For a little while he was okay with angrily lying to himself just to have someone to blame, but at this point he's moved on. It's a little more mature a reaction than some RPG lead characters would have.

Not that Vaan is the lead or anything. Just... y'know. Sayin'.

It turns out that Penelo... has been KIDNAPPED. By Ba'Gamnan, who is holding her hostage in exchange for Balthier. Vaan instantly offers the pirates his Magicite shard if they'll help him rescue her. Fran cannot seem to believe this shit ("The gods are surely toying with us.") but Balthier rolls his eyes and agrees to roll out if everyone will be happy. Basch elects to come too. RESCUE FORCE MOBILIZE.

Well... first I have those marks to hunt. So don't mobilze just yet. Just get back in my party, you two. We're goin' ghostbusting.

The fight with the Wraith is -worrying-. At the start of the fight it inflicts a status effect called "Doom", which gives you a ten-count and then kills the character affected. Luckily it's a long ten-count, so between swapping characters in and out when they fall and rez'ing them back up, I manage to output enough raw damage to drop the ghost before it downs more than two characters. Doom is a curable effect, but only via Remedy Lore 3... which is something I've not invested in with anyone. I should maybe look into more Remedy Lore. I only had two Remedies, but that would have been enough. More planning needed!

Hm. Let's see ... the next mark is a "Cluckatrice", a giant rolly-polly chicken. ... I have distinct memories of this thing kicking my face in last time I played, and also it is level 15 and I am levels 10-12. Let's save this for later. Maybe I'll go grind LP and money a while.

AAAHAHAHAHAHAHA. GENTLEMEN BEHOOOOLD. I HAVE ASSEMBLED A CHAIN OF OVER ONE HUNDRED WOLVES! IN RETROSPECT, I ASK: WHY?!

...so yeah that got out of hand. I started stabbing woofs and then like... there were more, and I kept going, and the loot meter started GLOWING, and... now I have a huge pile of pelts to sell. Uh... success!

Okay. For now I save, have some food and rest... and when I come back: The Chickensphere Waits.

Date: 2012-11-27 04:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] terrycloth.livejournal.com
I seem to remember buffs in FF12 being eminently gambitable. So your NPCs waste time on them instead of you. On the downside, they waste time of them when you're running around and the casting time makes them get left behind...

It's been a while since I played 12 though.

Date: 2012-11-28 09:17 pm (UTC)
rowyn: (smile)
From: [personal profile] rowyn
... so the game is mostly about chaining wolves? O:)

Date: 2012-11-29 05:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] read-alicia.livejournal.com
I'm still flabbergasted that PCs can emulate such a processing intensive game as FF12 on the PS2, especially with an English patch thrown over the Japanese image. Such a thing wasn't possible when I first looked into PCSX2 emulation. Glad you're having fun with it though.

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