The War of the Lions endgame fantasy

Day 387

Man, the requirements for unlocking the Dark Knight class in War of the Lions are pretty ridiculous--and I imagine by the point I've done that I won't really need it. I could roll with my current setup for the rest of the game and I'd most likely be fine. Against certain opponents, Ramza is already hitting 500 damage per turn and attacks twice. Ninja with Brawler support ability is just as broken as ever, evidently. This is exactly why I always used to do certain themed playthroughs to increase challenge. The game's mechanics are very exploitable. Granted, I have been doing a lot of grinding.

It is a game that very much rewards it, however, so I can't even begin to fault it for that. I very much enjoy the ridiculous power level you can raise your characters to if you put in the effort to do so. It does make me wish that there was content available to warrant characters of that power level, though. A hard mode probably would have been nice, although it would make some of the early missions close to impossible. I've heard there are hacks out there that rebalance the game's difficulty and I've considered trying them. It might be something worth looking into once I've cleared through my backlog (in a few years time, likely).

Always dreaded this fight as a kid

I think if this happened to be my first time playing through this game, I'd be gushing over the intense diversity of character compositions and the broad variety of skills to experiment with. This is still true, but having a great deal of knowledge about the game tempers that enthusiasm somewhat. There are a great number of skills but if you were to attempt to maximize efficiency, there eventually become only so many abilities worth using. The vast majority of the Mystic or Orator skillsets are not really necessary at any point, for instance.

In the end, though, that is why Straight Character Class challenges exist. Each class in the game has its merits although may have decreased value when compared with other classes. There are a great variety of debuffs available through classes like the Mystic, Black Mage, and Geomancer, but they seldom seem necessary when so many ways to utterly destroy your opponents exist. Powerful abilities like Dual Wield, Doublehand, Brawler, and the shocking nature of Arithmeticks invalidate a lot of otherwise interesting strategies. It is up to the player in this case to choose to abstain from abusing these strategies in order to experience all the game has to offer.

I've played Final Fantasy Tactics a lot and despite the shiny new script and new content, War of the Lions is largely the game I know and love. For this particular playthrough, I have decided to field the most devastatingly powerful party composition I can think of. I wanted to be able to breeze through the latter stages of the game--and so far, this is definitely the case. Most enemies can be destroyed in a single shot, although my character are definitely not so durable themselves. My eventual goal is to unlock the new Dark Knight class, but considering the fact that it requires a mastery of not only the Knight class, but Black Mage as well, I might be waiting awhile.