This is the game that never ends

Day 394

I had a pretty good day at work today! I sold a lot of cellular devices. Honestly though, that's a pretty boring thing to talk about even if a lot of the things I write about on a daily basis aren't really that exciting either. I'm still trudging my way through War of the Lions. I've committed to using many of the game's special characters, almost all of which are recruited near the very end, so I'm doing a lot of grinding to get them up to par. I still have to find a certain weapon for Cloud for him to actually be useful. Even then, the game kindly offers him to you at level 1...

I really do wish that these special characters were available earlier on in the game. Agrias is available from chapter 3 on and she's quite useful. I'm not using her this time because I've used her plenty of times in the past--but she is completely invalided by the existence of Orlandeau, who has access to every Holy Sword skill in the game. Granted, he also invalidates every other character choice you could imagine in the game, but hey. He is one of those oft-referenced overpowered characters. There are many, many ways to trivialize the difficulty level of Final Fantasy Tactics, but none are offered up on a silver platter quite as tantalizingly as Cidolfas "Thunder God Cid" Orlandeau. His abilities are shockingly powerful and his base stats are incredibly high. His initial equipment and setup are already sufficient enough to solo a lot of maps.

War of the Lions of course also has Luso (originally from Final Fantasy Tactics A2) and Balthier (originally from Final Fantasy XII) to offer--and they're available earlier on than Beowulf, Reis, or Cloud. Luso is essentially a clone of Ramza and therefore isn't terribly interesting. Despite his calss bearing the moniker of Game Hunter, his class is essentially just another modified Squire. Of course, every unique class in the game takes the place of the Squire in the class list but at least those classes have completely unique skillsets--although they do unfortunately share reaction, support, and movement abilities.

I really do enjoy The War of the Lions' plot and dialogue, but I've spent so much time grinding that that enjoyment has been diluted somewhat. Perhaps it was unwise for me to commit to crafting a ridiculously powerful party full of special character I haven't used before, but I'm striving to stick to it. I do like Balthier and Beowulf a lot, although the verdict's still out on Reis and Cloud. I'm not particularly fond of Reis's abilities that can only be targeted on dragons. I've never been a fan of monster units in Final Fantasy Tactics and War of the Lions has done little to change my mind. I feel that Disgaea did monster units a little bit better perhaps just because they can interact with human characters in unique ways. It also helps that ten units can be deployed at any given time in Disgaea so there's a lot more room for experimentation with rosters.