TW: discussion of anxiety and self-hate near the end.
Tutorial – Party Roster
-“Squire” seems like freelancer/onion knight.
-Interesting that the amount of xp needed to level doesn’t increase as job level goes up.
“You may have up to 24 units in your party at any given time.” UHHHHHHHH
-Potency affects magick attacks, but apparently not magick defense.
-Jobs have a mandatory ability, and also a job command, reaction ability, support ability, and movement ability. I like this. Seems like a souped-up version of the FFV ability system.
-WHEW. I get a common inventory. I was afraid I’d have to shuffle equipment between 20+ separate inventories.
-Weapons primarily affect Attack and Block Rate, and shields determine Shield Evasion (S-EV). Headgear and body gear primarily impacts HP/MP.
-“A unit must learn chemist abilities before he or she may use items.” This is a MAJOR change. I hardly ever used chemist back in FFV. Now, it sounds like basically a must-have healer.
-Units can gain access to new jobs by leveling up. A squire that levels to 2 can become a knight. I wonder if that “leveled-up” job will be strictly better than the prior job.
-I wonder what the max job level is. In FFV, I think it was something like 7? Idk.
-Reaction abilities look cool. Triggered when attacked.
-Ooh, you can mix and match abilities from different jobs!
-Friendly monsters can join the party, but can’t equip items or gain abilities.
But you can RIDE a chocobo and increase mobility. God, the possibilities are massive.
-Monsters lay eggs that turn into new monsters. So… if a chocobo lays an egg that hatches into a malboro… does that mean…
No. Not going there.
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Tutorial – Miscellany
-The game is largely driven by zodiac signs, about which I know jack shit. I hope that’s not a problem.
-The compatibility charts take me a while to process. I go over and over them. My main take-away is that 3-6 signs away = bad compatibility and 4 signs away = good compatibility.
-Wait, GENDER plays a role?
opposite signs and same gender = poorest compatibility
opposite signs and opposite genders = excellent compatibility
I’ve always been bad at telling gender in FF games. I just never expected it to impact the gameplay.
-Signs that are across from each other – six away – are at the extremes of compatibility.
Compatibility is a big deal! If a unit attacks an enemy of good compatibility, it deals 25% more damage. Excellent compatibility increases damage by 50%. Poor compatibility reduces by 25% and extremely poor by 50%.
-Monsters are opposite gender to male and female units, but same genders as other monsters. So it’s impossible to have poorest compatibility with a monster, or for monsters to have excellent/max compatibility with each other.
I get this generally, but I’m still bad on what units mean what, so I write out a big zodiac chart to keep handy.
-Magick has its own speed. This must refer to stuff like Fire taking a shorter time to go off than Flare.
-The interface tells me which spells can be reflected and which can’t. Every FF game should do that.
-Speaking of reflect, what wild mechanics! Spells don’t just reflect back to the caster; they have their own geometry, bouncing like a billiard ball. THEY THOUGHT OF EVERYTHING.
-Arithmetician is a job!
I’m envisioning the Mathemagician from “The Phantom Tollbooth.”
-The chemist having Treasure Hunter instead of thief/rogue surprises me.
-So if a unit dies, it can transform into a chest or a crystal if not revived. If it’s a chest, most items are gone except for one which is in the chest. If it’s a crystal, ALL the items are returned to the inventory but the crystal contains… something?
-If bravery gets too low or faith gets too high, the unit may leave the party. That’s… odd. I would’ve thought the goal for mages would be to jack up faith as high as possible.
-Some new status effects, like “Vampire.” The tutorial is unusually unhelpful in its description.
”Vampire: Turned into a vampire.”
I assume it’s like Zombie in some FF games.
-“Traitor” is also new. Seems like charm turned up to 11.
-Atheist and Faith both are new, lowering and raising faith respectively. I wonder if casting Faith can cause an ally to leave the party if it pushes the faith too high. Probably not.
-A KO’d units speed impacts its death timer. Lol. Live fast, die fast.
-“Job points may be acquired…by having a party member successfully perform an action in battle. The unit will gain points in the same job as that of the party member.” So if there are two chemists in the party, Chemist A and Chemist B, and Chemist A uses an action that earns JP, Chemist B earns JP too.
I wonder if there’s a power-leveling strategy to have a bunch of characters all in the same job and just rack up job points for everyone. Probably could only be done when you overpower the enemies.
-C-EV = chance to evade an attack. S-EV = chance to block with the shield. A-EV = chance that an accessory will block an attack. A weapon’s block rate ONLY applies when parry has been assigned.
This is not additive. So if C-EV, S-EV, and A-EV all have a 50% chance to block the attack, that block check happens three separate times. It’s not a 150% chance to block the attack.
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Tutorial’s End
That was a great tutorial. I don’t have the context yet to lock the info into my brain, but I’ll come back to individual sections for review as I encounter them in game.
I’ll be honest: I’m not excited right now to continue. I’m nervous. Everything is new. There are so many rules and stats. I’ve tried continuing from my last save, even saw the next battle, but felt massive anxiety.
My brain started racing. Like:
WHAT IF IT’S RAINING AND I USE MAGICK BUT THE TILE I’M ON IS TWO UNITS BELOW THE ENEMY BUT THE ENEMY HAS A HIGHER JUMP SCORE AND A DIFFERENT GENDER THAN ME BUT IT’S A LEO AND I’M AN ARIES AND MY FIFTH UNIT CASTS A SPELL WHOSE CT DOESN’T LAND BECAUSE ITS SPEED IS TOO LOW AND AND AND AND
That sort of thing. I hope you don’t mind if I get a bit personal for a sec.
There’s a common cause to my personal struggles. I pressure myself to do something perfectly, fail to meet that self-applied pressure, and give up. Rip myself, hate on myself, put myself down for that “failure.” I see this when I try learning different skills, in my work life, in dealing with my family. Over and over.
This small and silly moment of panic on the heels of a complex tutorial is a microcosm for all that shit.
This Final Fantasy playthrough has served as a counterpoint. It’s an unusual bit of consistency in a life full of giving up. I set out to play the FF games years ago, never thinking I’d get past a few games. And here I am. I kept my head down. Session by session. Kept my head down, kept expectations on myself low, and enjoyed the ride. No pressure.
Writing this has helped me name this anxiety, see it as part of a pattern. It’s still there, but I can work with it.
And now I’m psyched to move forward. No pressure to master the seven million systems in FFT. Let’s just see how the first fight goes. That’s all. That’s enough.
Maybe I can even remember it outside the game.
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Next time: Ramza and Delita in Garliand.
