Dug this game out again recently because my 10 year old son showed me up by beating it while I was still stuck with the White Mousse since 5 years ago.

Created this thread to avoid further derailing the Nation history thread.

I was following the strategy guide and was their recommended level (25 ish) but kept getting swamped by King Malboros, lizards and elementals. I've now beaten him and moved on. Technique I eventually used was Warp on the Malboros and Lizard then cast Reflect on each party member and spam Fira.

IIRC, the Flametongue, a sword you can get from killing Maralith, I believe, is another good way to take that guy on.
Of course, I consider Maralith to be a much harder fight due to the sheer speed and strength it packs compared to what you're likely to have at that level.

One thing you might consider when it comes to marks is to take them on during the times you have a guest character along with the party. In particular, I recall this tactic was very useful against the Wyvern mark when it became available. Guests always have a very useful skill, Telekinesis, which lets them attack an airborne enemy with their melee weapons. You can get the skill as well, but not for a very long time.


Who are you going with for your main party?

I keep rotating the party so they all level up at the same rate.

At the point where the guide suggested taking on White Mousse I had that annoying kid who is the son of the emporer or whatever - I can't remember why he joined the party from 5 years ago... He was good to have around for the potions, but I was succesfully casting Sleep on the White Mousse so I could use Fire (didn't have Fira till later) but he kept attacking it and waking it up!

Anyway, got rid of him eventually and went back with all my guys at level 28-29 and Fira, used Warp on the Malboros and Lizard that were hanging around, then the Reflect and Fira trick worked great.

Don't remember fighting Maralith yet but I do have Flametongue from Bazaar Goods. Vaan has the Sledgehammer now so I'm whacking stuff with that mostly. Ashe has a curvy? crossbow with bolts that inflict Slow and Penelo casts Sleep on everything. It's a good team!

Just did the Silika Wood last night, but might wander back a little to level up before I do the next stage. Only 30-31 at the moment.

I've been following the guide to make sure I can get the Zodiac Spear. I should be able to get to where it is now, so I might have a go at that. May not go well though...

It's a risk, even at high levels. Casting Vanish on your party helps. (I think it's Vanish. Turns you invisible.) Float too so that you don't set off the place's many, many floor traps.
Remember too that you'll still need the license before you can use it, so there's really no great rush.

Rotating in party members is going to make the game very, very grindy for you, but it will give you a better chance against some of the later bosses. There is an easy way to fairly quickly level lower party members nearer the end game, but it requires some setup.
I usually end up with one party of 3 at 99 and the rest at whatever I picked them up at.
I go with Vaan, Basch, and Fran as my main party. Two swords and a bow. You actually get Telekinesis very near to where you pick up the Zodiac spear, but it's still not available early as the hidden merchant that sells it won't have it until very late.

Thanks for the tips Monkey.

Vanish and Float are available but I haven't bought them yet. I'll try a quick run at the spear and if it's not happening then I'll return to the guide and get to it eventually.

I forgot how big these FF games are after clearing the likes of Resistance or Call of Duty in a week or two. I've really barely dented this one have I? Never really cared for the story in this one, another reason it was gathering dust for most of the last five years. I'll stick with it now, probably finish just before Square release a new version with trophies...

Story was definitely the weak point in this game, which is a very sad thing to say of a Final Fantasy.
You can blame Executive Meddling for that.

In 12, the story was there, but it took a back seat to everything else. Combat mostly worked, (aside from a flaw with high end spells that freezes your action meter until they complete) and you could actually end up making some fairly complex gambits if you wanted to take the time. And there were a plethora of sidequests and minigames, as has always been an FF standard.

The overall plot would work fine. It's your classic disinherited ruler fighting an encroaching evil empire. But it wasn't very well told. Stopping the action to cut to a still screen every so often that slowly explains what happened for a couple of weeks is not only dull (mind you I love to read, but not in the middle of the action), but also immersion breaking.
Let's look at the characters. Ashe, the princess fighting for her throne and country. Cliche, but workable. As the story goes on you'll see that she's the one who actually experiences the most character growth. For the most part, this is her story.
Basch, child of a dead kingdom, knight of a dying one, and framed for murdering its king.
Balthier, the classic 'dashing pirate' type and when it gets out that he actually does have a past he can be quite interesting, though his big confrontation was kind of a letdown.
So far so good, but then there's...
Fran, who gets points for being the only non-human in the party (wide variety of races and we get 5/6 humans. Missed opportunity.), and because at its heart her backstory is pretty good. But loses some points (along with the rest of the Viera race) for being a scantily clad bunny girl purely for the sake of being one.

But the real problem is Vaan and Penelo. They do not have a place in the story. Like Fran, they are there solely to appeal to a certain demographic. Square reasoned that mostly people of roughly that age would be playing so they wanted to make the main characters someone more able to be related to, but the characters themselves are so out of place and unneeded that it backfires horribly.
Penelo, a street rat orphan with a "big sister" attitude towards the other orphans. Her only function in the game is to be kidnapped once and then never involved in any truly important story bits again.
Vaan, same as Penelo, but also mostly serves as the comic relief. The story, when it gets around to being there, is focused on the rest of the party. Vaan himself does nothing important either. He just tags along. After the one and only serious part for him, getting over his brother's death (which he does fairly early), he does nothing.

Take the two of them out of the story for a moment. The game starts with Balthier and Fran busting into the palace and snagging the Shard. A slightly different unexpected event forces them into the sewers where they meet Ashe. They get captured, break out, and free Basch. The only hiccup is here in that they won't go to rescue Penelo. So, instead make it something like having to go rescue the informant who told Balthier that the Shard was in the palace or something. Fill the same role.
After this, is there anything that would be significantly different from the original story? No. /overly long rant

Yup all true. Of course it's so long since I started the game I couldn't remember who anyone was anyway!

The gambits are a good idea, but seem to take a lot of maintenance, like having to disable all the magic when an elemental's around so he doesn't stick his nose into my battles, tweaking so they don't keep throwing potions at each other instead of attacking the nasty monsters. I like how that kind of developed in XIII where the support characters automatically do stuff appropriate to each monster once it has been scanned.

Well, my spear mission didn't go so well. Got stuck with the Bomb King. Can beat him down to 20% or so then he renews himself and destroys my party. Back to the storyline then for the weekend.

That completely took the fun out of 13 for me, not controlling my party and that absurd game over on KO.
I agree that the gambit system wasn't perfect, but giving everything over to IA was not the right way to go about fixing it. Rather, they should have had something similar to the paradigm system, but much more customized. So, exactly like the gambit system, but with sets of gambits that you could change with a button press.
Examples:
Basic Gambits=Physical attacks, exploiting enemy weaknesses with magic, buffs/debuffs, heal only at low HP
Anti-elemental Gambits= Physical attacks only, buff/debuff, heal at <50% HP
Basically, the paradigm system, but without locking you into specific roles.
The important thing is that you could still override the AI routines though.

I really enjoyed this game back when I had a PS2, one game I hope that they will re-release for the PS3 one day, I know that some die hard FF fans HATED it but I really enjoyed it when I compare it to games like Terminator: Salvation, CoD (sorry but has to be said), and a couple of others that don't come to mind at the moment. As for 13, like some parts of it but others make me never want to pick it up, even though I REALLY want to be able to say I finished a FF game but I guess I'll wait for the re-release of 10 to do that.

Vaan still confuses me as to the whole point he was in the bloody game. Whatever, 12 is where the end started.

Like I said, executive meddling. He and Penello are there to appeal to their age group, which Squeenix stupidly believed to be their only audience.

They forgot about their original audience, which would be how old now? late 20s/early 30s?

Gotta get new ones in too though. Really don't like the new ones. They give me headaches and confuse me and make me feel like my father when he's trying to work the DVD Player.

Oh yeah, definitely, they just seem to forget one audience and focus on another, Naughty Dog sort of did the same thing with Uncharted 3 (they have gotten better by supporting but I still feel a little shunned). Developers seem to have a hard time finding that middle ground which is annoying but at the same time I guess its easier to focus on getting a new audience and forgetting about your old one or focusing on keeping your old audience and don't bother getting a new one.

You can easily do both, but it requires something that companies have grown to absolutely loathe.
It requires...risk! *gasp*
On new IP!

From 1 to 10, FF did a great job of keeping its audience. It did this by changing its trappings (combat/advancement systems, etc) somewhat, but giving you a deeper story experience than you would find in other series.
Then, they decided that they wanted a piece of that shiny new MMO pie.
So, did they create a great, original MMO experience to draw people in?
Nah. Let's just take everything we know the audience likes, hammer it into an MMO shape, and expect them to follow.
This did attain some moderate success because of die-hard fans that did follow.

Then you have 12. Now they're attempting to do two things.
Firstly, they want to try to get a new audience, which they do by once again beating on the story to shape it into something they think that audience would want. Who cares about the core audience? We know they're going to follow anyway.
Second, they want to further attract and keep the MMO crowd, and possibly convert any holdouts from that by making the game as similar to MMO mechanics as possible.

And now there's 13. Once again, the main series is forced to follow the market trend of attempting to appeal to everyone and being ridiculously simple. Out came the hammer again. But this time, after they were done crushing and chipping parts away, it didn't even look like an FF anymore.

They want to fit all the trends that they think will make them money, but they also want to drag along that core audience who they know will buy.
If they had made FF11 true to its roots and just made an original MMO, then players would not have that compulsion to buy. It has to be not just an MMO, but a numbered entry into the series.
FF12, they want to attract that growing younger audience, but instead of creating a game for them, they just try to force it in their existing game.
Same again with FF13.

I liked 10, 12, sort of 13, Crisis Core. Now I did not play anything before 10 but I would like to. I think that they had a good story if I compare it to other games, maybe not when compared to past Final Fantasies but I enjoyed the story of EVERY Final Fantasy that I played more than I did Call of Duty. I personally find that most games are moving away from a good single player and focusing more on a good or great multiplayer, you can even see games like MAG, Eve Dust 514, and Battlefield 1943 which are multiplayer ONLY coming out. I'm a big MMO player myself and there are plenty of people who played FFXI who say that there was so much to do that there was never an excuse to just sit around and do nothing, like there is in WoW. From what I hear they dropped the ball with XIV but I'm still looking forward to the next one, been a MASSIVE Squaresoft/Square Enix fan since I played Kingdom Hearts, been stuck waiting for a KHIII for too damn long, hoping for them to re-release Kingdom Hearts I & II and Chain of Memories on the PS3 before they bring KHIII back to the console (hopefully on PS3 as well).

I've really enjoyed playing this game for the last few weeks. I was holding off finishing it until I had all the best weapons and finished all the sidequests.

So close...

But, my PS3 just got the YLOD. I haven't took a backup for a couple of months so assuming I can't get it repaired and if I can be bothered again then I'm right back to my PS2 memory card with the White Flan...

The major criticism I have of this game is how lame the espers are. In the other games you call your aeon, GF or whatever and your enemy is toast. In FFXII more often than not my character is killed immediately, esper is dismissed and I'm back to the battle. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe doesn't matter now.

Condolences, my friend. Check for videos that can help you fix it. Perhaps at least long enough to do a backup. I believe we have a tech help thread, and I know others have had this problem. When you're repaired/replaced, then you can pick it right back up again.


I think the worst thing about the Espers is that their most powerful abilities have weird trigger conditions. For example, I think Zodiark's would only trigger if your character got petrified.


EDIT: Here's the thread.

Hi Monkey, thanks yeah I've seen some of the youtube vids how to fix it, but me and circuit boards are not good friends and I'm likely to make a terrible mess of it.

My son was playing Skyrim when it died so that disc is stuck in there. I have seen a video to remove that which I'll have a go at. Then I'll see if there is anywhere local that can repair it, even for long enough to backup the data.

I got a replacement when my first PS3 died even though out of warranty but that isn't gonna work twice. I'll just have to suck it up and get a slim model, but then my PS2 games won't work. My son has the PS2 but the drive is dodgy on that so some game don't work.

Glad I didn't get Blops 2 yet, I'd be really mad now...

Just gutted to lose my progress. I had two ribbons, was so close to getting Tournesol and working on the Wyrmhero blade...

Have you ever taken on Yiazmat? That is a four hour fight. Four hours. And once he's dead there's nothing worth using the sword on.
I've fought him before, but never killed him. It's just not worth the time to me.

You can get the Super Slim model, I got one for college and got no complaints, should be great for travelling, just need to figure out how I'm going to keep it safe.

I never got very far in this game, its kind of weird. Sucks that this game isn't on the PS3, that could be fun to play again.

Yeah the slim ones look nice and must be quieter than my one. Just a shame no PS2 compatibility.

So I just took it into a local shop. £70 for them to send the motherboard away to be reballed so should be good as new

No haven't faced Yiazmat yet, though I have opened up the area he's in to get my second ribbon. Decided to focus on the Tournesol first, then the fancy Sagittarius bow. Couldn't work out why I wasn't getting Moon Ring drops then went into a shop and another Forgotten Grimoire unlocked - I hadn't got the Dragoon Monograph

You're right though. With most of these games you have to fight the toughest bosses to get the best weapons then what do you do with them?

Anyway guess I'll dig out HL2 for a week or so.

What do you do with them? I suppose you could go fight the final bosses (or fight them again if you've already beaten them)

The final bosses are way easier than the optional ones. The only reason to have stronger weapons is to help you in harder fights. But if you have to win the hardest fight to get them, then they're not going to help you. So, no matter what, if you have the weapon you don't need it.

oh well, would still make 4 boss fights in a row without a save crystal easier