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I Think I Broke Final Fantasy Tactics
It's far from the first, and probably not the most purely effective Final Fantasy Tactics party setup ever. But my crew of Blade Grasping atheists is pretty close to invincible.
So I've been replaying Final Fantasy Tactics. Again. What, it's not like I have a problem. I can stop any time I want. Anyway, I'm at the point with this game that I'm running out of gimmick parties to see how they work. My latest experiment is the best one yet.
Everything about this strategy comes down to FFT characters' Bravery and Faith scores. You see, with a little bit of grinding, you can set your party's Bravery and Faith to whatever you like courtesy of Ramza and Orator skills. The Samurai's Blade Grasp reaction ability (Shirahadori in the PSP remake, but I prefer the goofy original ability name translations) sets your physical evasion for both ranged and melee attacks at your Bravery score. Hello, permanent 97 percent evasion!
Faith, on the other hand, affects how effective your spellcasting is as well as how susceptible you are to enemy magic and status effects. The bad news: low-Faith heroes are utterly worthless spellcasters. The good news is that Faith does not have any impact on how effective you are at a) punching dudes in the face, b) stealing and/or breaking all of their equipment, or c) distributing potions and other recovery items to your allies. Crank that Faith score down to its permanent minimum of two (out of 100), and the nastiest Firaga is a light tickle that immediately precedes your dual-wielding death machine gutting everything.
So, you're 97 percent immune to physical attacks and roughly 98 percent immune to magical attacks. Most encounters are complete walkovers at this point; large portions of the enemy's army will be incapable of doing anything to you. The world is largely your plaything at this point...but you're not bulletproof.*
* Actually you are, because Blade Grasp blocks bullets, but bear with me here.
The few things that can hurt you are mostly monster abilities – typically magic-type attacks that don't check the target's Faith in their damage calculation. Skeleton "Soul" attacks, for example, can still hit you and do reasonable damage. Red and black chocobos can get their specials past your defenses. Malboros can wreck you with their Bad Breath. Many Zodiac boss abilities still connect.
Fortunately, there are only a handful of fights in the game that have a threatening number of enemies who use that small subcategory of attacks. And that's what giving a few of your party members Item and Throw Item is for anyway.
Go now, and laugh your way to the conclusion of the War of the Lions. Zodiac, schmodiac – no army in Ivalice will be able to come close to standing up to your forces.
Have any of your own silly FF Tactics party configurations (besides Calculators, we all know about those already)? I'd love to hear about them in the comments.
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