Final Fantasy Tactics

Pardon the mess, we're reorganizing.

The Basics

- Play it on PSP, if you can. The story is better, there are neat bonuses, it looks nicer. It renamed some classes and most of the abilities, so if a tip's confusing you, that's probably why.

- Read the Tutorial for the basics, if you're playing PSP. Understanding how charge times and clock ticks work is a huge help. The PSX tutorial is a horribly-translated mess, and worthless for anything but comic relief.

- Lots of enemy bosses are Virgo. Make Ramza a Capricorn or Taurus (for good compatibility) and he'll be able to OHKO them with a strong magic attack.

- Make multiple saves. The game tends to suddenly spike in difficulty, and there are some places when after you finish a combat, either another one starts up immediately, or you are placed in an area of the map where no grinding is available. That can really screw a game over in some points if you are not set up for one or two of the fights.

- Early battles, much like Deus Ex, will be boring! This is because your characters just can't do much other than use items and hit stuff. Hold out! As your characters start advancing in other jobs, the strategic options will open up.

- The Guest/Special characters are powerful so use them. TG Cid is overpowered but even Agrias and Mustadio are very powerful if used correctly. The exception here is Cloud. He starts out at level one and his unique skills are rather average.

- Unless you want to drive yourself crazy, don't bother trying to get all of the rare/unique items. It takes forever and is not necessary for a normal play through. I think the best way to enjoy this game is to just follow the story, grinding where necessary.

- Triangle will bring up a turn listing-which will also show when spells will go of.

Mechanics

- Equipment and abilities tend to matter more than level unless there's a massive gap.

- Offense > Defense. Enemies typically can't heal/revive themselves worth crap so a bum rush strategy is usually the most effective.

- MA/PA/Speed > HP/MP. Raising your max HP doesn't make much of a difference and past chapter 1 fights should be over before your mages run out of MP. Ignore the Best Fit option and put on equipment that raise MA/PA/Speed.

- Males have better Physical Attack stats and growth, Females better Magic Attack stats and growth. Ramza has the strong points of both male and female. You WILL notice the difference between (for instance) a male Monk and a Female Monk.

- High Brave improves the attack power of unarmed strikes for the Monk and the basic attack of any monsters you might decide to take up. It also improves Knight Swords. Finally, high Brave improves the odds of Reaction Abilities. You can raise everyone's permanent Brave to 97 with no ill effects.

- High Faith improves all magic effects-damage dealt, healing dealt, healing taken damage taken, and the success rates of status magic(Both positive and negative). A caster is thus something of a glass cannon by default. Don't raise anyone's permanent Faith above 85 or so. Characters leave your party at 95.

- Line of sight attacks like guns, crossbows, books, harps, can hit those too close to be hit, so long as you target a square along the same path behind them.

- When a character earns JP, everyone else present earns a small amount of JP in that class as well. This can be very useful for teaching characters one ability from a class you otherwise don't want them to bother with.

- Don't neglect counter/support/movement abilities, and play around with secondary skills. Most of the classes with the best abilities don't have the stats to take advantage of them. And don't be afraid to mess around, there are lots of effective combinations.

- There is no benefit to mastering a job. If you ever feel you have all the worthwhile abilities for a job, move on to another one.

- Randomly created Crystals from dead humans (even your guys) could give you their learned abilities if your character doesn't know them. Kill your old guys off if you want to buff up late characters.

- Some spells/summons can be learned by being hit and surviving it. Your unit must be in the class that learns the spell. All the big damage summons can be learned this way (Bahamut and lower on the list) As well a the top tier spell of each element/effect Fire/Ice/Bolt/Cure 4.

Jobs

- JP Boost should be the first ability you teach all your characters, and Move +1 provides a great early-game movement boost, but aside from that, they're not really useful. Ramza's Squire class is special. As you progress through the game he'll get more abilities and better equip options, making Squire his best all-around class by the last chapter. Don't be afraid to abuse his abilities during hard fights.

- At the start of the game (and arguably later on), Chemists are better healers than White Mages, as their healing is instant speed, consistent, and doesn't use MP, MA, or Faith. It's not uncommon to keep a Chemist around the whole game (Protip: They can equip guns). If you can't decide on a secondary skill to give someone, consider Items. Auto-Potion automatically uses the cheapest potion available. Don't bother with Find Items unless you're using a guide.

- Past Chapter 1, Knights tend to suffer from their lack of range and movement effects, and are mostly useful for what they offer other classes. Break is great on ranged classes, especially Break Speed. Weapon Guard is very useful for upping mages' early-game survivability, and the Equip Skills are all useful for certain builds.

- Archers are useful for three things: Access to better classes, Concentrate (ignore all evade), and Speed Save. Beyond that, they're worthless past Chapter 1.

- Black Mages will be your early damage dealers, and have the best MA in the game. Bolt 1 and Frog are the best early-game BM spells, and Arcane Strength raises MA by 33%. This is huge.

- White Mages are especially dependent on Faith, and, to a lesser extent, on Zodiac compatibility. Their healing is more potent than Items, but also requires a bit more micromanaging. Holy is the most powerful single-target spell in the game, but it eats MP like nobody's business. Healing also does damage to anything with the Zombie status, which can be a neat trick.

- How effective Monks are is directly proportional to how high the character's Brave is, as the damage raises exponentially. Chakra, Purification, and Revive do a lot to help Monks survive, and keep your party up and running. Among their secondary skills, Counter's good on front-line fighters, and giving other characters (hint: NINJAS) access to the Monk's potential damage output is just scary. Healthfont can be very useful, especially on Ramza.

- The success of the Thief's various Steal commands is based off Speed, except for Steal Heart, which uses MA. Poaching doesn't do anything until Chapter 3. If you're going to bother with it, use a guide. Move +2 is one of those great skills you give anyone who doesn't have something better.

- Oracles/Mystics can be disturbingly powerful. Drain and Osmose (HP and MP drain) are percentage-based, rather than a fixed sum. Their unique weapon, the Stick, is based off Magic Power, not Physical power, and it has a two-square range. Manafont is fucking amazing, full stop.

- Everything about Time Mages is good, but Haste and Teleport are absolutely the best. Teleport's guaranteed to succeed in the character's normal movement range, and gets less and less likely as you extend beyond that. 3 is always safe, and 4 or 5 will backfire only occasionally. It also completely ignores elevation and obstacles, and is very much in the running for the single best movement skill in the game. Don't bother with Stop, Slow usually does plenty.

- With Dragoons, aim for enemies with low CT with Jump, and use spears. Horizontal and Vertical Jump 8 are the only ones you need, don't bother learning the lower numbers. Braveheart is great, but doesn't prevent against one-hit kills. You may want to knock your dude over the head with someone weak, just to trigger it. Ignore Elevation can be used as a poor man's Teleport, if you don't wanna bother getting your melee characters all that Time Mage JP, or just can't resist the urge to teleport across the map in one move.

- Geomancers use both PA and MA to calculate their skills' damage, so Ramza usually ends up being the only effective one, and even then, only after a lot of JP. Attack Up is good on any melee character. Lava Walking is useful in exactly one map.

- Samurai's Blade Grasp/Shirahadori is completely unfair, and completely awesome. Draw Out is great, but uses MA, and has a 1/8 chance to break the sword.

- Calculators are the logical extension of the game's tradition of letting you get away with stupidly overpowered shit if you're willing to grind and micromanage. The AI is very good at using them.

- Dancers and Bards are gender exclusive, and go against the genders' statistical preferences. Bards' Move +3 is possibly the best movement ability for males. Dancers are usually better in early-to-midgame.

- Be careful with Mimes. As they will mimic every attack and ability your generics have access to using their current facing.

Monsters

- Don't use monsters for combat, with the possible exception of Chocobos, and even then, only if you're dead set on riding an ostrich into battle. The end-game monsters are decent, but by the time you have them, you'll have characters who can do much better.

- You can ride on a Chocobo party member by moving a character on top of them. They'll use the Chocobo's move, jump, and movement abilities, but their own stats. Yellow Chocobo can heal, but are mostly garbage. Black Chocobo can fly, but are mostly garbage, and have even less HP than yellow. Red Chocobo can ignore elevation, and take a decent hit, and get Choco Meteor, a damn respectable attack.

- Try and invite a Uribo any time you see one. You can raise and poach them and their offspring (Porky/Wildbow) for some useful and otherwise unavailable items.

Specific Builds

- Build Ramza to be a decent melee fighter; he has two solo duels, one of which is notoriously hard.

- Monks with Attack Up make the best item stealers, due to slightly-wonky coding.

- A Monk with Dual Wield or a Ninja with Martial Arts will destroy anything that so much as looks at him funny. The latter is preferred, as it has higher speed, and can wear hats.

- Samurai's Draw Out makes an amazing secondary for a Black Mage, who actually has the MA to make use of it.

Other/Unsorted

- For an amusing time, try playing FFT using the auto-battle. You want to set your guys on "Save fading life" if you're playing PS1 or "Healer" if you're playing PSP. Generally this will give your guys AI with the same rough priorities as the computer players. The only other useful auto battle option is the first one ("fight for life" or "berserker"), which will let you mark a specific unit to kill, but keep in mind this will in most cases cause your units to not give a shit about dead/dying friendlies. Still it can be an easy way to get through "kill Whatsisname" type missions.

- The AI's also pretty good at judging Charge (the Archer skill) and you can use it on just about anything except a gun. Play around with it on some melee attackers, though you may want a secondary with more utility to it. It also knows how to float arrows over long ranges from up hill or arc them over obstacles, though bows generally do shit damage and the AI will still generally prefer even piddling damage to a crippling Knight skill.

- Summons only effect one team. Attack summons can only effect your guys if your summoner is confused. But you can target one of your guys who will move before the casting. The summon will be based on his final position.

- Spam Accumulate/buffs to build 10 experience.

- The more advanced classes gain more stats per level and the Mime has the best growth.

- Press the right direction over your attacks. It should show character turns and display if your spell will hit in time. The higher speed of weak spells is much faster and reliable.

- Speaking of Dancers, they're most effective earlier in the game.If only because of the speed difference between dances and your enemies. A pack of dancers can cripple an enemy team, giving you free reign to loot all their stuff.

- Summons will only target enemies or allies, never both. So you can target an ally who will move before the summon goes off and march them up into a group of enemies for some nice damage.

- Never use flails or axes, their damage is too random.

- Buy a holy robe as soon as they're available, it will give you an edge in a particular solo battle. (There are only two, and one happens before you can buy them.)

- Rubber shoes trivialize the part of the Lionel Castle battle that doesn't involve Ramza.

- On a related note, for fans of poaching, the AI is also very good at calculating the Mediator/Orator passive "Train" which converts anyone who gets hit down to critical by that unit. Also it never misses a lancer/dragoon Jump due to the enemy moving, though it will often stupidly kill its target with another of your units first.