Insane Difficulty: Man: This game is good - Insane Difficulty

I know that about BP now. I didn't at the time when I recorded it. I should state this as of now that these are recorded in advanced to give off a continuous stream as well as give people time to see some of the videos without having to watch all of them in succession-- as some people find too many videos at once off putting. I start knowing what BP is later on when I have more moves and start investigating them more thoroughly.

Yeah, evasion is a bit more noteworthy in this game for monsters than humans in the early game. Luckily, you don't have to use Ramza, but it's still nice to be able to have him as a flexible character if you don't want to go around hunting monsters. Plus, I think that Ramza is ever so slightly better than the baby monsters on the account of having a full moveset.

Regardless, Bombs are just evasive jerks with their massive hp and immunity to like every status effect I happen to like. They also float which incidentally has the effect of making them difficult to reach comparatively-- something that rarely ever comes into play in FFT but is still a nifty little feature. When I walked over there with Delita? That would have been able to attack if it were any other monster but a floating one. Float is still kinda bad overall, but it's not a half bad perk to have innately.

I don't get why the RNG hated me so much this battle, but it was driving me absolutely insane. That is all.

You had a good start to this battle, but wow @ that 57% hit move hitting nearly 100%... Sorry for your bad luck. Panthers in recent versions now have slightly lower HP, and Prankster instead of Move HP up, which makes them significantly less resilient. Poisoning them still helps (even more so with move HP Up gone) for the purpose of getting around HP Restore. Square is helpful vs. the Chocobos too, for reducing Missile damage and Chakra's healing.

RIP Auburn. The recruit locations on babies isn't listed, but anything that can be reached in ch 1 will produce a baby unit in ch 1. So if you'd like a new goblin in ch 1, you can get one in Mandalia North (from Igros).

It was hilarious, I'm not gonna lie. I started to cheer for the bad RNG to screw you more and more as the video went along.

The abundance of reraise and lack of revival make for quite an interesting dynamic in the mod so far.

Hart-Hunt, on 21 January 2017 - 05:23 PM, said:

Yeah, I know how it is. It's definitely funnier to watch someone else have to go through that. As it actually becomes interesting to see how far the awful RNG can go for.

It's a weird dynamic, I don't think I've seen anything like it.



This fight actually isn't that bad, just make sure you bring status effects and you're good to go.

ROULETTE TIME GO. Honestly, Roulette makes me a very upset person, but today it was actually nice to me. I do not expect this to always happen, I expect it to kill me like crazy in the future. Anyways, on to the battle.




Miluda is like some sort of weird Orlandu/Wiegraf styled knight. Under normal circumstances I'd be afraid of this, but I'm not because I have two guest that are under my control, and even with her new found power, it's not enough to overcome the player's new found power. I'm not sure which guest is more useful on this fight honestly, because Delita can seriously lower that Pillow Flight damage from those chicks which seriously will lay the smack down on any character that is so little as neutral compatibility from these monsters, and as much as they spam roulette, you are absolutely not going to want that, because if can go sour at any given moment.

The big thing that I took from this is that Don't Move seems to last an annoyingly long time-- longer than I definitely remember. And evasion is pretty intense in this game. Like super high all around-- that's primarily because it's more noteworthy in the sense that back attacks are the only true way to avoid evasion now. Having moves that bypass it, or just having don't act, sleep or confusion can go a long way. I didn't bring any of that this fight, and it shows how annoying it can be otherwise. I think since the early monsters are baby versions that it might be a bit *too* high at this moment (as a bit later on, I don't find evasion too bad), and might be nice to raise their evade that high when we get to later monsters from Ch. 2 plus.

The theme I get from this is that even if you try to muscle through on fights, there's always a unique enemy or two to make it a bit hard to do at moments.

Status effect durations for buffs have been increased a lot from their vanilla values. Most debuffs are the same or slightly increased. The durations were balanced in a way that all status effects are worth the actions to use. Evasion is on the higher end because monsters can't change setups. They are enough so that unevadable moves are worth the action to use, to encourage better unit placement (attacking from back), and abilities such as concentrate are worth it to get; but toned down considerably from vanilla ch 4 amounts.

Since there was no consistency to this at all in vanilla, I established a rule on how brave/faith affects things here. Brave and Faith are not part of any damage formulas. Brave is purely reaction rate and used for some supports (like Blade grasp, which moved to support here). The exception to this is 100% hit passives such as Rough Skin. Faith affects all moves that use status effects with no other effect (both positive and negative), fractional damage, most healing, and the proc rate on Firey Dance and Exorcise. The exception to this is consumables (item and draw out), Limited Wish, and any ability that cancels Innocent.

Roulette randomly chooses between all status effects, positive and negative, with the exception of uninflictable ones (such as Perform or Chicken) and too douchey for me to give to the AI (Crystal, Invite). While there are more negative than positive effects, taking in consideration it can also land on a character's immunity (in which case it does nothing), it's about a 50/50 chance of doing something good or bad for you not including the miss chance or nothings...

Your Algus had Flare Star, that was hilarious. Mine usually had CT save or Auto Potion. Anyway, because Flare Star works off of Giga Flare, it is quite possible that it double procced but didn't animate the first hit due to being a reaction; at least that's what I could gather from the amount of damage it actually did combined with the displayed number.

Yeah, the flare star was very shocking to say the least.



This fight is actually probably the first time that the difficulty really starts to ramp up. It's not that the fight is hard, it's just that Miluda puts up far more of a fight as a monster than she does as a human. She's tougher, she has a more varied moveset outside of damage, and she seems to have started traveling with a better group of friends. Two additional Psico enemies added to the left and and right of your party also add an additional bit of grief to you as reducing damage is probably the single most important thing at this point. There's too many enemies at the start to even bother trying to rush down the enemies this time around, and even if you could, there's quite a few units with revive around to ultimately make this very ineffective. Especially since the first enemy that you'll probably fight-- the bird family, has reflect innately which makes magic-- the best sweeping crowd control you have at this point, dubious at best. If that weren't obvious enough, the Slimes also add some additional problems using offensive magic at this point-- a far cry from the original battle in this where magic is pretty much THE way to go for this fight.

That said, fighting Miluda in melee can also be problematic if you try to go toe to toe with her on the account that she has enough health to last longer than most units that would dare fight her without support. Especially if you think you can just swoop in and have a quick kill. It's not that easy. Only through teamwork and cooperation can you have an easy time. There's no MVPs here.


Also, if you don't think Psicos look like noses from behind, you're just wrong.

No Mandalia 2 battle? Not sure if that version was just too old for it or if you didn't record it.

Anyway, the squid's tentacle attack procs Cursed. Cursed is written over "Dark/evil looking" which just makes your character black with no other effect in vanilla. It makes the target immune to positive status effects. It is cured by the Prayer/Holy Water group of status cures.

You can actually view a ??? character's HP if it's under 999 via "Unit list." You can find the Unit List here:



Judging by your level and how long that took without poison, she had around 800 hp. Of course this number varies by your level.

Emmy, on 04 February 2017 - 03:40 PM, said:

Shoot. I need to upload it. I forgot and I have it. Gimme the next day and I'll rewind the clock.

You're right Emmy, I did forget an episode. Here it is! This battle is weird, but I don't find it particularly hard. I like it though. Floating wizards make me laugh.

And now we take on Miluda's brother. Well, because he didn't become a monster, he's not nearly as difficult as his sister, and he seems far less prepared than she was. However, that doesn't mean that he's a cake walk either. This guy has a surprisingly good amount of crowd control, and if you park it in 1 place too long, he'll make you pay for it with your life.

I can say that at this point I'm really starting to get comfortable with most of the changes that Monster Tactics has to offer. Stay tuned for the next couple of battles, because Ch. 2 is when the game, and myself, really start to come full force.

Absolutely enjoying this. Your commentary is spot on for someone who's played both FFT mods from the site.

Hart-Hunt, on 12 February 2017 - 08:51 AM, said:

I'm enjoying it too. Honestly, I was going to do the Extra Battles, but I got destroyed with a chapter 1 party. If someone is brave enough to take them on, I'd love to see them do it, because I honestly couldn't.

And yeah, it gets easier to play as you understand the crazy stuff that happens in the game. 1.3's early game is significantly harder because it comes with the acknowledgement that you've probably been around the block with vanilla, but MT's approach is one that wants you to get used to the massive amount of changes the game has in store for you later on, and unlike Vanilla FFT, it doesn't have a "Dorter 1." It keeps increasing in difficulty, and is rather stable about it with a fluctuation that's pretty stable and the only reason I feel some fights are easier is because there are certain fights that are weak to you as a player based on your style and strong against you because it's your weakness.

Like Wiegraf here, I like to keep my units closer, but Wiegraf doesn't like that. Hilariously enough, you STILL kinda want that though in this fight, because reducing damage too much will have you being slapped around with a bunch of sleep and confusion, which is arguably worse than dying outright. Especially because if you're hit by sleep Wiegraf's damage spikes enough to basically render shell/protect worthless now that I think about it.

Augestein, on 12 February 2017 - 03:30 PM, said:

Really?

Not gonna lie, I'm being tempted to pick this up.

And that is no mean feat.

Advent, on 12 February 2017 - 04:01 PM, said:

Yeah man, you should. Like... The first version of this game is garbage in comparison to what it is now. The first version of the game was like "my first hack." This is like... A FFT where you actually have an excuse (more like a reason) to use more than 5 people. And ANY strategy game that makes me switch up my party is good in my book. It's even better now because the levels are fixed in that everyone levels once per map now. And because of the way the monsters work, if you forgot to use a monster, just kick out the old one and replace it with the same class. It's honestly the best compromise I've seen. Like even the Tactics Ogre remake wasn't that kind because you couldn't recruit someone with all of their skills learned.

You know a game is doing something right when you see Blade Grasp untouched from Vanilla and you're like "lol no, I don't need that shit equipped right now."

This fight is Algus. He's so ugly that he kills girls when he looks at them. That said, he's just a super Plague, so beating him isn't terribly difficult, and I was a Time Mage which seemed to be the perfect choice for that fight. So as long as you don't try to strong arm your way to victory on this one you're golden.

I can't say your team was ideal (Poison and Counter Magic strategies are by far the most efficient ways to get rid of him), but you got through just fine. Algus is literally just a regular Plague with ??? stats and a 4 move set pasted upon it (such that you're not having a boss that can cast White Wind and such). As such, his HP isn't as balanced as it could be (most boss classes run off a slightly different scale, with better growths/worse multipliers than playable classes, to better scale with quadratic damage in an extended fight). The event is still slightly derpy - idk how to make it look like he's using Look of Devil in the event which would make a bit more sense...

Welcome to ch 2!

I guess I could have gone counter magic, but I didn't have a leveled Plague and Ramzastein is too busy learning other stuff to get it right now, and poison wasn't learned at the time on the account that I didn't grab it yet. But yeah, I can definitely see that as being a better choice. But hey, I didn't die, so it's ideal for me because it's my team. It's nice not knowing every trick in the book . Makes me feel fresh again.

As for Look of Devil, you could have Algus look at her, and she screams about how hideous he is and faints. Only to have the dialogue hint that Teta actually died from the Self-Destruct bomb. Self-Destruct is still a nightmare to face especially with how tanky bombs are.

Next week I still do want to get some comments in about chapter 1 to sum up my thoughts, I felt it'd be more appropriate to get that settled in next week when I can start shuffling through Ch.2 videos easier as well.

Just a post talk, fights start next time: