Xios

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About Xios

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  • Favorite Games
    FFVIII, FFT
  1. Final Fantasy Tactics 1.3

    [caveat: i would give this 4 stars because some elements of it seem to be clearly fundamentally unbeatable, and only in later revisions from the version i played supplied items necessary to beat what appear to be some kind of gag-superboss (cough kanbabriff) on the version i had. but, then again, everything this game has done to me-- i mean, taught me-- points me to believe, maybe there really was some hidden path forward, that i just wasn't able to find.] well. this game too me seven years to beat. i matured as a PERSON through the course of time this game took. i say this in no way to brag, but just as context: i pulled a 145 on the IQ test and a 99 on the ASVAB. this was unironically the most difficult and confounding thing i have ever completed in my life. i don't know if something was glitchy in the patch, or i screwed something up mapping it onto a clean copy, but the things this mod puts you up against are utterly asinine. the 5 v 10 madly overpowered archers in deep dungeon, the absurdly powerful archers at the wall of bethla garrison, the stacked-to-hell colliery, the team of 10 monks and monsters that cast a *permanent* gollum summon... i can't tell you how many times i hit a fight in this game that i chalked up to 'impossible,' 'hopelessly broken.' one specific fight (bethla garrison, actually) was optional, as you can take the other route-- and for five or six years i thought it was a prank-- deliberately unbeatable. finally i found the only way to get around it was to cast berserk on your own character so the AI de-prioritizes killing it, then buff and heal it as your life depends on it, while the spked berserk PA steamrolls the terminators you're fighting for once. some of the newly-invented end boss abilities are abysmally destructive to your entire ability to even control your characters, and so many things are so bloody difficult that this game is ALMOST unplayable. almost. a-l-m-o-s-t. and it's in that tiny, helpless, dim, asphyxiated little sliver of desperate helplesness on the very edge of death, that you will spend your whole existence in this game. barely, barely, barely surviving. working out the gears of not just every possible character build, but gear-character-team-range-tactic-movement-rhythm-order-cycle conceptualization and implementation that you can possibly wring your brain out to get the last little bit of juice for. this game is exhausting, absurd, difficult beyond reason or measure (--and i'm pretty sure they made the post-boss floor of deep dungeon literally and actually unbeatable just to spite you and show you who's still daddy-- which was one last little squeeze of lemon juice in the eye at the end of it all). the final boss? has to be the most masterful and brilliant creation of any enemy/enemy team i have ever seen in any video game, period. the way they integrate, the abilities, the threat they pose... an absolute masterpiece. i am still in awe of just how impressive it was, and what an experience. AND HOW EFFING DIFFICULT THIS WHOLE GAME WAS, did i mention. the sense of satisfaction is proportionate to the challenges and absurd difficulty that is presented. many fights in this easily took me six hours. finishing it was a bittersweet mix of, "wow, that was an insane accomplishment" (and lives up to the name, insane difficulty), and "wow, that was an insane and astronomical waste of my time." i totally got sucked into this so many times, when i was in the headspace of playing a leisurely hour of FFT as i may have once remembered from the original... instead baited and taunted by it's difficulty, feeling 'certainly a solution must be within reach'-- only to lose... way too much of my time and life being egged on by this game. so that's my honest warning to you... this can be MORE than a time suck. a soul suck. a mind splitter. i began when i was trapped in the el paso desert wilderness without any kind of cell phone, internet, television, roommates, neighbors, people... (it's a long story) and few things to do other than read, write, work out, or play this maybe-slightly-cursed little ditty. at the very end, being so close to finishing it, this strange game continued to taunt me and pull at me-- i had to beat it. but the final fight easily took three weeks of............... way too much time every day, frankly. like i said, it's *thus far* been the most difficult thing i can remember completing in my life, eveyrthing else included. so it leaves me with this strange mixture of, an extreme sense of accomplishment, and.... an extreme sense of time wasted, my exact version played was 13030. i know there have been some clean ups and patches and improvements and additions and.... it seems like the thing was never truly 'finished' but just continued evolving. it's on my thumb drive in a file titled F://JUMANJI , because that's literally what this is. it's maddening, potentially deeply satisfying, and most of all, maybe just slightly cursed. (i also heard the RNG was kind of bugged on it; i can't tell you how many times i've been chain-spanked on getting clapped by something with 3% ten times in a row while whiffing 92% odds as many times. but who knows. everything you know to be true about math or life will be in question when you're done with this if you pick this thing up.) thank you for coming to my ted talk. after all this one put me through, it's kind of cathartic to be able to come here and give it a eulogy. it took everything i had to murder this game, and even then it still has a few fights that appear to be unbeatable. i chalk those up to either being literally broken beyond belief by accidents and overlooking, or just sadistic eternal snark left as an enduring memorium of Archael. i never met the guy, but he was clearly a genius for having built this-- and maybe a little mad, as well. like i said, it lives up to the name. i just qualified for Special Warfare in the US Military. they say to make it you have to be pretty sharp, exceptionally stubborn, never know when to get up, and a high-capacity problem solver against 'impossible' problems. i like to think the little slice of logic-strategy-and-tactics-hell this game put me through helped further build my confidence in solving problems in the face of what seems to be sheer impossibility, and find the faintest glimmer of hope from which to hammer out the slightest excuse to win-- as a habbit. God knows i spent probably a little too much time growing that ability with this thing. as a famous man once said, ... Jumanji.
  2. i feel ya. maybe we'll revisit this in another three years. hahahaha. i have plenty going on as well and probably shouldn't be devoting any more time to games in general... so if i drop off the grid on this one, it's been good getting to at least connect briefly and attempt to tie up a loose end from the past. ya'll are good guys. hopefully i'll see you around again at some point. cheers fellas.
  3. thanks fellas. 5 days left on that drop canvas before it expires. happy to reupload if it were to come down to it, but not the best at remembering to check in on this site. if nothing else i wish someone would at least give monks a runthrough just so i can get my card punched
  4. Thanks boss. Here it is: http://dropcanvas.com/su30s CONTENTS: - The patch I was playing, for convenience (1.3.0.6 unless I'm mistaken) - The dated file: the save state immediately prior to attacking Bethla Garrison's North Wall - "Bonus" battle for reference: The Monks/Sacred/Trees fight at Delta, with the ridiculous infinite-Gollum problem. (Still curious-- this just started popping up halfway into the game. Is this deliberately difficult, or a bug? Anyway, I successfully beat this fight, for those who have been giving me sh## So this is available as a bit of a litmus test for those curious.) (There are two files, one before going into the fight at Delta, and one as it begins, as there are a couple different options you may draw from the deck.) For anyone interested in giving this a shot: As stated above, the idea isn't just to SURVIVE North Wall, it's to steal all the bows and the Rubber Costume, without losing anyone. You can change all the job classes and builds as you desire, but you can't go farm any elixirs. Bonus points if you can crystalize and eat everyone's soul. And yes, if anyone manages to do this in under 15 minutes in video, send the paypal link and lunch is on me.
  5. Word. I mean I get that, across the board. This was just me finally getting through a locked door after years and responding to the damn thread I started a little late too the party. And by late I mean like Captain America being thawed out of ice. Bummed that it's too late for anyone to give a rip Ohhhh welllll.
  6. i'm thinking @Kyrios is the one i'm looking for in the transfer over from ID. if this is still worth anyone's interest. if not, what's the song lyric, "things change, people change?" haha. either way, cheers.
  7. Yeah not surprised, it's been awhile. FFT Monsters... that's... extensive. I'm dizzy just reading the posted description of the 3.0 updates. Very interesting.
  8. (I know, we're on, like, 2.6 now, right?) ALRIGHT, first, let me say, this post is intended with *massive respect* to all parties, and any snark anyone picks up from me in this or in future posts is intended to be benevolent and upbeat. I feel like I just got out of a freaking time travel loop guys. You may remember me (somewhere in the farrrr back of your minds) as Hezekiah from this post originally on ID: [Link to ID post] Well I got locked out of that account, and in the midst of all the ID admin problems, THERE WAS NO ONE TO LET ME BACK IN. Like, for years, guys. Years. I was thinking about trying to bother someone on their youtube account to get in touch with someone FOR me so I could get back on. Maybe there was a better way to get in touch? Some forum somewhere that would've told me? IDK guys, I don't have time to read everything or hunt; life is busy. Too busy to be playing video games honestly... but here I am anyway. It's been forever and a day, but I'm still down to upload my save state, along with the version of FFT it correlates to (title says 1.3030). I know this is an old version with way different parameters than some may be used to currently. As you may gather, I'm also NOT a major tech guy. Coding, patching, even the best way to upload files... ionno mang. I just play the games, I don't work on them. But I'm not the noob sauce ya'll seem to think I am. I swear this fight ain't easy. All that being said, Advent, I'm calling you to reassemble the Super Friends from the first thread and get this thing going. I want to pick this up where it left off. I want to deliver on a years-old promise that probably everyone's forgotten. Maybe I'll get schooled hardcore. Maybe I'll get a sprinkle of respect. Who knows. I want to find out. I want you all to know though, whoever does get pulled back into this, that my reason for posting in the first place, was because obviously we all love this game. Maybe a little too much. It wasn't to try to measure dicks with anyone, to noob-rant, to complain that the game is too hard or sucks or whatever. I swear some stuff was glitched-out or broken in places in this version and I played through it anyway. I have mad respect for how much more LEGIT and AMAZING this game was made vs the ridiculous brokenness of vanilla. So as long as you guys can appreciate that my perspective and posting this is out of a place of like, "dang, this pizza is crazy, you gotta try a bite cuz I know how much you love pizza," and not "GUYS, I'm the shizniiiiit," then I think we can all appreciate this together. OR someone is just gonna WRECK me and then fine, it's been settled. I appreciate Archael pointing out that I had special parameters for this fight. I'm not just trying to beat it. The way I played this playthrough was EVERY fight, EVERY piece of rare gear had to be lifted, and ideally, every opponent crystalized and absorbed. So, here's the criteria I'm looking for: 1) You must steal all six of their bows, and the Rubber Costume. 2) Ideally, all enemies must be crystalized and absorbed. 3) You have to work with what's on hand. I am 100% confident I could fulfill these requirements if I had a decent stock of elixirs-- maybe a dozen? But you get what you have on hand: 3. 4) Goes without saying, but you can't lose any characters or gear. It''s been years since I've even touched this save state. I will surrender that I have grown in my knowledge of deeper game mechanics, concepts and strategies far alternative and apart from my normal "style" of play, etc. Maybe someone will just take me to school here. I recognize that possibility. But, after so much ado, I feel it's necessary to finally get this up. Finally, I did NOT name my characters Tara, Tiara, and Dick, so don't give me hell for that. They showed up like that in the first fight. I was like "Seriously guys, seriously???" But that's the 1.3 experience in a nutshell. **********As a bonus, I'll put up the hardest fight that I DID successfully complete, the Monks+Sacred Delta fight, with the ridiculous Eternal-Gollum thing that I still never really knew whether was deliberate or a bug. As stated to Advent below, the first person who completes either of these in 15 minutes with the given parameters, I will paypal $25 for lunch on me. Now, is the easiest way to do this just to hit "attach files" to this forum? In response to the original posts, since I can't respond on ID: QuadPolar: Parameters clarified above. (As for the grinding to 99, I just took it in one shot. I had no way to know 40 was as far as you had to go. Fun fact, when I was playing this? I was trapped in the desert outskirts of El Paso/Juarez Mexico, with no internet or tv or cell reception. Magical days. No access to any information, just playing blind.) Ludovician: Definitely an old version. Again, trapped in the desert. I didn't even know what patch the thing was on, I just had it on a drive. I was of the mindset not to update the patch but beat it as it was. I figured updating the patch may make things different or easier, and I just wanted to headbutt my way through it. Advent: Rude. Haha. I'll say this: if anyone can beat this with the parameters below in 15 minutes as you say? I will paypal you $25 for lunch on me. Straight up. Gonna need a video though. Bishop: gosh I wish I knew what that image was. Philsov: Thanks for being super helpful. Nefarious: If that works as well as it sounds I'm gonna owe someone lunch. Appreciate the response. Emmy: Agreed and understood. When I was playing this, and posting at this time, I didn't understand there were ongoing revisions and rebalances based on feedback. I just thought, you could hang, or you couldn't, and I wasn't going to complain about anything. I just thought that maybe it was meant to be like, "You're dumb for attacking from the front, so now we will punish your dumbness with this miserable battle from hell." Archael, if you ever happen to see this: You caught what I was saying about stealing their gear. Maybe this just somehow reaaaaally played to my weaknesses, but I beat South Wall on the first try, and came out of it with a nice Rubber Costume and a Faith Rod, which was wildly important through the rest of the game for me. -- Also, if you ARE reading this, massive appreciation and respect for this crazy machine. Remaking this is, like, way out of my pay grade. Thanks for everything, here and on ID, etc. ZaFire: I leveled everyone as a total scatter as I just went for JP and expanded job classes. I'm sure in the land of 1.3 this was a major mistake and hurt my stats.