Is it harder than FF tactics? It looks more varied and more in depth
I'd say it's just as hard but it's actually more forgiving, what with the ability to undo bad turns and gain buffs from the tarot cards.
Your choices matter and there are 3 routes: Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic. It's no coincidence that every character has an alignment (and a nationality) and they will react to your decisions (and your kill count of their fellow countrymen).
This is the best guide I've found and it's spoiler free too: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/999440-tactics-ogre-let-us-cling-together/faqs/61842
I'm jealous you're starting it now as I wish I could experience this wonderful game anew. It's my favourite ever trpg and I have several hundred enjoyable hours logged in it (it has several dungeon maps that are worth your time for the loot you find.)
Don't use too many archers or ninjas if you want a challenge, or conversely if you want to have an easy time use a bunch of those. They're hideously broken, archers especially.
Big time FFT fanatic here looking for a similar title. Although I must say, this game looks pretty deep and I feel that I am either trying to do too much too early or I am missing stuff.
What should I be looking out for? Do I need to worry about crafting early on, or should I wait? Do I seriously need to level up 10 characters? What's up with Beastmaster, is it worth the trouble?
Also: I am a little disapointed by the ability system. I much prefer the FFT style and I regularly get pissed off when I see certain jobs can't use other jobs' abilities.
EDIT: Thanks a ton for all of your input. The game is very vague.
Keep multiple saves and keep a save at every major decision.
Keep a bow on all your characters until you really feel their skill set is rounded enough.
I found recruiting a lizardman really helped as they're a bit stronger than knights, equip him with a hammer as they get a bonus to hammer attacks that puts them that bit forward.
Canopus is essentially the FFT:WotL Cid-lite of this game.
Death is permanent, so keep multiple saves of your main game, as you'll be reloading a lot since this game is very very difficult and you'll lose characters too easily.
Warlock is a great spellcasting class for your main character that starts out poor but gets godly if you want him to be a mage, they get a multi spell hit move that is probably intended to be used on teams as it spreads out the blasts.. but when cast on a single opponent all the blasts hit that opponent, making them great spellcasters. I made my main character one and it REALLY helped with this next point...
Keep your main character well equipped and levelled, there's some rough team-difficulty bosses he'll need to solo IIRC.
The fact that ~90% of the abilities in the game aren't cross-class is going to seem really dumb and limiting at first -- but it won't be long before you're using eight to twelve of your party members in every battle you fight. So basically, instead of having five characters that each have the abilities of two or three classes, you'll have twelve characters that each have the ability of one or (rarely) two classes, so it kind of balances out.
Also, the devs mentioned in an interview (that I can't find right now, unfortunately) that while they wanted to focus on RPG elements in FFT, they really wanted to focus on tactics/strategy elements in TO; this is also something that becomes more apparent later in the game. Compared to FFT, the maps in TO are both huge (and I do mean huuuuge) and incredibly complex in terms of terrain and enemy placement, especially when you start doing the late game/post game content.
I wouldn't worry about crafting just yet. The whole system is pretty slow and archaic to be honest, but it's worth checking out once you start finding some of the really good recipes, which won't be toward/after the end of the main story anyway.
Two things about leveling. First of all, you level up classes, not units, and the more units of a particular class are in your party, the more XP that class gets -- so one archer in a group will only get an average amount of XP, but if your entire group is archers, the archer class is gonna net a whole mess of experience. Second thing: there's a throwing item called the lobber that you can buy in shops -- or if you can't buy it yet, you'll be able to eventually. This item basically turns anyone in your party that can equip throwing items into a chemist, granting them the ability to toss items like potions, status cures, buffs, debuffs, and elemental bombs at allies and enemies. You can upgrade your lobber into a lobber +1 with crafting, increasing the range. I highly recommend you pick one of these up; it is great for power-leveling because you can basically turn anyone in your party into an excellent healer. My rogue has one as her off-hand weapon.
Honestly, any class is worth the trouble in its own way; irrespective of their abilities, you can pretty much make anyone into a powerhouse through good weapons, good armor, and finishing moves (don't forget to equip the unit's corresponding weapon skill [if they're using whips, equip the whip skill] or they'll never learn their finishers!). Having said that, beastmasters can be nice -- provided that you either recruit beasts all the time (which can be a decent money-making scheme if you sell 'em off later), or that you use beasts in your party. Beastmasters get two useful buff skills: the first increases any one beast's damage to a ridiculous degree for one attack (with a properly-leveled beast, this buff will allow you to take down very nearly any enemy in the game in one hit), while the second is an AoE buff that increases the accuracy of nearby beasts to 100% for their next attack (this one is great for hitting faraway enemies with boulder toss, the default ranged attack for beasts, which is moderately-to-highly damaging but woefully inaccurate). Just watch out for dragoons later on -- that's a mid-game class that specializes in taking down beasts and dragons, and they will -ruin- a party of beasts/beastmasters.
Anyway, I hope all that helps. Tactics Ogre is one of my favorite games of all time, so feel free to ask any other questions you have!
Oh and by the way, don't worry about missing stuff or making the wrong choices during the game -- you unlock a system at the end of the game that lets you travel through time to pretty much any point in the story you want, so there isn't really anything that's a "once you've missed it you can never get it" scenario.
Also how should I use the magic scrolls?
Also why can't Canopus equip a great bow?
Abilities: It varies over the game, as early, mid, and late game all change things up. By the way, your first playthrough is still early game. Because of how damage calculations work, you want to prioritize, on all classes:
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Weapon skill for anyone who actually fights with a weapon. Only weapons you should be using are Daggers, 1H Katanas, Bows, Crossbows. Spears and Hammers for your Valkyries or Knight types, maybe. Whips and one or two other weapons can have relevance later on in the game. Cudgels are a mixed bag, because your mages won't actually fight with the weapon, but they have cudgel finishers they can use.
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Anatomy (assuming you have a human / winged unit). Reduces damage.
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Strengthen for melee units. Increases damage significantly.
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Spellcraft for damage spell mage units. Increases spell damage significantly.
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Spellward for everyone. Not just damage spells, but status inducing spells are very problematic, and spellward is your one skill against it.
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Swiftfoot, maybe Jump can be useful too, but that's later in the early game phase.
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Augment <Element> for the mage units. A mage should be using one or two elements, and for at least one, the element should be augmented. Will increase damage.
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Double attack from ninjas (can be used by one or two other classes as well).
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Field alchemy can be useful for certain units like Canopus. Certain missions with guest NPCs who die quickly will need healing, and Canopus can use a lobber to save them.
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You'll need to deal with dragons at some point, and also recruit them. Beastmaster with Tame will become important. A dragoon with that particular dragon slaying skill will help you a lot when you starting fighting them.
There are other skills like Nature's Touch on Shamans and what not, but you're at mid game or later if you're looking at those.
Please avoid: Fortify. Misleading, because damage calculations and enemy setups make this a useless skill. Most other skills are too conditional, IMO.
Also how should I use the magic scrolls?
You learn them. For example, with an enchantress, who you want using fire magic, you can teach her from the party menu the appropriate skills. There's a learn ability. Using the scroll in battle directly will also learn the skill, but it's not usable unless the person is a mage, with the right element skill equipped (and at the appropriate level). The one scroll you tend to use a lot though, in battle directly, is the Exorcism scroll. That's because only Catiua and your clerics can deal with them, and you won't be using clerics for long. Having Catiua deal with entire maps of undead herself is too much, so you want your other units using scrolls. It won't be until late game that you can have some relief on this front.
Canopus' Vartan class can only use one handed bows. Switch him to Archer if you want 2H bows.
Please read the Gamefaqs site and boards on this game. It has some really opaque mechanics, and many things that seem intuitively correct are not. Warriors with 1H sword, e.g., are horrible setups because they are too slow. Archers, on the other hand, are top notch until end game.
It's been a while since I played that. I'll tell you the nuggets of what I remember because that game can be complicated knowing nothing.
Skills- they train slow as crap. Go for anatomy and try to focus on one weapon per dude seriously,it's grind frenzy or accept the slowness. Especially elemental stuff, which you need to be almost post game for recipe hunting and that takes forever.
Lowest CT characters(these are story dudes/ chicks Raveness and another, lawful route) turn out to be the best as melee Ninja's/Rogues. It's MUCH later, so it'll suck to train them up, but you have a bunch of plays remaining, they'll be boss. You know google that CT list. It's about right. Ninja's get better usability/survivability, rogues get slightly faster CT (it's like turn order), maybe a mov point more, and a pretty cool ranged wind move for post game if you built it up.
Your main character depends on the tarot rolls on his bonus stats/what you should go for. There is a cheat code to skip that.
Story characters have special dialogue in battles with enemy commanders they are related to, so even though some guys can be better you'll still wanna use them
Mages (it's a bunch of sisters from various routes really,and deneb)- they are LATE game. Almost post game. You seriously gotta do these long optional dungeons and farm recipes for their spells and accessories and such to bring the best of them. It'll be a long while.
EXTREMELY LATE POST GAME-soooo many hours--- You can make generic dudes (human only iirc) undead. So that's like auto revive/chantage. Yup. you can also make chaos weapons from generics so generics aren't trash. That's all very complicated, I refuse to speak of it.
EARLY GAME- You recruit you 3-4 generic hawkmen, go half and half with canopus so you got 2-3 bow users, 2-3 crossbow users- you won't lose anything with the high ground/lil corner you tuck to. You'll break the game,even vs 30 enemies on those castle maps.
Crossbows have maybe the best technical skill. Fire/aoe. Bows have a height/rangeless trick to them, but will be crap vs things like dragons/golems. You'd want some coverage of both. Daggers have low CT/ very nice with dual wield.
MAKE ONE Dragon. Don't let any of the other dragon types level up so he can later change and have gr8 stats. Give him um the no pass/control skill. He'll be a tank for a very long time to protect your cheezing archers/hit n run ninjas,etc..
There are 2 blowdarts to consider for your ninja/rogues to also add a low CT further range/special option. Charm (you can kill/earn their loot) and Petrify (just kills em a while). They can be very good.
You DONT want to level up a bunch of classes due to how class levels work on a global scale. You want as many of the dudes you are using to be THAT class. So keep a lid on how many class types you use in a battle. It can be 3-4 sure, but don't make it one of each class. That'll be stat gain wasteful.
Just waiting on the game to finish downloading on my psvita. Does anybody have any tips, hints, or advice for somebody that has never played it before?