Ivalice Playthrough

From farming the Return to Ivalice raids in FFXIV for the new Relic, my (perhaps boredom addled) brain decided that it would be a fantastic idea to do a full Ivalice playthrough some time, and I proceeded to eBay the DS games I was missing.

I won't be doing this quickly or even immediately, but I was wondering if anyone had any tips or pointers for any of the games or stories or anything for when I get around to doing it? (other than Fynn saying not to play Revenant Wings)

I completed FFXII back when it released, and played 80% of Vagrant Story when it released as well, but haven't touched them a great deal since then, and only ever dipped into Tactics (but I've played Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem etc)

What order do you plan on playing the games? I've played most of the Ivalice titles so I can always help with some advice on any of them.

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The generally regarded chronological order - FFXII, Revenant Wings, A2, Tactics: WOTL, Vagrant Story (and then Tactics Advance if I can be bothered to find a consistent enough light source to use the GameBoy Advance. Honestly, how on earth did we do that back in the day!?)

That's true, I love my GBA games, but man I had issues with the system. Once I got a DS that was backwards compatible I hardly looked back unless I was trying to play a Gameboy title.

So if XII is first, are you playing the OG or The Zodiac Age version?

Sadly I only own the 3DS models, which don't have the GB slot, as far as I know? To be fair, I'm going to emulate WOTL to get it more performant than the PSP (and I don't trust my PSP battery after all these years), so I could just emulate TA as well. (I own both games physically so that's fine) Would you recommend playing TA?

For convenience, and maybe new content (I don't actually know, outside of the job system what's new about the rerelease) it's gonna be The Zodiac Age version.

I'd recommend TA, though it might be hard to play it after TA2 which is vastly more interesting in terms of gameplay. YA1 has the better story and cast imho. Honestly, I would say RW will be the toughest entry to get into. The plot feels a bit of a retread of the Spira entries (not surprisingly since it had a few members from those games working on it) and the gameplay is fairly basic until you reach the end and the game decides to ramp up the difficulty out of nowhere because it expects you to grind the old areas to build the best items and power level your party. Vaan even gets a special sword that gets better stats every time you beat the game's super boss Yiazmat.

The Zodiac Age does change around a few things. Spells and items are placed differently from the original, so you can toss your old strategy guide if you were hoping that would help. The biggest additions are the job system and the Trial Mode which is a sort of boss gauntlet that lets you have some fun battles against the game's various bosses and mark hunts. What really makes it cool is that there are several new and original boss battles added into this mode to keep things fresh for veterans. Overall, the job system and reaarangment of all the game's items makes the game feel really fresh for anyone familiar with the original.

Hopefully, by the time I get around to playing TA1, I'll have reset enough that the lack of gameplay improvements made by A2 won't be a bother, but we'll see. Yeah I expected RW to be annoying - there's no chance I'm going to be grinding a super boss.

Ahh okay - not sure if I'll bother with the Trial Mode stuff. I guess I'll see how much I enjoy the battle system this time around to see if I fancy it. I'll probably end up playing most of the games with some kind of guide to make sure I don't miss stuff and get the most out of my playthroughs - aint nobody got the luxury of time these days in order to go exploring every corner of old RPGs.

My copies of RW and A2 arrived today so I'm all set :D

You can be loose with guides when it comes to Ivalice games. The titles have some elements that really cater more for a grindy hardcore set of the fansbase, so I'd just stick to the part of the guide that gets you through the game.