Aah Real Monsters!

Let's talk trained monsters. I want to know if anyone actually took the time to charm and raise a monster in this game to the point where there was actually a point in using them in place of a human character. Has anyone actually done this and found it better that way?

Side note... Mediator is the suckiest job, in my opinion. I hate using monsters in battle so there's no reason for me to learn how to charm them. The only reason they're any decent at all is because they can equip guns and you have Mustadio or Chemists for that! Bah.

I can't say I have ever used a monster before, actually. Nor have I used any non generic characters beyond obligatory Ramza, actually!

Boko never gains acceptance into my party. We don't stoop. :|

(And Mediators are fun! Silly fun!)

I had a couple of those in my party once...

I think that's about it.

I thought this was going to be about the show. Then I realized it's in FF Tactics. Either way, I am deeply disappointed. Using Behemoths is pretty cool.

I experimented with this my first time through the game when I was trying out every new job available. I haven't bothered since.

Sometimes when I play, I send out 2 chocobos and the rest generic+Ramza, and I have 2 Knight generics ride the chocos. :)

I like the mediator class :p

I actually love Mediators and they are great for altering Bravery and Faith stats. :p

On topic...

I do use Chocobos cause I love watching my knights and Dragoons ride them and the movement boost is a major thumbs up. Byblos is also pretty decent considering your get him so late in the game. Behemoths and Dragons would be fun to use in a party but mostly I use monsters to have a never ending supply of poaching material.

The PSP version gives you even more of an incentive to use them thanks to Luso's innate skills and the fact that you need a specific monster if you want to get the insane stat bonuses from the Mastered Onion Knight Job class.

It's a shame that there wasn't a breed of Chocobo that sacrificed offensive ability for movement ability. When you have all of your characters equiped with Fly or Move +3 it really diminishes the advantage you can gain from riding a chocobo.

Which is unfortunate, I though the ability to ride chocobos was one of the coolest things in the game. Its a crying shame it wasn't more practical to just have the chocobo act independently.

When I first started I used a party with two Red Chocobos in it. With their mobility, range and stopping power they could always get into position and start picking of the squishies causing problems in the back. Dual ChocoMeteors will finish of most non physical classes, and their movement abilities usualy allow them to get to places where they can strike at vulnerable targets and keep themselves safe.

As fun as having my chocobo hit squad run around in circles decimating the enemy force the problem with monster characters (to me) is that they don't require any maintenance in the menu. To me half of the game is learning abilities, getting new equipment, figuring out new builds, etc... With monster characters you don't get to do that.

I agree that "monster" classes needed more customization and available abilities. That probably would've made them much more appealing to me. I sort of had the same mindset concerning the game being based on the strategy of which abilities you learned and how you utilized them. Not many options to make this really possible with "monsters". Eh.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I actually love Mediators and they are great for altering Bravery and Faith stats. :p

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Agreed. Nothing better than turning your target into a chicken

Or, you know, kill them. :awesome:

Turning them to chickens is more amusing

People, People. No need to fight.

The obvious compromise is to turn them into chickens, then kill them.

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Originally Posted by Zombiesaur

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I actually love Mediators and they are great for altering Bravery and Faith stats. :p

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Agreed. Nothing better than turning your target into a chicken

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I would use them on my characters too to raise their Bravery/Faith stats. Although they don't last beyond the battle, they do increase slightly so that I can basically make an amazing BlackMage/Summoner with powerful Magic attacks. And I agree that Red Chocobos are quite useful.

I did a lot of breeding and poaching of my own monsters, so I used Mediators a lot. In addition there are several points like learning Zodiac and finding rare treasure with Move-Find where lowering Faith or Brave came in handy.

Reis is underutilized unless you have at least one Dragon ally, but I found my favorite monsters in battle were Tiamats: flight, three way attacks, insane physical power, plus a long range (if random) attack.

Sucks that Tiamats can't use their high PA unless they Counter... Tri-Breath is based on Max HP, Tri-Flame/Thunder are MA...

They're so broken it hardly matters. Fortunately there aren't very many battles where they're on the enemy side.

I believe that there was a series of threads on GameFAQs where all monsters were deemed inferior to human characters with the exception of certain monsters under the care of Reis.

This sounds about right. I imagine that a dragon near Reis could become more powerful due to the battle mechanics.

Given that you're only allowed a certain number of characters to deploy, I wouldn't find it that helpful to "sacrifice" two of those positions for Reis and a creature that only becomes beneficial when Reis is near. Sounds like too many limitations, personally.

What monsters lack is versatility. Even generic humans have more flexibility. I tend to avoid using monsters in boss fights for this reason.

Reis' most useful abilities are the dragon breath attacks, which do not require an ally dragon. The rest of her primary skillset are wasted without dragons, but not by much.

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Originally Posted by oddler

Given that you're only allowed a certain number of characters to deploy, I wouldn't find it that helpful to "sacrifice" two of those positions for Reis and a creature that only becomes beneficial when Reis is near. Sounds like too many limitations, personally.

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I would not necessarily look at the slot that Reis takes up as a sacrificial slot in the sense that Reis is a regular human unit and has the versatility that BG-57 mentioned. I, personally, only use the special characters for the course of the entire game except for Chapter 1, occasionally, so this is the only thing that would make sense for me, I think.

Otherwise, being able to recruit and attack with monsters becomes more of a trivial thing to me.

I used the Tiamat version of the Hydra's a bit in a few playthroughs, they can put out some decent damage and i was breeding them and other Hydra types for the Poaching stuff anyways.

I've used a Red Chocobo for quite a while. He was very useful in lieux of my allies who were gone on jobs.
I must admit, I only got him from Boco.
Otherwise, I only charm and breed monsters in order to poach them for :bou::bou::bou::bou:.