FFTA2 First Impressions?

[Dragonsoul]

I don't know about that yet, let me check when I see it. The game is great, I'm getting used to it.

I'm trying to estimate the length of this game. I think that right now quests are averaging 15 minutes each. That means you can finish 4 in an hour and if there are 400 quests thats 100 hours. Maybe the main quest is 30 hours long by itself, not sure though. Then maybe 20 hours more for any other side quests or stuff. Then maybe 30 hours more for some extra levelling up and job mastering at the end. That may mean that this game is a total of 180 hours for a 100% completion rate atleast? Does anybody have any idea of how long the game is?

[Yar]

One thing I really appreciate about this game is the foreign language options. I really want to learn French, and this game is actually helping.

[Krelian]

You could always import the European games then. They always have several languages on one cartridge. Since DS doesn't have region codes there's only the price that could be stopping you

[Roto13]

Anyone else notice they got kinda lazy with the way certain abilities look? Jump and the breath attacks for Dragoons looked cooler in FFTA to me. And casting ninjitsu looked cooler too. But other than those 3 minor things, this game freakin rocks.

Jump looks more-or-less the same as it did before, but the Dragoon's breath attacks look a lot nicer. In FFTA, they were just three different coloured puffs. :P In A2, they're big crazy cones of fire/electricity/cold.

[wylantar]

Jump looks more-or-less the same as it did before, but the Dragoon's breath attacks look a lot nicer. In FFTA, they were just three different coloured puffs. :P In A2, they're big crazy cones of fire/electricity/cold.

Yeah you got a point, the cones do look nicer. I just liked how the "puffs" rolled out along the ground =P But still! Check out the ninjitsu, theres not that little puff of smoke that comes from your hands when you cast anymore. I guess I was just expecting the ninjitsu to atleast have different magic animations instead of using the same animation for two different spells, like "Water Veil" and the sage spell "Water"

[Roto13]

I finished the main story today. :P It took me about 75 hours and 250 missions. I was doing every optional mission that came up as early as I could. More spoilery details in a random order:

(SPOILER)The main story is over around when the second page of the Grimoire is filled. Once you go through the credits, you save again and come back right before the final mission, only now a bunch of extra missions are open in the pub.

Vaan is a lot cooler in A2 than in XII. It's like he... ate Balthier or something.

Al-Cid is hilariously awesome. I haven't played as him yet (I just recruited him after loading my finished saved game) but he was in a couple of missions already and he was great.

The recruitable characters with special classes (unless there are more, which is possible) are Vaan (Sky Pirate, a lot like a thief), Penelo (Dancer), Hurdy (Bard, which is an awesome support class) and Al-Cid (Agent).

There is a mission (well, it might not count as a mission, but a battle) that's a one-on-one fight between Adelle and someone else. Unfortunately, I hadn't used Adelle at all so she was at level 10 and going up against someone at level 25. It did not end well for her. I have to grind her up and try again.

Once you start figuring out some cheap combinations of abilities and privileges, the game gets pretty easy. I'm going to start setting limits for myself for the extra missions. No more Halve MP + MP Channeling + Magic Frenzy + Illusion for me.

MVP awards started coming incredibly rarely later in the game. I never did finish anyone's MVP statue.

EDIT: Mewt is in the ending. He looks a lot like a hardcore lesbian I used to work with.

One of the story quests later in the game involves fighting imposters of Vaan and Penelo. :P They look fantastic.

There's a scene where Vaan and Penelo mention leaving Nono on Lemures. I'm assuming that happens in FF XII Revenant Wings (I never finished it because it was so awful) so I'm wondering if this game is canon in the FF XII Ivalice after all.

[KH-Cloudy]

About 18 hours in..and haven't played the FFTA for GBA.

I seem to like it so far and read only up to page two of this thread. Thanks for the useful ffta2 wiki / jobrequirement! It's going to help me since I don't know which quests gives what job.

I like the laws..actually because they help make a challenge during the game. Also makes it more fun since it's going to be a bit harder.

The only thing I don't like so far is how long the quest reopens since you've either failed it or didn't make it in time. 200+ days seems a lot..

[Roto13]

Some quests take that long and others don't. There's a cabin in the Aldanna Range where you can sleep for up to 200 days at a time.

[Dragonsoul]

Great work Roto13! You finished already!

[Skyblade]

Finishing a speed plot playthrough so I can go back and do it on hard-mode (I always try a new game on default/easier settings before I tackle the harder difficulties). There's a lot of good things in this game, though there are a couple frustrations.

First, the quests to unlock jobs. I don't mind the idea of doing quests to unlock jobs. It's a good idea, and some of the quests are awesome. But you have to be about halfway through the main story or more to unlock the most powerful ones. I don't mind waiting that long to train those classes, but it totally ruins your stat growth when you're stuck levelling as basic classes for the first 15 to 20 levels.

Then there's the law that is really annoying, "Don't harm the weak". You can't take any offensive actions against a lower level enemy. This law only shows up in missions where either you don't have to kill enemies to win, or you get an ally to help. Now, for the no kills to win, it doesn't matter much, but the ones with an ally suck. My characters were level 40 and the mark I had to kill was 25. So I spent a few turns healing the ally (who was a Green Mage and most unwilling to attack) until I decided to say "to hell with it" and unleashed an Ultima Masher on the boss (oddly, it seems that if the move that breaks the law also ends the mission, the mission ends before the laws are cancelled).

And finally, there's the quest that can only be completed through dispatch, that the game gives you the option of taking on without dispatching someone. If you take on all the quests yourself, you might spend a couple tries banging your head in frustration before you finally decide to dispatch someone to take it out. (SPOILER)You have 6 days to travel to 3 different areas and talk to 3 people in them. Unfortunately, the quest designers seemed to have overlooked that talking to the people takes up an extra day of time, so you wind up 2 days short no matter what.

(SPOILER)I agree with Roto that Vaan seemed to die sometime between XII and A2, and was replaced by a character with a personality (and an awesome one).

Also, Roto, have you tried doing single character battles to boost MVP? I know that Illusionists generally kill things too fast to get MVP status (4 attacks isn't usually enough to earn it), but when I let my Assassin Ultima Masher everything, she tends to get MVP fairly often. Statue is over halfway, and the first gem has appeared in it.

[ljkkjlcm9]

IF you played Revenant Wings, you'd understand Vaan and how he is now IMO

THE JACKEL

[KH-Cloudy]

I haven't finished Revenant Wings yet, about 80% through with it though.

EDIT: Thanks for the cabin part.

[Skyblade]

Roto:
(SPOILER)The Gifted side quest to unlock Heritor (which is the one-on-one mission with Adelle that I think you were talking about) was really easy. I didn't use her that much either, but I did teach her abilities (since everyone gets AP). She had enough Thief abilities to become a Ninja by that time. So I equipped her with a Ribbon, Ninja Gear, Ninja Tabi, and two Ragetsu-Denbus (one from the Gun Gear-Screamroot-Lightwing Crystal from the AH, and one from the urn of that "keep them out of the water" mission you hated. :P) so she could dual wield. Mission started, she attacked him from the front, he moved and shot her from behind and missed, and she back attacked and ended it. Since evasion is independent of level this should work any time, and, if Adelle knows it, you can equip Archer's Bane to dodge his basic attacks.

[Roto13]

There aren't a lot of abilities that can help you in a one-on-one fight against someone who is 2.5x your level. :P I had to level up at least a little bit.

[Skyblade]

About the little moogle statues that you get for every 50 quests:
(SPOILER)I just got my third, and it is clearly Nono. I'm guessing then that the statues are all of Montblanc's siblings. That being the case, I'm really wondering what the significance of them are, and what happens when you complete all 400 missions...