Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
I disliked abilities in FFT because it was nothing but "grind". In FFTA2, you don't get access to everything at the beginning. In some ways, this is annoying, because the best jobs for stat training are locked until later in the game (stupid Parivirs). But in other ways, it is much more fun for me. Rather than spending three hours at the start of the game mindlessly performing the same actions over and over again (Chakra spam, anyone?) to gain JP, I get to fight the battles as battles, and I get AP afterward. You can't unlock all the abilities right away, so you get some customization to pick and choose where to focus your strengths. You get enough freedom that you can unlock whatever ability you choose, but you can't just unlock them all immediately. It allows greater customization, prevents super characters early on, and discourages mindless grinding.

I mean, as long as all the abilities are availible at the beginning, why didn't they just give us all the abilities and skip the mindless farm fest?

I'm not expressing myself very well on this point, unfortunately, and, even worse, I'm drifting away from focusing on the positive aspects and how the games would relate to the next in the series, so let's get back to the topic.
I feel the system is more to my liking cause I can go in grab what I want and leave the rest of the non-essential skills for when I need to do stat boosting. Thieves irritated me to no end in TA cause I stuck learning their useless skills when I would have preferred to get their steal equipment abilites (They are even more obnoxious in TA2). Paladin's are another class with a few decent starting abilites and some excellent abilites that the TA series won't let you touch until 30+ hours into the game or if I get extremely lucky...

Grinding also has its perks due to some stat manipulation from Faith and Brave but I also I found I can learn how to use a class better through it. I usually take out all enemies but one and then I have a character (usually Mustadio) incapacitate the last guy and then let my party go FFII on each other. It shortens grinding a bit and allows you to experiment with skills and really check the classes out. You can do this in the TA series as well but you lose the short term goals of gaining extra JP/EXP since TA feels those need to be ration out equally. I like straight up battles but I feel my grinding set up allowed me to learn the game better and I enjoy coming up with new methods of using classes and party setups by practicing on each other.

Beyond that, I just try not to go overboard. I usually wait until I notice my party has enough JP to purchase a skill and go on if even that. Its all about finding your own pace.


Secret Characters: This point applies to all of the games, so I'll go over them all. The special characters are great. Unique jobs, unique sprites, great personalities, and fun missions to unlock them. But they aren't perfect.

First, limited story after they join you. With these awesome characters, it's a shame that they never show up in any of the plot scenes after the join you. For some of them, they join so late that it doesn't matter, but I would like to see at least small appearances in the stories after they join up. Take Frimelda. When your clan is sitting around the cities after the missions, she should be there if you have her, and get a couple lines. Same thing with Ezel in FFTA (others aren't availible until after you beat the game in that one).

Second, let them join at low levels. You usually don't get these guys until late in the game, and picking them up at too high a level to stat train means that they tend to be weaker than the rest of your team.
I agree that I wish they were part of the story more. TA probably did it the worst, especially since so,e of them lose their special classes or abilites if you change their job class.

As for low levels... it depends. Cloud is a pain in the ass in FFT since you get him incredibly late in the game and his level one doesn't allow him to be useful... You just about have to do my grind strategy just to get him up to par.

I do miss special class quirks, in that a few of them are strong based on different stats. Using Cloud again from FFT as an example... His Limit Break skills damage are all based on his MA stat rather than his Stength. Another great example is Vaan in FFTA2 in that a one of his skills is based on the number of successful steals (just like Zidane's Thievery ability) which makes speed a better stat to raise him in. I just love these quirks and would love to see more of them.

I also like how in FFT, some of the special character have inherent flaws and you needed to utilize the job class system to counter balance them. I just love this cause I felt it was for the veterans of the game who knew the systems well and loved to tinker with the characters.