Laggy Fantasy Tactics! I didn't actually read through the changelog, but it removes the need for Gained JP Up (so I'll actually think about what to set for support) and it removes Yell cheese (which is what carried me through any fight that seemed hard in FFT) and I can't really think of anyone I'd trust more with FFT's gameplay than Laggy and mc.
As Laggy is painfully aware, my challenge for this file is going to be the challenge of playing FFT without actually knowing how FFT works. Until Laggy mentioned it to me, I didn't even know you could check when a spell would resolve in the turn order, or that you could look at the turn order at all. All of Chapter 1 was played before I learned how CT gauges work. Any "feedback" from me is the feedback of a novice who cheesed through the vanilla game without learning anything about it.
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So I have Ramza learning Knight, plus a physically-oriented generic doing whatever with no real plan in mind, and a couple of female casters with no specific plans either. Chapter 1 gets wrecked by Knight Ramza with Maintenance, basically. There are a lot of knights to fight, they don't react well to getting their own stuff broken, and there's nothing they can do unarmed that I can't heal away pretty easily. Algus is actually not so easy and gives me some resets before I work out where to position people so that I can get my big Fire2 on him, then finish him off with arrows rained down from the roof while the rest of my party dies. This only worked because Algus missed a bunch of autopotions in a row; at the end, with only my archer alive and dealing a lot less than 30 damage a shot, I was screwed if autopotion started activating. But it didn't! So I enter Chapter 2 vaguely aware that luck had gotten me through Fort Zeakden and that my team isn't actually very powerful or well-constructed.
Dorter gives me a pretty intimidating reset right away. One of my casters gets charmed immediately, the thieves outslug me, my archer with weapon breaks doesn't really contribute enough. I switch him over to thief (keeping Battle Skill secondary) and try again, repositioning to avoid a turn-one Steal Heart. This time I get lucky: he swings twice with Weapon Break and takes out both of Andy's knives. Andy can still do 20+20 with his bare hands, though, and ends up killing a mage before I finish him off. I can't quickly disable the archers now, so I just tank through the barrage, hasting Ramza so he can get some hits in while Wishing everyone back to life. Eventually the enemy time mages run out of MP, get their weapons broken, and become useless. Archers can't kill Ramza and can't keep anyone else down while he's up. After about ten uses of Wish the battle ends favorably.
Saving Boco fight is uneventful. I use Ramza's Cheer Up on Boco and he takes the opportunity to get further away from the goblins; without him at risk, killing goblins with fire is trivial. At Zirekile Falls, Ramza gets an Mbarrier, has Maintenance, and breaks all the knights' stuff. And then their speed. And then Delita kills them with Lightning Stab. Saving Mustadio is easy too, though it ends up taking forever thanks to the X-Potion knight.
Bariaus Hill doesn't present much difficulty, although a lancer OHKOs my priest right at the start with a jump. The highlight here is when there's only a lancer with 100 HP left and he's retreated to the back of the map, one square from the edge of the cliff. With two dashes in a row (one from my monk, then another from Ramza) I send him off the cliff for a glorious 83 fall damage. You'd think lancers would be immune, somehow.
Zigolis Swamp somehow goes nightmarishly even though Seal Evil wrecks pretty much everything here. First a reset because my priest got killed immediately and Ramza got Stopped before he could wish her back. I try again, move my casters more out of the way and have them take one undead down with Silf+Cure. Ramza and my monk get hit with 100% Stop. I threw in Boco just to fill space -- I end up sending him to a side of the map on his own, where most of the enemies waste some time giving him about five different statuses. Mustadio is slowly petrifying the map from a distance, but everyone else is just getting Stopped and then one of the undead that I killed with Silf+Cure gets back up and kills Mustadio and everything is unpleasant. With 4 HP left, a zombie Boco finishes one undead off with a Chocobo Cure, killing himself in the process. Stop wears off and I'm able to mop up, but it's really ugly. That my monk can use Replenish on my priest ends up being very important here.
Goug quickly devolves into what a lot of battles have been: everyone dying except Ramza, who saves the day with Wish. It helps that the archers have trouble hitting him (one misses with what would have been a 180+ damage Charge+20 that I had no way of interrupting or avoiding) and the summoners decide to get close. I threw Boco in again for the fifth slot, but he gets poached by a thief. Oh well! There's a nice bit here where a thief goes for my monk and gets Hamedo'd to death. Eventually Ramza and my monk kill everything except the archers, which they can more or less ignore while the monk yells at Ramza and Ramza wishes at my dead casters. My monk dies, I wish up my priest, she raises the monk, both get shot at. My monk barely survives and is close enough to hit an archer, who gets finished off by Ramza. Then, more wishing for a while as the surviving archer fails to make an impression. Eventually I get enough people alive (and Ramza's speed high enough, by the monk's yells) that I can chase him down without having to worry about timers, so that fight ends. "It's healthier to keep your nose out of certain things. Like princesses and--" "What's a nose?"
Noticing that Mustadio has unlocked Mime while he's been away, I decide to try it out. One reset on Bariaus Valley. Afterwards I decide to try out Archer instead, and I reshuffle the starting positions so that my summoner can actually affect the main battle. The fight starts with oracle Ramza (I was trying to get him to mediator) getting berserked by an enemy oracle just before he can move, then retaliating with a 60-damage toad rod physical. This gets him a kill, although then he gets knocked out by some knights and the oracle gets revived. Agrias gets hit with Negotiate for 88% Stop and is out of the fight for a while. I land a Silf on a couple knights and a priest, but none of them die and a Cure3 heals back a lot of it. A death sentence lands on my summoner and priest.
Across the river, Mustadio charges shots at the priest while my geomancer trades physicals with the oracle. I wish I had a slightly higher Charge so I could get a 2HKO and spamlock her, but I don't so I can't. Then this priest hops across a rock and spends a turn healing away my Silf damage on her teammates, so Mustadio spamlocks her from there and they spend many turns thus engaged. My geomancer barely wins the duel with the oracle but ends up far away from the action.
Back in the main fight, I get another Silf off (finishes one knight), poke the priest to death with my priest from there, and get Agrias back when Stop wears off, so the fight's in my hands again. The remaining oracle and knight try to mess with Agrias, fruitlessly. I finally get a raise on Ramza while my summoner, without enough MP to summon anything, tries a Don't Move on the knight. It hits, so he sits there using Potions while Agrias and Ramza kill the oracle again. Then my summoner and priest die from their death sentence and I have to wonder for a second whether I'm alright: Ramza doesn't have Wish equipped, Mustadio is still unable to kill his priest, Agrias does 30 with Stasis Sword while the knight calmly heals for 30 with potions. Then my geomancer finally catches back up from across the map, finishes off the priest who's trying to hide in the water, and frees up Mustadio to go contribute damage with his charges. And a Stop from Agrias connects, which ends the healing, so the race to avoid crystallizing doesn't end up being as close as I'd thought.
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I gave Golgorand one attempt tonight, with a discouragingly lopsided result. Ramza was still on Oracle, to be fair, so really I should go fight a random and get him to Mediator so I can break things with a gun. The whole reason I'm training a priest now is because I'm aware of how reliant I've gotten on Wish; if I keep things that way, Ramza doesn't get to move his Battle Skill over to a new class now that he's learned all the breaks, which was the idea all along. So I'll have to get used to playing without free revival always available to drag out a fight until breaks and yells eventually tip things my way, which honestly felt a bit cheesy anyway. Still no clear idea what I'm doing long-term with my generics. The fighter guy got Hamedo off monk and I was thinking of sending him to thief next, maybe. One caster is doing summoner for a long time to learn the spells, the other is staying on priest to learn the spells for now, but neither one actually has an adequate reaction or movement set. They basically just picked up MAU and that's it for now.
Pretty excited to continue the file, assuming I actually do get past Golgorand eventually. I think the only uninteresting fight for me has been Zirekile, with the vast majority of battles coming down to tense situations. A better player would have probably breezed through a lot of the maps that gave me trouble, but I'm impressed that a mod made by experienced FFT players is still balanced for people who aren't necessarily experienced FFT players, and it sounds like you've included optional superfights as well to cover the spectrum. Basically it feels like playing a new (better, so far) game rather than playing a fan hack.
