David Bridges
Highlights
- Gameplay: Final Fantasy Tactics offers deep strategic gameplay, particularly with the use of abilities like Throw Stone.
- Character Dynamics: The character Argath Thadalfus serves as a target for the player’s frustration, enhancing the game’s themes of class struggle.
- Combat Strategy: Efficient character progression depends on utilizing all available actions, including Throw Stone, to maximize experience points and job points.
- Thematic Depth: The game intertwines its combat mechanics with political themes, illustrating the harsh realities of class conflict in Ivalice.
Final Fantasy Tactics has long been beloved as one of the highest highs of the series, not just for its grand strategical depth but for its sharp and frank political themes, telling a sweeping tale of fantastical kingdoms, conspiracy, the nature of power, the truth in history, and class and political violence in equal measure.
But revisiting the 1997 classic this week for its new remaster, The Ivalice Chronicles, its opening hours reminded me that it’s also really about the simple joy of beaning someone you really, really hate in the face with a stone, even when they’re ostensibly on your own side, as a viable political action.
What is the significance of the Throw Stone ability?
In the early hours of Final Fantasy Tactics, the Throw Stone ability is a fundamental tool in the game’s strategic combat kit. It allows players to take action during their turn, which is crucial in Tactics.
The Throw Stone ability serves as a basic ranged attack, enabling characters to pick up rocks from the ground and hurl them at enemies or allies within range.
How does character progression work in Tactics?
Character progression in Tactics is built around earning both experience points and job points, which are crucial for unlocking abilities. You earn points by performing significant actions during combat.
This progression system allows characters to effectively multiclass by picking abilities from various jobs, enhancing their effectiveness in battle.
What is the role of Argath in the narrative?
Players meet Argath Thadalfus early in Tactics, where he is portrayed as a character of disdain, representing the arrogance of nobility.
This interaction highlights the game’s themes of class struggle and the moral complexities faced by the main characters.
How does Throw Stone affect gameplay?
Throwing rocks at Argath becomes a form of cathartic release for players, emphasizing the game’s exploration of class dynamics.
This action illustrates a unique blend of gameplay mechanics with thematic storytelling, as players engage in a form of rebellion against a disliked character.
Throw rocks at Argath. Repeatedly. Every turn, if you can. You can always occasionally chuck a potion at him if you get so zealous in your class consciousness that you almost stone him to death, but that just means you can repeat the cycle. Do it because it feels good.
And really, it does feel like an act of class solidarity. Ramza may be a noble, but eventually even he realizes that Argath’s complete disdain for those less well-off than he is abominable. Delita, a commoner himself, is already at odds with Argath, and part of the reason why Argath ultimately splits from your group is when the jerk callously mocks Delita’s sister after she’s believed to be a noble and taken hostage by the Brigade. The rest of your retinue is made up of randomized characters this early on in the game, so you can tell whatever story in your head about them—and with Throw Stone being a low-level Squire ability, it’s easily acquirable by every character you recruit by default, so it really can be a point of commonality for everyone regardless of background or whatever you go on to train them as.
Everyone in Tactics‘ opening can be unified in hating Argath so much that they all want to pelt him with rocks as much as they want to get through a combat encounter alive, to put the high and mighty snob in his place stone by stone. After all, when we all throw rocks at a guy who sucks together, we all rise together.
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Brandon Fletcher
