Final Fantasy Tactics A2/Headscratchers

• Why is Luso in his school uniform at the end of the game? When he says "I wonder what today has in store for me" or something like that, he is wearing his uniform, but school is over. I'm willing to say lasy devs, but can someone think of something better.
  • Possibly it's his everyday wear and not necessarily a school uniform.
  • Or maybe he was going back to school, there was no mention on how much time passed when he said that.
    • I'd like to spend my summer holiday defeating monsters in another dimension with a Five-Man Band...
  • School Uniforms Are the New Black
  • I always though it was closer to a callback. he was wearing the uniform before he got bejudged and then he entered his battle uniform. So I thought that he had changed back after leaving the clan, thus losing the new uniform and going back to the old one, witch was his school uniform.

• When you fight Ljda, one of the Gifted Ones, why does she not have any Heritor abilities?
  • Maybe she just knew different gifted ones that happened to have Meaningful Name(s). I always figured it was kind of like how Babus and Ezel in the first game were advanced alchemists and didn't have pure-Alchemy techniques.
    • She didn't even have her own skill, though.
    • No Gifted One uses their skills, but their Gift appears somewhat by what defines the battle with them. Ljda fights you with monsters (thus her ability is to charm other units), Elde sacrificed herself to keep other people safe (thus that ability kills Adelle to revive every other character), Viola died of heartbreak (and her ability does more damage the more you are hurt), Wermut asks you a potion for his broken leg (hurts and slows)... Ok, some connections are tenous at best, but bear with me, it makes sense.
  • Remember that Adell unlocked her own power last. She had to put a lot of work into learning the herritor power before she got her own. As to why they arn't used, there could be a few reasons.
• Since this is the real Ivalice instead of a world that was created by the desires of Marche, Doned, Ritz, and Mewt, would that mean that the book is capable of just transporting someone to a world of their desires, or is the Ivalice in this world just something created by the desires of Luso? Or was the world of their desires actually still around after they defeated the Li-Grim and sent them back, then evolved into the Ivalice seen in Final Fantasy XII?
  • If it just created an alternative Ivalice instead of putting them in the real ivalice (implied in A2), then is this the "real" Montblanc while the montblanc in the first Tactics Advance game is someone imagined by Marche?
  • The one in Tactics Advance was a false one created by the Gran Grimore. The one in this game is the real one, seen in Tactics and XII. See, Mewt and Co. got the Gran Grimore, a Grimore that can alter the world around them. Luso ended up reading the Grimore of the Rift, a Grimore that flung him into an already-existing dimension. Different books, different powers, different Ivalices.

• What was Mewt doing leaving that book around in the library for? It's implied by the ending that he actually knows what the book would do. Did he drop it into a plothole and it came out in the library?
  • I like to imagine that the book just appeared in the library to appear before Luso. Kind of like the book in The Neverending Story.
    • 'The Neverending Story is a pretty good comparison for FFTA IMO.
• Why can't we keep the items that Adelle uses when she is possessed and fights you after you beat her? Sure it's still late in the game but those are some good equipment to have.
  • Not to mention the class itself.
    • You do get access to the class later as part of a side quest. Adelle didn't realize the potential of her powers until she was ready to accept it.
  • I think the strangest thing about that mission is that Adelle had the Lennart skill, and she hadn't even met Lennart yet.
• Who was the teacher in the prologue? Wasn't that "Mr. Randal"? I could've sworn the teacher in the ending looked like a woman, so can'tve been the same person... Not to mention the rest of that damn thing is confusing and too sudden. At least FFTA's ending had more emotion.
  • The teacher in the start of the game is Mr. Blair. The person Luso sees in the library at the game's end is Mewt Randel all grown up (the game does take place several years after FFTA so his appearence obviously changed) and he didn't look like a woman to me. If you paid attention to Luso's script throughout the whole game, he's pretty much happy with the adventures he was having and was ready to go home when the time came and once he did go home, he looked forward to what each new day would bring him. Then again, FFTA 2's main story isn't as deep, but probably was for the better compared to FFTA, which was controversal due to Marche's motives.

• OK, so there's a mission, a repeatable one, called For The Cause, where you donate some money to Carm Mercantile, the monster-preservation guild. Doing this one opens up the quest line about monster poaching, and at the end of that quest line, you find out that Carm Mercantile is actually a front for Khajima, and is behind the poachings. The weird thing is, even after finding that out, For the Cause remains a repeatable mission. So... what?
  • Donating enough gets you rare items, I was gonna kill those monsters at some point anyway.
  • Well yes, that's reason enough for the player to do it again, but why would Luso keep donating, knowing what he does?
    • Maybe he feels guilty about beating up Khamja's higher-ups. Besides, it's not like that simple White Mage in the quest has any idea of what's going on; Cid himself says that most of the rank-and-file in Carm Mercantile have no idea. More broadly, would you stop donating to the Salvation Army if a few of the people up at the top took whatever was most valuable and auctioned it off for their own gain? It doesn't make the actions of the higher-ups right, but it also doesn't invalidate the positive effects of the charity on the lower levels.
    • Would I stop donating to the Salvation Army if the head(s) were skimming off the top for their own gain? Abso-freakin-lutely. If no one else in the organization was smart enough to notice that "Hey, were not actually getting as much money as our books say we are," and no one investigates that, then they're not a group I'd be giving my hard earned Gil to.
      • Well, you're simplifying it immensely, and ignoring the fact that Khamja's smart enough not to make it too obvious, and that Carm Mercantile actually is doing good. Plus, hey, clan points and free items for a tiny amount of gil you'll make back in a mission or two anyway. What's the big deal?

• Why wasn't the Parivir class just named Samurai? Really, Parivir is much more esoteric than Yojimbo, and Final Fantasy already has a history of using Samurai as a Job title, so...? Not that I really see why they felt the need to change the name in the first place, but since they did, the choice just bugs me.
  • To say nothing of the fact that Square has used Yojimbo for stuff in previous games' American releases.
  • Maybe they wanted to use an esoteric word for it because it's a completely different setting than just about every other final fantasy game?
  • There are parivirs in Final Fantasy XII. (Only as random NPCs, but still.) It's played for consistency with that, is the main thing I can think of.

• So: Shield Bash. Requires a shield to use. Fair enough. However, it's taught by equipping a Beastsword. Beastswords are two-handed weapons. You can't use a shield with one, so you can't use Shield Bash while equipped with one, unless you teach your Gria Monkey Grip ahead of time. That's more than a little odd.
  • Maybe since Raptor is the only Gria job that can equip shields without Shieldbearer, and they didn't want Ravagers using it.
  • For that matter, why give Raptors Shieldbearer at all? I don't think any of their weapons are one-handed, meaning you have to fall back on Monkey Grip just to learn the skill. It would be more appropriate on the Geomancer, due to the oddness of poles as one handed weapons. In fact, the Geomancer's poles are the only one-handed weapons a Gria can equip in any circumstance, not counting Monkey Grip.
  • Gria (and Hume) Hunters can use knives (though I'll admit most daggers/knives are terrible).

• Dual Wield doesn't work with books. Why? Attacking with them doesn't involve reading them, just using them as bludgeons, so why is it impossible to hold two at once?
  • Have you ever tried to swing something as large as an encyclopedia or even a coffee-table book with a single hand? It's really not designed for that. REALLY not designed for that.
  • But they're already one-handed weapons, indicating they aren't that heavy.
  • Obvious answer: they're magic books.
  • Even if you can hold a book in each hand, you'd still need one free hand to turn the pages. Thus they only hold one book at a time.