The Franco-Taiwanese Alliance

I finally got the goddamned PSP to update itself so that it would play Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions and sat down on the couch, ready to put in a nice, solid hour of badguy-whackin’ before bed.  Alas, it was not to be…

I got past the introductory battle by dicking around in the back and figuring out how Squeenix renamed all the skills, while Agrias and Gafgarion did all the work on the front line.  Some cutscenes rolled, and I was put down in the second battle of the game, the first real fight.  I dug through my meager troop selection, found out that I had a couple of female badasses (around 75 Brave and Faith each), plunked down a 75ish-Faith chemist and another random male squire, and then the familiar map faded in.  I remembered it giving me problems before in the original Final Fantasy Tactics, because of the enemy chemist who went around tossing potions to all his buddies whenever I damaged them.  So right at the opening of the fight, I sent Ramza and one of the supersoldiers after him, while the rest of the gang hung out with Delita to take out the enemy squires.

Ahh, Delita… you magnificent bastard, foil of my every plan.  The fight started out just fine, with Delita running around recklessly smacking enemies like a headless chicken, and my troops putting down the guys he lost interest in.  It was a slow process, but Ramza and his companion took out the chemist with no real problems.  Along the way, though, my other uber-chick fell in battle.  No biggie, I thought… just mop up the remnants in less than three turns, and she won’t disappear.  So I refocused my efforts on taking out the rest of the enemies as efficiently as I could.  Part of that plan, however, which ended up being the fatal flaw, centered around assuming that Delita would attack the nearest enemy, especially if that enemy was just about dead.

I ended up with two nearly-dead enemies about half the map apart, with two full rounds left on the death timer for my unconscious babe-sassin.  Delita was standing between the two enemies, but closer to the one that was on the edges of the fight.  So I merrily issued orders sending the others away from that guy, assuming Big D would take care of him for me… big mistake.  He jogged on over to the other enemy and hit him with a sword.

What’s wrong with that, you ask?  Delita took care of one of the remaining dudes, it shouldn’t be a big problem to take out the other and end the fight, right?  Wrong.  Near the last man alive was the corpse of one of his friends who had fallen early in the battle.  Right after Delita’s turn ended, said friend turned into a sparkly little rejuvenation crystal.  The Last Man Standing casually strolled on over and took it, regaining all his health.  Two of my troops were able to reach him, but weren’t able to remove his newly-refilled hit points before my precious sleeping femme fatale faded into crystal herself.