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.
In the early hours of Final Fantasy Tactics, the Throw Stone ability is a fundamental tool in the game’s strategic combat kit. An early ability earned by one of the two default jobs, the Squire, Throw Stone is exactly what you think it is: a ranged attack where your selected character picks up a rock from the ground and promptly hurls it at whatever is in range. It doesn’t do a lot of damage, but it lets you do something on a unit’s turn, and that’s very important in Tactics.
Character progression in Tactics is built around earning both experience points and “job points,” the former increasing your character’s general level in any given job they use and boosting their stats, and the latter being a currency used to unlock abilities within jobs (the term Tactics uses for different traditional Final Fantasy classes, like Knights, Archers, White and Black Mages, and so on). You earn them every time a character performs an action in Tactics‘ turn-based combat—not when they move around the field of battle, but when they perform a major action, like attacking, casting spells, or using items.
Characters can pick and choose abilities from across jobs to essentially multiclass as they progress through the games’ systems; making sure they’re earning XP and job points efficiently is a key layer to the games’ strategy. You want all your characters in the field participating, not just letting your heavy hitters run in and get all the hits in. So push comes to shove, if they’re a melee unit who can’t get in range, or they’re a primarily buffing or healing-based character, getting the Squire’s Throw Stone is useful early on just so a character can pick up a pebble and lob it at someone. It’s a last resort to keep that efficiency ticking over.
But most importantly, in regard to Final Fantasy Tactics‘ themes of class struggle, Throw Stone can target anyone who’s in range, friend or foe. It’s not a lot of damage, barely double-digits at most. If you want the XP and job points at the most efficient rate, why not have your lowly chemist ding your nearby knight with a stone if no one else is in range. They take a teeny bit of damage, you get your points, and it’s all fine.
There are targets among your allies for this minmaxing temptation that are much better than others early on, however. Well, actually, there’s one in particular: Argath Thadalfus, a guy who sucks so much.
Players meet Argath very early on in Tactics. Main characters Ramza and Delita run into him being accosted by members of the Corpse Brigade, a revolutionary band that serves as an early antagonistic force. In Tactics‘ setting, the kingdom of Ivalice has only recently emerged from a half-century-long war with its eastern neighbor, Ordallia—a war that Ivalice broadly lost in suing for peace, having been financially ruined by decades of conflict. The Corpse Brigade is largely made up of disillusioned members of Ivalice’s peasant classes, brought in to fight the war on behalf of its noble families and then cast aside and left unpaid for their service, with no ways to support their families, already ravaged by the cost of the war.
Tactics makes it clear very early on that Ramza and Delita—the former the young scion of House Belouve, the latter his commoner friend—begin to realize that their life as training warriors-to-be is not necessarily on the right side of history as they’re drawn in to help put a final end to the Corpse Brigade. But Argath, who joins your retinue after being rescued, unabashedly and gleefully thinks otherwise: although his own noble family was disgraced in the war, Argath prides himself on his place above other people at every opportunity. He is arrogant and simpering in equal measure and deeply cruel—relishing in fighting alongside Ramza and Delita as they hunt down people he sees as little more than chattel.
Tactics knows this dude is a real piece of work every step of the way, and that’s part of what makes its opening so compelling, as you, the player, slowly come to realize alongside Ramza and Delita that you’re pawns in a much larger game, and the rot in Ivalice’s class structure runs deep. But it also means an interesting intersection of Tactics‘ mechanical and narrative design becomes clear. You have Throw Stone to maximize your leveling up. You have a guy in your party who is a snobby piece of shit that no one really likes. Throw Stone needs a target, and you’re not always going to have enemies in range to use it.
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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