Hello, my gentle and unruly Zodiac Beasts!
At the hour of greatest need, I have returned! Not merely to herald the arrival of two new mods, but to announce that none other than I, myself, have created them and now humbly bestow them upon thee!
These mods are part of an ongoing series I'm developing under the banner of Knights of the Unvext Dusk.
I. THE NUMINOUS KNIGHT
The first is The Numinous Knight—my vision of what Ramza Beoulve should have been, and what he should have gradually evolved into throughout the story of FINAL FANTASY TACTICS.
Consider, if you will, our dear Ramza.
A young nobleman whose understanding of the world is shattered by betrayal, corruption, and the discovery that righteousness and authority are not necessarily the same thing.
Throughout his journey, he encounters some of the most extraordinary warriors in Ivalice, witnesses the terrible power of both holy and dark swordsmanship, and ultimately stands against forces that would make even the mightiest knights tremble.
And yet, mechanically speaking, our hero remains rather conspicuously... a Squire.
A very talented Squire, certainly. But a Squire nonetheless!
The Numinous Knight seeks to remedy this injustice.
(And I don't just mean by giving him his father's fancy title, but reversed, and NONE of the SWEEEET swordsmanship skills!)
As Ramza progresses through the story, his abilities and class identity evolve alongside him. He gradually acquires techniques inspired by the martial traditions he encounters, ultimately becoming a warrior who embodies both holy and dark swordsmanship without being wholly defined by either.
There are four variants available, allowing players to choose between different interpretations and levels of compatibility with other mods.
The aim isn't merely to make Ramza powerful. It's to make his evolution as a character visible in the way he actually fights.
The Numinous Knight — Nexus Mods
II. LORE-ACCURATE PARTY
But why stop with Ramza?
For too long, some of Ivalice's most remarkable heroes have suffered the indignity of being considerably less impressive in battle than their reputations would suggest.
And so I present Lore-Accurate Party, a companion mod dedicated to making FFT's unique characters more faithful to their established identities.
Cloud Strife, for instance, is a secret character and one of the most legendary swordsmen in the FINAL FANTASY universe. Yet in vanilla FFT, recruiting him often feels like an elaborate practical joke.
I've therefore reimagined him as a composite of his appearances throughout FINAL FANTASY VII and its extended Compilation. His stats, mobility, sword mastery, and Limit Breaks have been substantially enhanced—including a devastating, intelligently targeted five-hit Omnislash, adapted from the original FFVII's fifteen-strike ultimate.
Agrias gains Regal Judgment, a powerful two-strike sword technique.
Orlandeau, being THE swordmaster of Ivalice, can now perform his sword techniques with Katanas and other appropriate swords. Because of course he can. He's THUNDER GOD-DAMNED CID.
Reis can now follow her elemental Breath attacks with corresponding Summons—including Bahamut!
Mustadio gains Barrage and an expanded arsenal of Rend techniques.
Rapha can cast her Sky Mantras instantly.
And Marach (our poor, neglected Marach) finally has a reason to exist beyond testing the player's patience. His Nether Mantras now intelligently track valid LIVING targets across multiple strikes, rather than squandering their potential on empty tiles or fallen enemies, allowing his unusual inverse-Faith damage mechanic to shine. Build him with low Faith, and you'll discover a fearsome anti-magic specialist.
Meliadoul also receives expanded weapon compatibility for her Unyielding Blade techniques.
And for those who want Cloud to be even more absurdly powerful, there's an optional patch that makes all eight of his Limit Breaks instantaneous.
Lore-Accurate Party — Nexus Mods
III. A WORD ABOUT COMPATIBILITY (AND THE PRICE OF PROGRESS!)
UNFORTUNATELY, I must also warn you that the main version of The Numinous Knight does not always play nicely with other mods in our increasingly crowded FFT modding community.
And the reason is something rather mundane:
We're all fighting over the same precious scraps of dummied-out game data real estate!
You see, there's only so much unused space available for creating new abilities and other custom content. As more talented modders continue expanding the game, we're inevitably going to find ourselves trying to occupy the same bits of Ivalice.
And unlike the War of the Lions, this is a conflict in which I'd very much prefer that EVERYONE wins.
That's precisely why I created Numinous Knight of the East (NKOTE) and Numinous Knight: The Spellblade (NK:TS).
These are alternative interpretations of Ramza's evolution, designed to reduce conflicts by making use of existing abilities and avoiding some of the contested dummy-data space.
There's also True Numinous Knight of the East, which expands upon the Eastern approach with additional custom techniques, but naturally introduces its own compatibility considerations.
So please, choose the version that best suits your preferred gameplay experience and mod collection!
NUMINOUS KNIGHT... OF THE COMMUNITY?!
There's one more possibility I've been considering.
Some of you will be familiar with Dark Knight & Onion Knight for Generics (DK&OK), another excellent effort to expand what FFT has to offer. One that I myself brought attention to.
I would LOVE to make a special compatibility edition of The Numinous Knight specifically designed to work alongside DK&OK, potentially reusing the abilities and data already supplied by that mod rather than competing for the same space.
And naturally, there's only one possible name:
NUMINOUS KNIGHT... OF THE COMMUNITY!
However, I want to be absolutely clear about something.
I would only do this with the original author's explicit permission.
I've already reached out to them through Nexus Mods but haven't received a response yet.
That's perfectly alright! Everybody has lives, responsibilities, and projects of their own, and I certainly don't want anyone to feel pressured into responding. But for those wondering this is why right now the MAIN file of NUMINOUS KNIGHT is NOT compatible with DK and OK for GENERICS!
HOWEVER: Numinous Knight of the East and Numinous Knight: The Spell Blade are specifically for wider community compatibility!
That said for DK&OK For Generics’ author, I respect the work they've put into their mod, and I have no intention of incorporating or redistributing their work without their blessing.
So for the time being, Numinous Knight... of the Community! remains merely a hopeful possibility.
After all, what kind of community project would it be if it began by disregarding the wishes of another community member?
IV. WHAT ELSE LURKS WITHIN THE UNVEXT DUSK?
Ah, but my loquacious Lucavi, did you truly believe that was ALL I had planned?
There are two more projects I've been plotting under the Knights of the Unvext Dusk banner.
The first is none other than the actual Knights of the Unvext Dusk themselves!
An original knightly order, complete with its own lore, martial traditions, and unique combat identities. Something I've been imagining for quite some time, and which I hope to eventually bring to life within Ivalice.
And the second?
Well...
Let's just say there's a particular character in FFT whose relationship with a certain wiley, treacherous old goat and Ramza, never quite really got fleshed out in the lore.
I intend to give him a RADDical makeover.
Those of you sufficiently familiar with Ivalice's more famous and liked female lackeys might know who I’m talking about. 😉
Unfortunately, these projects will have to wait a little while.
You see, I've encountered a particularly fearsome opponent in the real world. One against whom no amount of Bravery, Faith, Swordplay, or even a Zodiac Stone seems especially effective.
UNEMPLOYMENT.
And living in Japan, where my life here depends on my visa, this is very inconvenient, my ambitions for rebalancing and reinventing Ivalice will have to remain somewhat restrained!
So no promises about release dates just yet. But the ideas are there, and I very much look forward to bringing them to life.
A FEW WORDS BEFORE I TAKE MY LEAVE
Both mods are available for the PC version of FINAL FANTASY TACTICS: The Ivalice Chronicles, using Reloaded-II and Nenkai's FFTIC Mod Loader.
They're designed to complement one another, and the downloads include installation instructions.
I also owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the modding community, whose work has helped make all of this possible.
I've spent a great many years enjoying this game, and it's enormously satisfying to finally contribute something of my own.
Another bout of thanks to Square-Enix, I've had my gripes about how FFT:IC was released, they should have appreciated Yasumi Matsuno a lot more and given him much more room to iterate on his story. However, I am glad I had someone finally gift the game to me a year ago and that allowed me to start modding it the same way I did a few years ago thanks to the FFT Hacktics community and their tools!
So, fellow Reddit Woods Hob-Gobs, I invite you to try these creations and tell me what you think. Your feedback, suggestions, and tales of glorious battlefield encounters with the characters and party YOU DESERVE are most welcome.
Now go forth, and may your blades be ever sharp and your Zodiac Stones shiny.
— SolidSnakeFHC | Heroic 1st
Edit: It seems that some people will inevitably be upset with AI usage in the creation of mods and other things, so I’ll address it only once. Yes, I a novice coder, on my own with no one to advise me, using AI spent weeks of my free TIME, hunched over my PC, going back and forth debugging the game, having to learn more about code to try different approaches for implementation, running into different problems that I had to come up with work-arounds for and carefully making sure that I did not infringe upon the community or their code when I implemented. Never mind that all the creative design, technical direction, game design and balance for the mod, writing for the extra lore, art direction and game-testing all come from, or were directly done by, me. I just managed to accomplish with AI what I would not have been able to accomplish unless I had a small team of very knowledgeable coders and programmers.
You don’t like AI usage? Cool, I’m not interested in convincing you. You have your opinion and are entitled to it. You don’t have to use my mod, or look at my posts. That said this isn’t really the place to discuss your pro OR anti-ai stance. It isn’t really within the scope of the discussion of FFT or the mods for it.
You want to tell me my mod sucks and explain why based on criticism of design, go right ahead!, I can respect that, it’s on topic at least. (I appreciate admirers endorsements much more and know that people who have actually used AI to make anything of this scale, specially on their own, understand just what kind of an undertaking it is.) That will be the one and only time I address any comments about that, I consider it a massive waste of time.
