Summons?

[Cake]

i have played the old version of this game and the Summons were weak did they fix them in this version?

[Scarlet Crusade]

They can stay out for longer, and you can change their gambits, and you can even manually control them if you want, so they're better than they were, but... still pretty much not worth it.

[Nightmare]

Originally posted by Scarlet Crusade:

They can stay out for longer, and you can change their gambits, and you can even manually control them if you want, so they're better than they were, but... still pretty much not worth it.

were they that bad? i hunted them all and i could use them on some fights , ofc i wasnt gonna use a level 1 one vs a high level monster

[Scarlet Crusade]

It's not that they're necessarily "bad", but they're not as good as having the other two party members you're sacrificing to have them out. There's a few niche situations where you might maybe want to use an Esper, but the vast majority of the time, you're better off with a full party.

[Khalen]

Summons certainly took a swan-dive in viability in FF12 and 13. I barely used them in either game as it felt like it broke the flow of the battle. Perhaps I wasn't using them 'correctly' but I didnt like them in FF12.

Most of the design effort seemed to go into the Quickening system and learning how to chain off those abilities... I assume that system hasnt changed much since IZJS.

[oda.iori]

Originally posted by Scarlet Crusade:

They can stay out for longer, and you can change their gambits, and you can even manually control them if you want, so they're better than they were, but... still pretty much not worth it.

No.

You cannot change their gambits.

Mist cartridges are eparated from MP meaning you won't use MP for Espers or Quickenings.
Once you summon an esper. You can switch their gambist on and off.
You can control them manually.

Esper stats have been buffed from the original FFXII to the IZJS, but they still useless (situational at most) so the developers buffed their HP immensely in TZA, the maximum HP being 32767 they can be Bubble'ed to 65534 (65535, anyone get the reference?).

This immensely buff damage potential of a few espers since their attacks are HP based.

Shemihazai: Devour Soul uses Knot of Rust damage formula.
Exdeath: Meteor: deal random damage 0~max HP or 30k damage (50% each)
Zeromus: Gravity well uses Balance spell damage formula multiplied by 2
Zeromus: Big Bang uses Balance spell damage formula multiplied by 5

A level 99 Zeromus has the biggest damage potential of all espers being able to defeat the judges at trial level 100 with two Big Bang, the first one taking 3 off them. Level of the esper is tied with its summoner.

[Cake]

Thanks for the info guys now i think i'll get this game when it's on sale