Despite some problems here and there, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is a enjoyable game for everyone.
Final Fantasy Tactics: Wars of the Lions is set in the land of Ivalice. You take the role of Ramza Beoulve, the youngest son of the royal Beoulve family. With your friends, you discover secrets of the wars and of the zodiac stones.
FFT is a turn based strategy game, mixed with some RPG elements. You fight on a square-like map, with different landscapes and heights such as river, forest, grassland, lava, etc. Each type of landscape will effect your damage and movement. Characters fight in turn, based on their speed and actions. In a turn you can move, act or wait.
Battles' difficulty is varied; random monster battles are quite easy, boss battles are from okay to hard, and zodiac boss battles, which involves a lot of trial-and-error, are very hard. The battle system is kinda hard to understand, especially when the tutorial is so tiring.
When you're outside battle, you'll see yourself (Ramza) on a map, where you can walk from spot to spot. You can modify your party, read tutorials, look at your treasures, and save here. When you walk from a spot to another spot, there's a chance you'll encounter monsters.
There's a handful type of equips in the game, which are divided into categories like robes, swords, hats, normal clothings,... Some type of armor/weapon can only be worn by a specific job(s). Jobs are one of the best things in the game. Players can choose from over 15 jobs, each with it's special armor/skills/weapons. You can also pass a job's skills to another jobs, so there's lots of customization here. At first, you only have 2 jobs, but as you level them up, you'll unlock more.
The graphics here are quite outdated. The color doesn't feel lively, animations are simple, but the high-tier skills looks nice, like Firaga, Thundaga, Blizzara, summon spells. Cutscenes are amazing, with cel-shaded movies. Characters' portrait are really cute.
FF Tactics' sound are as old as ever. Background music occasionally seems to make you sleepy. The worst stuff is the sound when a character dies, it sounds like a loud "beep", which can be very annoying. Voice acting is good, with people-with-British-accent(?) speaking something like Old English (though not all words are in old english), but voiced dialogues only appear in cutscene, in normal dialogues, there's only a irritating sound when a dialogue box appears
One of the fun things in FF Tactics isLots of things to unlock. You can unlock class, special non-storyline related characters, boss-only equipments, event equips,... Sadly, if you miss out on one event, the only way to get it is load an earlier save file, because there's NO NEW GAME+ . Really , the PSP port should have a new game + option, -almost- everyone hates starting from scratch.
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The Good:
[+] Fast-pace, intense battles.
[+] Great character customization system.
[+] Nice cel-shaded cutscenes.
[+] Many things to do even when you "completed" the game.
[+] Great story.
The Bad:
[-] No new game +
[-] Background music is boring.
[-] Steep learning curve with boring tutorial.
------- OVERALL: 8.0 -------
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions' a great and lengthy game for anyone who have an interest at turn-based strategy.