Strategy-RPG at its very best.
Similar to the many Final Fantasy games that came before it, Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT) is a true Role-Playing game. You will fight random battles, gain experience, purchase weapons, and do everything that you will do in a Final Fantasy game, or any RPG in general. What keeps it apart from the rest of the crowd is the “Tactics” part (hence the name Final Fantasy Tactics). Instead of attacking and retreating to your spot waiting to be attacked, you will have full player control. Although you and your enemies will take turns battling, you can move your characters freely on the battle arena, similar to chess (I’m sorry if that’s a bad comparison).
In FFT, you play the role of Ramza Beoulve, who is the youngest member of a family of noble knights. After seeing many heinous acts done by his brothers, he eventually turns on them and the government. The story is extremely strong and has a ton of unexpected plot twists and betrayals. It will eventually get confusing the point when you don’t know what’s going on, but luckily the game keeps all of the main events and character bios in a journal. Unfortunately there is very little character development; only two characters develop over the course of the game, Ramza and Delita. There are many other exciting characters that emerge, such as Mustadio the Engineer and Agrias the Holy Knight, but they are soon forgotten.
There is no way Ramza can complete his journey alone. You start will Ramza and six other allies, and you will acquire many new ones as you progress through the game. They all start off as the two most basic jobs: squire, (a weak soldier) and chemist (pretty self-explanatory). They can later be upgraded to better jobs, thanks to the awesome job system.
Every time a character performs an action that affects another unit, whether is it an attack, spell, or whatever they gain job points. After battles these job points can be used to purchase new attacks in battle, and once you reach a certain amount other more advanced jobs will be unlocked. So don’t worry, your characters don’t have to remain as squires and chemists until the end of time; they can upgrade to better jobs, such as monks, summoners, and lancers.
Luckily, once you assign a character to a certain job they don’t have to stay like that forever. They can change to another one (assuming their job levels are high enough), and even two at the same time! Actually they can only remain in one job, but can use any attacks or skills purchased in any job whenever you want. For example, monks can’t equip armor, so what can you do to boost their defense? Why don’t you teach them the knight’s skill equip armor? Maybe you want your wizard (AKA offensive magic user or black mage) to have healing capabilities. Why don’t you try to learn some priest (while mage) abilities? Unfortunately job points aren’t universal, so you’ll have to level up the character in the specific job you want to earn points toward.
Pretty cool, huh?
Unlike most RPG’s, you won’t enter certain towns and be forced to take to many people. You will move on a linear path from city to city only to fight a battle, buy goods, hear rumors/do propositions (more on that later), and maybe recruit a new party member. This linear path system works extremely well and gets rid of all of the boring aspects of RPGs, such as wandering around in a city (you can’t “enter” a city, you get a list with the options of what to do) and getting lost. The only problem I had with the map is the location of the stores. Instead of making the best store located around the area you’re currently up to (what most RPGs do), there are three different types of stores that update their merchandise simultaneously as you progress through the game. Sometimes you are nowhere near one of the stores that you wish to buy something from, so this can lead to a lot of backtracking.
When you’re not fighting the storyline battles you’ll be fighting random encounters. The random encounters in FFT are the best I’ve ever seen in a videogame. I previously mentioned a lot of backtracking is involved. So that means lot of time will be spent fighting battles that are way too easy and get in the way, right? Wrong. The enemy levels are based on the levels your party is at, so enemies in random encounters will always be around the same level of your party, providing an adequate challenge every time. Luckily you should never have too many problems beating them, but they’re just hard enough to keep the numerous battles interesting.
Overall the missions in FFT are pretty tough. Some of them I won pretty easily, but some had me resetting the Playstation multiple times. If you expect to win every battle rushing to the enemies and taking them all out with a quick attack, think again. The AI is spectacular; the enemies will often use the terrain to their advantage. For example, archers will move to the most elevated area on the map, so they can easily hit any of your units below. Chemists will often hide behind something and only pop out to hit one of your units with its gun or revive a fallen comrade. In order to win you will have to use tactics similar to the enemies. Not only does this make the game a lot harder, but it makes it a lot more fun. Using tactics is what the game’s all about, not rushing up to the enemy and taking it out in one or two hits.
That’s not all of the tactics that are required in FFT. You’re forced to bring Ramza into every story battle, but besides that, it’s all up to you. If you want you can have a team full of mages, a team full of warriors, or even both. You can also choose where to place your units, instead of lining them up in a boring line (your only option in most RPG’s). Square also did a wonderful job making the numerous units so diverse. Some RPG’s contain characters that are pretty much the same, but have one aspect that makes one useful and the other(s) useless. This is not the case in FFT. Although I found myself avoiding certain units, every unit is useful and can be used effectively. There is no best job; it all depends on your personal preference. Some characters also have the ability to invite enemies to your party. So if you want some more units (Geez, the ones given to you aren’t enough?), any monster in the game is available, including the monster that was once crimpling your whole party with its lethal attacks and spells.
Although the battling is always fun, it will become boring after a while. Lets say you’re trying to gain job points in a certain job. Instead of fighting the same battle over and over until you have the correct amount, you can send a unit on a proposition. These send away 1-3 of your units (of your choice) to perform a certain task for a few days. While the units are away you can’t use them, but when they come back, they will earn a certain amount of job points depending on how successful they were. This saves you a lot of battling and time. The only downfall is that each mission can only be done once, so you have to choose the units you send carefully.
FFT is a long game, and will probably take most people between 40-50 hours. There are also many side quests available and a lot of hidden characters to get. FFT is so fun most people will want to play through it more than once. There is no multiplayer; imagine how cool that would’ve been. Luckily the long quest more than makes up for that.
Although not up to par with Final Fantasy VII, FFT is a great looking game. It combines gorgeous 3D backgrounds with 2D sprites, and looks very good. The best aspect has to be the spells, especially the summons. They look like they were taken directly out of FF7, a graphical masterpiece at the time. The only graphics aspect that could’ve been improved is the lack of different character sprites. Although they all look great, they are a bit repetitive, especially the generic characters. Square could’ve also added more FMV’s, but the cut scenes already look great, so that isn’t a big loss.
The music in FFT is excellent. Although no songs are worth buying (or downloading!), they are all good and fit the game very well. The best part about the music has to be the variety of songs. It’s very rare you’ll hear the same song repeated twice, even during random battles! So instead of hearing the same annoying song over and over you’ll hear 4-5 different songs. The sound affects are also solid, about up to par with the rest of the Final Fantasy series.
Final Fantasy Tactics is an amazing game. The amount of freedom you’re granted in battle is unmatched. It’s different than the rest of the Final Fantasy series, so those looking for a FF7 killer will be disappointed. But those looking for a deep, fun, and challenging game that’s slightly different from the rest will love FFT. This game rules, pick it up now.