Final Fantasy Tactics

"The Final Fantasy with leader ship qualities that brushes off vanity and shows reality of how a great game should be."

Final Fantasy Tactics uses the job system of FFV and is one of the first if not only Final Fantasy games that is a strategy game. Then again the way the game is, it is actually a strategy RPG. Well enough with the chit chat here comes the break down of the scores for this game.

Graphics - 8: The very first Final Fantasy that truly impressed me with good graphics for the PS that looked more than just advanced. The sprites are clear. The effects of the spells are vibrant. Only problem is a the characters seem to be missing noses and some of the summons animation seems to contradict their attack range. Over all very solid.

Story - 10: This is the second best story only second to Legend of Mana and I have played both of these games a lot.

There is always a since of despair in the game and the fact I can customize my party as cadets leads me to come up with reasons why my hired female Oracle decides to stay with Ramza. Yeah I know they start off as Squires, but I don't keep them that way.

Only problem with the story is the fact it is very repetitive. To give a none spoiling analogy pretend you have 20 people with fruit. 3 may have apples, 3 may have oranges, 3 may have oranges and apples, etc. Final Fantasy Tactics is like that a lot of it is repetitive. To give a real example how many brother and sister groups do they need anyway?

Another good aspect to the story is Ramza instead of being a super strong savior, he is a dedicated person and a great leader he may not be able to best many Square main characters but he can surely beat them at leading others to victory. This is a guy who can lead hired soldiers to defeat the final boss.

One other good aspect to the story is if you complete jobs at bars with out failing the job of course you can read about you characters did or felt which in my opinion adds a human touch to the story which is very emotional. There are time I read these more than I actually fight the battles and often I think about what happened in them. I love it when games are like this.

Music - 10: You have to hear this to believe it. Each tune is beautifully composed and always has emotional impact. No tune is bad at all in my opinion or least not bad enough for me to mention. This also has in my personal opinion the greatest final battle tune ever. The thing is just scary. o other tune has gotten to me like the final boss tune of Final Fantasy Tactics in terms of Square games and being scary that is. Fun part is there seems to be at least 2 tunes that play for random battles. In the end the 2 composers work well together for an exciting experience.

Challenge - 7: The game's challenge is strange it starts off hard then it gets too easy. The problem is when you start off the enemies are on equal footing with you in the story battles unless you over level up.

Sadly after awhile the enemies never try to catch up. It is like they never train. You'll end up against enemies in the final area who rely on the weakest potion in the game to try to beat you. Random battles can be hard for awhile but since you can avoid fighting them if done correctly they are a dead point however they are part of the challenge and in fact most of the score goes to the random battles.

This would have been a lot better if story line enemies leveled up and used more skills and maybe the final boss has a speed of 50 for a real challenge.

Another problem here is a lot of battles are gang up on the pathetic leader who is easily exposed for you to blast away at. Over all the lack of challenge in story mode ruins the game play aspect some what.

Game Play - 10: Now this is the way Final Fantasy should be. Characters have to earn things themselves mostly, but they are not stuck only being say a wizard. This in my opinion is a perfect balance.

In the game you have classes. If you gain enough levels in the right classes you will gain access to more classes. Some characters come with their own special classes and at least 3 of the story characters are cadets so if you want to go through the jobs at the bar with out giving up a story character you can.

Jobs at the bar are cool what you do is accept an offer and choose 3 characters max for it. Then you choose the days you want to to do the job for. Come back after the days have passed to the same bar and your characters will talk about what happened you may gain a treasure or land. You can't use them you can only read about them and you can go read about what your characters did in each job when you access brave story I be lieve. It is done in story format and add depth to a mini game that most mini games don't have at all.

Now then each Class comes with these abilities for the most part, but some don't come with certain thing. Ability is what you use in battle for example a White Mage has abilities such as cure, cure 2 and raise. React is where your character will do something based on what has happened to him or her. For example if a character has absorbed use MP from the Oracle and they are hit with cure 2 they will get MP based on how much it cost the caster to cast it.

Support allows you to do things you normally can't in a job or improves your character. For example two hands of the Samurai allows you to equip one weapon in 2 hands increasing attack power which is great for characters who only use weapons that do not work with 2 swords from the Ninja which allows you to use 2 weapons at once if not a Ninja.

Finally you have move which changes your move ability. For example Float from the Time Mage allows you to float 1 height off the ground. Each character can be one class at a time which determines their first ability and their stats, have one secondary which allows them to use abilities from another class they are able to use, one react, one support and one move.

This is where the fun comes in. You have to learn what works with what. Some times what is best is not so easy to know. With the right set up I can have Oracles that are superior to Knights for example. This is what is so fun about the system thanks to the way it is set up you are forced to consider how to work with it and find the best combinations.

Of course like any game getting to the highest level kind of removes a lot of the reason for this in the story battles at least.

Now then when you fight battles you choose 1 to 5 characters depending on which battle you are in. In story mode battles Ramza must be in your party. You will be given the battle's objective. They are as follows. 1. Save .....: Defeat all the enemies most of the time with out said character getting killed. 2. Defeat all enemies: Exactly what it says. 3.Defeat .....: You have to defeat the person in question. Characters have CT. Based on their speed their CT fills up at increments. So if A has a CT of 10 and B has a CT of 9 it goes that A will reach 100 first and get a turn to attack.

When your turn come up you can do these actions. Act which allows you to use any ability you have access to unless for example you are trying to cast a spell you do not have enough mp for. There are other restrictions too, but I won't get into that too much. Some abilities have charge time meaning they take a certain amount of turns to go off.

It is very important to see when the ability will go off to see it is not being wasted. Another thing to note is when charging a spell you character can have mp taken away from them, be silence so they can't cast, but if you cure the silence just before the spells goes off and restore enough mp they will cast the spell. So in other words a lot of struggle can happen in the strategy.

Move allows you to move your character anyway he/she can based on the blue panels. If you choose wait you will not do anything else until your next turn. Act and Move will leave you with less CT than Act and Wait or Move and Wait.

Wait alone leaves you with the most CT. Many abilities have effect ranges and rules of who they can hit. This is why you don't want to cast spell that will take so long the target can go next to your only living member and have him/her die from the same spell he/she was casting.

Monsters are interesting. They can not be changed like humans, but Monsters lay eggs which get you more Monsters. The level of the hatched monster is usually some where in the levels of you characters. Through a monster may not have as many options as Humans they are very strong and if they die well they are much easier to replace then humans especially if you let them lay eggs.

In the end there are tons of ways you can go through the game battle wise at least and there is one side quest or side story. I just love the way the way the classes are.

Over All - 9: Everything about this game screams perfection. The story is linear sadly which means you go straight forward from area to area for the most part meaning there are few surprise unless you fight random battles a lot. but the battle system and being able to have cadets which you can think of reasons why they stay with Ramza more than makes up for it in my opinion..

Also the challenge going from hard to easy makes it hard to get into the game and makes battles pathetic later on. I would suggest not over leveling up once you beat it the first time.

The story as said is well done, but can get repetitive. The biggest annoyance may be the kill the leader excuse me I mean bull's eye battles. These are way too easy most of the time. The music is however one of the highest points in a well done game.

One other thing to love about this game is when you use certain abilities your character may actually say a few words which in my opinion makes the abilities feel almost mystical and more than just simple things to use to get you by. I wish you could control when the sayings come up through that would have been nice.

This was the very first play station Final Fantasy I loved. I liked FF7 I did not love it. Over all the experience is one I will never forget in my life. Thanks to Square for getting the right people for the task of making this game

To Rent or Buy: Buy it. Get it whatever way you have to legally of course. If you don't mind challenge for awhile and you are willing to use you brain in other words actually think when you use a battle system then you can't go wrong with this game.

Games like Star Ocean 2 (one of my favorites) may have action elements but they do not compare to Final Fantasy Tactic's many ways of play. And speaking of Star Ocean 2 which I used as an example of an action rpg I say you should get that game to just so no one thinks I am biased against Star Ocean 2. Better safe than sorry.

Either way search as hard as you can because Final Fantasy Tactics is not easy to find in some areas due to the fact no more copies are made. Sadly you may only be able to rent the game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/01, Updated 05/22/01