Final Fantasy Tactics

"Best. Game. Ever."

Final Fantasy Tactics, easily one of the best RPGs ever created, has caused quite a few players to devote quite a large chunk of their time into playing the game. This little gem, despite Square having never released enough copies for it, has still found a way to become one of the best and most popular Final Fantasy titles of all time. The demand was so high in fact that Square wound up releasing the game as a Greatest Hit. There is a very vocal cult following behind Final Fantasy Tactics, be it an ivy league student writing the Battle Mechanics Guide, a fan of punk music creating one of the single most addictive challenges to ever grace gaming, or the multitude of people that continuously play the game and explore each and every single aspect it has to offer. The play that Final Fantasy Tactics has seen over the years is usually reserved for fans of multiplayer games to train themselves in their art for hours a day to stay one step ahead of their competition, but Final Fantasy Tactics has somehow struck the correct buttons necessary for it to be an addictive cult hit. How did it do it, you ask? Read on.

Storyline

Quick, rattle off all the necessary ingredients needed for an RPG to be amazing. The list usually revolves around gameplay, storyline, and to a lesser degree, the characters themselves. Final Fantasy Tactics delivers this perfectly. A lot of the more successful RPGs have had a war theme. Final Fantasy Tactics has one of these, and a huge one. The background seen in the game's introduction is that after the resolution of the 50 Year War, the kingdom of Ivalice was at a loss in terms of how to choose who the king would be. An inevitable war breaks out because of this, and Ivalice gets ripped in two. The game then goes on to note two characters in the introduction, Delita and Ramza. History calls Delita the hero of the Lion War, the former Squire who managed to overcome all of the odds and save the land from utter destruction. But a philosophical point then gets brought up. Is the truth really only that which we can see or experience with our own senses? These motifs are littered all over the game, and they add a tenfold effect to the overall behemoth that is the storyline of Final Fantasy Tactics. A young man named Ramza Beoulve is introduced, and Ramza is one who was branded a heretic by the church. Since the game seems to be based off of the many Puritan philosophies of the old England culture, excommunication from the church is one of the worst fates possible for a human being.

You then begin the game from the point of view of Ramza himself, and you play out his story. The game has a million different plot twists, subliminal messages, and various cathartic inferences to real-life desires of the superego. And that's only a small bit of what the game's story presents. Multiple discussions rage across the entire culture of the FFT fanbase to this very day about the true meaning of some of what is in the game. The game's story can be difficult to follow at times, but thanks to the insane replay value it has, you'll have multiple chances to understand what is going on. There is also a lovely option in the menu called the Brave Story that you can read on a regular basis if you need to catch up on the various characters, their background, and their current role in the plot. The entire games takes place as if someone is recollecting the events of the past, even though it all takes place from Ramza's perspective. It's a very interesting thing to see play out, and it is another of the many details given to the game's storyline.

Gameplay

Any game can have an amazing story, but it doesn't mean much if the game isn't fun when you're actually playing it. But there is nothing to fear, as FFT manages to deliver some of the most addictive gameplay of all time. Strategy RPGs are inherently addictive because of the sheer attention to detail that is in all of them, but FFT goes well beyond most realms to deliver. Between normal runthroughs, the multitude of challenges the game presents, and the millions upon million of various combinations of items, job classes, attacks, and skills, anyone who finds themselves liking this game at first can become grossly involved with it later.

As for the actual workings of the game, most of it revolves around the battles. But any confusion is taken care of by the game itself thanks to a wonderful (albeit boring as hell) in-game tutorial accessible right from the main menu. There is also the Battle Mechanics Guide for the players out there who want to learn how the game works to the nth where n is varying levels of insanity. As for the surface, it's pretty simple. The game is divided among four chapters, each of which has a set path for Ramza to go through before the story can advance. How to do it? You point a friggen finger on a red dot and press Circle. A trained monkey could at least do that much. From there, you are either sucked into a random battle or a storyline event. And that's where the real fun begins. The game wouldn't have 'Tactics' in the title is it were your standard RPG where you simply enter a command and watch what happens. In FFT, you have to move your character, decide which way to face, use the terrain to your advantage, and all of that other fun stuff associated with tactical RPGs.

The beauty of Tactics is in the small details. Topography and height matters in terms of battlefield positioning, and attacking an enemy from the front or back yields different evasion results from said enemy. And this is only the beginning. The bread and butter of FFT is the time-based CT system. In virtually every other SPRG, gameplay takes place in phases; the player gets a turn in which he can move and act with all of his characters, then the enemy has its turn. In Tactics, everything is going on all at the same time. The simple explanation of CT is that whenever a character's CT meter hits 100, their turn to act comes. It gets far more complex when you look into it a bit.

A character's Speed stat determines how fast their CT will hit 100. Each increment in which Speed increases the CT meter is known as a clocktick. clockticks are never actually seen by the player. If a character's Speed is 10, then it will take 10 clockticks for their CT to hit 100 and get another turn.

Seems simple enough, but the difficulty (and what makes FFT such a blast) with clockticks comes with spells and abilities that aren't instantaneous. In the ability menu, you'll see a number next to ability's name. The higher the number, the faster the skill resolves after use. For example, the Oracle's Life Drain skill has a Speed stat of 50. It resolves in a mere two clockticks, making it one of the most deadly boss-killers in the game if used en masse. Much of the gameplay revolves around said charged abilities, and deciding which ones to use and how is the apex of FFT's fun. Do you cast Bolt 3 on a Knight and run away in hopes of the spell not hitting your units by accident, or do you use the safer Ice 2 that will go off before the Knight even moves?

These choices are all over FFT, and they're not solely within charged skills. Reaction abilities, weapon choice, secondary abilities, whether or not to let units have high faith, and endless other things are all taken into account by the game. It's all fun as hell to use, too, so go nuts. One can literally play the game multiple times without seeing everything the gameplay has to offer, because it's that huge an effort.

Music/Graphics

Whenever one of those 'What game do you feel has the best soundtrack?' questions pop up, three games always take center stage: Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, and Final Fantasy Tactics. The soundtrack for this game is easily one of the best of all time, and it needs to be. You simply cannot sit in battle for hours in end to music that sucks.

As for the graphics, FFT is a pretty dated game by today's standards. But the game uses what it has very well, and though none of the skills will cause your eyeballs to pop out of your head, quite a number of them can at least impress the first few times they are viewed. There is also the added bonus of having a 15% chance of seeing a pre-skill quote for certain attacks, and 95% of the quotes are amazing. Just beware the summons, as they all literally look like cardboard cutouts.

Overall: 10/10

FFT has its flaws, but most are easily overlooked. The translation from Japanese to English is horrendous, there are more than a few glitches, and the game will occasionally do things that even make the veterans among the fanbase wonder what exactly is going on. But the game's strengths are so damned awesome that all of its weaknesses are essentially irrelevant. FFT is one of the best and most addictive games ever made. And despite the occasional hiccup along the way, rest assured that few games will give you the fun that this one offers.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/13/04, Updated 08/04/06