Final Fantasy Tactics

"Truly a masterpiece"

Final Fantasy Tactics… What can be said about this game? Well, for starters, it is simply amazing. This game is just about perfect; it has a few translation errors but honestly, is it that big of a deal? Will it hurt the game a lot? Of course not! Now you'll notice that this is Final Fantasy Tactics, not Final Fantasy (Insert Number Here). So, this game is different than an ordinary Final Fantasy. The atmosphere is fantastic. If you are familiar with Fire Emblem or Ogre Battle, you'll find this game is similar. If you are not familiar, Final Fantasy Tactics is a great way to start!

If you enjoy RPGs, you'll love this game. If you don't love RPGs, there is still a good chance you'll like this game because this game isn't your average RPG; it is different. This game will engage you. This game will absorb you. This game will truly give you an experience you'd have to be crazy to not like. This game is filled with action, betrayal, romance, mystery, suspense and an extravagant storyline. Not to mention great game play and a great soundtrack to go along with this masterpiece!

Storyline/Characters: You start off as Ramza Beoulve, who is a Beoulve, a royal powerful family. After his fathers passing away, Ramza soon finds his ideals are different than that of his corrupt brother and he is forced to go against them. Ramza is an honest, trusting cheerful character as opposed to a moody sulking character. The story starts out simple but it quickly becomes much more. You'll find that there is much more of a storyline in Final Fantasy Tactics than there is in any other Final Fantasy game.

There are quite a bit of characters introduced into this game. This can cause for confusion but if you pay attention to the story, you'll come to see what characters are important to the story and what characters aren't as important. You'll meet friends and foes along your journey filled with pure entertainment! This game is filled with many plot twists that, frankly put, you won't see coming! The story and characters are just incredible You'll be hooked. 10/10

Game Play: The game play may confuse you at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll probably agree this is the best type of game play you'll ever use. This game goes on a turn based style in which the map you fight in (Be it a forest, swamp, castle etc) is divided into small squares. For each of your certain characters, you can move X squares and attack from X squares away. You have HP and MP at your disposal as well. So, for example, your Knights can attack at close range while your archers can shoot at a distance. You also have other commands such as items, or you can use other actions such as Defend.

The system that is used is the Job System. You have several characters you start with and you get several characters as the story unfolds. You can customize your characters into whatever job you want them to be. A few of the jobs include Knight, Wizard, Priest, Archer, Lancer and Ninja. There are several more jobs too. Each job can use it's own abilities. A Knight can attack with a sword, a wizard uses Black Magic, a ninja throws knives. When your character has a job selected, you get Job Points for that Job. To unlock jobs for your characters, you'll need a certain amount of job points for your certain jobs. Once you get a certain amount of job points, your job level increases. To become a Knight, you need a level 2 Squire. It may seem confusing but if you play, you will get the hang of it. You can also have a secondary ability on your characters too. So, you could have a Ninja who knows White Magic. The Game Play is just simply astounding 10/10

Sound/Music: The sound is realistic, when you attack with a sword, it will sound like you attacked with a sword, when you block with a shield, it will sound like you blocked a shield. When someone gets killed, it will sound like a death wail.

The music is fantastic. There are many different types of battle themes, and all of them fit in nicely with the battle at a specific time. The music is beautiful and you will come to respect how much of a masterpiece the music is, I guarantee you. 10/10

Difficulty: This is a difficult game. You are going to need to be smart on how you battle and you are going to need to build your levels up or else you won't survive. The battles aren't going to be herb picking, they have the potential to be frustrating. However, if you play this game smart, you'll come to see why it's my favorite game of all time and why it's highly praised. 5/5

Camera Angle: If there were a complaint with this game, it would be the camera angle. To put it bluntly, the camera angle is horrific with a capital H. Fortunately, nobody really gives too much of a damn about the camera angle. Just look at Kingdom Hearts! Anyways, the camera angle is still rather bad, sometimes you can't see your guys behind a mountain or a hill and other times you can't quite see where the enemies are in proportion to you. Alas, I'm going to have to give camera angle a bad score. 3/5

Graphics: The graphics are just fine; they honestly could not be much better than this. Just imagine how much bits this game took up with all of the stats and what not? A lot of people complain about the graphics. Well, if the people were any bigger, the area would be smaller and that would detract from the game play. The graphics work, they may not be the greatest but the graphics that are in this game work perfectly for the game. 5/5

Replay Value: One of the most important aspects of a game in my honest opinion is the replay value. This game has replay value all over the place! You can start as many files as you want and still have almost as much fun on every one of your files that you start! You can use a different party each time with different jobs or you can try to do some challenges such as an “All Knight file” or an “All wizard file”. The replay value is perfect; I've played about 20 times through the game now. 5/5

Recap:

Storyline/Characters: 10/10
Game Play: 10/10
Sound/Music: 10/10
Difficulty: 5/5
Camera Angle: 3/5
Graphics: 5/5
Replay Value: 5/5

Overall: 48/50 = 96% = 10/10

Pros:

Great story
Great game play
Great music
Great replay value
Will have you addicted
Will make you wonder
Will leave you breathless
Won't be too easy or too hard

Cons:

Bad camera angles
Sketchy translation errors

This game is great, it's a masterpiece, it truly is. The story will have you hooked, the game play will keep you entertained, the music will add to the drama, you'll find the difficulty is perfect and the best part is, you can keep playing the game many times. I love this game to death and I know you will to! You can find it really cheap now, I believe the price range is 15 to 20 dollars. So it's definitely a great buy. So what are you doing?! Go get it! Now!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/21/04