Life On The Grid

I have been a semi-long term fan of the Final Fantasy series and like many others, Final Fantasy VII was my first proper introduction to the series.  I played all games since and went back into the series past to play the previous entries but despite the amazing reputation it gets, Final Fantasy Tactics was one game that I had never played.  Until now.

The main difference between Tactics and main entries in the Final Fantasy series is that while the main entries are traditional JRPGs where allies and enemies stay static in an area and automatically move back and forth to attack. Tactics is a turn based strategy game instead.  Wherein you have control of your team’s movement around the map as well as their actions.  This allows for greater control and is a sub-genre of RPG that I have always loved so I was keen to try this one out.

The mechanics of this system are quickly explained and becomes intuitive very fast so you will be manoeuvring around and flanking your enemies in no time.  But while the early game is quite easy, once you get into the mid-game, the difficulty does start to ramp up quite a lot so you will need to grind a lot of optional missions in order to level your team up enough to be able to tackle the more difficult main missions.  This came off as a slightly cheap way to force you to space out the story missions and slow your progress down.  Padding, some would refer to it as.  While this is common in classic RPGs, it is not so common in turn based strategy RPGs so I found it a little odd to have such a difficulty wall like this in a game of this genre.  The difficulty does even out and then drop again towards the end of the game due to the acquisition of some new and extremely over-powered characters (who some would even call broken) so I think a little more difficulty balancing throughout would have improved the overall campaign progression.

The game retains the class mechanics of earlier Final Fantasy games like Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy V where each character does not have a set role, but can be switched as desired to a number of various different classes such who specialise in particular fields like healing magic, offensive magic, sword attacks, defence, ranged attacks and so on.  There are a limited number of classes available at the start but more are unlocked as the campaign progresses and you can unlock even more specialist classes by levelling up existing classes enough.  This allows you to tailor your team any way you see fit.  As is my tradition, I went for all out bone-shattering offence with ninjas who can wield dual weapons for double the damage and it worked out very nicely for me.

Being a late PlayStation 1 era game, the graphics are as expected, not great by today’s standards, but they are quite impressive for the hardware at the time and are done in a simple cartoon character manner which has made them age well even by today’s standards so it is by no means hard to look at.

Sadly, one weak point of this game is its story.  While being a huge and epic tale about the fallout following an enormous war which involves upper class royalty looking down on lower class peasants and said peasants fighting back to gain equality and some control, it is very difficult to follow the nuances of the plot.  It is presented in a very unclear and confusing manner with multiple sub-plots going on at once which makes it difficult to see an overall picture of everyone’s current status.  This game was remade in later years for the PlayStation Portable in the form of Final Fantasy Tactics: The War Of The Lions, and the plot was re-worked slightly in this to make it easier to follow.  Sadly, choosing to play the PlayStation original, I was lumbered with the original interpretation of the plot which as mentioned is difficult to follow at times.  This took away some of the immersion and at times felt I was just fighting for the sake of fighting, not know what the real goal behind it was.

Final Fantasy Tactics Review Summary

Final Fantasy Tactics provides rock solid turn based strategy game-play with a very deep and customisable battle system that can be tailored to the exact way you want to play.  This is both deeply satisfying to set up and a lot of fun to implement.  If you are a fan of turn based strategy games, there is plenty to like here and the game is well deserving of its stellar reputation.  The only small issues along the way are the sometimes obscure story and uneven difficulty levels.  If these are an issue, there is always the option of playing the later remake on PlayStation Portable or mobile devices which it was also ported to.

Final Score: 4/5