Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (2007)

4/5

Played on Android, along with the Resonant Arc podcast.

Fantastic game. The story is intriguing, with a more grounded fantasy setting (at least initially) that incorporates political and religious complexes, and feels fresh even in 2022. I think the writing is some of the best in any game ever - I love the elevated speech used in this translation, it exudes craftmanship and passion, and makes reading through the dialogue both cerebral and gripping. Thematically I feel the story nails what its going for, I particularly enjoyed the Ramza / Delita friendship and it's trajectory throughout the game. Music and overall presentation were also top tier - it must be mentioned.

Gameplay wise it hits all my sweet spots. I love games that let me progress and develop my characters and involve job systems where you jump around jobs getting abilities that can be made permanent. Basically - I love the tactics series and fire emblem. It was great here and plenty satisfying to unlock jobs and make my units fully jacked. I think the battle design is pretty hit and miss though, some ludicrously unfair battles, and also some really easy battle objectives (beat the boss...). There are also some obtuse systems like the zodiac sign system which is a bit much.

I wish this was on switch, android was definitely suboptimal. Certified banger.

Do not get me wrong in anyway at all, the rewritten script, new cutscenes, and extra content are absolutely amazing and make this game somehow even better. Especially the new script, I will sing its praises to hell and back. It is so well written and elevates the story to something much greater.

B U T

Holy god how the hell did Square release this game with a bug that completely tanks the framerate during any sort of skill, technique, or magic use. It completely ruins the gameplay experience and it is such a shame. This version is still absolutely superior, but only if you patch it with a 3rd party patch that fixes the damn slowdown.

Story (4/5) | Characters (3.5/5) | World (4/5) | Gameplay (3.5/5) | Visuals (4/5) | Music (4/5) = 77% overall score

Final Fantasy Tactics is a game that I wish I had played when I was younger and had more patience. The story of the game is great and tells a story of war, politics and ancient evil that becomes more interesting as you go through it. I wish that there were more cutscenes and events showing the various events during the war as I found this to be the most interesting part of the game. Unfortunately, many characters are often used for a scene or two and then are relegated to your party where they never have a line of dialogue again.

Many love the gameplay of FFT and I wish I was among them. Maybe it's because I'm not a huge fan of tactical JRPGs to begin with, but unfortunately I found the job leveling system to be tedious and it required too much planning and grinding in order to build an optimal team. Make sure to save often and to keep multiple saves going back a few battles because this game has some battles where the difficulty ramps up very fast and it can be very frustrating.

Visually, this version especially, the game is beautiful and has great pixel art and cutscenes. The music as well is really well done and is something that I've listened to outside of the game

Time to Complete: 50 hours

Favorite Chill Track: Ovelia's Theme

Favorite Action Track: Trisection

After playing Tactic Advance games, I see why people like this way better. There's definitely a level of stake and challenges that is not present in later games. Your team can die, you're always outnumbered, even random encounters can be a pain to grind. But there's a lot more features present and not in later games. Such as the AI systems.

I personally don't care for the story as much because of the confusing dialogue and mass of characters, but it doesn't hurt gameplay. I hope they remake this with quality life changes, such as a better camera and quests.

This is a solid example of the strategy RPG genre, with all the good and the bad these kinds of games have to offer. Chances are if you are a fan of this genre you have already spent some time with this game, but if you are new to this title (like I was) or just curious about how my playthrough went here is the breakdown:

(If you didn't notice already, I played the PSP version.)

--The Good--

One of the most important parts of games like this is building your characters. You are basically designing and nurturing your own custom chess pieces. This title focuses mostly on unlocking and learning abilities based of the different classes. Each character, if properly groomed, can learn and use abilities from each class. You can have a pickpocketing mage or a knight with time magic, for example. The real fun comes from figuring out all the unique and useful ways those different class abilities can be combined to form unique (and uniquely powerful) characters. Customizing my favorite characters and growing attached to them as I nurtured them is what I love about this genre and this game accomplished these mechanics to near perfection.

--The Bad--

This game can be considered "classic" in the fullest sense, and that includes all the problems people typically complain about with this genre. To begin with, yes there is grinding. Some people I've talked to say the grinding is not as bad as other titles. I agree, if you grind correctly at least. But I personally find the idea of grinding itself to be problematic. As I get older and find I have less time to play games than I used to, grinding in games becomes even more painful. I would rather spend my time brooding over a battlefield where my decisions and tactics actually matter every time I play, like in the Fire Emblem series (one of the few in this genre without a need for grinding). Instead I spent hours spamming "Focus" to earn job points to spend on abilities. Not much strategery in that.

The other problem I had with this game was the story. I just do not enjoy fantasy politics, and that is what this game is all about when it comes to the story. I found that I just did not care about what happened to my characters outside of battle. I could not connect emotionally with what they were going through and the plot did not motivate me even a little. If I could I would have skipped much of the dialogue (and I likely would not have missed much of what makes this game fun to play in the process).

--The Verdict--

This game is a shining example of this genre. If you enjoy strategy RPGs in general I can't imagine you will not find something to enjoy here as this is pretty much the archetypal SRPG. But you will also find all the same problems typical of this genre too. If you decide to take this game on make sure you have plenty of hours to spend on it, make your peace with the entire concept of grinding, and have at it! I recommend this game heartily.