Many years ago, when I was but a wee lad, there were a
series of very popular JRPGs. It so happened that one year this series wanted
to branch out and make a game in a slightly different genre. Rather than their
usual style of game they instead opted for a more tactical one, with grid based
combat similar to what one would see in, say, Fire Emblem. They brought their own flavor of individual character
progression and classes to the table and the result was considered a rousing success.
That game was called Final Fantasy
Tactics. I…did not play that
game.
Pictured: The game I’m
not going to talk about
You see, I didn’t own a Playstation 2 until 2002 and the
PS1 completely passed my child self by. However, what I did play was Final Fantasy
Tactics Advance, a GBA game with a similar combat system released in 2003.
The game wasn’t a direct sequel, dealing with different characters and
possibly(?) taking place in a different time period, but existing in the same
world as the first. It was also a game I became mildly obsessed with, loving
the game enough to beat it and play through most of it several times. In 2007
they released another mouthful of a sequel, Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, for Nintendo DS. I
bought this game and played it a bit, concluded that it wasn’t as good as its
predecessor and stopped.
But just a couple weeks ago I decided that I never gave
the game enough of a chance and tried giving it another shot. I still
encountered things I didn’t like but have been able to power passed them to the
core gameplay I love so much. Though I haven’t beaten A2 yet I’ve decided to
write some things about it and its predecessor. Of course, in order to do that
I’ll have to explain the basics of how the games work, so bear with me.
How It Work
In the Final Fantasy Tactics games, battles take place on
a grid in a similar manner to say Fire
Emblem or Advance Wars, but from
an isometric perspective (in this and many ways more like Disgaea, another game I should talk about one day). This adds the additional
tactical element of elevation. When a characters turn comes, they can choose to
move, perform actions or wait. How many squares they can move (and the maximum
vertical jump they can make at one time) are determined by move and jump stats
that change based on class and equipment. As far as actions go, players can all
attack by default, usually only 1 square away but further if equipped with a
ranged weapon. Apart from regular attacks, characters have skills they can use
such as magic and special moves. These can do all sorts of different things and
have varying ranges and areas of effect.
A picture of Final Fantasy
Tactics Advance’s first battle (not counting a snowball fight tutorial)
After a character uses an action or waits, they are
prompted to choose which of the 4 directions to face in. Which direction you’re
attacked in changes things, though what way varies slightly between the games. In
FFTA, attacking only determined the accuracy of the move. FFTA2 worked a
similar way, but for damaging attacks had the direction determine the damage of the attack instead, having the
accuracy be constant and generally high. Though it took some getting used to,
this is one of the changes in the game where I prefer the sequel. Regardless of
which game, attacking from behind is the best, attacking from the sides is
alright, and attacking from the front is least effective.
For each individual fight you can only bring a certain
amount of units, usually about 6. However, you can keep far more than that in
your clan at any given time (I usually don’t, as I’m the type to get attached
to a set party, but you’re given the option at least). These clan members all
belong to certain races, and which race they are determines which classes they
can become. Every time a character levels their stats increase based on what
class they are, so for example a black mage would gain more Magic every level
than other stats. The other things your class effects are what equipment you
can wear and what abilities you can learn.
This is another game
where you can spend hours customizing things in the menu. Some may disagree,
but I see this as a good thing.
Abilities are tied to weapons. So for example a Short Sword
might be able to teach Soliders the ability First Aid if they equip it. They’ll
have that ability as long as the Short Sword is equipped, and if they keep it
equipped long enough they’ll learn it permanently. There’s a catch though, and
that’s that you can only have 2 types of Action Abilities used at any given
time (the other types being passive ones). For example, we see above that
Montblanc is an Animist, which gives him animist abilities or ‘calls’. But he
can also choose one other class of abilities he’s previously learned, in this
case Black Magic.
So your
character can only perform the abilities of 2 different classes at once.
However, some of the classes in the game can only be unlocked when you learn
enough abilities from a previous class. For example, you can only become a
Gladiator once you’ve learned 2 Warrior abilities, and so on. This means you
could be using a certain class to get to a later class, to learn certain
skills, because they’ve got good stat growth, or because they can equip certain
things. The point is the system offers a ridiculous amount of depth to the
progression.
This shot of a
character choosing a job concludes the boring mechanics portion of our
presentation.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance versus A2
So what are the differences between Final Fantasy Tactics
Advance and the sequel? Well, there’s the point I mentioned about facing above,
for starters. Before I started writing this I thought that the original Advance
would win out in most categories, but when I stop to think about it A2 has a
lot of mechanical changes I do actually like. For example, in the original
experience would be earned every time you performed an action, whereas in the
sequel everyone who participates in the fight gets experience and then bonuses
are awarded for how they did. The original system wasn’t terrible or anything,
but it favored acting every turn regardless of results and was vulnerable to
gaming the system. The obvious example is that you could literally just hit
your own team mates and heal them ad naseum to level up.
Another change A2 made was that your mana always started
at 0 instead of the maximum amount, and would automatically regenerate 10 every
round. This means that you couldn’t blow away opponents at the start of the
match but also that you wouldn’t have to worry about completely running out of
mana. These things in turn made moves that restored mana a bit more useful and
though my feelings are a bit mixed I’d say it’s overall a positive change.
One more positive change I feel A2 made to the original
formula is the law system. In both games there were laws you would receive at
the start of each match, guidelines of things not to do. As a side note, this
system can be occasionally silly or frustrating. In the original
game you would be penalized whenever you broke the law, with fines, stat losses
and perhaps even being sent to jail until bailed out. In the sequel, the first
time you break a law in a fight you lose the protection of the judges and can
no longer revive dead party members, as well as losing some bonus items at the
end. I feel the penalty of the second game is preferable, because it’s more
like losing bonuses than things you already had.
A final thing in favor
of A2 is the slightly improved visuals, most noticeable in areas such as these
higher level spells.
So if FFTA2 is superior to the original in so many ways,
how could the first be better? Well, in just about every other way. Obviously
the first game has the benefit of nostalgia, though that isn’t really fair
objectively. Both games have stories wherein children are transported to the
magical realm of Ivalice through a magical book. However, the original had
interesting characters who dealt with problems of escapism and whether they
wanted to go back, whereas the sequel is a bit more just a happy-go-lucky
protagonist having adventures in fantasy land. The sequel isn’t really as
strong musically either, as far as I’m concerned, with a large portion of the
soundtrack just being more orchestral rehashed (and not always superior) tunes
from the original.
The remaining features the second game added that I tend
to think of with indifference or as making things worse. You have to gather up
materials to make items available at the store but given that you don’t know
what materials you need until you have them it basically just becomes another
layer of busy work. There are auctions for clan territory instead of handling
it through quests but again it just seems to be another layer of abstraction
with a confusing mini-game that isn’t very engaging. Some classes have to be
unlocked with quests before they become available and though it’s a nice idea
it’s quite bothersome for compulsive side questers like me who level up a ton
before said quests become available. A2 added new jobs but a lot of them aren’t
quite as up to par and/or look stupid. A2 added traps, which are randomly appearing
annoyances that are invisible without one specific type of job, and these are
even stupider.
Pictured above: Two
different types of stupidity
Unrepentant Gushing
But despite the pros and cons of each game, I want to
make it abundantly clear that they’re both awesome. It may have taken a while
to explain all the base mechanics, but it should be noted that normally they’d
explain these to you slowly over time. And these are mechanics built to last,
as both games feature somewhere around 300 missions to complete. This doesn’t
even count reoccurring things like battling for territory or with enemy clans. The
first game has 5 races and over 30 jobs, and A2 has 7 races and over 50 jobs. There’s
a lot of game to experience here, and an equivalent level of customization for
your characters.
The combat system is also incredibly satisfying.
Developing new strategies to use with different combinations of characters and
skills is an engrossing enterprise. Even on a turn by turn basis it can give
you a warm fuzzy feeling to get an attack just right and cripple the enemy team
or wipe out an opponent with a well-placed attack. As the name suggests, tactics
really do matter, and there are few things more rewarding than having a plan
play out properly. Of course, likewise when you spend half an hour doing that
only to fail it can be equally frustrating.
Oh shut up.
But regardless of all the moments of frustration I really
like these games. They’re good enough to be mildly addictive in the sense that
you could always do one more mission (or even one more turn if you use the
in-combat quicksave). They’re not completely simple to figure out but are
fairly accessible as far as deep tactical RPGs go. They’re generally just
really good games, and if you like strategy games and/or RPGs I can highly
recommend them. If you ever come across either of these gems, pick them up. And
buy them. With your money.
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