Playstation: | |
Final Fantasy Tactics |
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SquareSoft
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SquareSoft's newest Final Fantasy game is a departure from the standard RPG, emphasizing more in tactical aspects like developing characters and using them efficiently in battles. You can have up to 16 Player Characters (plus computer-controlled guests), which can be one of 20 different character classes (called 'Jobs') and can learn up to around 200 different skills in total. |
Visuals |
The graphics in this game do not appeal to every gamer. They consist of a polygonal battlefield with pre-rendered texture maps pasted onto them, to make it look as a wide variety of terrains. The characters themselves, though, are sprites, and sometimes, when the battlefield rotates, they kinda pop from one frame to another which looks a bit crappy sometimes. But apart from this, the game offers quite a bit of eye candy, especially some of the later spells and summon magics. |
Music and Sounds |
The music is standard Final Fantasy stuff, which means it rules. After a while, though, the battle music becomes a bit repetitive and, to some extent, annoying. The sound is pretty average, with swords clashing into shields and death-cries sounding like they came right out of the stored sounds of the programmer's keyboard. |
Merits |
This game succesfully introduces the tactics genre to a modern day next-gen machine. Plus, its got Final Fantasy elements like classes and spells from the series. And yes, it has LOTS of those cute and adorable fellows called 'Chocobos' we all love! (Of course, the fact that those "adorable" Chocobos tent to walk all over your units makes them slightly less cute.) Being able to switch between the 20 different jobs, and thus learning various skills and discovering new, ass-kicking combinations (like having an archer that breaks armor with arrows) is the most fun and creative part of the game. The story is a bit hard to absorb sometimes but it rules. Also, being able to walk through the world raising levels and earning Job Points is a very nice touch and it allows you to work on your character's Jobs while your other characters are away doing some Proposition. |
Flaws |
As a tactics game, this game is a bit lacking though. There are a few tactical elements missing, like conquering cities and expanding your army. This is because the game focuses more on the actual development of the units themselves rather than on the expansion of a huge army. Also, the AI in the computer-controlled guests sometimes really sucks, especially when the weak cleric guest that you're supposed to protect dives straight into the enemy's front line of fighters! The opponents in the random encounters rise in levels as your main character goes up, but the opponents in the story battles do not, which results in way hard and tedious battles with crappy enemies like Goblins and pathetically easy battles in which you have to defeat Gafgarion the level-4 Dark Knight (when your guys are level 20). |
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