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Final Fantasy Tactics
GameRatio Review
PSX |
View Full Game Info
Published by
SquareSoft
Released on
1997-12-31
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| 87% GameRatio |
85% GR% Review |
Shay
Reviewed on
2003-11-08
Final Fantasy Tactics pretty much copies the Ogre Battle gameplay and perfects it. There are dozens of character classes to choose from, dozens of locations and levels, tons of side quests, equipment, and an enormous amount of spells and abilities to use. Throw in a great story along with Square quality graphics and sound and you get a great game that lasts a very long time.
Gameplay doesn't behave like a Final Fantasy game. Instead, it plays like the game system used by Ogre Battle and Advance Wars. Levels are composed of square blocks that characters can travel upon, the distance of travel determined by the ground terrain and the characters themselves. Whereas you can get away with traveling many blocks at a time on normal ground and pavement, snowy terrain and water will slow your characters down. Each battle starts by placing your characters on one side of the map while scattering the enemy team around the other side. Action is done by letting each team take turns to allow all of their characters to do something. Your turn ends once you have done something with all of your characters.
Once you learn the moving and taking turns part, the Final Fantasy gameplay will become visible. All of your characters are categorized by their character class. These include knight, ninja, monk, white mage, black mage, red mage, archer, thief, and dozens more. Each class has strengths and weaknesses, requirements to be met to become a part of the class, and tons of unique actions to perform. During your turn you have to choose each character one at a time and make them do something. This usually involves moving, attacking, using items, and casting magic spells. White mages are primarily used for healing, black mages are used for offensive magic, thieves steal equipment from enemies, and the list goes on and on. Also, the attack and defense strengths are based on the character class. Magic users tend to be bad fighters and weak defenders, but paladins attack and defend well but are bad when it comes to magic. In addition to all of the human classes to acquire, you can also find and use chocobos as well as other animals. Battles allow only five of your characters to fight each map, but dozens of characters can be saved onto your team and stored for later use.
There are a lot of small gameplay aspects that make the strategy to this game endless. Attacking characters that you are standing next to can cause the enemy to counter-attack if facing you or standing next to you. If you attack from behind you will inflict more damage and avoid a counter-attack or block from the enemy. When casting spells or using long range attacks you must decide beforehand if you will cause damage to any of your own characters, because shooting them with arrows and indirectly hitting them with spells can be a very bad thing for your team. Since you can only bring five characters into a battle, it is crucial to figure out what kind of characters you are fighting and which characters would be best to fight them with. When a character dies, his body lies on the ground for a couple of turns. If you revive him he will jump back to life, but if you let the countdown run out he will disappear off your team forever.
Music is just as great as you would expect from a Final Fantasy game, keeping the songs exciting and new for every battle. Sound effects are decent, but not excellent. Graphics are not standard Square-caliber, but they work really well for this kind of game. There aren't hours of movies to watch; you only get an overhead view of the maps and nice special effects for all of the spells. The user interface is very good, being laid out in an organized fashion and making the game easy to play and understand.
Final Fantasy Tactics lasts for weeks, clocking in over 50 hours at least. There is just so much to do and see that you will be playing forever and still not get a chance to do it all. The story advancement keeps the game interesting, but the gameplay is done so perfectly that there is almost no need for the story. Good luck putting the controller down, because if you like this game at all then you will become madly addicted.
Shay O’Neil
GameRatio review by Shay
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