First Impressions: Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions

While it will take me about another year before singing praises of utter fanboyness with tears flooding out of my eyes at the mere mention of Chrono Cross, I will do a partial review on another game that I was looking forward to after getting my PSP.

Yes, I do have a PSP, in fact, I got it not too long ago, and the first thing that I had to complete was Chrono Cross from PS1. How did I do that? Well maybe I’ll make a guide on installing POPSLOADER onto the PSP some other time, first, the Final Fantasy Tactics review.

The one box art that got me into buying a PSP.

Undoubtedly the best Final Fantasy game ever made, the masterpiece takes its stage again, but now on the PSP screen and is totally portable, means you can walk about in the world and play as dear Ramza Beowulve at the same time. Square really did a good job doing this. I will now compare the original Final Fantasy Tactics and this remade version. Also, a little bit more info on the basic mechanics of the game.

They kept the story intact ( thank godness ) and it is still about Ramza and friends. Well, not really as happy as Haru and friends from RAVE, and they can’t really be considered friends other than Ramza and Mustadio, it’s more like “Ramza and his underlings in war”

Yes the game is about war, and a lot about politics, the story is engaging with the idea of being able to see two sides of the coin at the same time, basically the fight between countries, held by Duke Larg and Duke Goltanna, each bearing one monochrome color of a lion, in which this event is eventually called “The Lion War”

The other side of the story is much more interesting, it follows the path of Ramza Beowulve, a young outcast of the Beowulve family, as he uncovers the truth about the corrupt world in the present, and also, the truth behind the legend of the Zodiac Stones, and that of St. Ajora.

An impressive cast of jobs to choose from, each with it’s unique abilities, speed, power, and equippable items.

The story meanders around the war and the fight between Ramza with his innocence perfectly, with slight hiccups here and there, a little plot twist, and also, introduction of a large cast of recruitable characters.

This is what I like the most about Tactic games, your recruitment of special character classes, other than that, the creation of your own original character. The remake never changed this bit, it is still just as exciting to train up a new character and get them to the correct job that you want. With a boastable variety of almost 30 jobs ( inclusive of special classes ) , each with different skills, character models and capabilities, it is rather difficult to get bored.

Though the new and beautiful CG cutscenes are worthy of applaud, they retained the original anime chibi styled shrimps in battle sequence, non-important dialogues, and also on the overworld map. Random Battles are still fought the same way ( yes, the one without the option to run ) but they don’t get too challenging ( aside from them female archers, ever wonder why they’re so painful? )

No you’re not. Anyway, compare the cutscene to this.

I find this kind of cute, in fact, nostalgic. But yeah, it is Playstation 1 graphics, don’t expect too much out of any game other than Chrono Cross.

Now the main difference in the two games. The style of speech.

Ramza : “But but…. I love you Delita!” and the fangirls go wooo. Seriously, I have seen too many fangirls make this kind of fanfiction.

They remoelled the style of speech from normal english into Olde English. Since Ivalice is meant to replicate medieval times, I had dreamt years ago of Ramza conversing with Dycedrag in Olde English.

My dream came true.

I could not help myself but to role play as their voices ( since normal dialogues lack voices ) while playing at home. My room soon became noisy with me trying out different pitches for each character and reciting what is typed on the screen. Much laughter to be had, oh joy, oh jolly good fun.

But no game is perfect ( except Metal Gear Solid games ), the rendering time for spell animations seem to be much slower, with the sfx coming in much earlier than the designated time. Perhaps the conversion of screen size to be wide screen had made the rendering slower?

The lag doesn’t concern me much, the extended version of this game is just too good to miss for any Final Fantasy fan. I had not played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, but I heard it’s horrible, they made Ivalice into a storybook land, made it overly childish ( even Kingdom Hearts was fine ) and ruined my beautiful land of Ivalice.

The PSP had also made another function possible: the connection between players. The multiplayer sequence in this game is divided into two categories, Melee and Rendezvous. Melee basically pits you against the other player, character to character, I would had liked it better if storyline characters are not allowed in this, because T. G. Cid is too… darn… powerful…

I haven’t tried Melee yet, but I know that Rendezvous is awesome. So far me and my classmate had been playing Rendezvous missions just to test our skills. You don’t get any EXP for the multiplayer sequence, just Job Points and perhaps some coin and loot at the end of it all.

Oh, I forgot to mention about Job Points (JP) . Basically JP are points you get alongside your EXP, and are used to learn skills. They can be obtained through two ways: 1. To fight alongside a party member who’s of that job, 2. To fight using that job.

Job Points are not common, so even if you have 2000 JP in your Monk, you cannot learn Archer skills using those points. JP is also needed to level up your proficiency in that job. The higher the JP in that job, the more powerful it becomes, the maximum level for a job is 8, and this level is also used to unlock new Jobs.

Take an example Ninja class, it requires level 4 Knight, Level 3 Monk and level 2 Dragoon ( or Lancer as it used to be called ) Achieving this might prove to be quite a feat for those that you have trained to be a mage. My black mage is horrible at holding melee weapons, even if I turned him into a Knight, his damage is way below my Monk ( who had mastered Knight )

it is an even bigger feat for storyline characters who have special “Squires”. While Squire is the basic job, storyline characters tend to replace Squire with something else, like Gaffgarion being a Fell Knight, Agrias being a Holy Knight, Mustadio being a Machinist ( used to be Engineer ) or Rafa and Malak being Heaven and Hell Knights respectively.

Mustadio, for example, is really bad at holding swords.

Whereas Agrias is clueless on how to deal damage with a bow.

Not to mention, some specials need specific weapons to be equipped. Like Swordskill moves like Divine Retribution ( ex-Holy Explosion ) and Shadowblade ( ex-Night Sword ) unable to be used unless equipped with a sword. Which renders Agrias’ oh-so-awesome Holy Knight skills useless when equipped with a bow.

The game has been promising so far, and it’s good to relive something that I had once played and loved almost 10 years ago. The only major fault is the lag time during skill casting ( which apparently can be solved by purchasing the real copy of Tactics ) And if someone like me can be a total freak about it, so can you!

Please make sure to set a mature mindset, different than that of Tactics Advance when playing the game, it helps. And by the way, Cloud makes an appearance in the game, along with the fabled hero of old, Beowulf. But I’m rather disappointed at how useless Cloud is in this game.

P.S : I still hate you Algus, even though you sound less sissy and stuck up and even changed your name to Agrath, you will forever be my punching bag.

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