Final Fantasy Tactics

STORY

The story centers around two characters, Ramza (player) and Delita. The story starts off with Ramza in a group of knights assigned to protect Princess Ovelia during a war in the country of Ivalice. Sure enough, the princess is abducted by an unknown group of bandits. Ramza recognizes one of the bandit as his once childhood friend Delita. From here on forth, Ramza's group goes on a search to rescue the princess. Like with most strategy rpg game, FF Tactics is focus on civil and class warfare between the rich and the poor. The story is a long and in-depth one that provides a strong presentation of differences between rich and poor people. It's a very good story. The only bad part is that the ending isn't as good as it should be.

Score: 8/10

CHARACTERS

There are many characters feature in this game. Since it's a strategy rpg game, there should be many characters. While the main focus is on Ramza and Delita, all the secondary characters are shown nicely with equal screen time. Plus you get a bonus character in this game. Any game that has Cloud as a bonus character gets a thumbs up from me.

Score: 8/10

GRAPHICS

The graphics are very nice. Basically you have a beautiful 3-D rendered background with sprites for characters. The character artwork in the text bubble are nicely drawn. The colors are excellent too. A fully bright and colorfull game.

Score: 9/10

MUSIC

Great music. Hey if a game with has the words Final Fantasy attached to it, it better provide great music. And FF Tactics does. An excellent abundance of tunes available. One should spend more time listening to them. It does need more memorable tunes though.

Score: 8/10

GAMEPLAY

Now this game is a straightforward, story driven, battlefield map rpg game. Basically you move from one battle map to the next in a turn base battle system. You can only have 4 members per battle though. Which is a major disappointment. The menu system is the same as other FF games. You have summon, attack, defend, magic, ect for your menu selection. A couple of things to point out though. First is that the game uses a Charge Time (CT). Basically all special attacks and magic uses charge time. Meaning, instead of casting a magic or special attack right away, the fighter will have to wait for a few turns before they can finally cast the magic. This is very frustrating sometimes as when you finally do get off a magic or special attack, the enemy would have moved to another spot. Thus resulting in a miss. Secondly the game uses FF5 job and class system. Basically every fighter start off as a basic Squire fighting class. As the fighter gain levels, he/she can then be change into another fighting class. Each fighting class has it's own unique special abilities.
Thanks to the job and class system, FF Tactics gameplay is pretty immense and fun. I really like this system for strategy rpg game.

Score: 9/10

EXTRAS/REPLAY

There are two extras that stand out in this game. One is getting Cloud from FF7 as a party member. This is a big plus for those that love FF7. Second is the deep dungeon. The deep dungeon provides a place to fight an extra boss plus get cool weapons/items and magic. Note that the deep dungeon levels are randomly altered everytime you enter it and it's dark as hell so you can't see what you're doing and going. There are no extra storyline or multiple endings but you should give this game one replay.

Score: 8/10

With so few strategy rpg games out there for the playstation, FF Tactics is a game you definetly want to pick up. While the game isn't as rich or statisfying as the Vandal Hearts series, it's very good.

Final Score: 8/10

~Chi