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GBA

North America

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

by Jonathan Metts - September 6, 2003, 7:43 pm EDT

An old veteran of turn-based strategy games takes a spin with SquareEnix’s newest. Find out how it looks, plays, and compares with its predecessors and competitors.

Though we originally expected Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (FFTA) to be a remake of the PlayStation original, the end product proves to be anything but. Of course, we learned not long after the initial announcement that it would be an original sequel. What wasn’t clear, at least to me, is how markedly different it would be.

The differences are certainly not visual. The polygonal battlefields have been replaced with hand-drawn ones, but the change is probably for the better if anything. The only drawback is that you can no longer rotate the view to see behind obstructions. On a large scale, the battlefields have been designed around this limitation, as they tend to increase in elevation towards the back. But there are often small obstructions, such as trees or rock formations, that hide your characters or the enemy troops. You can always move the cursor to the hidden space to see who’s there, but it can be a problem if you don’t even know to look there. Suddenly someone jumps out from behind a big bush and attacks your hero from behind. I don’t think those kinds of situations are conducive to this sort of gameplay, where you’re supposed to be able to plan ahead several turns.

Otherwise, the graphics are clean and quite impressive. There’s certainly more color variety used throughout the art design than in, for instance, Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis. The characters are modeled exactly like they were in the original FF Tactics: super-deformed with two big, black eyes as the only facial features. Thanks to the new inclusion of races, it’s not too difficult to tell the various characters apart from one another. What might be a problem, however, is that you can’t so easily tell the different job classes apart. Maybe I’ll pick up on the differences as I play more of the game, but I never had a problem telling which characters were basic soldiers and which were thieves and which were knights in either the original FFT or last year’s portable Tactics Ogre.

Rick has already explained the story, so I won’t rehash it for you. What’s rather interesting is the completely different tone in FFTA, as compared to the original. Even though the basic setting is the same (a world of swords and sorcery, warriors and monsters), everything seems to be more lighthearted. The battles, according to the instruction book, are not part of some larger war; they are just friendly skirmishes that are so commonplace as to be sanctioned by the government. Hence the law system, which so far is not nearly as overbearing or confusing as I expected. It seems that it will eventually become more involved though, as several laws at a time are imposed upon each battle in the later parts of the game. It’s balanced so that the laws don’t throw too many restrictions on your playing style until you have enough characters and abilities to work around those restrictions.

Besides the law system, there are several other minor changes to the battle system that may strike you funny if you’re familiar with the original game or the Tactics Ogre series (which plays almost identically). I won’t go into the gritty details, because the changes seem to be very slight and will probably not make much of a dent in the end. What is drastically different is the game’s structure between battles. Instead of leading a small army around to save the world, you’re a member of a local clan of adventurers. Perhaps grander schemes will eventually unfold, but right now it seems that your clan is content to take on contract missions and defend its turf. All missions, regardless of their importance to the story, are accepted through information dealers at the pub. You pay a small fee to sign up for a mission, go to some location on the world map, fight a battle there, and cash a paycheck. Other missions don’t require fighting at all; you just send out one of your characters to do the job automatically. After you wait a few days or defeat a certain number of enemies, he or she will rejoin your party and you’ll collect the rewards. This latter, non-combat sort of mission is basically the same as “Quests” in the original FF Tactics. It’s still a great way to earn money and build up abilities for specific characters.

I could probably write a few more pages about this game, but most of it is fanboyish details that don’t matter to most people. What you should know is that there are some unusual changes to the formula that I, for one, will welcome as long as they keep things balanced and fun. But FFTA is mostly in the vein of its ancestors, which is to say that it’s a deep and rewarding turn-based strategy game. The brand name and Nintendo’s heavy promotion will likely reel in a new audience for it, but this remains the kind of hardcore, extremely complex game that I would not recommend to casual gamers or those without a lot of time to invest. On the other hand, if you love Final Fantasy and/or strategy games, there’s little doubt that Final Fantasy Tactics Advance lives up to its heritage and provides a ton of quality gameplay. I’ll let you know for sure, though, in my upcoming review.

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Genre Strategy
Developer Square Enix
Players1 - 2

Worldwide Releases

na: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Release Sep 08, 2003
PublisherNintendo
RatingEveryone
jpn: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Release Feb 14, 2003
PublisherNintendo
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