A review of Final Fantasy Tactics A2
Available systems: Nintendo DS
A foreword, from Our Chowder
Some games really deserve someone taking a second look. For some older games that you can still find in circulation, there's IIWYM Bargain Finds, where I take a look at some games that are a few years old that you can still find for a reasonable price. Plus, this is my 1000 views special. I wanted to review and talk about a series that was very close to my heart. So, hope you all enjoy...
Goooood evening friiiiiiiiiends!
Welcome to a new IIWYM Review! This week, we're reviewing FFTA2 for the DS and... My gods. This is a bittersweet moment for me.
Let me explain.
It's the late 90's, early 2000's. You're dusting off your shiny new PSone and you open that blockbuster case with a new Final Fantasy game inside! OMG so excited! But it's not FFVII or VIII, it's Final Fantasy Tactics, a new strategic game that plays AWESOME. You're a guy called Ramza, and you're leading a ragtag army against a group of religious tyrants who have a disturbing tendency to turn out to be demons in disguise and your own family, brothers in particular, because they're a bunch of #%@&! and there's betrayals, intrigue, tragic death, and sacrifice at every turn. It was Amazing! Right up there with Chrono Trigger and FFVII as one of the all-time RPG greats. It even got a re-release with the subtitle War of the Lions on PSP, which I highly reccomend checking out if you're a fan of turn-based action.
Flash forward to 2008. You whip out your shiny new DSi and snap that brand new cartridge out of the case for a ALL NEW FINAL FANTASY TACTICS GAME OMG SO EXCITED! You turn on the game, expecting the same epic story, the highly memorable characters, the completely overpowered special characters with their own unique classes, awesome tactical gameplay, unique sprites...
And you get...
Wander around aimlessly until something happens with your two buddies with an actual voice!
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Okay, lemme explain first off. I don't hate this game. In fact, I love it. I had a bunch of fun with it, and the gameplay is top-notch... But it just fails to live up to the bar set by its predecessor, and I'll try to explain why.
The story basically goes like this: You're a pretty regular high school/middle school/whatever kiddo in the normal world who gets stuck on cleaning duty during the last day of summer vacation. Being a lovable rascal, you vandalize a library book which turns out to be a MAGICAL TIME AND SPACE BENDING BOOK, which drops you in Ivalice (The traditional world this series takes place in) without a clue what's going on. You fall in with a clan of guys with a judge that applies completely arbitrary and often ridiculous laws in exchange for never truly falling in battle. Which wasn't even a thing in the original game, but its explained decently well. Anyways, you agree to walk with these guys until you fill your journal which shooooould allow you to go home? Maaaybe? WHO KNOWS AND WHO CARES JUST WANDER AROUND A WHILE UNTIL SOMETHING HAPPENS!
Yaaaay?
The story is weak sauce here. You then spend the next ten hours where NOTHING happens. It's very clear the story was immensely sacrificed in service to the gameplay here. Oh, and remember those judges I mentioned? Other reviewers had a problem with the judges and their arbitrary rules, but I found them moooostly to be beneficial. It made you switch up your tactics so you don't just find ONE dominant strategy and stick with it, it encourages you to make up a much more balanced team and have more tactical options, which was a problem in the original game. Once you acquired the Thunder God in your party, the game pretty much played itself. Just stick'em in your battle party and watch the enemies tumble. Which was nice as the game was also HARD AS A ROCK. Soooo difficult if you didn't pay attention and weren't strategic. You had a very limited time frame to revive a party member if they got defeated and gaining levels was HARD because you only got XP when you actually hit things and...
Urgh. There were alot of things which needed improving.
And the good news is alot of them were fixed here! Leveling is no longer a chore, it's much easier to make a varied and balanced party, there are LOADS more classes to choose from, and races to choose fro... Ooh.
Races to choose from.
NO.
This game suffers as well from alot of revisionist history. There are SEVEN races to acquire party members from and each of them has unique classes to choose from. Which would be fine, if they were MENTIONED AT ALL IN THE OTHER GAMES IN YOUR SERIES!
In the original FFT, it was all humans! For every class! No other races or species were really needed, it was all how you trained a person. You also had special classes for certain genders, which... is kinda sexist, but...
It was the 90's. A male belly dancer would have been pushing it. Regardless, these other races were mentioned NOWHERE in the game. Which is confusing, because you see some of the places from the original thousands of years later and it's treated like they've ALWAYS been this way, like all these other species have always been here!
Ya can't just do that!
And, don't get me wrong, I'm not being nostalgia blindness here. I understand you have to make changes to a game, especially one that's been dormant a long time, to keep up with today's top-of-the-line kids. But they have to be changes that make sense, guys, *Especially* if you're going to keep the same world setting. Adding several races completely changes the party dynamics by shutting off jobs to certain characters just because they weren't born right and gets into a whole new weird area. Also they removed different genders for certain races, which gets confusing because SOME NPC's break the rules maybe and some don't but you can have a law against harming the opposite gender and...
Urgh. What a headache.
For every major progress this game takes forward, it takes another backwards. The few characters with personalities too can be kinda bland, with only three that you see for the vast majority of the game (The player avatar, his mentor, and...love interest? Maybe? Something.) it leaves the game hurting for strong character, and with no villain ANYWHERE in sight it just... suffers on the story front. Compare to the original, which had TONS of characters with personality. Ramza's determination, that one guy who betrays you who thinks he's doing it for the right reasons so he can regain his honor or something and Delita's playing-both-sidesness... And there's tons more INTERSTING characters that you come face-to-face with over time.
However, all of this DOESN'T make it a BAD game, it just makes it a disappointing one. Now, I didn't play the previous title, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which was for the GBA and I more or less missed the boat on that one, but I heard the story front was much stronger there, and maybe alot of this was explained better. I don't know the answer. And judging this game on its own merits, there's alot of fun to be had and it's definitely worth a purchase, especially now that DS games are very cheap with the advent of the 3DS and such.... But if you're interested in RPG-Strategy, pick up a copy of the original on the playstation store or the remake on PSP, which also comes bonus with cutscenes, extra missions, and characters, and much improved graphics.
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 gets the Bargain Finds Seal of Approval.
This has been Nev with IIWYM, heading back to Ivalice once again on his old PSP for a wonderful trip down memory lane.
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