FF Tactics and my General Greatness

For those of you I haven't already impressed into a lust induced coma, I am awesome. In fact, I've been awarded a PSPgo for all my awesomeness.

I would like to thank my fans who made it all happen, and I would also like to thank the Sony Corporation for giving me another PSP which is pretty much useless due to its lack of entertaining games to begin with.

Funny I should say that, as this weeks review will be on Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, a PSP exclusive (unless of course you have an emulator or the original PS version, so it's not so much exclusive as too bloody difficult to get any other way).

Final Fantasy Tactics is the first Final Fantasy I have played since the release of Crisis Core that I actually enjoyed in any sense. While I did have a morbid sense of enjoyment pulling apart the big steaming pile of shit-cake that was FF XIII (which was way more fun than ripping a literal shit-cake apart and not quite as fun as cutting off mutliple peasants legs and then getting them to race each other).

In Tactics, our main protagonist, Ramza, is a noble born knight in the house of Beoulve. The youngest of three brothers, Ramza's mother was a servant girl, and later finds out that his brothers resent him for it. His best friend, Delita, is of low-born status, and is a knight in training only because Ramza's father had taken a liking to him.

The game starts out beautifully, recounting the War of the Lions and the hero Delita, and goes on to say that history had forgotten a major player in the shaping of the time, namely, Ramza.

This is probably very confusing to some of you because it seems like I've described the story backwards. And I have. Not due to concussion, but because the game starts in the middle, goes back to the start, then to the middle and then onwards to the inevitable end. If you still don't get it, I suggest you become a peasant so I can raid you and then confusion will seem like a minor annoyance in comparison to having your legs chopped off and then forced to race.

When the game announced that the hero of the story was Delita and I was to play Ramza, I was confused. Why the hell would I want to play as the nobody? I am the Viking Gamer, goddammit, I demand to play a character the earns similar respect!

However, when I found out that Ramza had quite a lot to do with the story, I realised knowing he would ultimately be forgotten by history intrigued me. Why was he forgotten? How could one man achieve so much to just then be cast away? Why should I give a damn?

It turns out I give a damn because it's FINALLY AN ORIGINAL HERO STORY!

I'm so sick of every other hero set-up. Normally the 'the name was lost to the mists of time...' is cliche and full of wank. The reason Ramza is forgotten is because he doesn't have political interests and makes immediate decisions based on their moral value. In a world where everything was moved by politics, Ramza is a pawn that isn't black or white and struggles across the board because EVERYONE IS AN ENEMY.

Delita is the hero because he is involved in the politics and comes out on top, just like in real life.

Moving on, the game play for FF Tactics is completely different to any other FF I've played. The only familiar thing from Tactics is the job system, in which you can train you characters in different jobs to gain different abilities and use a variety of weaponry and armour.

The battle sequences place characters in an environment, like a forest or desert or waterfall, and battles are fought across them in a chess-like fashion. Each character has the ability to move (depending on class and skills depends on how many squares they can walk or how high they can jump) and Act (which includes attack and any other special abilities). All abilities and attacks have a certain range, and magic can be directed at a person or at a square.

Say for instance that I want to attack and I can only attack squares that are next to me. I have to move the character to a square next to the enemy and then select attack. If I'm ninja class I have the option to throw, in which I can throw shurikens or axes or dictionaries (I'm not sure why dictionaries) several squares across and around me. Magic normally hits five squares (like a cross, one in the centre and one to each side), so that means that if I aim it on an enemy and another enemy is next to him, the both get hit. But if an enemy is next to one of your characters, your ally will get hit. Due to the spells having a delay time there is always the chance that your spell may miss or hit your allies.

Having explained this badly and understanding some of you would probably now prefer to race legless rather than read through this again, I assure you the whole process of this game is simple yet tactical, and probably why it's called FF Tactics.

While the game play is quite fun and requires your average gamer to use more than two braincells, there are two problems I have with it. The first is that enemies very rarely have normal attacks. These normal attacks are replaced by their default attack, which is normally the exact same fucking thing as a normal attack but takes THREE TIMES AS FUCKING LONG TO DO. So having to go through the same ten second animation to complete can feel like an hour, especially when you get really into the battle (mostly because in this game you actually need to concentrate on the battle and your next move).

The second thing are the summons. They follow a similar problem of overly-long animation, but their animation is also super shitty. It's like they put a picture of the summon on the screen, light flashes around it, it does a shitty effect of its elemental power, and then goes away. Fuck that for a laugh, if my characters move around on the screen, then why wouldn't you make it so they ACTUALLY HAVE A CHARACTER MODEL WALKING AROUND AND FUCKING SHIT UP ON THE SCREEN AS WELL? Seriously, why the hell am I not giving ideas to gaming developers? Is this stuff really too hard to think of?

The battle camera is also a little dodgy as well. If there is a tree in the way, you can switch to a different view, but this may not be the most comfortable view for you either. While there are about three or four camera angles you can choose to get the angle that suits you best, there will be times when trees just wont get out of the way. It may make you angry. It may make you want to drink yourself legless and then have a race. It may me drink and get legless and then cut someones legs off to make them have a legless race.

The best thing about this game, besides the plot and the fact there is actual political machinations going on, is the dialogue.

It is eloquent and grand, not exactly Shakespeare but actually heart-felt. It is incredibly well-done. Because each character speaks in the same style it doesn't seem like complete wank, like in other games how one character will inevitably come across as a wanker because he thinks he's sophisticated and talks 'properly'.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a great game to play on those hour voyages when I go to work (to raid booty), and has a satisfying storyline and game play that will keep me interested till I slay the final boss and crown myself king of everything.

I'm giving it 4.5/5 legless peasants racing.

Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.