ic-games Review - Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - Reviews, Previews and Interviews for PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii

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Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

Information
Reviewer: Casey
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Nintendo
Reviewed: Gameboy Advance
Genre: Strategy/RPG
UK Release: 08th Sep 2003
Article Date: 14th Oct 2003
Difficulty: Medium
Retail Price:
Price Comparison:
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Score Breakdown

Experience:
Game Play:
Graphics:
Sound:
Overall Score: 84%

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Pros

Gameplay, Gameplay, Gameplay!

Great GBA graphics

Plenty of game time

Cons

Story = Mleh

Screenshots

3 of 16

There happens to be a brilliant moment in Kevin Reynold’s unquestionably classic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves where Will Scarlett (played unflinchingly by Christian Slater in his finest role since Gleaming the Cube) lays it all out on the table for our hero, Robin Hood. He tells him, “I have more reason…to hate you…then anyone. But I’ve found myself daring to believe…” It’s a key moment in the film, and has a message that is applicable even in today, 12 long years after the film graced our cinemas. How is it applicable, you ask? Well, it pretty much explains how I feel about Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance.

Hate. That’s a strong word. Why would such a nice young boy as me have any reason to hate a game? Let’s see, where should I start? I’ve been a strategy game fan for quite a long time now. I’m talking turn based strategy here, not real time “strategy.” And squad based strategy is the best kind. I would still put X-COM: UFO Defense and Jagged Alliance on my top ten list of all time. And I’ve been playing Final Fantasy for even longer then strategy games. I was also an enormous fan of the Playstation Final Fantasy Tactics. It was one of maybe three games for PS I never traded back, always thinking I would revisit it at some point. So all of these seem like reasons I would have to love FFT:A. Why hate?

Let’s start with strategy. From a game with the word “tactics” in the title, you would expect there to be some tactics involved. Here, there is not that much. Many will argue with me on this point, but I’m pretty sure I know what I’m talking about. The strategy here is moving your character to the back or side of the character you are attacking so you have a better chance of hitting him. That’s pretty much it. Magic works exactly like an attack, but with some range. Like a ranged attack, really. You can face your character with his back against a wall, too, so no one can attack you from behind. That’s the tactic that I am assuming the title refers to. Everyone who thinks they are hard core strategists with this game will disagree with me and say I haven’t discovered the intricacies of the system and whatnot. I will ask them to go play Advance Wars 2 for a day and then get back to me. Advance Wars 2 is a strategy game. Tactics is not.

So what about Final Fantasy? Well, the Final Fantasy series has known how to tell a story. These are epic tales with fairly interesting characters. It’s still worth going back all the way to FF2 to watch those poor brave twins turn themselves into stone to save the gang. Now time to get controversial: I hold the opinion that Final Fantasy Tactics on the Playstation has one of the greatest stories ever told by a video game. It was the epic to end all epics, as you fight against your world’s organized religion and work your way toward the secretly evil Christ-like figurehead. It blew my mind. I think everyone else hated it. It was over their heads. So, a sequel to this wonderful story? What epic tale awaits us? How about: three kids wish they were in a final fantasy video game, and then wake up and they are in a final fantasy video game. If you are laughing right now, I hate to break the news, but that is really the story. This is the most disappointing aspect of the game. It’s written about a ten-year-old for a ten-year-old and probably by a ten-year-old. I’d mock some of the dialogue right now but I’m too depressed. A Final Fantasy game that starts with a snowball fight…

But there was more to that quote. It says he’s found himself daring to believe. Is there some hope for this game? Even from the most jaded of critics? I am almost ashamed to say this, but you bet your bippy. With everything that I think that I hate about the game, I’m still hoping to finish this review soon so I can get back to playing. Why?

So gameplay. Well, it’s not strategy. In fact, the battles aren’t even the best part. I have never gotten utterly destroyed like I have in Advance Wars. I don’t think I’ve ever even lost a battle. To fool you into thinking the game has even more strategy, all of the battles are ruled by judges – robotic turkeys – who pass out yellow and red cards for fouling. Yes, Final Fantasy battles with penalty cards. The judge actually blows a whistle when you cast, say, a fire spell in a no-fire spell zone. And then sometimes he randomly moves dead bodies. KO’d bodies, I mean. This might add strategy for some people. I just don’t use whatever they ask me not to use. If you get a card, you go to prison or lose some of your reward. A little into the game, you can start adding laws or taking away laws with special law cards. It all sounds ridiculous. And it is. But, you know what? It’s still pretty fun. There’s something better then the battles, though…

All of the characters in Tactics, like the original, can change jobs at any time to learn new abilities. Your thief can become a ninja and learn all of the ninja magic and then switch to white mage to start learning some cure spells. See, he already knows his ninja magic, so he can still use it at the same time. Characters learn new abilities by having certain items (weapons, armor, etc…) equipped during battles. After a certain amount of fighting with the item, you learn the ability for good and can call on it any time, even if you no longer have the item in your possession. And the more abilities you learn, the more jobs are available to you. So it’s up to you to decide how to best allocate the skills to your characters, and to try to work toward the best jobs. I’m not kidding, this is better than the fighting. You will be checking your characters progression 3 times a minute, not because it actually has any effect on how well they perform, but because for some reason it is really fun. I can’t explain why this is fun, and I’m going slowly insane because of it. I’m starting to think this is the same thing that happens with kids and Pokemon. Instead of catching pikachus and jigglypuffs, you are catching life spells and fighting techniques. Don’t tell anybody that, though. Just pretend the strategy is really tough.

Other stuff. The graphics are quite good. It’s a little screen, but for all I can tell it’s a compact version of the original FFT. It is starting to freak me out that the little gameboy cartridge is edging up on playstation level graphics. The character design is the weird cutesy Japanese ambiguously-gendered big eyed RPG standard, but well done. The sound is good, too. Nothing that’ll knock your pants off, I mean it’s still a gameboy, but you won’t need to turn down the volume. The story…I mean I hate it…but it’s not really as bad as I make it out to be. It’s interesting enough, I guess, and a fairly original take. I guess. The map system is more ridiculousness, but what the hell, it works. Every time you complete an important mission, you are awarded a piece of the map like a town or forest and then you place the piece on a map spot. This causes other map pieces to shake and have treasure. If that makes sense to you, then you are Japanese. Thank you for coming up with new and often scary ways for us Americans to enjoy interactive entertainment. I will continue to scoff at these new ways and then enjoy them immensely. The controls are just like you would expect. It’s a bit hard adapting to an isometric system with a straight up-and-down keypad, but because it’s turn based, you will never do something you didn’t mean to do.

All in all, this game baffles me. I thought I hated everything about this childish-no-strategy-involved Pokemon clone. But right now, I am gonna play some more before I go to bed. There are a few glitzy next-gen FPS’s that have just been released that are being put on hold for this damn little game. I have no idea how long this game will hold out. I guess I just have one last question to ask Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance.

What I wanna know is: is it gonna finish what it started? I want to know if it's gonna turn and run like the spoiled little rich boy I always took it for. And I can only pray to God that when I ask it this, Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance will respond: I have a brother...I have a brother. I will stand by you!

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