[Crescens]

The much awaited sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics arrived in the US on September 9th, for those who don't know. Being the freak I am, I ran out to the mall to get it on that same day. Anyway, I've found it to be a decent game worth playing. Well, on with the review...

Gameplay: 8/10
Even though I've finished the story-related parts of the game, I'm still not done, as there's about fifty more missions for me to complete before I'm done with them all...Anyway, the game has 300 counted missions to beat, plus extras that don't count toward the numbered total. Even after the story-related missions (including the last battle) are all completed, you can keep playing. In fact, there's a few special characters that you can only get after the game's completed. Several of the unnumbered missions are well-hidden, particularly the ones that can net you a special character. If you include the missions without numbers, there's probably about 330 missions in total. Also, along with the inter-class changeability that Final Fantasy Tactics provided, Tactics Advance has divided the classes among races. Some classes are unique to a certain race. For example, only Humans can be Ninjas. However, one thing that hurt the gameplay on this game was that the races weren't balanced. Humans, Viera, and Nu Mou were vastly superior to Bangaa and Moogles in almost every aspect. Anyway, the gameplay has a wide variety of sidequests in store, as well as the usual min/max-ing of a class-changing system that we all love so much. Oh yeah, and they added in a quick-save feature in case you need to save in the middle of a battle.

Story: 10/10
If you could live in a world of your dreams, would you want to go back to reality? Well, this game throws the world into a fantasy world of dreams. Marche's quest revolves around trying to restore the world to reality, despite the fact that he and many others want the world to stay in the fantasy-ish way it is. If fantasy is to become reality, what does reality become? I like this game's story because it provides an interesting outlook on what one wishes for in one's mind as compared to what one truly wants in one's heart. Yeah, I know, that sounded corny. Anyhow, the game's story develops characters more than the average RPG out on the market today, and is worth paying attention to.

Audio/Video: 5/10
Unfortunately, this game has a rather weak soundtrack, quite unlike the original FFT. The battle themes aren't nearly as good as the ones from this game's predecessor, and the sound effects haven't really been changed at all. As for video purposes, things haven't changed too much, although distinctions are made between races and classes. Naturally, special characters look the same no matter what job you make them. The summons, totema, and phantasm skills all have nifty animations, though, and should be greatly appreciated considering this is a portable. The graphics don't match the level achieved by the Golden Sun series, but are still good considering that we're playing this on a portable system.

Replay Value: 8/10
Well, right now, I've still got maybe fifty more missions to complete, so I'm not entirely done yet, but once I am, I doubt I'm going to want to complete 300 missions again. I've found this game to be quite fun to play, but feel that the classes and races were entirely unbalanced, and that an unbalanced class system gives me little to no opportunity to change my way of playing through the game a second time around. I'll probably replay the game eventually, but doubt that replaying it will have enough value to get me to do everything all over again.

Overall: 8/10
Well, I guess I wasn't expecting too much considering that the series has been in gradual decay for some time now. I got pretty much what I expected. Square can't use as adult themes now that they've gone back to Nintendo, and has lost the edge they had at this kind of theme before they moved to Sony in the first place. It's not nearly as good as the original FFT, but it's still a game worth playing and paying attention to the ideas of the story. This game has potential, and I recommend it to all gamers, hardcore or not.

Game on, everyone.
- Crescens

[Grimbold]

Great game! I love it. On thing though...

What were you expecting, Dolby Surround Sound and console graphics? It's a GBA!!! The tinny speakers on those things aren't worth beans, and shouldn't be. It's portable after all... So I think your Audio/Video rating was a little low, considering it didn't have much potential to being with.

[Goto]

I've only done a few missons so far. I've always preferred the traditional rpg or action rpg to turn based strategy games, but it isn't bad for it's genre. I agree that the audio/visual score was probably a bit low, but other games have really shown what quality work the GBA can do. It's quite good, but not the best it could have been.

[Maxi]

Ah, I've been waiting for a chance to play a tactics version of Final Fantasy (seeming as the original didn't release properly over here in England). Now I just hope it actually gets released over here .

I guess the audio rating had to be expected. . . it is on the GBA after all. But everything else said seems to give me a good impression of it, so I'll see to buying it sometime when it comes out.

[Crescens]

It's good to see that my review seems to have been helpful and/or informative to people.

[©allum]

yeah, this is a good review and it makes me now want to buy it.

[Crescens]

For other reviews and recommendations of mine, you might want to check some of the reviews I wrote for CurvedSpace under the name of KaiserDragonRyu. From the main site, scroll down, and most of them will still be findable in the updates. I'm still waiting for Cspace to update my username in the staff list, though. >_<

[Maxi]

[Crescens]

Since this review seems to have gotten good feedback, I'll be sure to write more in the future. I hope everyone enjoys the game.

[Goto]

Started playing this game heavily over the last few days, I recommend it to anyone that likes turn based strategy or rpgs, and even those that don't. The game doesn't take too long to get the hang of, yet there is huge depth to the game trying to find the perfect class and abilities. The races do seem a bit unbalanced although at this stage in the game bangaa are extremely strong if you outfit them properly (dragoon!). I'd say humans seem to be the dominant race, they have more classes than any other and that means you can modify abilities to combine the best of many of these. For instance I have a human black mage who can also cast white magic and has the blue mage's learning ability so he can learn attacks from monsters. The graphics are quite good, not the best but above average. The sound is a bit weak, but you'll probably still listen to it. My only complaint with the game is that with a maximum of 24 clan members the game can get a bit confusing trying to give them all weapons and armour and trying to juggle the abilities everyone is learning. Oh and it's a pain to work out which weapons and armour are better than others, have to try them all out and remember it rather than being able to check easily.

A great game, especially if you're a fan of the earlier games of the series (especially final fantasy V).

[Halohunter]

I got fft a week ago and still have not figuared out all the jobs, . It is a long game even if i dont play it as much as i would like to but in comparison to the others gba gamne sit is long after all if is ff.

If you have a list of job and abilities send to me @ halohunter1987@yahoo.com

[Maxi]

Try looking those up somewhere in GameFAQs. . . There are quite a lot of helpful FAQs on there

[Goto]

Yes, Gamefaqs is great. There is a picture file which lists the requirements for each job on Gamefaqs, get that it's very useful. Oh and of course check out the other topic on FFTA where Crescens (and to a lesser extent, I) listed some good class combinations.