Name: Final Fantasy Tactics (97.89% in 19 votes) Type: STG Platform: PSX Company: SquareSoft Japan Release date: 1997 Reviewed by: Tamahome
SquareSoft is a company known for its release of top of the line RPG games. One of the most famous being the Final Fantasy series. So how is Square withgames in other fields such as action and stragety? Square proved that theycan handle fighting games as well as RPGs with the release of Tobal No.1, Tobal No.2 and Bushido Blade which are all action fighting games. The next step Square made is the release of a stragety game based on the Final Fantasy Series. Final Fantasy Tactics is a game which makes use of a complete 3D tactical map. InFFT, a lot of real life battle situations also apply to the game. Attacking someone from behind guarantees a better hit percentage and hitting someone from a higher terrain also guarantees a better hit percentage and higher damage. The game utilizes a very high intelligence AI which makes the game really good, since the AI makes incredibly smart moves which amazes evenme. Most straegty games have stupid AI and they charge at you most of thetime and the only challenge lies in the sheer number of the computer troops. In terms of numbers of enemy troops and the player's troops, it is pretty even in FFT. The player can usually sortie 5 member of his party and the enemy will either have 4-6 members. What I mean by the AI being intelligentis that they walk to spots on the map where they can hit your troops and yourtroops cannot touch them. So often one will find himself getting wasted even before getting close to the enemy.
This game utilize the job systems introduced in Final Fantasy 5, which wasnever released in the US (Too bad, it was a good game =>.) There are somethinglike 20 different jobs your character can change into and each job has different abilites. White mages casts healing magic, black mages cast destructive magics and summon mage summons espers to cause major damage to the enemy. The storyline of this game is totally astonishing just like the rest of the FinalFantasy games. The actual game is kinda like reading a book. The story of the game is called The Zodiac Brave stroy. It is a very good story showing another side of saints and angels we've never seen before. Saying more about the game will spoil it.
Gameplay: 9/10 The gameplay is so good, I was in awe. I found this game probably the best stragety game I've played in a long time since the computer makes suchsmart moves, but then the flaw of this game like all other rpg/stragety game is that if the player spents time collecting levels and the different job abilities, then the game becomes very easy even if the player make stupid moves.
Music: 9/10 Totally awesome music. Squaresoft has done it again with their music. I believe that there are no gaming companies that made game music as well as SqaureSoft had.
Story: 9/10 The Zodiac Brave story is a well written story, you can find it translated on www.gamefaqs.com. Read it, it is good, or better yet, get the US version and play the game to find out the story. I wonder if Square will make a novelor anime out of this.
Graphics: 9/10 The graphics of this game is good and the characters on screen are animated smoothly. The only thing I would complain about this game graphically is that all solider characters have the same face. They should have taken more timeand made soliders with different faces. The FMV scenes of this game is verygood. The 3D architectual designs of the maps are well done.
Overall: 9/10 Squaresoft has outdone themselves with this straegty game which I enjoy verymuch, they even put the main character of Final Fantasy 7 in this game as a hidden character. Cool eh. => Go out and get this game and have fun.
