Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

Final Fantasy Tactics is a game I have a love-hate relationship with. It's also a game that's been bugging me for YEARS. That's right, years.

Yes, the game that has been haunting me for years is a box of tic-tacs

My first encounter with Final Fantasy Tactics was years ago in a gaming magazine (in the days before I had reliable Internet access), in a small article which lamented the fact that there was a new Final Fantasy title (this was after the wild success that was Final Fantasy VII) that wasn't going to make it to Australia. Of course, importing at the time was all but out of my reach due to being young, not having knowledge of how or where to import games from (again, lack of Internet would have me rely on a physical shop that was willing to import a niche title), and not having knowledge on how I would make the damn game work once I had it (because region locking sucks giant donkey balls, and is completely unnecessary).

Cue someone at school handing me a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics on a disc a few years later, after I had offhandedly mentioned that I wanted to play it. This person had a chipped PS1, and a burned copy of the game. I borrowed it, acquired a PS1 emulator for my computer (by then I had amazing dial-up interwebs), and played. 10 minutes later, after the game playing really really slowly (due to the computer being unable to handle the pressures of emulating the Playstation), and a fairly boring (for me at the time) combat system. I returned the disc, and let it go.

Come 20xx, when Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions is released for the PSP. A re-release with new cutscenes, a few extra quests, and an extra new cameo character is released. At the time, I have other PSP games to play, and I had remembered how bored I was by the combat when I was younger (and less patient), and so avoided it.

2011, I caved in and ordered the game off PlayAsia. I played it, frustrated the hell out of myself repeatedly, and then eventually finished the game last Friday evening.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a tactical RPG. This makes combat much slower than one is used to from playing other Final Fantasy titles, or (more recently for me) the Tales series. Instead of simply getting control of a character, and telling them to make the magics, or hit the dude with the sword like the other Final Fantasy games, you control a larger party, tell them where to move, if in range you can attack or use magic, etc. Much slower paced, but also much more... well... tactical. Hence the tactics title, I suppose.

This also leaves things more open to confusion early on. The first few battles are ones where you are only able to control your own character - the others are guest characters. This means you spend the majority of the first few battles watching sprites run around and kill each other - while you get to maybe move a few squares here and there. Not much of the battle system is explained to you in-game unless you watch the tutorials separately (which is boring, but it definitely helps).

Eventually when you learn how to play, and get a bit into it, its quite fun. You can switch jobs at will, and every time a character makes a successful action, they earn experience for themselves, and job points for their current job. Experience is a general thing for the character overall - higher level means higher stats to do better at the killing and surviving and the healing things. Very standard.

Job points are used to learn abilities for the current job. For example, 200 job points as a Black Mage can teach you Fira (the level 2 fire spell). Or you can learn Fire, Blizzard and Thunder for a total of 150 (they're 50 each). You also can learn equip abilities, move abilities and reaction abilities for a variety of abilities. Once you learn an ability, you can use it in any job, although there are some requirements (for example, equip the Black Magic skill to be able to use your Black Mage spells in any job other than Black Mage), and certain jobs are better suited to some abilities than others. You'll find that a Knight will tend to do little damage with Black Magic, for example, while a White Mage will likely have a better time using Black Magic as a secondary skill, since their job uses the arcane arts already anyway!

There are quite a lot of jobs in the game, some are specific to certain characters, and a lot of them need to be unlocked by reaching certain job levels in other jobs. For example, the Arithmetician job requires levels in Black Mage, White Mage, Oracle and Mystic to unlock.

The Arithmetician job is also one of the strangest of the lot - when you are using it you get to keep all the spells you learnt as the four aforementioned jobs. You get an ability called "Arithmeticks", which allows you to cast a spell instantly with no MP cost. The catch is that it will hit everyone on the map that is covered by the algorithm you pick. You need to pick a multiple (3, 4, 5 of prime) and a statistic (level, experience, charge time or height on the map), and everyone who matches the particular multiple in the particular statistic that you pick will be hit by the spell. This makes Arithmeticians especially powerful, since they don't even have to move anywhere near danger, as long as you select the correct algorithm and spell combination, you can annihilate an entire squad if you're lucky (in that enemy stats allow you to hit all of them, and not your own side!).

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions features three cameos from other Final Fantasy games. Two of them were in the initial release of the game, and may look somewhat familiar if you look at the screenshot below.

Aren't you supposed to be dead?

Cloud and Aeris - although Aeris is in the game only briefly, Cloud can join your squad. However, he is beyond useless. He comes with no weapon at all, can only use his special skill (which emulates his limit breaks from FFVII) if you equip a certain hidden sword on him, and starts at level 1. When you recruit him, your group is likely to be at least level 40, making him the most useless character I have seen in an RPG to date.

The other cameo, the one introduced especially for this re-release, is much more useful. In fact, he saved my party on numerous occasions, and has been known to end boss battles in a single turn. I blame this on horrible balancing occasionally, or just the fact that he is too much of a badass for everyone's good. He is able to shoot enemies from quite a hellishly long range, sometimes 4 times per turn. He has quite a decent move range (unless you make him a knight or something, which would be STUPID since his original job is better, and special, and once you max it out then Chemist is great to back his killing power with the ability to heal people - and retain the ability to equip guns), and he steals stuff from people.

Because he's a GODDAMN PIRATE.

Also, for some reason, noone in FFT has a nose

Balthier from Final Fantasy XII makes an appearance. I haven't played much of FFXII, but if he is even half as bad-ass in that as he is here, then he will be my permanent party in FFXII.

The entire party. On his own. Because we don't need anyone else. Well, except maybe his bunny-girl partner. Gotta love fanservice!

Thanks Japan!