Final Fantasy Tactics is a welcome diversion from the typical FF games most of us have played to date. This game has your typical Square RPG storyline with a young lead character that has to save a female character and the world with the support of people he meets along the way. The difference is that this is a straight strategy game where you gather a group of soldiers and position them on a playing board made up of tiles. Positioning and timing are very important as each character has a certain number of tiles they can move over and a certain attack range (i.e. magic users can target someone much farther away than a monk using hand to hand combat).
There are still RPG aspects to the game, such as leveling up after your battles with ability points you earn. You need to have a steady mix of magic, power, and support abilities in order to succeed in battle so you want to use your ability points wisely.
Graphics are nothing to write home about, with summon spells being nothing more than a 2D image being moved and wiggled all over the screen and the "cut scenes" used to advance the story are not going to rival any other PSOne FF game. In my opinion the entire aspect of a tile based strategy game doesn't really allow for too much imagination in the graphics department.
Aside from the soundtrack, the sound is not very good either with the only other audio being cheesy attack noises and really bad screams when a character dies.
The one thing I will warn you FF fans about is that, as with any strategy game, the battles can take a looong time. You can spend as many as 20-30 minutes on one battle, even more if you didn't plan appropriately and find yourself scrambling to get good positioning on the board. My overall recommendation is that only strategy lovers and patient FF fans need apply for this one. Those who can will enjoy a solid game play experience.
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