[Games: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Review]

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

By
Different hopes, different product

A few years ago, Squaresoft (before the merger) put out a rumour saying that they were working on a sequal to Final Fantasy Tactics. Of course everyone expected it to be on the Playstation 2, because that would give it the most potential. Alas, Square-Enix surprised us with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance instead, and many a fan was disappointed with the news. For me this meant buying a Gameboy Advance SP plus the game, which cost me a whopping $185 total. I don’t regret getting the Gameboy, because now that I have Lufia, Phantasy Star Collection and Shining Force, I am content with the puny screen that will probably blind me in a few years. I guess the greatest disappointment about this game was that, not only did they put our hopes up for a great game, just like Final Fantasy Tactics for the PSX, they took practically everything that was wrong in the first incarnation, and add much more mistakes. Anyways, let us go deeper...

What it’s all about

Gameplay, the reason why we play games. After working through the boring beginning of the game, you are not surprised when you find out that battles are, well, pretty much the same as Final Fantasy Tactics. However, the clumsy item and status menus (that bugged FFT too) were not worked out in some kind of orderly fashion. Okay, we can look past this, right? So Square-Enix added a new element, the Judge. Every battle has random rules that you cannot break, and if you do break them, you get a yellow or red card (like in soccer) and you can get sent to jail. Okay, we can deal with that, but the rules, especially when you are just beginning are very confusing. Without the Strategy Guide, you have absolutely no way of telling the difference between a Knightsword and a Greatsword. The rules mention them, but your equipment does not tell you what kind of equipment it is, other that Sword or Rod. This really annoyed me a lot, so I bought the guide to put myself out of my misery. The game features many jobs, divided by race, but a lot of them are repetative and some are just blatantly useless. Ninjas, Assasins and Gunner all have the same types of attacks, Fighters, Warriors, Paladins, Defenders etc etc they all look alike when it comes to fighting style. Other jobs like the Illusionist and athe Gadgeteer are absolutely useless and will have you annoyed very quickly. Dishing out 64 MP for a spell that does only 40 damage will make anyone mad, in my opinion. So what about Monster Hunting in combination with the new Morphing ability? Useless, utterly useless and time consuming. There is no point in gathering Monster Souls while you can just as easily have a Blue Mage memorize the best monster attacks, and the great thing is that a Blue Mage learns them when he gets targeted, and does not have to spend any AP on those abilities. Okay, enough of the faulty gameplay, let us move on, shall we?

The Highly Interesting and Captivating Plot

They must still be laughing over at the Square-Enix headquarters because I payed $50 for this game. The story is poor, poor as poor can be. After like, the third mission you can pretty much guess the whole story. Just because you make a game for the GBA does not mean you need to throw in a hugely crappy, Pokemon-esque type of story. There are absolutely no interesting plot twists, there is no chemistry between the characters, there is no interesting dialogue, and the ending is just bland and boring. I think games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears and Final Fantasy VII may have spoiled me because of their good stories, and because of that I was biased into thinking I would get at least a half-decent product from Square-Enix, but this is just a waste of my money. The story is definately no reason to buy this game.

Graphics and Sound

I understand that Square-Enix wanted to retain the geekiness of the FFT original graphics, but this game highly under-uses the potential of the GBA. The animation is poor as poor can be, as if they had an animation buget of $5. They even ruined the original beauty of the art that was originally made for FFT and made it horrfyingly cute and childish. The colors used in this game also leave much to be desired, as some stages are just downright ugly. The sound is decent, and the soundtrack, at least the full music versions and the arranged tracks are worth listening too. I missed the bells that were trademark for FFT, and the music was way too much like Uematsu’s other work. Hitoshi Sakimoto was probably just a side-producer for the music, rather than what he did with Iwata on FFT.

The final score, should I buy it?

With so many other better Strategy RPGs out there, I would say save your money for something else instead of this. If you are an FFT fan, than you will probably want to play it out of respect for the original, but you will still be disappointed if you do. I do not regret buying the guide, but that is only because of the beautiful artwork of the Totema (and then we wonder, why are the job graphics so bad?)

h5>Game Rating:

Graphics: 4
Music: 6.5
Gameplay: 5
Replayability: 3
Story: 4
Overal: 4.5