Wozza's Profile

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions

Published: Fri 11 Jul, 2008 | On:

The cult classic PSONE game, Final Fantasy Tactics hits the PlayStation Portable. Ten years on, does FFT stand the test of time?

Usually the answer to that is a big fat yes, but in some ways FFT shows its age and occasional flaws. As rewarding as this game can be, it’s also very frustrating and frequently moves a tile backwards for every two forward steps.

I’m getting ahead of myself, FFT is a strategy RPG (SRPG) which means it’s very different to your normal Final Fantasy romp. The tactics on the end of the title means that this game is all about the fighting. So imagine a typical RPG but stripped down to only the fights and you’ll have a rough understanding of what this game is about.

Because the fights are the emphasis of the game there is of course a bit more depth than your normal FF fight scene. You can move your units around the battle map which has been divided up into a grid, each character can only move a certain amount of squares. There are also many little things to consider such as attacking from the side, or even better, behind will give you a better result than a frontal assault.

The main feather in FFT’s cap though is the ‘job system’. This is what defines each characters abilities. Knights will have good attack and defence stats while Magic Users will have more magic points available, it also determines which moves can be learnt by which characters. The interesting part though is that you can change character jobs between battles and create the ultimate fighter, mixing and matching attributes from all of that characters classes. You have a lot of freedom and building up your party is the most satisfying part of the game.