Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

This game shares a lot with the original Final Fantasy Tactics on Playstation. It is a turn based tactics style game on a map grid. It features several jobs, each with their own abilities. You can mix and match abilities (to an extent). Both games take place in the land of Ivalice. That's where the similarities start to fade.

Tactics had ninteen different jobs to choose from for your characters, but only one race to choose from. Tactics Advance has added four new races to choose from. Each of the five races has a limited amount of jobs they can choose. There is a total of 42 race/job combinations in the game. I liked how they added a lot more jobs, but I didn't like how they made the jobs race specific. I think if you're going to add more races and jobs, you should allow all races to learn all jobs. I can see why they made them race specific (balancing reasons), but I'd like the added challenge of turning a magic using race into a melee character. Not really a strike against the game, but more of me being a little anal and liking a lot of choice when I'm given it.

Another difference from the original is that the tone is much different. The original Tactics was about betrayal, corruption of the nobles, corruption of the church, fighting for what's right. It was very serious, and the decisions you made helped shape the history of Ivalice. In TA, it has become more childish (which is apparently from the T rating on FFT, and the E rating on FFTA).

In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, you start off as the new kid in St. Ivalice. To get aquainted with the battle system, the first thing you do is have a snowball fight with other kids in your class. During the course of the fight, you're introduced to two other main (unplayable) characters, Mewt and Ritz.

Things turn out bad, people make fun of you, people make fun of Mewt, people make fun of Ritz. You're a real popular bunch. The three of you decide to hang out at your house with your sick brother. Mewt brings over some magical book that he bought on the way over. Little did the four amigos know, but things were about to change.

You find yourself in some weird place. You have lizard men, huffalump men, cat girls, and cute little bear looking things with a pom pom on their head running around. You find out you're in some place called Ivalice. You hook up with a nice moogle who helps you start a clan and he shows you the ways of the land. You've already gotten your nice little tutorial from the snowball fight, now you get to play for real.

The game play is exactly the same as it was in the original Tactics. Turn based movement upon a grid. There's a few tweaks done to the turns (such as you can actually take back moves if you find out you're too far away to land a spell or ability), but the game remains basically the same. The one huge difference is that of the laws.

Judges can either be your friend, or your enemy. Every battle (except in the lawless areas called Jagds) has a Judge. These guys enforce the law. I don't have the instruction booklet, and I"ll be honest, I didn't pay much attention when the explained the Judge thing, but I think this is how they work. If break a law, you get a yellow card. A yellow card is basically a warning, and you're fined when the battle is over. If you kill someone with that ability, you're given a red card, which instantly sends you to jail. I'm not entirely sure if that's how it worked, but I liked to keep my parties a little varied to make sure I didn't break any laws.

You might be thinking, these laws are a bunch of crap! I want the lawlessness that was present in Tactics! At first, I thought the same thing. When I realized that any character that had died in the battle is automagically raised at the end of the battle as long as you're not in a Jagd, I changed my mind. I don't have to worry about wasting Phoenix downs on dead characters. I don't have to worry about having a White Mage (or someone with Whm abilities) in the party at all times with Raise. I just leave them dead. Where do I sign up!

At first there's one law in place. You cause some trouble, get the judges on your back, they add another law, cause more trouble, get another law. If you balance out your party, this will never become a problem. I recommend at least one of every race, and levelling at least two of each race. Maybe alternate them between battles. I levelled basically the same party, and had troubles completing some missions because I need ot use certain races and I'd be shorthanded because they only people I had levelled were off fighting some solo battles.

There's one huge thing that bothered me about this game. It's a huge step down in the maturity level of the game. In the first one, you're a warrior trying to fight for your family's honor, then your honor. In this, you're just a kid trying to find his way home. I'm not saying that I didn't like this game, I enjoyed it very much. It's just that the story is, well, for a lack of a better word, lame. It was a lame story.

The first one had this wonderful story that kept you captivated. It was a blockbuster of a story, which a lot of FF games seem to lack nowadays. You wanted to know what was going to happen next. You felt sorry for Ramza, and everything he's been through. This, I just couldn't help think that Marche was just a whiney little brat. It was his way, or not at all. The story was good, just not Tactics good. It kept you going, but it was mainly to see if it got better. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't keep playing, but it wasn't that great where I couldn't put the game down.

Overall, I liked the game. If you've played the original Tactics, this is a decent buy. You're not getting the great game that was before it, but it's still a good game. It starts off a little slow, but once you get into it, you'll keep playing it. Like I said, it's not good enough to keep playing till you fall asleep of exhaustion, but it's good enough to fill in spots in a boring day. If you like turn based strategy, this is a good buy.