After the very successful and fun Final Fantasy Tactics game that was on the Playstation 1 in 1998, it was expected...
The premise behind the new version of the scaled down game is the same. You start out with a hero who has to build a team of fighters of variying classes to take on others in turn based battles with each character on each team getting a seperate turn to take out various enemies on the field with their moves. All the classes are traditional Final Fantasy classes that we have seen through out the years in various FF games. Only unlike the PS version of the game this time the classes are seperated by race of the character you have in your party.
There are five races that you will meet in the land of Ivalice where the story takes place. Humans, Viera, Moogles, Bangaa and Nu Mou are the races that will fill up your team. Each race can hold certain jobs with only a few jobs being able to be used by more then one race. In typical FFT way, you must level up by fighting in battles and learning skills that a particular job can hold to retain them for later use even if you change your job to another one. Half the fun is building up characters with the various skills and jobs and building a dream team that is totaly under your control. You can have magic users, warriors and specialist all working on one grand team complimenting each other in perfect unison.
The game play is fun and pulls off a tactics type environment as well as can be expected on the GBA. The graphics aren't stunning like the first FFT game due to the system it is on but it does pull off everything graphicly well enough. Summon spells and magic looks stunning and you can clearly see what is going on without difficulty of making out each character is supposed to be. The game is colorful and easy enough to understand. There is some strategy to things as depending on where you stand when you are about to attack can make things easier for you. Also the various status of you or your enemies at the time of attack will matter too. Like if they are asleep you will hit them 100% as they can't defend you. If you face them with their back to you you will hit them more then 50% due to them having to turn around to defend themselves.
The game itself is a lot of fun but far from perfect. The storyline is a tad on the weak side, almost being secondary to the whole experience of playing the game. The game has the weird notion of making the main characters realizing that they are in a "Final Fantasy" game the whole time. Making many mentions of how the series is their favorite and everything they are going through is something out of a Final Fantasy game.
The story of the game is basicly a group of kids one being a new kid and another being a shy kid who lost his mother years ago and has been depressed and the last being a girl who is more of a tom boy all find a book that seems to date back decades in time. As they open the book something weird unknowing to them occurs. They go to sleep and wake up only to find their whole town has been transformed into a world out of a Final Fantasy game and now Marche the new kid has to figure out a way to get home while the boy who lost his mom, Mewt has become the prince of the land and enforces tough laws that must be followed during every battle or else you can be penalized or even be put in jail. Marche now must destroy crystals in order to get closer to bringing the world back from what seems to be all a figment of Mewt's imagination.
The story doesn't even seem to matter after awhile though, and even the writers didn't seem to focus to much on it. The game itself is fun just by building up your characters and classes and doing the missions and tasks that you will have to in order to expand through the game. The laws though get annoying after awhile. They add challenge to the game which is needed but most times they are just annoying. Laws are basicly what you can and can't do during said battle and it randomly changes every battle. Sometimes you can't use bows other times you can't use magic and as the game progresses more and more laws that can't be done are added making things harder as now you have 3 laws rather then just 1 that you can't do during a match.
It can be quite a tasking challenge at times to sort out what missions you have to do, what battles you have to do and what weapons have to be changed to learn new skills and will keep you more then occupied all the while. No its not up to the same standards and excellence that the PS1 version of the game was but that is only expected given the different abilities that the two systems can do. You definitely will get your moneys worth here by adding this worthy addition in the FF line to your GBA. Its a game you can play often as you can always build different classes and try and get differnet abilities and weapons you never had before and its a lot of fun. There are some negatives to the game but no game is perfect and this pulls off the transition well enough to more then satisfy. A little more story and less annoying random battles that you have to do would have been nice (you will see that defending areas in battles will get to be draining and boring at times) but the pros definitely out weigh the cons.
Highly recommended is getting a strategy guide for the game as it will make your life easier when you have to figure out what weapon gives you what abilities and what you need to form what class. It can come in very handy when you have to over come the limitations of what info can be shown on the screen at a time when it comes to what you have over what you don't.
Over 300 missions, 34 jobs and multiplayer abilities means this is a game that will keep you more then occupied as you navigate through the vast world of Ivalice. Check it out, you won't be sorry you did if you are a fan of Tactics games or a good role playing game.