One of the most complex PSP and best PSP games.

User Rating: 8.5 | Final Fantasy Tactics: Shishi Sensou PSP
Final Fantasy Tactics is a remake of the original Final Fantasy Tactics from 1997, you take control of 'Ramza' and embark on a quest to save the world of 'Ivalice' but this is a very simple explanation of the story, its a very detailed world complete with political turmoil, wars, economic hardship , rampant crime and strife amongst the working/peasant and aristocracy. Furthermore the story is abundant with many characters to keep track of, their own stories and plot twists.
Needless to say its a very plot driven game and the world seems more alive with the little errands and side quests you can also undertake.

The game is not strictly a RPG in the classic sense but a SRPG, in that you have a main character and a band of other characters you can choose to bring along and the plot advances through battles, these battles take place on a usually square grid with different terrain and elevation and you look down on the map at a isometric viewpoint and select a character to move about and undertake a attack/special/cast then its either another characters go or the enemies.

That's the basic overview of combat but its much more complex and strategic, each character has certain abilities and attack specials (usually dependant on what weapon is equipped) for example an archer with a longbow can shoot further and over peoples heads were as with a crossbow needs a clear line of sight otherwise the shot will miss the target or even worse hit your own character, another example is say a holy knight equipped with a Excalibur sword, this will enable them to unleash their potent special attacks but if that weapon should be destroyed by a enemies 'rend' ability then they'll have to rely on their fists for combat, unless they have a reequip ability attached and a spare sword in which case during a turn they can reequip the sword lost and resume fighting as normal.

As you can tell there's many different options regarding abilities the cast of characters can use, but ill go into that abit later, for now focusing on the battles.

Continuing on the battles, there's not only the abilities and moves to consider but also positioning them, each character has a movement grid they can choose to move a character to usually dependant on class and speed (for example a chemist has a pathetically small movement grid compared to a thief) , if you move a character behind a rival and attack them in the back there's a damage increase , if you have an archer you'll seek the high ground to have a distance boost, same with magic casting, also you can cast a spell on an enemy/group of enemies and move the caster out of range and the enemy will still be casted upon, like wise, the enemy has the same options and limitations for movement and will use this to the best of their advantage, seeking to move around and flank your characters and gang up on them so they cant escape and kill them, so use terrain and movement to the best of your advantage too.

You also need to consider charge time, each characters turn will occur based on their charge time bar filling before another characters, so if you have a really fast ramza he may get a couple of attacks in before a rival enemy even gets one, likewise a really fast enemy may get two rounds of attacking to your characters one etc, this bar can be dependant on class/speed again but also can be altered by certain spells like haste/slow etc

Also magic casting in general requires abit more planning to use correctly, you can choose to have maybe a white mage for healing/raising and general support (there are also other support class casters) or a black mage for offence casting, with most spells there's a box of what will be affected by the spell, so even if you cast fire level 1 and there's one enemy in the box but two of your characters, both of your characters and the enemy will be scorched by the flames which can lead to some very nasty friendly fire incidents unless you're careful in how you use your magic casting characters, like wise with a support cast, if there's an enemy in the cast effect box and you cast cure you'll also heal the enemy!

However with summoning, you can be a little more careless, the cast effect box is much greater usually especially for the powerful summons and only effect enemy characters and the support summons will only effect your own team mates, again though there's the cast box so you'll want to position a summoning cast just right but also bear in mind the longer charge time which effects various spells and summons so you may need to plan a summon/spell in advance to hit a group of enemies as they advance.

When an enemy is killed they'll fall on the ground or turn into a little totem or maybe leave a skull or feather behind, and a number appears above them and as you are fighting, each round that goes by this number decreases, when it goes past 0 the corpse disappears and either a treasure chest or crystal is left behind, this adds another small layer of strategy to the game, for enemies and you can take the treasure box (usually something crummy like a low level potion) or a much more useful crystal, which can sometimes grant abilities to the character that finds them (can sometimes be very useful and grant powerful abilities for free) or restore all HP's and MP's. However if one of your characters dies and isn't resurrected with a phoenix down or a spell, then they'll also disappear in similar fashion and be gone for good!!

Also there's a bravery and faith tag on each character, these can increase and decrease and are fairly complicated matters to, faith boosts spell power and bravery physical attacks however if either gets to a 100 then the character leaves the players party, also if these drop too low they'll run away from the players party.

It should also be noted that each enemy in a random encounter is level scaled to your own parties so a level 50 ramza with various party members around that level will fight a similar level scaled opponents party, however story mode battles are not level scaled but they are levelled to what seems right as you play through to what your parties level will most likely be at - for example 50's towards the end of the game.

After a battle you'll appear back on the world map, and you can choose to move down a certain path to what destination you want usually a story point marked in red or a town of which there are several such as castles and merchant cities each of which provides different equipment, there's not just towns though there are maps which have no features to stop by at such as cities but rather represent a random battle encounter chance , if you land on a spot there's a chance of a random battle and the screen goes black and zooms in and loads up that map ready for a battle, and you can select what characters to bring along and place them and commence battle.

Next im going to look at the huge array of customisation features in the game, and there are many! you can have a blank character as it where from level 1 and assign a 'job class' to them, at first there are only a few job classes to choose from - squire, black mage, white mage etc and you only have a handful of abilities/spells to use in battles, as you fight a battle for each action / kill you gain not only experience (100 experience = level up) but also 'job points' these job points accumulate and unlock extra abilities in the specific class you've chosen for that character (so the character levels up and also the job class so level 5 squire to level 6 squire etc) and these job points can be spent on new abilities/specials/spells etc,

But that's not the whole of it, you can keep on switching job classes as you like so you may be tired of having a level 5 chemist and switch to a level 1 squire and level up that job class, and you can mix and match the abilities from various classes (each class has an inherent ability for example chemist has throw item) so if you have a squire but want the ability to throw potions you'll have to add that ability in (there are limitations on what abilities , of which there's a choice of two, and also various other skills such as movement + 1 or jump + 1).

Also when the prerequisite job levels are met you can unlock entirely new and more powerful job classes for example a time mage requires the character to have at least reached a level 3 black mage.

And the player needs to pay careful heed to the equipment each character has, for whilst magic points and health points increase slightly with each level up the bulk of HP and MP increase is down to the specific items each character is wearing and these are also limited on the specific job class each character has chosen so a mage/support character is limited in what items they can wear , usually light armour, also applies to monks too, were as a knight can wear heavy armour - but linking in with the huge customisation in this game again, you can negate these changes by having certain skills/abilities equipped if you've unlocked them on that character from a job already - such as Knight ability wear heavy armour

This means there's a huge amount of customisation and freedom given to the player in how they create their team of characters, also there are hero characters which are unlocked and can join the team as you play through the game, some of which are only recruitable if you complete certain side quests.

Speaking of the quests, the main one is epic in length with a good storyline throughout, and there are also optional errands you can undertake to find hidden treasures and get some gil (currency think gold) which have various little stories attached to them, but the errands are mainly a distraction, there are also side quests which involve listening to rumours at inns finding secret locations and doing battles in them, or returning to a certain town on certain dates to acquire new comrades, hardly as involving as most RPG's (certainly western RPG's such as arcanum , baldurs gate etc) but they do add a little more depth to the game.

Graphically FFT is a mixed bag, overall the game looks very basic on the square no thrills grid with some ok spell effects and with undetailed animations, but it looks colourful and crisp so I cant really say they're poor but neither can I say they're good, they are average.
The art style is generally very good, the cut scenes play out in a cel shaded almost hand drawn quality cartoon which looks both stylish and professional, also the actual locations look suitably varied throughout and I never got a 'been there already' feeling playing the game - and you do return to certain locations throughout and yet the game remains fresh enough.

Sound wise, FFT has a very good soundtrack as you would expect from a final fantasy game, there are a few tracks which you'll probably come to like and remember and the music varies throughout the games locations, screens and how the story is progressing.
Sounds in the games battles are fairly limited, there's an attack sound like a sword swing or a twang from a bow or gunshot, and a few spell sounds, these sound somewhat lame especially the early level summoning spells.
Sound wise, the voice overs in the aforementioned cut scenes seemed good enough, the characters sound like I imagine they would from the world they are in and its troubles the sound not emotionless but not entirely impassioned but rather more reserved and conservative, after all ivalice is a world comparable to the medieval age.

Speaking of the setting, the stories progression maybe seem convoluted with the sheer number of characters to keep track of (after all its not just about Ramza, or his sister, or the queen, or ramzas old friend delita but a plot to cause civil war and a (unintended) demon invasion and this doesn't include all the back story in the world of ivalice, the economic troubles and political strife.
Furthermore the game in true role-play fashion has the characters relate to each other in what one could accept as speech for the day , its long you'll need to concentrate on what's being said its not complex language in itself after all its English but its put together differently from speech today.

Some criticisms I have for the game, beyond the story , sound and graphics I mentioned are game play ones, the game I found was at its most difficult near the end but also in the very beginning when you're characters are weedy and can be dropped with relative ease by the enemy so it may seem unfriendly to newbie characters, although it must be said the level scaling is done right and fights seem just right when it comes to difficulty , i would say its more challenging than easy or too hard.

Ah i cant forget to mention that whilst the camera is generally very good with its isometric viewpoint, its very limited in how it can be manipulated by the player, you can chance the map around in only 5 ways, zoom up ever so slightly, or spin the camera 4 ways (sideways each time) you cant have a true birds eye view which is a shame because it can limit what the player can do and sometimes be the cause of mistakes when positioning characters , such as moving a character near an enemy and thinking its right next to it but due to elevation of terrain your infact your too far above the opponent to make an attack.

Which leads onto another fault to the game, you cannot undo movements if you have selected ok, as the battles are done in two sections per character, you can choose to move and select ok then choose to attack, so you can accidentally move to a place you didn't choose (maybe a victim of the relatively poor camera) and not be able to undo that movement, so the game can feel even more unforgiving for strategic mistakes even as light as moving characters, usually I wouldn't complain about this but the camera angles can create situations where you would be forgiven for mistakenly moving a character to a incorrect point on the map.

Also when launching a special attack or a spell there is a slight but still noticeable slow down of perhaps up to a second before it occurs so again you gotta have patience for games like this but still the slow down will irritate..

A final point of criticism I have is the way death is handled in the game, i can understand enemies expiring and leaving chests or crystals it adds a little more strategy to the game and stops their corpses blocking tiles, but what's the point in one of your characters being able to expire in the same way? it adds no enjoyment to the game and no strategy either it just means you're rushed to resurrect a fallen comrade usually with a handful of HP's who just gets dropped by an enemy the next go they have, who in there right mind would let on of their characters disappear and continuing playing the game especially considering how long it can take to level up and master job classes, most people are not going to and will just reload the game, is that really a good designer decision to have permanently dead comrades? I could understand in traditional western RPG's where its say, its done for storyline reasons or a disposable comrade but in a game like this were it can take hours to create and develop a character integral to your party? no thanks.

In conclusion, FFT is perhaps the most complex final fantasy game, PSP game and is my favourite RPG for the PSP, I have a few faults with the game but they hardly stop the game from being fairly addicting and immense fun to play with a interesting storyline which drives the game play.
I would certainly recommend to everyone with a PSP to give this game a try and suggest a purchase to traditional final fantasy fans or those fans of the SRPG sub genre.

Pros:

.Turn based combat is very fun and strategic
.Lots of customisation
.Huge game first play through took me 45 hours and I didn't even undertake every errand and uncover each and every secret.
.The games difficulty usually feels just right, it is quite challenging.
.Interesting storyline with twists and turns throughout coupled with nicely animated cut scenes.
.Music is good and suitably varied
.Sounds in general are good voice overs included
.Some little side quests to undertake
.Probably the most complex PSP and FF game to date.
.Level scaling done right – story battles fixed to what level you're most likely to be at (high 50's by the end) and random encounters fixed to your level.

Neutral:
.Presentation overall is average nothing great but is hardly bad either
Same with animations

Cons:
.Complexity may overwhelm people at first due in part to the poor and boring tutorial along with the games inherent qualities.
.The game feels too difficult in the beginning
.The storyline may also feel convoluted with many characters and sudden twists in the plot.
.While the isometric viewpoint is very good there's very little control in how far you can turn the camera which can mean you position your characters incorrectly
.You cannot undo a movement if you have selected ok which is quite unforgiving if you make any strategic mistakes.
.Team mates disappearing forever is silly idea just causes the player to reload.
.There is some degree of slow down when using abilities and casting spells which is annoying.