Not your basic Final Fantasy

“Lead epic battles in a new Final Fantasy world. Betrayal and darker dealings await in Squaresoft’s game of war. Fight hundreds of battles across dangerous 3D terrain as an ancient blood feud awakens a deadlier foe.
Command knights, mages, ninjas and more. Based on Final Fantasy characters and magic. 19 character classes ; 400 abilities. Deep customization options.”

If the text on the game box is to believe, it doesn’t sound like Final Fantasy. Yet it is, kind of. Tactics should not be confused with other Final Fantasies as it’s completely different. In other Final Fantasies the battles are fast action, but Tactics delivers another view. Tactics’ battles are long and turn based, more like chess. Final Fantasy Tactics isn’t a traditional RPG at all. You don’t run across cities talking to people or wander in the world map as you like.

In FFT the towns are only places to buy items and recruit new characters. There are taverns which can be visited to find out the latest rumors. But these places are just chosen from the menu as you enter the town. You can’t walk around the place. And the world map is much alike. You walk from one place to another instantly and there aren’t random battles although there are places where battles occur such as forests between towns.

Tactics’ characters are customized with class-system. If you’ve played Final Fantasy V, you’ll know what I’m talking about. There are a lot of classes, a knight, a mage, an archer, and a lancer, for example. Each class has its own special abilities and weapons (Knights can use break-techniques to destroy enemy’s weapons and armor, mages can cast attack spells, archers use bows and lancers use spears, etc.) Each character in the game belongs to a class and can use the skills of his class.

Let’s take an example to clear this up a bit, shall we? Our character, Marcus the Knight, for example is a knight (What a surprise!). As he gains levels and develops, the player gets to buy now abilities for him. Player may also decide to change this characters job and change the knight to a mage. Now he doesn’t get to keep his nifty knight equipment, but he may, however use knight skills alongside mage’s skills, if the player wishes so.

Let’s customize

The system may sound complicated but it actually isn’t and the class system is one of the best parts of Final Fantasy Tactics. It allows you to customize your character as you wish. You can make a ninja-skill using priest or a lancer with abilities of a dancer (dancers, by the way, aren’t as crappy characters as they sound like…), possibilities are countless.

Tactics’ music is collaboration between composers Hitoshi Sakimoto (Legaia: Duel Saga, Vagrant Story, Ogre Battle series) and Masaharu Iwata (Ogre Battle series) and offers one of the most impressive soundtracks ever on the PlayStation. The quality of the instruments used on the tracks is amazing and it’s difficult to believe that they’re done using the simple PSX synth.

Final Fantasy Tactics’ graphics are nicely detailed, but not amazing in any way. Also, you don’t get to explore any cities, forests or caves as mentioned above, since the game’s completely linear, turn-based fighting.
But even though walking in beautiful 3D rendered landscapes, isn’t something that Tactics has to offer, it has a very good plot and excellent features such as the class system I promoted earlier on. If you enjoy slow paced action with more strategy involved than in other FF’s (or RPGs in general) then Tactics might be your game.