Published by: SquareEnix
Developed by: SquareEnix
Score: 65

Telling people these days that you loved Final Fantasy Tactics doesn’t really surprise anyone and you’re usually met with more praise for the game as well as “deep” tactical discussion. However, telling others that you’re a fan of Final Fantasy Tactics…Advance doesn’t bring the same reaction. Welcome to my situation because I am in fact a fan of the original Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (FFTA) which originally appeared on the Gameboy Advance. Recently released is Final Fantasy Tactics A2. Notice how they ditched the word advance? The removal of that word, however, may be applicable in more than one way as you’ll read.

FFTA2 and FFTA are somewhat tangent to the original FFT in the way of how the game is played. The idea of leveling is still there, but for FFTA2 it has more emphasis on customization. You can have race A with 2 different abilities, a reaction from a completely unrelated job along with a support ability that seems suited for some other job. Part of the fun of FFTA2 is getting almost addicted to finding all the weapons and gaining as many powerful abilities as you can. Even at times when you find weak ones, it’s still fun to try them out. Using a gunner to inflict Ultima level damage from half-way across the screen becomes the sort of thing you look forward to. Going along for the ride is a fairly deep gameplay system that has so many different elements to account for which is exactly why ‘Tactics’ has been tacked on to the title. Of course there was a price to pay which in FFTA2’s case is the story.

Now FFTA didn’t have a great story, but at least there was some emotion and a touch of drama involved that at least made you feel compelled to do the main story missions, but sadly FFTA2 might be one of the shittiest stories to ever have the name Final Fantasy. The name of the protagonist is (excusing the option of being able to change his name to ‘Candyass Mcqueerpants’ or ‘generic SquareEnix girly man,’) Luso and he’s pretty average. Rather, I should say the entire story is average. Luso gets sent to the library to work all summer for being a dick in class and finds a magical book which sends him into the world of Ivalice filled with all sorts of races like the wise Nu Mou and the furry favorite Vierra. Midway through the story you find out that in order for Luso to get back to his home, after a bunch of loosely inserted cutscenes, he must fill up the same book he got with adventures. Yes, that’s right, he has to get involved in issues in order to get home. I thought it was usually the other way around, shit happens to the main character not the other way around. Honestly I’ve spent as much time as I will on the story because it’s really just sort of there and far from the main point of this review.

As a tactics game, FFTA2 operates on a grid system for battles which is acts as the playing field and itself is a tactical tool. Most battles are set up as 6 of your clan’s members against anywhere from 1-6 enemies. Enemies can range from other clans to monsters and bosses. The objectives of each battle can vary depending on what mission you’ve selected. Some will be your basic ‘defeat the other clan’ battles and others might have you looking for things all over the map while fending off monsters. The latter can be quite tedious at times due to the turn based system. You may defeat all monsters on a map but be forced to find all the little sparkling icons on a map square which can get a little boring. I wish there had been a little more consideration in making some aspects, like this, a little faster. A new horrid addition is traps. Traps can be planted by certain job classes or just be set into a map, what makes them terrible is that they end a unit’s turn and may deal damage without you having any clue as to where they are. Position is key to the game. Attacking a unit from behind will deal significantly more damage and have a better chance of hitting than an attack from the front or sides. The great thing about these games is they truly force you to consider the environment as well as what’s happening when it’s not your turn in detail.

As in the previous game, there are 2 primary distinctions between units, race and job. Some races have exclusive access to some jobs and have different stat growth, for example Nu Mou have access to high level magic jobs such as mages and in general have good resistance and magic power. New to the game are 2 new races, the Seeq, fat and pig like, and the Gria, basically odd-colored humes with wings. The new races don’t really offer a whole lot of jobs and it takes a little while before you’re given access to them, but there a nice change. As for the rest of the races there are some new jobs which warrant leveling up other jobs in order to gain access to them. Abilities gained come from weapons. In order to gain an ability, you must first master the weapon or any item that you can equip in order to keep that ability permanently. It’s the same system, and love or hate it, it’s still there except one thing has changed. In FFTA1, weapons gradually became available or you could gain them at the end of battles or you could use a thief class to steal them. All of that is still the case except the weapons store doesn’t change. Basically, you gain unusable items like skulls, grass, skins, or whatever at the end of battles and then sell them in combinations in order to get a new weapon in the store. Initially, it sounded fine, but there quickly became a problem. The problem being that it becomes hard to find some of this crap, granted you have to go deeper into the game to find some of the items, but it really limits your ability to obtain abilities for job and in general, explore the job system.

The auction feature is new to the game as well. Auctions initially serve as a replacement for territorial battles which used to take place in the first game. Rather than having the more fun battles, you now are reduced to visiting 1 of 4 auction houses to get control of areas. Basically these auctions come down to you having a bunch coins and biddng against other auctioneers on a particular area. The auction is in real time with the objective being to have the highest bid using as few coins as possible. When your clan controls all the areas delegated to an auction house, the fun truly begins because that’s when the auction starts offering rare weapons and armor. If you find yourself not winning a lot of auctions the simplest thing to do is just reload a file and try again because some of the items offered will be very important to some jobs. I kind of wanted to see the battles for territory stick around, but getting rare weapons is a lot easier now as well.

Let me start by saying first off, yes, the rules are still here. Like FFTA1, rules for each battle are placed by a judge and are laws that your team cannot break without facing some sort of consequence. In FFTA1 you risked having you teammate sent to jail, however, the lawbreaking in FFTA2 has been tuned down a bit. This time around breaking a law simply means that you will not receive a law bonus at the end. Missing the law bonus isn’t too much of a big deal after around the midpoint only because you’ve amassed most of the things the bonus grants you such as lower weapons and healing items. It’s a good change I think because the rules are also much more restrictive. However some rules such as ‘must move 3 squares’ are just ridiculous and really make me think that the developers were sitting around the office just finding ways to piss of the gamer. What makes it even worse is that none of these rules are enforced for the other team. I have a feeling the process went something like this:

SE developer 1: We should make a rule where players can’t move or attack, but let’s allow 6 monsters to gang rape them!
SE developer 2: That’s a great idea, but let’s add on the a time constraint rule as well!
SE developer 1: You totally read my mind!
Unnamed man in Baltimore, MD: …now all I have to do is put my head through the loop and jump!

It’s sort of a trade-off, yes the penalties are reduced but the benefits for following the law have become much more difficult to attain.

Visually, the game doesn’t look much different from a few years ago. The same lush backgrounds are still there which match there descriptions. Lots of tan sand for deserts and tons of trees for the forests are pretty much the norm. Of course most of your time will be spent navigating the map and menus of the game when you’re not in battle. I noticed that there are more different character portraits this time around. Rather than having the cowardly solider looking exactly the same as the brave, selfless solider, they now have some differences in terms of the portrait next to the MP/HP stats. Aside from that, everything looks the same with a more additions in terms of character classes and races. The camera however is still a pain in the ass. Basically the camera is set in an isometric view without any ability to modify the view. Usually it’s sufficient, but sometimes you’ll find difficulty in trying to see areas that are lower in level farther in the background. With this being a game heavy on positioning, it does become a little bothersome simply because no one took the time to allow for rotation of the camera. Overall it looks fine for a tactical RPG giving you what you need to play the game, but for a DS game I would have expected a little more as well as a better camera. The soundtrack seems to come mostly from FFTA1 and a few new songs come from FFXII. Basically it’s the same sort of hum-drum battle music from every other FF regular fight with most of the sound effects being recycled from the first game. I would’ve hoped for some new music, but it gets the job done.

I wish I could say it’s an improvement, but it’s not. In fact for every problem the developers attempted to fix, they actually made it worse. The weapon abilities system, the laws, and the story are just a few of the things I noticed the most, but without this turning into a 20 page Martin Luther-esque list of grievances, I think I got the big points. Disappointing as well is the overall presentation and story; it’s recycled and overly simplistic. I looked forward to this game, but to be honest, it’s disappointing to see a series that has a lot of potential not truly advance the series and actually commit the cardinal sin of sequels by not fixing what was wrong in the first game. If you got the first game, you may want to pick it up or at least try it. For those who never played this series or only played the original FFT I would say don’t bother.