After a few hours delving into the latest Tactics for the Nintendo DS, I’m ready to share a few thoughts with you.


by Benjamin Buday, Editor-in-Chief

My typically low-key neighbor in the dorms of Emerson College sophomore year spent the last few weeks of the semester as something of a door-to-door salesman, or rather, a walking garage sale. Some sort of mobile merchant pawning his unwanted goods (and other “materials”) for some cash and less clutter in his soon-to-be empty room. His broken PS2 and assorted useless cables didn’t appeal to me, but his copy of Final Fantasy Tactics for Playstation did. My original copy lost, I opted to drop his selling point, $20, for a classic I’d enjoyed many an evening as a junior high schooler.

Needless to say, much like my summer nights between 7th and 8th grade, recently I’ve spent many an evening holed up in my room, leading Ramza into random battle after random battle, striving for the double sword technique in the ninja job class, as I waited for Final Fantasy Tactics A2 to drop. Today, it hit shelves in North America, and while I don’t have a review for you — I’d rather not review games I haven’t beaten, but will certainly make note of such occurrence when applicable — but I would like to share my initial impressions of this highly-anticipated sequel.

The first thing I notice when booting up any game for the first time is presentation. Final Fantasy A2 begins with a musical flourish reminiscent of FF Tactics Advance for the Game Boy Advance — actually, the same motif, if I’m not mistaken. A2, as I’ll call it henceforth, sets a premise pretty similar to the GBA iteration; our protagonist Luso is a schoolboy who happens to stumble upon a book that leads him to Ivalice, only this time, I’m under the impression that he’s actually in Ivalice, unlike Marche’s adventure on GBA.

I’ll stop right here and inform that those who didn’t enjoy the whimsical motif of FF Tactics for GBA probably won’t like this one either. If you were hoping for the grit, tension and militarism of the medieval Final Fantasy Tactics for Playstaion, you’ll have to get the remake on PSP.A2 embraces the whimsical storybook quality that its immediate predecessor possessed.

After assaulting the B button to slog through a little more vapid dialog than I care for, I was thrust into an introductory battle. Patronizing for a Tactics veteran, but surely necessary for a beginner, this battle does a decent job of showing how the formula of gameplay is easy to learn and difficult to master. It’s in this battle also that players see the style and vibrancy of A2 — black magic spells flow and strike swiftly with crescendo, swords and staffs glance with piercing swipes and bludgeons, characters and the battlefield boast the art style expected but improved from previous Tactics games.

For the unfamiliar, A2 goes like this: it’s a strategy role-playing game in which you direct your characters of different abilities, race and job class on a battlefield like a chessboard with topography. Your goal typically is to clear the battlefield of your enemies by commanding your militia’s members in order to carry out directives like basic physical attacks, healing magic, elemental spells, summons and various other techniques. Players progress by visiting pubs and paying a small finder’s fee for various jobs that usually amount to clearing a battlefield of enemies, though these missions can be to protect non-playable characters, defeat a boss among him and his posse, or other narrow objectives other than destroy all enemies. By equipping new armor and weapons, your militia can learn new abilities as you find which job — soldier, black mage, animist, gunner, dragoon — suits your team best.

Only 20 minutes into the game it became apparent to me that the developers of A2 stuck closely to the formula of FF Tactics Advance, perhaps even to a fault. Why? Because besides a few alterations from its predecessor, A2 plays exactly like FF Tactics Advance. Disobeying laws in battle incurs less a punishment, there are new job classes and abilities, and the presentation has been overhauled, but this reeks of cloning. Maybe this doesn’t bother you — it doesn’t particularly agitate me — but when you’re humming along to the tunes the first time you hear them, you’ll feel like you’ve already played this game. And for the most part, you have.

I’m enjoying my time with A2, because frankly, I love the hell out of the FF Tactics gameplay. But compound my desire for a game more like the original with my hopes for a lot more innovation that is offered here, and you’re left with a loyal FF Tactics fan who’s feeling a bit underwhelmed. Mind you, I’m barely two hours in, but so far, I’m not amazed. I’m entertained, but far from dazzled. Yes, I knew the story wasn’t going to be grisly and mature like the original, but the fact that I already feel like I’ve played this game doesn’t bode particularly well. I have high hopes though, so check out the full review towards the end of the week.

Benjamin can be summoned at Benjamin@megazinemedia.com.