Final Fantasy Tactics was the previous holder of George's Favorite Final Fantasy of All Time until I played Final Fantasy IX, but being second best is still pretty good, and man, it was a hell of a run. Tactics is an excellent game, one that I think remains unrivaled by other tactical RPGs to this day. I've played some of the Ogre games and the Tactics' sequels, as well as stuff like The Banner Saga, and nothing quite compares.

I also play this game like a total psychopath, grinding random battles during the prologue chapter in order to make sure every member of my squad has at least one job mastered. I can usually do this by gaming just a couple of battles, inflicting grievous acts of harm on my own troops in order to build character. JP gains by a thousand cuts. By the time I'm on chapter 2 I've got a full fleet of chemists chucking elixirs and knights that can easily slay their enemies in a single blow, but instead break every piece of their armor systematically in order to cause the maximum amount of torment before death.

Perhaps somewhere along the way I've lost sight of the "tactical" part of Final Fantasy Tactics, opting to dominate through raw numbers, but I don't care. I'm still having a good time. At least until I get to Wiegraf. Easily one of the most sadistic moments in gaming, pitting you one-on-one against a foe who can easily put you into a corner where two strikes will kill you, and who doesn't afford you enough distance to break out of a cycle of perpetual healing. I've always trained Ramza as a ninja to compensate, since their two-strike ability definitely gives him an edge, with auto-potion as a passive ability for extra protection. However, if you don't already have knowledge of the Wiegraf fight then it's entirely possible to softlock yourself here, as this battle comes right off the heels of another. If you save inbetween (as the game gives you the option to do), there's no way to go back to the world map to grind experience. You're just dead in the water. It's a little funny then that you unlock Cid not too long after this fight, because even if you aren't rolling with an over-leveled party, this guy kinda breaks the whole game in your favor. Tactics is not balanced by any metric, and this unevenness is probably its greatest weakness.

There's a bunch of named characters you can unlock through sidequests, and I always do these once they're available, even if I might not use them in battle (except for Cloud.) Maybe that has something to do with me wanting to wring as much as I can out of Final Fantasy Tactics, but I also genuinely love the character interactions in this game. The story is one of the more complicated narratives in a Final Fantasy, with enough intrigue and back-stabbing to make your head spin. The climax, Ramza's fate, and the post-credit scene have stuck with me in particular. It also seems like it was localized by someone who has suffered multiple traumatic brain injuries, so it might take a few passes before you pick up on everything. That is if you don't play War of the Lions, the PSP remake, which features a new translation along with other improvements. This is probably the best version of the game to play, but for some reason Square refuses to make it available on modern consoles (and given the quality of some of their modern ports, maybe that's for the best.)

Despite a few shortcomings, I'm still rating Tactics pretty highly, because I can't deny how much fun I have with it. Mixing and matching job abilities to create the ultimate hybrid class, sending troops out on treasure hunts and recon missions, pouring over team formations tailored to specific encounters, all of it just sucks me in. The characters, lore, and world of Ivalice are just the icing on top. If you enjoy tactical RPGs or Final Fantasy and have yet to play Tactics then obviously I think you should check it out, but I would also suggest spending a little extra time getting a PSP emulator up and running so you can play War of the Lions.

This game is the gold standard for the strategy RPG genre. It's the best in its class, still yet to be topped, and an absolute must play for anyone who enjoys RPGs or strategy games. To this day, I haven't played an SRPG I've enjoyed more than this one. This game makes it into my Top 5 Greatest Games of All Time list.

This game has it all - challenging, strategic gameplay, multiple different job classes and party customization, in-depth battle mechanics, diverse battle grids/areas, etc.

For a first time SRPG player back in the 90's, this game routinely kicked my ass throughout... but in a good way. :) It pushed me to try different tactics, party layouts, and just learn the game in-and-out about how it works. This game is dense in its gameplay, and it will take you a while to learn all of its intricacies. It also taught me a valuable lesson of keeping multiple saves, so you don't find yourself in an unwinnable situation (staring at you Wiegraf...).

I remember being haunted by Dorter Trade City, Golgorand Execution Site, Lionel Castle, the Wiegraf 1v1 and the 2nd part of that battle as a kid. There were other challenging battles as well, but these ones stay burned in my memory. The feeling of joy I felt when finally conquering them was euphoric. Don't be scared off by the challenge, however. If you learn the game properly, you can get through it. As an adult now, and understanding the game much more than I did as a child, I find myself dabbling in some modded versions that increase the game's difficulty even further.

The game is just fun - and I think a lot of that has to do with its job system and the quick nature of its battles. Each battle is usually comprised of 4-5 units on your team vs the 4-6 enemy units (there are instances where this changes though).

For players that want to break FF Tactics, it gives you plenty of options there too. Experimentation with the character classes is great, and I won't spoil some of the more OP job mixtures.

So that's enough about gameplay - next up I'd like to focus a little time on the game's story and music.

I'd consider FF Tactics to have the most mature storyline of any FF game to date. It essentially was Game of Thrones before GoT made it big (I know, the first book was released less than a year before the game, but you get my point). The game's tone, heavily political backdrop, and story with major themes in class warfare & religious dogma, create this very well constructed and believable world of Ivalice. And for those that dig under the surface, you can read up on the history of this world in the game to get an even greater appreciation for the game's setting and writing.

And its music fits this world and its tone perfectly. From its sweeping epic battle songs, to more somber character pieces, this game has it all. Some of my favorites would have to include: Trisection, Antipyretic, Delita's Theme, Battle on the Bridge, and Attack Team.

Also, I think the game's sound effects are a highly underappreciated part of the game, but everything just fits well: in my mind I can hear the character's death screams, weapon attacks, spell sounds, cursor noise, etc.

All in all, this game is a masterpiece. I still hold out hope for a true sequel to the series 20+ years after release...hell, I'll even take a War of the Lions remastered version on all platforms at this point. Just give me some SRPG goodness within the world of Ivalice, Square-Enix!!!

The argument surrounding what the term “RPG” entails has been going on for decades, and at this rate, it will probably go on forever. Some people argue that it refers to leveling up a character, some argue it’s about narrative choices, but I would say the key ingredient is player expressiveness, in whatever form that may take. Set-character stories like The Witcher are usually on the low end of the spectrum, with the existing personality of the protagonist taking precedence over the player's. Freeform narratives like Fallout: New Vegas are on the other end, where players can make up their own backstory and choose their own path. However, since expressiveness can come in a variety of forms, even a set-character story with few narrative decisions can afford players plenty of freedom. Final Fantasy Tactics might be the best example of this, with the unprecedented amount of depth it allows for when customizing your party. In classic Final Fantasy games, characters are assigned a job that defines their specialty in combat and limits what abilities they can use, but the rules were loosened up in Tactics to reflect the game’s focus on strategy. Your party members are still assigned jobs, but the job-specific skills can be mastered over time and then used with any class. There are twenty jobs each with an entire menu of skills to use, five characters participating in each battle, and each character having four skill slots. The amount of ways to customize your team is absolutely staggering, and the potential for interesting synergies is limitless. There’s still a vibrant romhacking community for this game over twenty years later because the depth afforded by all these options has kept people playing for years.

As interesting as the RPG theorycrafting is though, I still haven’t even mentioned the second half of the title: Tactics. If there are so many possible builds, how are players kept from accidentally screwing themselves with a bad setup, or destroying the difficulty curve with a good one? In short, the answer is “they aren’t”. This game is legendary for having a couple difficulty spikes that softlocked players who saved over their file in the middle of a mission that was too hard for their suboptimal team to complete. Meanwhile, a certain job provides an ability that synergizes so powerfully that a single character can destroy half the enemies on the map in a single turn with it. It’s also well-known in the Tactics community that some of the companion characters have unique abilities that trivialize the majority of the game, creating a dominant strategy and removing the need for tactics at all. This is the biggest problem with Tactics, its balancing is handled so poorly that you either run into unbreakable walls or thoughtlessly plow through the game. For me, I experienced both sides of this. Since I was warned about the overpowered options, I decided to avoid them and use only the default companions. This went well for about half the game, before the legendary difficulty spike made it impossible for me to progress, even with hours of farming. After that, I abandoned the balance limitations, and steamrolled the second half of the game. For most tactical games, that would be a failing grade, but I truly did have an amazing time in that first half and enjoyed the unparalleled amount of freedom. The story is also fantastic, albeit with some awkward translations that made comprehension difficult in places. Luckily, there was an updated PSP version of the game titled War of the Lions that adjusted the balance to make it more tactical, fixed the translation issues, and added new cutscenes, so that’s the version I would have to recommend, even without having played it yet. Those are the exact changes needed to make the strategy worthy of the amazingly expressive RPG it’s tied to.

had a similar experience as ffxii in that no matter how dense, well-written and ideologically sound a game's themes and messages may be, i have a hard time getting invested enough in them to care if i'm not interested in the characters, setting or writing. with ffxii i was at least extremely invested in fran and balthier and charmed by the refreshing mediterranean/middle eastern/south asian setting of dalmasca, but i didn't feel any of that about tactics or its particular portrayal of ivalice.

i think it's really that i honestly just don't care for medieval fantasy

O jrpg quem fez gostar do subgênero ''tactics'', aqui fugimos do básico de ''bate e espera'', aqui precisamos montar estratégias em cada batalha, explorando as diferentes classes e habilidades/magias/equipamentos (por conta da diferença de terreno e altura dos mapas, tempo de casting de algumas habilidades e magias, tudo isso implica nas lutas), movendo os nossos personagens em pontos chaves do mapa, para atacar e defender algo ao longo das lutas, claro que nem todas as lutas vão ser difíceis, mas se comparando com os jogos seguintes (o tactics de gba e ds), as lutas principais, e algumas aleatórias são bem difíceis de lidar (quem teve o ''prazer'' de enfrentar o bando de choccobos pretos e vermelhos em lutas aleatórias, ou até mesmo a luta principal, contra Wiegraf Folles e o seu corredor polonês sabe o que eu to dizendo kk), fora o post game, que te faz mergulhar em uma sequência de dugeons, pra pegar algumas recompensas valiosas, desde equipamentos/habilidades e um companheiro em especial.

Se você que estiver lendo isso, e nunca teve contato com o gênero de jrpg ou o seu sub gênero tactics, e estava atrás de jogar esse jogo aqui, eu recomendo fortemente você jogar antes a versão de gba (jogue a versão europeia, não jogue a americana, pois nela há um bug que te impede de recrutar 2 personagens especiais, coisa que da pra concertar com 2 editores de do game, mas é trabalho demais para ''leigos'' com o jogo e computação), e depois a do ds, e depois se possível, jogue essa versão aqui do ps1 ou jogue a versão de psp, o motivo é muito simples, como ele é de longe o mais difícil dos 3 jogos, muitos podem acabar desistindo do jogo ou do subgênero em sí como todo, mas se você gosta de
se desafiar, pode seguir a ordem dos jogos normalmente.

A beautiful looking game, and a game that comes across as stronger than many of the games inspired by it.

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The game has a big focus on the diorama aspect of the stages, setting each one up like a little theater scene, and very expressive sprite pantomime acting, leaning in to what gave FF so much identity with the SNES sprites. Characters coming in from offstage and having great characterful animation while a scene plays out on a nicely decorated stage never stopped charming me, and I think it’s one of the games greatest strengths.

The music really grew on me too, I’d heard it out of context before and never felt much for it, but it ends up fitting the game well.

The writing is also remarkably terse and effective compared to all the purple-prose-choked scripts that plague every game inspired by it. The main story itself is mostly standard fantasy beats but the execution is confident and compelling, only somewhat hampered by the awkward translation (though it’s still perfectly readable outside very optional backstory menus). The game also ends very strong, I was very impressed with that final scene, just great stuff.

Actually one of the best Final Fantasy games, up there with my favorite in the mainline series. The gameplay is excellent, requiring actual strategy & planning even in the random battles, but without feeling too taxing. The job system is great, and it's fun to find what combinations can work well together. The story is interesting, but this version of the game is marred by a terrible translation that's chock full of awkward wording, typos, and inconsistent names. I'll definitely revisit this on the PSP to see how its newer translation fares.

It isn't suprising to me that Ivalice has established itself as a recurring universe in the FF canon, considering how rich and elaborated its inception was with Final Fantasy Tactics. A far cry from the high fantasy grandiose storylines familiar to the main series, FFT presents instead a self serious political crown succession conflict with a vast number of morally ambiguous characters clashing their ideologies and inner struggles with honor and duty on a shakespearean stage. While not to say that these ideas haven't been explored in previous FF titles, it's clear that director Matsuno has a particular interest for real life history events that make his storytelling more akin to Game of Thrones than to The Lord of the Rings.

So much so, that the FF iconography present in Tactics is for the most part just superficial acknowledgement of the franchise, with the obligatory presence of chocobos, familiar spell names and screen filling summons. The biggest FF contribution in Tactics is however the class system, which allows a plethora of options and strategies in creating a deeply personalized party that feels constructed and earned by the player, giving the game a level freedom comparable to something like Symphony of the Night. But like Symphony of the Night, Tactics freedom is simultaneously its biggest strength and biggest flaw.

Notorious for its lack of difficulty balance, it becomes extremely easy to accidentally build a team in Tactics that can decimate every late stage battle in a few turns. And while you could have the prior knowledge of how not to break the game, the infamous difficulty spikes permeated throughout FFT make it very hard to not do so. Getting save trapped in a sequence of battles with no opportunity to grind inbetween, just to find yourself against an opponent that can one hit kill you if you do not have a very specific set of abilities and stats, is hardly what I would consider fair. While I appreciate the unique challenge of FFT, I find that its chess like diorama battles felt more like fighting an AI calculating my stats and my exact moves instead of an equal battle of the minds.

Still, despite its shortcomings, FFT has maintained its status as a classic for good reasons. A representation of a time when Square owned the world and had free reign to experiment, Tactics remains a deeply engaging SRPG that also boasts one of the most compelling and well written storylines in the franchise, with Ramza and Delita's rivalry being a worthy take of the trope and the ambiguous ending successfully book ending the themes explored in the game. I reccommend going for the PSP port over the PS1 version, the overthought flowery dialogue is essencial to the Tactics aesthetic.

Absolute perfection. I've probably played this game all the way through 20 times at this point. And I can tell you that this particular experience comes nowhere close to anything else, besides one other game.

Let me blunt, play the rerelease of this game on PSP for the story. At the time, there was absolutely nothing like this game when it came to the kind of story it was trying to tell. A kingdom riddled with war and betrayal at every turn. The story is so captivating, and it's constantly shifting in tone and expectation. I adore the story of this game, it was ambitious at the time, but it works. Again, play the PSP version for story, the original PS1 release has a patchy translation that's hard to follow and loses a lot of details. PSP also added a lot of new scenes to make the story even better.

The gameplay is superb. Masterful execution of the tactical RPG style condensed into smaller battles where your decisions matter so much earlier than other games like this. The sheer variety of maps, types of units, skills, combinations of skills, unique armor, weapons etc. I can go on forever, this game can be replayed multiple times with new combinations and ideas for strategy or map specific strategies that it never gets old. The classic Final Fantasy job system returns in this game, and it's amazing. There is so many to choose from, and while some classes might not inherently be useful, they might have an ability you can use on another class to make it useful. Combat is rather simple, run up, attack, end turn. But there's a lot of little details between these rather simple exchanges that reward you for knowing them. But they're not so cryptic or hard to understand, all you need to do is observe and you'll continue learning.

Art style is awesome. Incredible pixel artwork for the units. All of them have so much personality and are super charming and unique. The more realistic maps in comparison mesh so well with the characters, it's seamless. And each map is a treat to look at, although sometimes it might get hard to see some of your units on certain maps, and that can be annoying, but it's not too bad. Spell animations are so cool. They feel so old school but have these brilliant effects and lighting. It's truly a spectacle every time, and I never get tired of seeing them.

Music is also stunning. You have incredible battle themes that feel very epic, and there's a ton of variety. You have happy songs, really sad songs, tension. It's so diverse in emotion and is able to make story sequences have so much more impact. Definitely listen to the OST sometime, it's honestly impressive.

Sound design, once again, is just incredible. Sword slashes have such a satisfying sound effect, critical hits have a loud piercing noise to emphasize the damage. Every spell has beautiful sound effects that are loud and powerful. It's also really unique sound design, like I couldn't compare this game's sound design to anything really except maybe Suikoden 2.

Final Fantasy Tactics, while not being as well known, is a masterpiece. It has absolutely everything you want both from a Tactical RPG, and a Final Fantasy game. If you love breaking games and getting overpowered, or love trying something new every time, this game is perfect for that. You can get it on PlayStation 1, and PlayStation 3 via PlayStation store. You can get the rerelease of the game with a ton of new content added to it for PSP called "War of The Lions". Do be aware the PSP version suffers from a lot of its own issues, so just be aware of that before making a decision.

okay we all know it's one of the greatest rpgs of all time, certainly one of the best tactical rpgs, and it taught me more about class stratification than an entire social anthropology course during my junior year; but let's focus on the fact that this gem brought of some of the best bad translations ever, featuring iconic gibberish such as:
innocent: magic sword makes enemy disrespectful and not believe in god
"live, know, become a frog! frog!"
this's the way
and the absolutely timeless
L I T T L E M O N E Y

This is one of my favorite games to replay and I can see myself going back to it again and again without getting bored, but equally, whenever I go back to it its flaws stand out clearly to me. Two major issues in particular:

- FFV is my favorite game of all time (thanks largely to its superlative take on the job system), and the job system here is possibly even better, with tons more depth and customization. But the more I play this game the more I realize that a great job system is only half the battle: the game's difficulty curve has to be carefully curated in order to make tinkering with your jobs feel rewarding. FFV did a much better job of that than this game, which had a backwards difficulty curve with strange spikes. I think the main issue is that with a few exceptions, the enemies in this game are all human and therefore play by the same rules as you (i.e. they have primary classes, secondary skillsets, movement abilities, reaction abilities and passive abilities). But rather than having coherent builds, their ability sets seem to be determined at random. It isn't noticeable at the beginning, but by the endgame you will have crazy focused builds like teleporting wizards who evade 97% of physical attacks, and barehanded ninjas who can yell at themselves to go faster, and you'll be facing mages who jump on you for pitiful damage, or dragoons (lowest magic stat in the game) who waste their turns healing for single-digit HP instead of attacking you.

- The story is probably the best of any JRPG I've played. Or at least, I realized that it was the best after I read a plot analysis online, because the translation was utter steaming garbage. There are technically worse translations, but they tended to be early JRPGs with tropey stories you could get the gist of anyway; this web of political intrigue and double and triple-crossing deserved better. I honestly think any English-speaker with a Japanese dictionary could have done a better job - from how unwieldy a lot of the dialogue was, it seems almost like it was translated by one guy with a Japanese-English dictionary with no knowledge of either language.

Despite the two issues above, I would say that this is actually one of the RPGs I've played that comes closest to a 10/10 in both story and game mechanics. It is well worth playing and replaying.

É um excelente jogo com um elenco de personagens interessantes e sistema de jobs bem variado, possui uma história muito bacana e repleta de reviravoltas com uma trilha sonora épica rolando de fundo.
Seria um jogo perfeito ou quase isso, se não fosse QUEBRADO, o jogo tem um balanceamento meio esquisito, com sequências e picos de dificuldades estranhos, existem umas missões bem ridículas, como a de salvar um personagem especifico no telhado que pode morrer simplesmente no primeiro turno do combate, na reta final do jogo, entra um personagem que é tão forte, que se tu colocar ele na party, todo o desafio da reta final fica bem fácil, isso sem contar as várias maneiras que você tem de deixar personagens extremamente fortes por si só.

Final Fantasy Tactics is dearly beloved for a lot of reasons by many, still subject to modding and new character builds every so often. It's simply good, from the flow of combat to the great storyline and character development. It ticks many boxes, from customizing your team to actually giving you the means to break the game - and be broken. The game is unfair at times, but I can't really hold it against it since it's very open about it. Not only that, but the game is beautiful, the sprites are colorful and detailed, stages and cutscenes look incredible and thanks to great sound, both soundtrack and design, immersion is guaranteed. What I can tell you that I don't like is the uneven difficulty curve, the way progression is handled (looking at you, Wiegraf) and random encounters not being fair, but it's small things I reckon.

Simply put, I love this game, it came to me as a revelation, it made me realize that videogames could tell stories, good ones at that. They could mean something more than simple entertainment. I don't recommend the PSP port for several nitpicky reasons, but if you can you should get The Lion War and other mods from the boys, gals and meteor chugging chocobos at ffhacktics dot com.

This is an incredible and ambitious Tactics/RPG. For starters, this game has an extensive tutorial and the ability to recap the story and rewatch cutscenes. All are first that I’ve seen in a PS1 game. It also has a vast amount of lore leading up to its story. The world of Ivalice truly feels alive and great care went into its history and world building.

By far the best thing about this game is it’s job system. There are 20 jobs (classes) and unlocking them is a thrill in and of itself. You can assign a job to a character and equip them with skills from other jobs. The result is near endless experimentation by mixing jobs and skills. I could easily see myself making a team of Summoning Archers or Time Mage Ninjas in the a future playthrough. There are many possibilities. As glorious as the job system is, it can become quite overwhelming. To prevent wasting job points, I often felt forced to change jobs once I mastered one. Doing this for 5+ characters felt like a hassle. This becomes more apparent the longer you play. Thankfully, your primary job’s set of skills can be used as secondary, preventing you from starting from scratch when changing to a new job.

I loved playing this game, but there were a few flaws. Some attacks/abilities are unclear as to what attributes are important for their power/success rate. There is guide online but it is extremely complicated. During boss fights, the game suffers from difficulty spikes and/or scripted battles. You’ll learn quickly that these battles need to be done ASAP, as the boss and their minions will slaughter your party, but it diminishes the strategic element of the game. These fights usually end when the boss is in critical condition, making them seem anticlimactic as they vanish off the screen, only to fight them later. This happens often. There are also times where you’ll have consecutive battles. If you aren’t properly leveled up and save in between these battles, you could be stuck in a fight that you can’t win.

I didn’t find the story outstanding, but it is unpredictable and complex, with drama and mystical elements that I always find appealing. The strategic battles can create some unforgettable moments. One battle, I stole a bosses’ sword, so he was forced to punch me instead of using his regular attacks lol. In another battle, a boss and his minions nearly wiped my party but I killed him with what would’ve been my final attack.

This game has an insane amount of detail, a nice soundtrack, and the job system is addictive. I can’t imagine that there are many PS1 games better than this.

"Blame yourself or God"

What a game. This game was an introduction to tactical RPGs for many, and may be the Final Fantasy game that holds up on the PSX to this day (and FF9) The art style and music are both fantastic and does not feel dated.

The best thing about this game is the replay value. The idea of being able to craft your team whichever way you like would introduce tons of different ways and challenges to complete this game.

Ivalice, oh Ivalice. Tactics marked my first foray into this wonderful world when I was a toddler watching my father play. I would sit by his side, strategy guide in hand, tattling whatever information he needed. I’ve still got it, even if it’s hardly held together all these years due to how many times I pored over its contents. It’s safe to say Tactics means a ton to me emotionally, and has shaped, for my entire life, what kind of games I enjoy. I have since revisited it a good number of times as I’ve grown up, be it on the PS1, PSP, or other dubious means, all the while my love for it never waning. I suppose now is as good a time as any to explain exactly why.

Nothing has topped Tactics as my favorite Final Fantasy game, and this is due to nearly every facet of it being phenomenal and top-of-the-line, not only in the FF series, but this entertainment medium as a whole. Every person on the development team is extremely talented, and their work in the rest of the franchise henceforth has made waves. Tactics has flaws of course, some of which are egregious and make it obscenely hard to play for those unfamiliar with the genre, however I feel everything else more than makes up for it. "The grandfather of tactical RPGs," some consider it. While I tend not to relish such terminology… I can see where they come from.

Little other games come close to Tactics’ satisfying gameplay and team-building. It truly has it all. Since it operates on a per-unit turn basis as opposed player/enemy/npc phases (ala Fire Emblem) battles are dynamic, fast-paced, and frantic at times. Having low overall unit count adds to the quickness of battles, too, though you’re often outnumbered. The maps are diverse and gorgeous, and provide unique strategic play that will completely depend on your party composition. Unit facing dictates damage and hit rates, environments have elevation differences and hazards, and line of sight is a consideration for projectile-based abilities, so positioning matters more than ever. Maps being fully rotational is very intentional, as there are nooks and crannies that could be hiding foes. There are even items hidden on select tiles that can only be discovered when someone with a very specific ability stands on them… the result of which depends on a certain stat. Point is, there’s a plethora of gameplay mechanics that are fulfilling to learn and take advantage of; it’s so dense I could not possibly cover it all here. For instance, I had no idea about the Zodiac compatibility system until at least a couple playthroughs. Of course, whenever I replay it now, I spend a good half an hour ditching the starting party and tailoring one with optimal Zodiac synergy. There is a solid in-game tutorial at least; something surprisingly uncommon for games back then.

Let’s be real here: the highlight is the job system. Everyone knows it, or at least, I hope they do. Final Fantasy V might pull the job system off better as far as balancing goes, but the foundation of Tactics’ battle system and how said jobs are able to be utilized in a strategy RPG setting is what pulls it ahead of all other incarnations for me. I actually think the lack of balancing is a strength in a way, due to the game being so easy to break with certain class and ability combinations. I won’t get into the most grotesquely-powerful ones for spoilers’ sake, but it’s genuinely a ton of fun finding new ways to bend the game’s balance in your favor. “Muh replay value” except it’s actually legit here. The job sprites and portraits themselves are adorable as well. Chock full of passion and character. That extends to the artstyle as a whole, actually. It should be mentioned that the act of grinding is a bit funny, with the gaining of JP being tied to the actions you take, as opposed to the battles you win, so you end up whaling on your own party members while the sole remaining enemy is tortured, rendered completely unable to fight back, or both.

I am likely taking for granted a lot of Tactics’ ingenuity, having been around it almost my entire life, so if there’s one thing to take away, it's that it's damn fun. I can pick apart the intricacies all day, but that fact remains. One thing it isn’t though, is perfect.

A poorly utilized function of the job system are the human enemies fought, both in random encounters and story missions. While their primary jobs are fixed, I’m fairly certain that every single other ability of theirs is randomized. I’m an advocate for the unpredictable, however this causes them to either never take advantage of their full kit or be incredibly weak with their secondary abilities. An enemy summoner receiving the Aim command is either never going to be able to use it, or use it so poorly they open themselves up for a OHKO because they’re a squishy mage who decided to approach your dual-wielding brawler ninja. This is much more apparent in the mid to end-game, where your party is reaching its penultimatum, while enemies retain their relatively primitive ability setups. At the very least they’ve got good equipment to steal/catch.

I also don’t like the Gained JP UP passive ability. Yes, this incredibly specific one in particular that’s worth an entire paragraph in this review. It’s available to everyone the moment they’re recruited with minimal investment, and is basically opportunity cost if you don’t use it, since all it does is make the game slower if you wish to learn more abilities and make unique builds utilizing other passives. Romha- er, “mods,” that remove this ability and/or simply make its effects innate to every character receive my highest praise.

The balancing as far as difficulty goes is a different beast. Everything else is a nitpick compared to this. There exist such incredibly steep difficulty spikes that one has to wonder what the developers were thinking. Dorter Slums and the Execution Site are a couple of these spikes, but they feel fair and are knowledge checks to see if you’re learning the game and experimenting with jobs. Wiegraf 1v1 and the whole Riovanes Castle sequence though? Yeesh. Every playthrough I spend preparing for them, and I can only imagine how jarring it must be for someone playing for the first time, since I’ve really never gotten to play it blind. This isn’t even getting into how it’s possible to softlock oneself in these battles due to how the in-between battle saving works. It’s become common rhetoric to keep multiple save files when playing Tactics, and this is why. I do it in other games too, whenever it’s possible… just in case. Legit PTWD (Post Traumatic Wiegraf Disorder). I don’t care about this as much as the difficulty spikes, but near the end of the game - depending on how you built your team - everything becomes about overpowering and brute forcing enemies rather than strategic play. Orlandeau is a common stickler for this point, however him being busted beyond belief is for narrative's sake. Anyone else can become juggernauts on the battlefield with the right abilities. It isn’t difficult to achieve this, either, so whenever I replay, I tend to limit myself, steal gear, and/or find hidden items to add more layers of strategy. The difficulty curve, or lack thereof, is the main deterrent I find when recommending more people to play it.

Throughout the story and optional side quests, unique guest characters are recruited, and overshadow generics due to their base classes being oftentimes very powerful. I still like making unique builds with them, even though they can carry themselves quite effectively by default. As mentioned previously, Orlandeau is infamous for breaking the game’s balance in two, so much so in fact that I feel like he’s an apology for the pain players endure in the first half of Chapter 4, however nerfing him in a hypothetical remake would downtrod on his immense strength that the narrative spends so long talking up. Not to mention he’s completely optional to use and deploy. Nowadays I tend to strip him of his gear and send him to the bench for the added challenge if nothing else; Excalibur makes anyone busted. I have a particular fondness for Mustadio, because guns are cool. Yeah, this game has guns. He makes for an amazing support unit that can dish out serious damage once elemental ones start to become available.

Tactics features permadeath, which results in all recruited characters eventually fading into narrative obscurity once they’re no longer relevant to the plot. Kind of a shame but it’s understandable. It’s very convoluted to account for every given scenario where certain characters might not even be recruited/alive. This aspect ultimately doesn’t take away from much, and that’s because everything else about the plot is stellar. It’s taught me more about class struggles and religious dogma than any history and government class I’ve been in. The twists hit incredibly hard, and the epic moments are genuinely so. Realizing there’s an entire demonic scheme involving the church that’s happening below the central political strife is such an incredible revelation. It sticks the landing too with the ending! For those who want to dig for the details, it’s possible to read up on the history of Ivalice via in-game entries and rumors to gain a further understanding of the game’s current and past events. After all this time, having experienced hundreds of other games and movies and shows, it remains the case that Tactics’ plot is intricate, gripping, mature, and legitimately one of the best in any form of media I’ve experienced.

It wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is without the excellently-written Ramza and Delita, protagonist and deuteragonist, respectively. Despite playing and experiencing events through the former, Delita receives so much development and characterization that it feels wrong to relegate him as anything other than a protagonist. The two play off each other masterfully. It’s hard to get into detail without spoiling (so I won't) but these two have solidified themselves as one of my favorite duos in all of gaming. To this day, people discuss them, and the game is over two-and-a-half decades old. The villains are particularly well-written, too. A lot of moral gray area makes them interesting to have to deal with, to say the least. No one gets a happy ending in this tale.

I suppose this is when the translation should be brought up. It’s so bad it’s good, and has brought unto us a good handful of hilariously iconic lines. I think it does its job though; it’s mostly the spell call-outs that are oddly worded. With how deep the plot and characters are, I think Tactics definitely deserved a better translation. Think somewhere along the lines of Vagrant Story’s… and that’s where the War of the Lions remake came in. The entire script had been uprooted and given a shiny new Shakespearean coat of paint, which is better in a lot of aspects, but it softens the blows of some of the more famous quotes of the original due to how flowery the words are. “Animals have no God!!” is punchier than “The Gods have no eyes for chattel,” among others.

Not exactly sure where to slot this in, but Tactics’ music is… oh my god. Even after these last couple decades, I have never gotten tired of listening to it. Legitimately every track is bound to instill some sort of emotion, be that through its palpable battle tracks or the crushingly melancholic ones. It’s CRIMINAL that many of them play for only one or two battles at most, but I’d wager that makes them hit even harder. I had considered listing out my favorites, though I fear it’d turn out to be quite literally everything. Antipyretic, Under the Stars, and Ovelia's Worries are personally notable due to their sheer tonal shifts midway through. Damn it, I did it anyway. If “punctual” could have a new definition, it’d be Tactics’ soundtrack.

On second thought, there can be two definitions, and that would have to be the sound design. Very likely the punchiest and most unique in any game I’ve played. Scoring a critical hit as the screen does a sudden zoom-in absolutely sells the impact. Even stuff like doors closing, or drawbridges opening, sound real neat. I have the “grope” noise ingrained into my subconscious. I imitated it out loud while typing that. IYKYK. It’s an utter shame that the War of the Lions remake butchered the audio quality… it’s like MiDi vs orchestral, except applied to every sound in the game; all of the echo is gone. What’s left are weak and shrill sound effects that, at their worst, are genuinely painful to the ears. It makes it hard to recommend over the original. So I just don’t.

Tactics does so, so many things right; I do not kid when I claim it to be superior to most - dare I say, all - numbered Final Fantasy entries. The gameplay is too tight, the plot is too deep, and the characters are too compelling for me to think otherwise. So, I hope I can speak for a lot of people when I say we're praying for some sort of rerelease that will feature the original’s sound quality as well as WotL’s content, or something along those lines. Tactics deserves to be experienced by a wider audience.

I'm a big fan of action games, in fact that's about the only type of game I really enjoy playing whereas I can't for the life of me get into RPGs. Yet I adore Final Fantasy Tactics and its clones. There's a reason for that that I noticed right away and it's Final Fantasy Tactics being an action game in tactics form. In fact there isn't much tactics going on in FFT, 99% of the time you'll give orders based on instincts and feeling rather than thought. There's a real tactile quality to FFT and it comes from multiple sources: the aesthetics, the small maps and rosters, the brutal "kill or be killed" approach to combat and its overall flow, the powerful spells and abilities, the customization and the grounded and gritty narrative elements.
Where other TRPGs put a stronger emphasis on puzzle-oriented scenarios, FFT likes getting into the thick of it and channel the pugilistic qualities of the battles it illustrates, it's very compelling in that regard, and while it is a simpler and more straightforward game compared to many other TRPGs of that era, I think it works to its advantage. To me it does anyway.