I just love Ivalice so much
took a break and then drastic kinda hyucked itself and I can't be bothered to fix it right now.
So this is just gonna be a short review with the consideration that its an unfinished playthrough I might come back to (and in fairness, I was very close to finishing the main story with above 200 quests already done).
Either way, this was a game I really enjoyed more than I expected myself to. It's just got really solid tactics gameplay with a good variety of classes and skill while not feeling overbearing or too complicated. The number of established characters (e.g Luso, Cid, Adelle namely) for your clan is
limited, but this is to be expected from these sorts of tactics game.
And quite honestly, I actually had a lot of fun imagining the personalites, backstories and customized appearances e.t.c. for the generic party members. This is how I generally am with these sorts of games including the tactics ogre series, it just kind of feels jarring at times cuz I don't share these same kind of feelings for say, Dragon Quest 3 and 9 or something, which also has generic customizable party members for hire. Regardless, having a good variety of distinct class options for most playable species is pretty cool. My major complaint really is the lack of more classes for two species, and species as a whole being either male or female instead of letting you choose their gender. In fairness though, I imagine they probably just didn't have the time or were limited in some way to implement this.
The main storyline is actually fairly short, which I think is about a total of 20 missions iirc. This sounds rather underwhelming, but its cuz the meat of the game is actually in all the clan side quests you can do, a total of 300 listed ones with a few extra as well. You're more or less encouraged to do as many as you can because that is where the main enjoyment of the game is gonna come from.
This seems to have affected the writing as well, as far as I can tell. Compared to Advance 1 and what little I know of the og tactics, the story of A2 is definitely very stripped down in comparison. But I can't say I'm disappointed with that? It feels like a deliberate choice to make the main storyline generally more lax and low stakes to further emphasize the "clan doing all sorts of jobs" aspect with the sidequests, not making the player feel like they're cornered into doing the main storyline as quick as possible. I think the writing quality of the main storyline is made up for anyways this way, as clan quests often present interesting stories with many of them being connected through each other through a continuous storyline. I'm finding it hard to express why I liked it so much, but I guess I just liked the freedom of it and the writing never truly bored me in any way.
I do also want to say the main storyline and notable characters still have their interesting and heartfelt moments here and there. They aren't gonna win any awards for it but I genuinely got pretty connected to the close knit group of Cid, Adelle and Luso and their struggles and how they overcome them with the help of each other, as well as other characters like Huey, Vaan and Penelo being generally likeable and its also just neat of them to bring in ff12 characters, really makes the ivalice games feel more connected. The main storyline villain is pretty slay, ofc, nail polish emote, periodt.
Overall though yeah I do quite like this structure. Would it have worked as well if the game wasn't a handheld? I'm not sure, as I ended up playing it on a phone lol, but for a handheld at least its structure works perfectly for anyone to hop into the game at any point and do whatever they wanna do. Definitely would recommend this game.
So this is just gonna be a short review with the consideration that its an unfinished playthrough I might come back to (and in fairness, I was very close to finishing the main story with above 200 quests already done).
Either way, this was a game I really enjoyed more than I expected myself to. It's just got really solid tactics gameplay with a good variety of classes and skill while not feeling overbearing or too complicated. The number of established characters (e.g Luso, Cid, Adelle namely) for your clan is
limited, but this is to be expected from these sorts of tactics game.
And quite honestly, I actually had a lot of fun imagining the personalites, backstories and customized appearances e.t.c. for the generic party members. This is how I generally am with these sorts of games including the tactics ogre series, it just kind of feels jarring at times cuz I don't share these same kind of feelings for say, Dragon Quest 3 and 9 or something, which also has generic customizable party members for hire. Regardless, having a good variety of distinct class options for most playable species is pretty cool. My major complaint really is the lack of more classes for two species, and species as a whole being either male or female instead of letting you choose their gender. In fairness though, I imagine they probably just didn't have the time or were limited in some way to implement this.
The main storyline is actually fairly short, which I think is about a total of 20 missions iirc. This sounds rather underwhelming, but its cuz the meat of the game is actually in all the clan side quests you can do, a total of 300 listed ones with a few extra as well. You're more or less encouraged to do as many as you can because that is where the main enjoyment of the game is gonna come from.
This seems to have affected the writing as well, as far as I can tell. Compared to Advance 1 and what little I know of the og tactics, the story of A2 is definitely very stripped down in comparison. But I can't say I'm disappointed with that? It feels like a deliberate choice to make the main storyline generally more lax and low stakes to further emphasize the "clan doing all sorts of jobs" aspect with the sidequests, not making the player feel like they're cornered into doing the main storyline as quick as possible. I think the writing quality of the main storyline is made up for anyways this way, as clan quests often present interesting stories with many of them being connected through each other through a continuous storyline. I'm finding it hard to express why I liked it so much, but I guess I just liked the freedom of it and the writing never truly bored me in any way.
I do also want to say the main storyline and notable characters still have their interesting and heartfelt moments here and there. They aren't gonna win any awards for it but I genuinely got pretty connected to the close knit group of Cid, Adelle and Luso and their struggles and how they overcome them with the help of each other, as well as other characters like Huey, Vaan and Penelo being generally likeable and its also just neat of them to bring in ff12 characters, really makes the ivalice games feel more connected. The main storyline villain is pretty slay, ofc, nail polish emote, periodt.
Overall though yeah I do quite like this structure. Would it have worked as well if the game wasn't a handheld? I'm not sure, as I ended up playing it on a phone lol, but for a handheld at least its structure works perfectly for anyone to hop into the game at any point and do whatever they wanna do. Definitely would recommend this game.
If it wasn't for how easy it is to make broken builds with illusionists, this would be my favourite tactics game ever.
The way to level up the characters, the childish tone of everything, the cute sound effect of the mogues, the limitations on races of jobs, the lore worldbuild about those races and jobs being as they are.
The previous entry was too focused on the main characters and lacked this much exploration, this one is so relaxed and easygoing compared to the advance one.
The soundtrack lives rent free in my mind. Thanks Ayako Saso.
The way to level up the characters, the childish tone of everything, the cute sound effect of the mogues, the limitations on races of jobs, the lore worldbuild about those races and jobs being as they are.
The previous entry was too focused on the main characters and lacked this much exploration, this one is so relaxed and easygoing compared to the advance one.
The soundtrack lives rent free in my mind. Thanks Ayako Saso.
peak fiction does it again