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!!!

Decided to try out this game after hearing everyone praising it endlessly. Turns out, it's now one of the best stories I've experienced.

For a story from a game more than a decade old, it defies every expectation. There's little to no clichés, and all in all just a deep meaningful story that is unique even until now. Definitely one of Matsuno's Magnum Opus.

It also has probably one of the most complex but methodical gameplay mechanic for an SRPG. It's undoubtedly very challenging but it's also satisfying once you get the hang of it. It is also possible to break the game, as I did with my DK Ramza.

Overall, as it is an old game, it's obviously not without flaws but it's also really that good.

Going into this game i wasn’t sure if i was gonna like it, since i never really played a SRPG (i played a bit of FE7 and some Advance Wars but that’s kinda it), and holy fuck was i wrong this game is awesome

I’ll start by saying i technically didn’t play this version of the game, but instead I played The Lion War of the Lions, which is a romhack of the original Final Fantasy Tactics that brings almost all the WOTL content to it (i think onion knight isn’t in it) and even made the multiplayer only rendez-vous playable in single player. I went for that romhack instead of the psp game because i know that while the slowdown can be patched, the audio quality can’t and i’d honestly recommend playing this hack instead of the psp port unless you really want to play it on a real PSP/Vita or plan to use one of the few elements they didn’t bring over

As i said above, i wasn’t sure if i was gonna like this game at first, and yet it ended up being one of my favorite game of the series, and unless we count spin-offs, it even is the one i’d say has the best gameplay. I’m obviously not an expert in the SRPG genre, but the way FFT approaches some of its mechanics in a different way than other series (at least Fire Emblem which is like the series i associate with the genre, even if i’m aware most other games probably differ from it a lot) really made me love it a lot. This game is extremely similar to Final Fantasy V (which might have one of the best gameplay of the turn based FF), but as a SRPG. Every character starts with a couple jobs unlocked, and performing actions as a job nets you EXP (which increase your overall level) and JP, for job points, which increases your job level. Each job comes with different abilities to unlock, divided in multiple categories depending on what they do : active abilities have their own category, and then you have one for movement, one for support abilities etc. Each unit, no matter its current job, can equip one of each kind of abilities from any job, just like in FF5, so for example you can have a thief that has black magic as a secondary ability and also has a passive ability that lets him equip swords. This system works extremely well, because it allows you to really build your team the way you want it. Each job has its strength and weaknesses, it’s far from being well balanced (monk is by far the most busted physical job, especially if you grind for dual wield) but it just works so well, coming up with ways to make your team really good is just so fun. Some story characters even come with their own special jobs, and those are really good, shoutouts to holy knight it’s just so good. The game has most of the classic FF jobs with a few exceptions like red mage, and even has some unique jobs, like mimic, orator or one of my favorite job, arithmetician

The game also approaches dying in a really unique and awesome way. When a unit dies (this applies to both allies and enemies), they don’t immediately disappear. Instead, for three turns, you won’t be stay on the tile they’re on, but you’ll have the ability to bring them back to life, using a raise spell or a phoenix down. If you don’t, the unit will disappear, leaving behind either a crystal (that heals you or sometimes lets you learn one ability if you stop on it) or a chest, and if it’s one of your unit, there’s permadeath so it’s goodbye forever. This approach to dying is so cool because it allows for a lot of strategy: if someone dies, it’s no big deal, you can bring them back! I know that depending on the game permadeath isn’t always that punitive because you’ll always get more units later on, but in FFT, since you build your units the way you want, losing them would be much of a pain considering there’s some grind involved (i ended up never losing a single unit permanently, and used the same 3 units + story related characters for the entire game and i think most people play that way too)

Spell casting is also awesome in this game. With a few exceptions, each spell will be cast in a cross shape around the tile/unit you’re targeting (for each spell you can decide to cast it on a tile or a unit, meaning if the unit moves your spell will still target them). Spells don’t cast as soon as they’re used tho, they all have a different cast speed which mean they’ll be cast after X units take a turn (you can even see who is gonna take a turn before you cast the spell, to know if it’s worth using it!) This can lead to really cool strategies too, like targeting one of your unit with a healing/buff spell and moving it next to another one of your unit to have the spell target them both, or even moving next to an enemy unit with one of yours that’s being targeted with an offensive spell to have the spell hurt both your unit and theirs. Some abilities other than spellcasting also have delay like jump for dragoons or aiming for archers, and i think this aspect of the game opens up for a lot of strategy, it’s really cool.

And on top of the combat system being amazing, the story is also really really good. It starts off a bit confusing since yknow, it’s a story involving a lot of factions in a war so there’s a lot of characters that are named and you have to remember them all, who they’re allied to and oh shit count bingus actually betrayed duke floppa so actually the relationship between their faction has changed, there’s a lot to take in but once you get past the first few hours and understand who’s who, it gets really good. Ramza is a really good protagonist, and Delita is one of the coolest mfer from the entire series. The game also has a lot of really awesome quotes, those dudes keep spitting fire at each other before, during and after battles.

The game starts off really challenging, and with a lot of difficulty spikes every now and then (you better make those backup save files), with the ending of chapter 3 being the big one a lot of people know about because if you don’t make a backup, chances are you’re gonna have to reset your game. Once you get past it tho, the final chapter is pretty easy, even the optional dungeon with the superboss in it isn’t that hard. The difficulty of the game is awesome tho, it’s challenging but not in a bullshit way and getting past those hard battles is so satisfying, and grinding isn’t even that bad since battles are more involved than in a turn based game.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a really awesome game, one that’s being slept on by way too many FF fans, either because it’s not a numbered game, or because it’s a strategy game. Almost everyone who played it will agree that it’s one of the best tho, and for a good reason: once you get into it, it’s one of the most fun and rewarding game of the entire series, backed up by some extremely extremely cool characters and settings.