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.
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.