Found this off-putting at first, doing that high fantasy thing of referencing names before we can put them to faces, then presenting a dense thicket of betrayals and shifting allegiances that never quite satisfies. (Could be a PS1 translation issue, though I never had that problem with other Final Fantasies of this era, which are notably populated by a smaller number of intense personalities - this is recognisably a different authorial voice.) But the combat system - once it clicked - became incredibly addictive, a mind-boggling combination of Pokémon and chess. The big battle in the slums early on is a major obstacle that forces the player to pay attention to their players and every single move they make - and from then on, the game presents an impressive series of scenarios that display not just tactical but emotional variety, gamifying often complex human behaviour on its isometric stage. There’s a stage where you have to rescue a friendly character on a rooftop from assassins, and the character’s first instinct is to run headfirst into combat - which is frustrating (they die very quickly) until you realise that they’re emotionally affected by the events of the cutscene prior and therefore reckless, even suicidal. The game keeps finding ways to ground its tactical scenarios in concrete human realities, and if the magic evil stones business is ultimately less than satisfying, things do pay off with this devastating epilogue that’s tossed off after the end credits, but completes the narrative in a classically tragic sense. If this is a game about the human instinct to strategise - to acquire power, to overcome grief, to deny death - it concludes the same way WarGames does: the only winning move is not to play.