Haven't read part 3? Do so here.

Welcome back to the final part of our retrospective. It's been a long trip getting here, and I'm glad you've stuck with it. While not part of the main series, we will be covering Tactics and Tactics Advance. We both have played them and think they are very much worth including into this retrospective. So we'll cover these two real quick and then wind things down with our overall score and statement of the series. And just like the last three times, this may contain spoilers.

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SK: So, interestingly, I happened across this non-numeric FF title shortly after VII hit the shelves, and while I wasn't familiar with strategic RPG's at the time, I was hooked onto Tactics right away because of the amazing gameplay, even if I couldn't find much semblance to past FF games at the time.

Lantis: Right, and while it's not a part of the main series, I think that it's just as good, if not better, than even Final Fantasy VI.

SK: Really? It's a contender for your top FF installment?

Lantis: And favorite game in general. Even though it's not part of the "main" franchise. It would make top 5 for sure.

SK: So, Tactics was this seemingly little side project Square had been working on for the PS1 along with VII that I personally had heard nothing about. But, boy, why didn't they hype it up just as much as VII? Because it gave me plenty to do while waiting for another two years for VIII. It's a brilliant tactical RPG with even a good story to boot. So, I guess, characters first as usual?

Lantis: Sure. Now there are a lot of characters in this game, so like FFVI, we may have to skim across a few.

SK: Our main protagonist is Ramza, who is a very likeable although seldom talked about hero in the FF franchise who is a military cadet from a noble family, and he has a strong sense of humanitarianism, justice, and self-sacrifice. I really admired him throughout the game in every decision he made.

Lantis: Ramza as a character is the best main protagonist since Final Fantasy VI. And has remained so since.

SK: Definitely. Also with Ramza is a commoner friend from childhood and fellow student Delita, who represents the anti-hero counterpart in the story to Ramza. What he achieves ultimately is a good thing, but he uses more morally questionable and treacherous means to achieve the same basic ideals as Ramza. Right off the bat this characterization web makes for a good story, I must say; watching each protagonist's actions throughout the story.

Lantis: And all the characters you run across are all interesting as well. Like Agrias. Mustadio. Orlandu. Just a full cast of characters, and 3/4th of them are all legitimately good characters. Which is kind of uncommon for Final Fantasy. Specially seeing there's a higher number of them.

SK: Yup. You can even gain a few peripheral party members from sidequests with unique backstories and job classes, such as a former Temple Knight (the knighthood that represents the ultimate bad guys in the game) Beowulf, his dragon-taming lover Reis, and orphaned siblings raised in false beliefs who are rescued by Ramza with special - albeit practically useless - magic powers. Not every named party member was personally likeable, but they were at least pretty well filled-out and had an integral part to the story at some point. As you can imagine from me, Agrias, being a noble and loyal lady knight with extraordinary holy sword skills, is one of my all-time favorite characters in the franchise. The bad guys were pretty intense, too. Mysterious, intimidating, and always had us guessing what their true objectives were.

Lantis: Not to mention genuinely powerful. They most often could back up their talk.

SK: Well, onto the story then?

Lantis: Sure. But before we get into it, I'd like to point out that this is an example of having a very deep story without it going full stupid. Which is seemingly impossible these days.

SK: Holy crap, yes. Square can actually achieve that, it turns out. The thing is, the story cleverly starts off simple enough like it did in, say, Xenogears, where you play as a young Ramza and his fellow military students fighting for what they believe to be the good cause in a small-scale regional war between nobles and thieves mostly comprised of disenfranchised warriors from a previous war between Ivalice and another country entirely, called the Fifty-Year War. This plot is what the first of four game chapters is composed of, ending with Ramza and Delita and their friends witnessing some personal tragedies and each of the two main protagonists beginning to question their personal beliefs and ideals. So each one embarks on a new path by the start of the second chapter. From there the heroes find themselves involved in a war breaking out between opposing regions within Ivalice for the throne, and the complication of the game's story escalates to a - you guessed it - deeper evil force going on
behind the scenes of the war that Ramza and our heroes are out to stop, out of their genuine care for the Ivalice people and a balanced sense of justice.

Lantis: And that's just scratching the surface. All the shady deals and backstabbing that goes on. And respectable plot twists. Non-Shyamalan, for real.

SK: And these constant twists, unlike in most games and movies, aren't out of left field or unbelievably ridiculous in their execution or origin. It's amazing how good a story like this ended up being. It really got me into trying to analyze for myself who the real heroes were, and who among what group was really fighting for what. And the sheer treachery and sneakiness of the perceived villains really got me into wanting to take them down myself in battle, as though I myself were actually Ramza and being personally enraged by the immoral manipulations of the innocent people.

Lantis: Honestly, I really don't want to spoil too much. While we've not really held back as far as spoiling goes, this one I think deserves to be reserved for the most part.

SK: It's good stuff. Although, one seemingly major drawback is the translation problems that the game all too obviously had. There were constant misspellings and a few seemingly vital facts about the plot that were either not explained well enough or left out completely, as we soon saw in the plot-rectified PSP version of FFT that came out many years later. But EVEN WITH THAT PROBLEM I still really enjoyed the story.

Lantis: That PSP version, man. Absolutely loved it.

SK: So, onto what really gets our fancy in this game. The fighting.

Lantis: Well, if you've read everything thus far... you know what I like. I likes me some jobs. And this is by far the best iteration of them.

SK: Totally agree.

Lantis: There are so many classes and so many abilities. It's staggering. And even outside of that, there's special-character-only classes. Or monster classes. There's really strange but very useful classes like the Calculator. And the combination of skill and mixing and matching class abilities is endless.

SK: This is a battle system that made me WANT to go out and do random battles for job point grinding. It's great.

Lantis: So. The way it works is like this: You have a starting class of either Squire or Chemist. From those classes, you can unlock other ones. Like Knight, or Priest. And from them, learn more advanced classes like Monk or Summoner. And as you do any action in the game, you get job points. The job's entire list of skills are there for you to choose from. Assuming you have the job points for them.

SK: Squire kind of puts you on a path to learning physical, warrior-like jobs and chemist goes towards more magelike classes.

Lantis: Right. So like, if you wanted to learn revive before learning cure 2 on a Priest, you are more than welcome to do so. It's the customization, really.

SK: Yes. You don't have to go on a straight-set path in learning job abilities here. *glares at FFXIII*

Lantis: And what's so great about it is that you can always play the game differently. SK and I have played this game several times over the years.

SK: And it never gets old.

Lantis: And in our recent LP of it, I got SK trying some new jobs and combinations he hadn't bothered with yet. I tried using more monster type classes, which I usually don't. And it was awesome. Red Chocobos are awesome.

SK: Minor note, but I would also like to assert that summoning in this game is very worthwhile to pursue, and I am usually not about that kind of stuff. The summons were very effective and were among the most visually impressive of the entire series. Really, although amongst the many jobs you can imagine there are a fair share of abilities that Lantis or myself personally find useless in battle, there really isn't a class I can say is obviously very useless. It really all depends on your personal fighting style what works for you. I think the game is winnable enough with just about any combination of job classes, really.

Lantis: Right, you just have to find something you like and go with it. But don't be scared to explore all the many skills and options. Also, Gain JP Up is your friend. Your best friend, actually.

SK: Except for maybe the Oracle. So in FFT there are actually no "random" encounters that you face while going from one place to another, unless you are actively looking for them. There are a total of around 55 storyline battles in the game with 15 or so sidequest battles. You are generally free to select the battle party to your liking - except for Ramza and on occasion another named established character like Agrias or Mustadio, of course - for the fight before it starts. Most of the time, you are pitted against an equal number of enemy party members, 5 against 5 or 6 against 6. The battlefields are a 3d-esque model and have many terrain differences that can make or break your strategy. Another minor but worthy note is that there are very few battles that are overly simple or difficult to win. In other words, the level of challenge remains quite balanced, to where the enemy's strength matches yours (even if they are but random unnamed soldiers of the enemy group) and if you don't plan ahead,
you'll wind up with a few of your characters permanently lost or a complete game over. The enemy doesn't screw around with you.

Lantis: Nope. No they don't.

SK: What I also really like is that Tactics has a more realistic sense of the horrors of war that personally appeals to me. In that when a party member reaches 0 HP they don't simply stay incapacitated until the rest of the team wins the battle. They fall more as if mortally wounded, and if you don't revive them somehow within a certain amount of turns, they are considered utterly dead and lost to you forever. So you'd better take special care of them.

Lantis: Absolutely. Most people, when losing a character, will just reset the game. Due to the number of hours lost training them up to where they are. The last time SK and I played through, we never reset. It was hard letting go of a character that was well trained. Like that Ninja and Monk we had. But it adds to the experience. We also had some extremely close calls. Like, checking turn order close.

SK: Boy, I'll also bet Beowulf was really pissed at me when I lost his lover Reis in battle. No more hot girlfriend for him.

Lantis: You know, that was also the first time I used Reis in conjunction with a dragon. And it's SO worth it.

SK: And now you see why they call her the Dragon Tamer, nei?

Lantis: She can buff those things into steam rollers. It's awesome.

SK: Well, if nothing else, let us go on to the musical score.

Lantis: Good stuff all around.

SK: Not quite as great as, say, VI through IX's tracks, which I consider the absolute best, but worthy of the series nonetheless. In particular, Tactics has a wide variety of great-sounding battle tracks that seemed to perpetually fit the emotional intensity of the current situation.

Lantis: Absolutely. All the battle tracks really got you into the fight, really. But like I stated earlier, I think for a soundtrack to be truly great, you'd have at least cared to look up and would remember a few track names. I don't think I really did for Tactics.

SK: Well, for me, lastly I would like to mention that the graphical style of FFT really appealed to me. Especially the unique character design for both male and female job classes. It was not as in-your-face impressive for its time like FFVII was, but it was perfect for FFT's look. I mean, if even without their having noses on their faces you know I must like the character design if I am crushing on certain female job classes. Cuteness all around. ... But bad naming, sometimes.

Lantis: Oh, the names are ridiculous. But that is such a minor nitpick to the game as a whole. By far one of the best games Square has ever released and is still one of the best games of all time in my book.

SK: Same here.

Lantis: It's one of those, "If you were stranded on an island for the rest of your life and you could only have 5 games" kind of deal.

SK: Could I opt to take along just one female monk from FFT, instead of the games?

Lantis: No...

SK: *hangs head in disappointment*




Final Fantasy Tactics final scores:

SarahsKnight: 9.25 out of 10
Lantis: 9.5 out of 10


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Lantis: So, when I heard that there was going to be another Final Fantasy Tactics, to say I was excited was an understatement. And the way the game opened and how the story started, I felt this was going to be great.

SK: As did I.

Lantis: Marche was a pretty good character too.

SK: And for me, honestly (although I only played this once, so I'm going off of pretty vague memory), I liked the story from beginning to end. Especially in the Nevereending-Storyish way that it started. But overall there's just one major flaw that simply ruins the enjoyability of the game no matter how I look at it, which we'll get to.

Lantis: Right, it was pretty solid. It was much more simplified from the original though. MUCH more. Story-wise anyways.

SK: We had pretty much four major characters, right? Marche, Ritz, the little spoiled prince guy, and Montblanc the Moogle, right?

Lantis: Yep. And they actually introduced something rather interesting. They added all the Ivalice races in there. And certain job classes were race sensitive. Which was kind of neat.

SK: Which were also carried over into FFXII's Ivalice. I think a lot of the job classes were different from the original Tactics', right?

Lantis: Right. As well as some additions. Like the Viera-only class, Fencer.

SK: Viera are lagomorphic women, by the way.

Lantis: Right.

SK: And then there was another cool race, the Banghaa dudes. Salamanderish humanoids.

Lantis: The ever familiar moogles also show up.

SK: Which is always a plus to have in an FF game.

Lantis: And the only other race was the dog-like Nu Mou.

SK: So, yeah, we don't really have a huge group of highly-developed characters, but for the atmosphere and direction of the story, there was a wide spectrum that made me feel at home in the Final Fantasy world.

Lantis: The story for a FF game this time around was a lot more fantasy based than usual. Which sounds funny considering the title of the series. Marche is a kid in the real world that gets sucked into Ivalice through a story book. Along with his friends.

SK: Some tomboy gal named Ritz and a little guy who gets bullied a lot at school, can't remember his name. Marche finds himself in a new world separated from his two friends who got sucked into the book with him, and to help him get along in this new place, he quickly runs into a fun-loving adventuresome Moogle named Montblanc, whose name I can never say out loud without an exaggerated French accent.

Lantis: From there, you find out that the world consists of groups of people in guilds. And there are guild battles for different things. Titles. Territory. That kind of stuff. Official battle are watched by judges. And this is where things take a bit of a wrong turn.
In the FFTA world, you can't actually die. Because of the judge's protection. But for that protection, you have to follow their rules.

SK: Which basically forbid having fun in battle. No lie.

Lantis: Pretty much. Even in boss fights against really bad people, there's a judge overseeing and keeping tabs on the fight. And will give you soccer style yellow cards and red cards for breaking his laws. Anyways, this is starting to get into the battle system stuff. So if you have anything else to stay about the story, now's your chance.

SK: Yeah. Basically, the story consists of Marche and Ritz (whom he eventually reunites with) on a quest to escape the fantasy world they were summoned to. It doesn't really let on to that, as the first act of the game is pretty much entirely consisting of battles to strengthen your guild on random contract missions. Until, a little over a third of the way through the game, Marche and his friends find themselves going up against a "mega-boss" monster that brings the plot to a head, and their new mission to is escape the world and free their little bullied friend (still can't remember his name) from his self-imposed prison of escapist fantasies. I really liked it. Interestingly, this plot structure seems to be very identical to that of the original FFT. But, yeah, onto battle, which is where Square has utterly failed with one simple addition to the program: the law system.

Lantis: Well, before we get into the actual law system, I think it's worth mentioning how the job class system works. So instead of picking a job class, getting points for it, and picking skills from a list, you are stuck, really. Instead, they've adopted the Final Fantasy IX style of learning skills. You can buy weapons, and those weapons have skills for your class to learn. The only way to get new job classes is learning so many abilities for the class you are on currently. The problem with this (other than learning skills off of weapons being fairly dumb) is that these weapons are impossible to come by until certain points of the game. Meaning you are just locked out of certain classes till the game gives you the weapons that will give you enough skills to unlock them. I found this very frustrating.

SK: Yes. Somehow this way of learning abilities was more off-putting in Tactics Advanced than FFIX, likely due to the one fact that you couldn't get your hands on equipment to get the skills you wanted so easily. It by no means would have made fighting unenjoyable on its own in this game, but again, I saw no reason why they didn't just do it the same way the original Tactics did.

Lantis: Also, magic spell miss rate. I've never played an RPG where magic missed to such a degree. Magic shouldn't miss at all! It can be ineffectual, sure.

SK: Kind of an odd concept, really; magic missing its target.

Lantis: Nothing seems quite as dumb as an Ice 3 spell that covers the entire enemy's model and then says "Miss" But you know what? Despite learning skills off of weapons. And despite a huge miss rate making mages not much worth using... They are nothing compared to the law system.

SK: This, my friends, has to be one of the single most obviously stupid-on-paper ideas any game producer could ever have had. And this is including FFXIII's notion of battle, so you can imagine this is serious business here. Tell 'em, Lantis.

Lantis: So previously we mentioned these judges that offer protection from death at a cost. Before each battle, a judge will set random laws against certain actions. And you must complete the fight without doing them. So one might be no swords. So you can NOT deal damage with a sword type weapon. If you do, you will get a yellow card. Which is your warning. Breaking a law with that same character a second time will get you thrown out of the fight and into jail. After the fight, you can bail them out at a price. If characters go to jail too often, they get permanent stat debuffs. But Marche? He doesn't get red cards. It's automatic game over.

SK: I guess bailing out Marche for being from another world completely really fetches a high price that no French-sneering Moogle could possibly sell enough snails for.

Lantis: But anyways. Any fight can have at max, I believe, four laws. I've game-overed several times because of these. Let me give you an example. So you know how I said swords can be outlawed right? Well. Marshe just so happened to have a sword. I had JUST learned counter attack with him. Which has always been a very useful skill to have. ...Until you play a game where swords are outlawed. I had two enemies come up to Marsh. One hit him. He countered and swung with his sword. That's a yellow card. Next enemy came up, and did the same. Counter attack fired off. Red card. Game over. Do you see the problem with this?

SK: And the thing is, Lantis couldn't have known the law against swords ahead of time to where he could simply take off Marche's counter ability before the fight. Once you see the laws the judge gives you, you're in! There's no being able to adjust what party and abilities you use first. There's actually a law against using "holy", which was bad enough in my mind as I thought it meant not being able to use a white mage's abilities, or a holy attack spell. .... Nope. It means not being able to heal anyone, through ANY means. And guess who got stuck with that law on the FINAL battle of the game? *points thumbs at self* This hapless gamer. Somehow I won that fight on the first try, but holy crap was not being able to heal anyone inconvenient.

Lantis: Now there are ways to negate laws through the use of cards, but they weren't easy enough to come by to be a viable excuse for such a terrible system. This is by far the dumbest idea Square has had for a battle system. Period.

SK: Now, unlike FFXIII, the rest of the game was still good enough in other regards for me to have the patience to play it all the way through, but still, the laws alone crippled the enjoyability of battle. They alone are single-handedly responsible for knocking Tactics Advanced all the way down from a pretty good and memorable game to a barely tolerable one.

Lantis: BARELY. And here's the kicker. There are areas of the map in Ivalice where there are no judges. Where battles happen "off the grid" so to speak. And it adopts all the Final Fantasy Tactics original rules. No laws. People can actually die. And those fights are where it's at. Too bad they are so few. They entire game should have been this. It would have been SO much better despite the terrible way to get more skills and classes.

SK: I'm quite a bit more forgiving on Tactics Advanced and other FF titles than Lantis is, but nonetheless, I can just barely bring myself to give this game a thumbs up on one hand (for nearly every general aspect but the battle system), and a thumbs down on the other. The Laws are terrible. They don't encourage the player's initiative to think harder and restrategize; they just sap the fun out of playing the game.

Lantis: I mean, the game just turns itself in to a huge joke really. You're up against a major boss. Stakes are high. You go to attack it, and a judge blows his whistle and steps between you and the monster, and gives you a freaking yellow card? Way to take all seriousness out of the fight. I mean, this honestly sounds like a Looney Toon gag. With that, I'd say this game is only worth playing ONLY if your tolerance for a garbage battle system happens to be high at the time.



Final Fantasy Tactics Advance final scores:

SarahsKnight: 5.5 out of 10
Lantis: 4 out of 10


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Conclusion

Final Fantasy (as a series) final scores:

SarahsKnight: 7.5 out of 10
Lantis: 6.8 out of 10



Lantis: So there you have it. As a whole, the series is still a respectably good franchise. It's seen good times, and bad. It's been a very long haul as there are few franchises that have gone on as long as Final Fantasy.

SK: And most start going bad long before Final Fantasy did even if they do go on this long, except for maybe Zelda.

Lantis: And you know, looking back at it, I've been giving Square a really hard time lately. But even with what I consider the blunders, the series as a whole is still good stuff. The titles I've ranked the highest, I still play. And have played recently. And they still hold up. Right now in the community, I can name four Mag members who are currently playing Final Fantasy VI. And they are all enjoying it. The past week alone we've been in hangouts as Myoky has been streaming it. It just goes to show how timeless the series is.

SK: It is. Nearly all of the series' main installments are classics and somewhat respected, and most of the FF5 through 9 season was a consistent masterful work done by one of the most popular game developer names. In spite of the fact that I've lost my hopeful fanboy initiative for the franchise since 13, as 14 was at first a widely known failure of an MMO, and 15's released gameplay so far just has made Final Fantasy suddenly seem like an almost complete stranger to me, I still love the series as a whole, and I'm glad Square was enough of a success with their first game to hang in as a company and produce the next several great titles that they did. And even IF the Final Fantasy franchise hits a point of no return to its former glory in the eyes of the gaming public like some unfortunately do, hey, I can at least still respect it for the many good memories of gaming experiences it has given me. Lantis and I may despise 13, but that doesn't begin to ruin the taste we still have for, say, 6 and
7, which are easily considered among the best console RPG's of all time.

Lantis: Honestly? I would love to give the series a much higher rating than what I did. But that would be more biased nostalgia than anything else. But after going through each game individually, I do agree with how the numbers ended up.

SK: I must say, though, I noticed how, in spite of the fact that I've come to be that kind of guy who has no trouble sarcastically complaining about what he hates in entertainment the last few years, I actually seem to have been far more far more forgiving than you were in the majority of the individual FF games we went over. I guess I do still have some of that naive hopefulness in me, after all. But, unfortunately, because of the recent drop in Square's integrity in our eyes lately, our overall scores, while still good enough, were not as high as they'd once been.

Lantis: Even so, the series as a whole is still a good one.

SK: Yes. Just not, say, the superhero figure I always looked up in almost full-on reverence to as a much-easier-to-please child back in Final Fantasy's Super NES and PS1 days.

Lantis: Right.

SK: The earlier games in the series are worth checking out, guys. Really. But going off of the seeming general opinion of the fanbase, I suggest you avoid 8, 12, and 13 onward. Although, as you saw, I personally liked 8 and 12.

Lanits: The "golden age" for me would sit between IV and VII.

SK: I would say VI and IX.

Lantis: I would agree for that if not for VIII.

SK: When you get down to it, it really doesn't take much to please me in most cases. Along with every other game before 13, FF8 was good enough for me in spite of the obvious flaws because, I just felt that I was still getting what I wanted out of a Final Fantasy game as I played it. So for me, I was satisfied. I didn't feel like a stranger to the series while going through the game, you know?

Lantis: Well yeah, I think it's worth at least one playthrough. But to consider it part of a golden age is a bit too much for me.

SK: Yeah. I guess I just wanted to include IX in there so badly without breaking the chain.

Lantis: Ha, I should have figured as much. Well, I guess we'd better go ahead and wrap this up then.

SK: It was fun. I hope those of you who may not be - or better yet, never were - fans of the series have found this article informative enough to want to give some of the FF games a try. Even if there are some you as more old-school-inclined gamers might not like due to the changes in gaming culture from the older days like the Super NES and PS1 times, or the other way around, just remember that that shouldn't stop you from being a die-hard fan of those games in the series that you DO like. That's how I view Final Fantasy, anyway.

Lantis: Absolutely. It's hard to imagine RPG fans who haven't played any of the Final Fantasy titles. But if so, I believe it's something you are missing out on and that you owe yourself as a gamer to experience.


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And there you have it. Thanks again if you've stuck all the way through this. I know it must have taken a while. Also, I hope none of you take this to heart if it goes against your own opinion. It wasn't written to be an attack of your likes or dislikes.