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A different change of pace... Its been four years and the new verdict on this game is in. Four years ago, I did not care for its slow gameplay, abysmal story, and so on down the line. Now, in 2003, the same still holds true. My stance has not been moved for a second, and this usually does happen. Only a rare few get better and more favorable reviews the second time around. Deus Ex is one of them, as I recall. But, I digress. The game draws incredibly heavy inspiration from another RPG, Suikoden, which was heavy into the strategy-based premise. The game doesn't do much better, but it had better gameplay qualities that Square apparently missed on when they developed this game.
The story is so bad and so poorly written that you will not even give a damn. I know that its about total annihilation. Like the others, so you can figure out the rest if you want to. Such a shame. Square has been one of the grandmasters of storytelling, and they really bomb this one back to the early 1980's.
The graphics are nothing to write home about, but I suppose you could do worse. They do draw a lot of inspiration, once again, from Suikoden, and they put a couple of years worth of graphical updates, but over half of the PS-X games can walk all over this one, even the old ones. There aren't very many tears or anything like that, its just the overall presentation that is the problem.
The controls aren't too bad. They are what they are. Menu interface is a little awkward, but the rest is fine. You won't have any major problems here at all.
Music has a lot of the FF overtures and they do bring out some nostalgia that a lot of us hope for. I can recall a lot of the music and most of it is good, but they could have mixed it up a little bit because some of the music doesn't seem to fit all the way through. Pretty good, on the whole. Probably the strong suit to the game, and that is sad.
The gameplay is terrible, to say the least. The basic premise is solid, and that is the good news. The bad news is it is slow, awkward, close to zip in hit detection and boring strategies that you won't give half a damn about thirty minutes in. This game does require patience, yes, but not this much. Come on. You expect us to sit through long, slow, boring battles when we can be playing FFVII or FFVIII and getting sort of the same idea but much faster and more entertaining. FF Tactics really bombs it in this category, which is the one thing Suikoden, its inspiration, did not screw up when the game was developed in 1996. In many ways, FF Tactics takes a few steps back from that game.
Square tried to best itself and it tried too hard in the process. The game is overdrawn, boring, and slow. I can only recommend this game to FF fans or strategy fans. The rest of us will be turned off by the abysmal gameplay, which should have turned off a lot more gamers than it deserved to. For shame, Square. This game, more than anything, is either you really like it or you really won't. I didn't care for it, but judge for yourself. -- Chris Vavra, PGNx Media
---- Apr 24, 2003
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