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PreviousFinal Fantasy Tactics series First Impressions
PSP DS First Impressions by Simon Parkin
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In 1949 the New Statesman held a contest inviting readers to send in parodies of the great novelist and playwright Graham Greene. So distinctive and unique was his writing style that it apparently invited parody. A few weeks later the publication announced the winners and, to both their and his surprise, second place went to Graham Greene himself, who had written in secretly using a pseudonym.
For Square-Enix the muted critical and (Japanese) fan reception to Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced, sequel to the widely-lauded PSOne original, must have left them feeling much the same way as Greene. In trying to ape their earlier and greater work they seemed to have lost what made it so special.
Now, in what could be taken as a hedged bet, the company is re-releasing an updated version of the majestic original onto the PSP, while also putting the finishing touches to the GBA game's sequel on the DS in a two-pronged attack.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (PSP)
The original Final Fantasy Tactics released ten years ago is one of, if not the finest Strategy RPGs ever conceived. Yet its brilliance was no fluke.
Yasumi Matsuno was a young videogame director working at a small Japanese development tribe called Quest. He and his team had created a game for the Super Nintendo (later ported to the PlayStation) known as Tactics Ogre. Highly-esteemed in Japan this fantasy-styled chess game was supremely well-balanced, building upon the basic game structure laid out by Sega's Shining Force series. Its competence and flair caught the eye of Square's founder and president Hironobu Sakaguchi.
Rather than attempting to compete with Quest, Sakaguchi simply made an offer and bought the company outright, took Matsuno under his wing as his protégée and instructed him to start work on a Tactics Ogre-style game based in the Final Fantasy universe.
Now working with Square's massively deeper pockets Matsuno was able to unfetter his dreams for the perfect SRPG and, together with luminous friends such as Hitoshi Sakimoto (the composer who went on to soundtrack Radiant Silvergun and Final Fantasy XII) and the supremely talented character artist Akihiko Yoshida, craft a game of astounding artistic coherence.
Sitting down to talk through the game's ported update on PSP, producers Shingo Kosuge and Takamesa Shiba, wholeheartedly agree. "The original game was nigh on perfect," Shiba enthuses. "It's incredible how well the game stacks up after all these years - it really is a masterpiece of game design."
While thematically and internally poles apart from the mainline Final Fantasy games, Tactics captured the imagination of the Japanese public and was a roaring success. Even today it remains one of the country's most popular videogames. This month the remake features on the front covers of no less than six game magazines in the country.
However, in the West the game didn't fare so well. Its U.S. release was shamed by an abortive translation that left Matsuno's rich and complex political drama cut into mostly incoherent ribbons. The game never secured a European release and, thanks to a small print run, found fame only as a cult hit in the States.
Reassuringly Kosuge is quick to assure Eurogamer that the localisation team are already working on a completely new translation. Likewise the game has enjoyed a few other welcome additions. Balthier from FFXII is a playable character (following in the tradition of FFVII's Cloud and Aerith's appearance late in the game), two new job classes are being added (Onion and Dark Knight) and, most impressively, a whole new head-to-head battle mode is included.
Eurogamer, having spent some time with the multiplayer - not wanting to brag but we actually beat Kosuge in a close fought fight - can confirm it works supremely well. Each player picks out five characters, chooses each one's class and equipment, before being launched into an arena to fight in the orthodox manner.
The game's demanding difficulty has only been tweaked in one place according to Shiba: "One battle in Chapter 3 with Wiegraf was notoriously difficult in the original. We've adjusted the difficulty there but otherwise the game offers the same challenge it did before."
The final addition comes painted by Yoshida himself who has created exquisite artwork for the game's numerous new cut-scenes. Although we did notice some slight slowdown this seems like a brilliant port and, as Square's localisation team is currently one of the best in the world, we're extremely excited to see the game being so reverentially handled in a way it absolutely deserves.
Are you excited about Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift on DS?
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Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift
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Comments: 1-43 of 43 in total
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While FFTA wasn't as deep, I still think it was a great little piece of work - to deny that it was a superb little game is very snobbish of tactics fans. So what if it wasn't as grown up or deep? It was fun, addictive and enjoyable throughout. Surely that is most important, especially when the game is on a handheld system - habitually seen as the "short journeys toy"?
I, for one, will be most looking forward to it's DS sequel. On a final note, Balthier sucked. Basche was better, though poorly scripted towards the end... |
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HiddenAway
16/05/07 @ 13:31
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FFT: TWOTL is being released in the US and Europe in October 2007
AT THE SAME TIME! http://www.pr-inside.com/square-enix-all... |
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Seriously, the difference in brilliance between the two titles (original FFT and FFTA) is astonishing. While FFTA is a competent and fun game within its genre, FFT is one of the very greatest games across all genres.
That people who adored the original were disappointed with the simplified and kiddified sequel should be of no surprise. You know, things that are good should be judged more harshly when they seek to build upon things that are great (see Halo). It's not case of being annoyed that core systems were constructed differently - rather that, in doing so, they were made worse. |
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I'll be interested to see what the story of FFT is like without the dodgy translation messing it up, though I'm sceptical of claims that bad translation was all that was wrong with it. Also I have to say that the difficulty of FFT was really uneven and the special characters were badly balanced - so it certainly wasn't a flawless game.
As for FFTA, I really enjoyed it and I definitely don't think it was a weak sequel in any respect. It has quite a different tone to it, but different is not bad. For my money almost the only thing wrong with it was that it was too easy, adding a choice of difficulty levels would have sorted it out a treat. Chances are that I will buy both these games when they come out, even though I'll have to finally buy a DS to get FFTA2. Square still living up to their legacy as system-sellers... |
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CitizenGeek
16/05/07 @ 14:45
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FFT on PSP is probably the game I want most out of any upcoming handheld title, it just looks fantastic!
A2 looks great too! |
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Chrono-Kun
16/05/07 @ 14:47
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*drools*
Finally, I have use for my Brother's PSP... And hopefully, We should be having original Jobs instead of the re-used boring ones (Knight, Black Mage, Etc) And bring back the Trainer job, I want to catch a Zuu and train them. |
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Looking forward to both of these, ever since Advance Wars and the original FFTA I've been hooked on handheld strategy games.
Having played the original FFT to death, I'm a wee bit disappointed that the PSP version is a much more direct port than I'd hoped for. Classes like Archer and Dragoon always seemed like they needed a bit more variety, which I'd hoped they would use this opertunity to think about them. I thought there might be a bit more cross-pollination from FFTA, and it's certainly suprising they're leaving the difficultly curve more or less intact - being wiped out in random battles was quite frustrating very early in the game. That said, it's probably better leaving them untouched than mess with a good thing. |
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"Rob reviewed FFTA - clearly he liked it a lot. Simon presumably would have been less fulsome in his praise."
Yeah - I think we clearly have conflicting opinions on that topic :) While I agree that FFT remains one of the best games ever made, on any platform, I don't think that necessarily detracts from the fact that FFTA is also a wonderful game. In some regards, it's actually better balanced than its precursor, and I think a lot of the criticism it faces is down to the fact that FFT's style and themes resonated better with quite a few older gamers than FFTA's. Still - all this means is that I can look forward with glee to both of the games previewed herein :) |
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Stupid_Fat_Hobbit
16/05/07 @ 16:11
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I also thought FFTA was great. However, I would be far from sorry to see the Judge system go.
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It's nice to see Final Fantasy Tactics, one of the finest games ever made, is finally going to get the worldwide recognition it deserves. I've sunk around 200+hours of gameplay into that little beauty, and still never fully got it all done.
It really is a masterpiece, and actually gives reason for me to buy a PSP! |
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I guess some of you never opened a monster-in-a-box chests before. Would make you think twice about opening chests and whether or not you'd open them with courage or fear. I wish these games were out on ONE handheld, not two. I would like to give the new FFTA a try even though I didn't enjoy the first that much.
The original had incredibly difficult moments right from the beginning really. Although the creeping text made me want to pull my eyes and hair out more so than the game's difficulty. Really wished that there were MORE side-quests that involved exploring dungeons in Tactics. Comparing them graphically is pointless as it was never about the graphics. IMHO, go elsewhere if you are looking at the graphics. Disgaea, perhaps. Speaking of Disgaea, Disgaea my ass. You can keep your Prinny Brigade and pathetic story. Tried playing this "game" and all it felt like level grinding from 5 minutes onward. Where is the story -- quite a joke. Give me my Level Down traps, squidlarkins, race of aggressive chocobos, a STORY, and all that's good with Tactics. Edited for spelling! THEM, NOT THEN!
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 16/05/07 @ 20:29
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"One battle in Chapter 3 with Wiegraf was notoriously difficult in the original. We've adjusted the difficulty there but otherwise the game offers the same challenge it did before."
\o/ That's exactly where I gave up all those years ago. It was either that or kicking the PS1 out of the window. Good to hear they've realised that that one battle was way too hard. Another thing they need to fix for the handheld version is the unskippable cut-scenes combined with crawling text display. That was terrible. |
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I tend to look at FFT and FFTA in pretty much the same way as I look at FF VIII and FF IX - one is aimed at an older audience, the other has nothing to do with its predecessor and and aims to attract a younger target audience, thus story/game complexity has been adjusted accordingly. As such, I found enjoyment in both titles, although FFT did pull me in more with its storyline and game mechanics.
Personally, I'm a bit disappointed that they would make the Wiegraf battle easier (sorry Itamae :) - it was one of the most challenging parts of the game, after that, everything became increasingly easier. I was rather hoping that they'd increase the overall difficulty level instead so that there's an actual incentive to build a super army apart from completist purposes. But I guess it's too early to go more deeply into that. FFTA2, on the other hand, hopefully has a *significant* increase in difficulty level compared to its predecessor, because that one was a pure cakewalk from start to finish. With that said, FFT will certainly be a nice reason for me to get a PSP. I probably won't miss FFTA2 either if the difficulty level has been ramped up to a normal level.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 17/05/07 @ 00:03
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FFTA is a great game, one of the best ever released for the GBA. However, if you compare it to the absolutely brilliant PSone original it IS lacklustre.
I recently played the original FFT again on Playstation and it hasn't aged at all. Timeless classic. I'm definitely finally going to get a PSP just to play this over and over. As for the DS version, touchscreen support would be great. I'm not too convinced by the screenshots though... More snowball fights? They're picking on poor Gonad again? Let's help him! Ugh. |
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NegativeZero
17/05/07 @ 01:15
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Since they're giving the whole Ivalice world a lot of attention recently - these two, FF12 and its DS sequel - perhaps they could get around to a PSP remake for Vagrant Story as well?
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dirigiblebill
17/05/07 @ 09:10
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A direct port of Vagrant Story would play out a lot like Monster Hunter Freedom, really- frequent loading times, large amounts of preparation before heading into the field. Not sure it would work well on a handheld without major revisions.
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ProfessorLesser
17/05/07 @ 09:34
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Rather harsh outlook on Tactics Advance - don't agree with that myself. Should've stressed more clearly that it isn't simply ignorance of the uninitiated for those who enjoyed it, it's actually a very decent game. I'm definitely looking forward to A2.
Not sure about having 8 new jobs and races though! That could get frigging complicated. |
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This is the way!
Mightily looking forward to the PSP port, a decent translation would be excellent. Not so excited about FFTA... really didn't like the GBA version despite spending a fair amount of time with it. I dug it out a few months ago to give it another spin and it felt worse than I remembered. |
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Bringing Vagrant Story to the PSP would be nice, and while I disagree with an overhaul of the weapons creation system (forging items was, and is a brilliant mechanic), I would certainly welcome an overall increase in the difficulty in some way so that fighting fearsome dragons and other mythological beasts is a challenge rather than a 25+ chain. Or introduce selectable difficulty settings. Creating ultimate weapons and armour can be a lot more fun if there's an actual incentive to do so.
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Comments: 1-43 of 43 in total
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