Final Fantasy Tactics A2

Finally beat this game, after 271 quests and... what is probably 149 hours and 40 minutes. Yes, this means I'm going to blow off steam. Hard mode made dispatching a pain, so I never really dispatched any quests. There's two quests you have to dispatch, but your level has to be so high for those, it's just stupid.

What went right? Well... it's FFT. The whole job system should be familiar to those've you who've played the series. (If you haven't, look it up, I want to conserve space here.) This is really a winning formula, and it hasn't changed much. Certain abilities got balanced more (Hamedo/Strikeback only works on regular attacks as opposed to just about any melee attack in FFT), but that's about it.

Quests in the game are creative and varied. There are off the wall ones like set off all traps, or talk to all NPCs on the map and figure out the most common thing they want for New Year's. In fact, for the genre, I consider this a high point in the fact that they go beyond the standard beat everyone up, or escort NPC that fill every other game out there.

However, let's talk about what went wrong. First, the quests that weren't balanced. There's Rafa fights (where you're supposed to protect one guy who charges off into suicide if you're unlucky before you even get a turn), for those who remember them, but I only remember 2 of 271. There're still abilities and combinations that are stupidly broke (that's kinda the point, sure, but there's such a thing as too much). And there are some game balance issues that I think need tweaking (detailed last).

But the main thing that really brings this game down is the law system. First, I like Clan Abilities. But, I'm almost always building up my characters. Why would I not always pick AP Up 3? The only time I didn't was at the end of the game when I had all the abilities I wanted, or at the beginning before I had it. The ability to divide the number of fights I had to do to get abilities by three was just too good.

But there are two times when it's easy to break the law. The first is when you start the fight. The second is when you realize you have a runaway victory on your hands. From a AP per quest standpoint, and for a lot of cases, from an AP per hour spent standpoint, it's better to restart the quest even if it's repeatable. This leads to so many restarts for an honest mistake... and seriously, this is the sort of thing that, if stuck in an otherwise average game, would turn it into a bad game. As it is, it takes away from an otherwise pretty good game.

The simple solution is to increase the number of AP you get from quests, and decrease the amount of AP the ability gives you. Maybe if that were done (like, 70 AP from the quest, 20 from AP Up 3), I wouldn't mind breaking the law, and might even use other abilities. However, even if AP Up gave half again the AP you normally get, I'd probably use it every fight. As it stands, I think I'd rather gain the bonus AP and bail my guy out of Prison, even if he loses out on it, rather than to have the entire clan lose the AP.

So that's it. All in all a great, creative game that's generally fun to play. Tweaking your characters to be how you want them to be is all kinds of fun, and the quests are varied and bring something new to the genre. Breaking the law wouldn't be bad if the bonus wasn't that great. Alternatively, it's restrictive by nature and only hinders the game (in fact, it's like the system tries really hard to make the game suck), so taking it out would've made me enjoy the game so much more. I ranted three paragraphs about it and could've gone on much longer. That should tell you how I feel.

For the record, my Ruso: (Parivir) Flair, High Magic, Counter, Geomancy

Finally, before my laundry list of tweaks, I just want to say I'm not sure about the direction the new Ivalice has taken. In the days of FFT, Ivalice was a cruel, miserable world. Everyone was doing the wrong thing, either because they wanted to from the start or because it was too hard doing the right thing and they gave up... except for one guy who kept doing what he thought was right even while everyone around him generally schemed and backstabbed and got ahead in the social pecking order because of it. He saved the world, even though no one really knew or cared about it, but that didn't matter to him. That, to me, was what defined Ivalice, and I haven't seen that lately. Yasumi Matsuno left Square. I can see why. I could just rationalize it and say that the current Ivalice is FFTA Ivalice and not Vagrant Story/FFT Ivalice, but that sounds delusional. Maybe.

One-pointers: (1) Changing jobs might change stat bumps on level up, but it doesn't change your current stats. Once a mage, always a mage. I don't think I entirely like this. (2) Ruso gets crap Soldier stats when he starts out, so he'd probably have to level up like twenty times as a mage before he could become a decent one. The questions you answer at the beginning of the game should change his starting stats, though he still could start as a Soldier. (3) I haven't figured out how Speed really works, and why sometimes an entire enemy group gets two turns before I get one at the start of a fight when they have only slightly higher speed than me. (4) Each race has its own unique classes, but some are similar in function to unique classes in other races and may even share some abilities. I'd rather have a bunch of shared classes with a few race-specific classes. (5) Pummel and Doubleshot do what Opportunity Turns do for no cost, and are beyond broken. Hastega to an extent, too. (6) Rather than 10 MP a turn (making your max MP meaningless after a while), I'd do 10% of your max MP a turn, and adjust MP costs accordingly. (7) I would increase evasion in the game, and tone it down if you attack from the side or rear. The current payoff in damage is too big, too. (8) The item unlocks are kinda cool, except there's too much stuff and some wierdisms might crop up. I got every ability I think, and the last one I got was Leg Shot/Awareness, which are like podunk skills. (9) The AI is stupid, and the game isn't that hard even on Hard aside from the few broken missions that are hard in all the wrong ways.