Final Fantasy Tactics: A War With Lions And Stuff

I first played Final Fantasy Tactics on the PlayStation, shortly after Playing FF7. I bought it used whilst I was in undergrad, not really knowing anything about it, mostly on the Final Fantasy name. As it turned out, I ended up liking Tactics a lot. The plot was a lot heavier on political intrigue than most Final Fantasies, though there was of course some fantasy-esque stuff going on in the background. I ended up sinking quite a bit of time into the game, especially exploring the "Deep Dungeon".

I really liked the battle system which was more involved than most FFs and based on the job system used by several of the other games in the series, though it alsa was more detailed bringing a wider array of abilities (for the most part) and greater degree of flexibility in character customization.

So, when a PSP port was released (subtitled The War of the Lions) I knew I would eventually end up getting a copy. It was, in fact, my main motivation for getting a PSP in the first place. Had Square done nothing other than a straight port of the PlayStation version, I'd still have gotten it because, hey, it's a portable FF Tactics, which in itself is awesome. However, the PSP version saw several improvements and addtions.

For one, it received an all-new translation since the original one was, to put it kindly, less than stellar. This also fixed some naming issues with some of the jobs. For example, in the original, White Mages were called Priests, despite the fact that they were clearly the White Mages of Final Fantasy tradition. The PSP version also added a couple of new extra characters and a couple of new classes. There was some rebalancing of existing characters and classes, such as the Arithmetician (formerly Calculator) which was slightly harder to unlock, but not by too much. Math Skills are still overpowered though, and as always quite fun and potentially self-destructive to use :) There are also a couple of new multi-player modes which I have not had the opportunity to make use of yet.

Overall, I've quite enjoyed playing through The War of the Lions, just as much as I did the original. In some ways, the new translation makes it seem like a new game, while at the same time having a familiar, nostalgic feel to it.

Anyway, my "not so short" plot summary is in the post below this one. Perhaps I shall do a summary for FF 12 next, despite not originally planning on doing one since it was released after I started my FF series replay.

Freak Out
-TFitC