Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions Review [PSP]

Posted February 27, 2009 by Michael Curley in PSP, Reviews.

As its name might suggest, Final Fantasy Tactics is quite a departure from the main series of games. This is the first game to take place in Square’s world of Ivalice (later visited by the Tactics Advance series, Final Fantasy XII, and Vagrant Story), and eschews the usual RPG trappings of the core series in favor of turn based strategic gameplay, with a more mature and complicated plot than the rest of the Final Fantasy series.

The original release, on the PS1, had its share of problems, most notably a notoriously shoddy translation which did not help in understanding the complicated plot. Nevertheless it was a solid title which offered lots of diverse strategies and allowed the player to customize his army for any task. War of the Lions, the rerelease for the PSP, takes the original game and polishes it, while keeping true to the core of what made the game good in the first place.

The bulk of the gameplay concerns raising a small army of soldiers to fight in a diverse variety of battles. To do this, you’re given a number of Jobs that you can give to each of your men or women, and furthermore you can pick and choose which abilities from each job to give them. This gives you a lot of flexibility when making your party, and is fairly easy to understand. Unfortunately, you’ll have to do hours of grinding in order to take full advantage of most of the jobs. Most of the jobs and abilities are taken from other places in the series, and should be familiar to anyone who’s played a Final Fantasy game before.

The battles themselves are very user friendly and you are able to plan out your actions precisely, as the game tells you exactly when a charged spell will go off, who will be hit and what effect it will have. It is very satisfying when a plan comes together just right and the end-of-battle fanfare plays over your victory – when you win anyway.

The game has a fairly steep difficulty curve. Early in the game, it’s possible to be wiped out by random encounters, especially if you haven’t been paying close attention to your troopers. While the battles are difficult, they are still manageable, and the game gives you every opportunity to save before going into battle. Unfortunately, there are a few battles that feel unfair. The game prompts you to save between unavoidable story-based battles and sections can become entirely unwinnable if you haven’t given the main character the right set of skills and equipment. Thankfully, there is only one really bad section for this, but if you are only using one save file this could lead to replaying the whole game to this point.

There is also a small issue with certain enemies getting access to abilities you simply can’t get (the Assassin’s instant, unblockable, undodgeable kill move comes to mind), and at times it will seem that any spell you cast that can fail, will. Your enemies just seem to have unerring accuracy and unbelievable luck. That aside, the battles are usually manageable so long as you’re careful and have a good diverse party, but don’t be surprised if you have to retry some battles with a different strategy.

The game’s graphics haven’t changed from the original release, but the art style still holds up and suits the action on screen well. The graphics are clean enough, and there is a startling array of customized sprites for every action in the game’s story sequences. You’ll almost never see a generic action used in a cutscene; when the story calls for someone to be stabbed, they’re run through using a custom sprite, and the reactions are realistically depicted given the graphical style.

The original’s CG cutscenes have been replaced by a more anime inspired style, and are made to look like sketches come to life. These scenes are well done and the voice acting is good too. The overall sound design is good, though some of the effects stand out as odd; particularly the characters’ death cries, which sound more like a balloon deflating. Given the gravity of the story, you’ll be hearing that death cry a lot in the game’s many cutscenes. While there is a certain lighthearted tone throughout most of the Final Fantasy series, War of the Lions has a much darker story, involving betrayal, manipulation, murder and all the fun stuff that goes with a civil war, and that’s before the actual demons show up.

The story is worth seeing to the end, though at times keeping track of all the different players in the struggle for power can get confusing. Last I counted, there were at least five sides to the conflict, and each was manipulating at least one (usually more) of the others. By comparison, Ramza’s plans are simple: try to end the war, get his sister back and kick the butt of anyone who tries to stop him. The game also comes with a new translation which brings the dialog more in line with other games in the Ivalice world. This gives it a more Shakespearean feel, as with Final Fantasy XII.

Overall the game offers a lot. The story is well written and mature, not shying away from some pretty dark subject matter, and the gameplay itself is open to customization; being addictive in that “one more battle” sort of way. It provides a challenge you can’t help but try and meet. It’s worth picking up if you’re a fan of either RPGs or strategy games.

Tagged as Final Fantasy, Square Enix, Strategy, Tactics, War of the Lions