Finished playing Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions (2007, TOSE, Square Enix, PSP) on 3/19/2018 for the second time.
Play Time: +600 hours
After a gruesome conflict known as the Fifty Year War, another grim chapter awaits the land of Ivalice whose political strife and economical instability are now topped with the recent death of its king. And with the only heir to the throne being an infant, the kingdom is split yet again on the decision of a regent between Prince Goltana, represented by a Black Lion, and Prince Larg, symbolized by a White Lion. This comes to be known as the War of the Lions, and in the midst of all its conflicts is a boy named Ramza Beowulve whose major role in the history of this war was covered up by an influential religious institution known as the Church of Glabados.
Man, oh man, oh man! I've never had such a wild ride of ups and downs with a game before. I've also never played a single player campaign for this long!
So, Final Fantasy Tactics takes place in a medieval setting where magical abilities and mystical creatures abound. The game's political plot is complex and mature played by a varied array of characters. While the plot's maturity is welcome, the number of characters might make it a bit hard to follow along. But their Shakespearean dialogue makes it only more interesting to pay close attention to. I believe it wasn't so Shakespearean in the original PlayStation release.
I've never played the original western release of this game, but from what I've heard War of the Lions brought the difficulty level up to the original Japanese release, which sometimes can be very unforgiving to the point of some battles feeling unnecessarily punishing. This is especially frustrating with story battles that can't be skipped, and is only made worse if you decide to overwrite your save file in between battles with multiple fights as you'll find yourself stuck in the character select screen with no option to go back to the overworld map, leaving you with the only option to start the game all over again or keep trying to beat the battle you're stuck on by hoping for a miracle. This sort of happened to me, but not because I overwrote my save file as such, it was because I had to collect and steal certain rare items (not required) before defeating all the enemies. But because the enemies were so powerful compared to mine, I ended up resetting the game an unbelievable amount of times over the period of two of three weeks before I was miraculously able to do it. And it's not like leveling up my team would've mattered as enemy levels grow with you.
And then there's the very limited amount of character units you can recruit. It's about 32, I think, which doesn't leave much room for ordinary recruits when you're trying to obtain every single special and story character there is. This was a struggle for me as I ended up having to sacrifice characters I had spent hours upon hours of training and leveling up, just to make room for folks like Cloud or Balthier to join the party. Had I known how many spots I should have reserved when I started the game, I wouldn't have recruited and trained so many folks. That's really one of the major contributors to my insane playtime. Next time I'll know better, I suppose. But I'm probably not going to play this game again. I wouldn't want to put myself through another round of this sadistic game difficulty. And if I do, it won't be for a long time. Maybe if there's a remake, I don't know.
But I'm not trying to say the game is completely terrible for that. In fact, I very much enjoyed it for its story, characters and battle mechanics. The whole job system and the thinking you have to do on the battlefield is very engaging. And the cutscenes are great too! The cell shaded models combined with the cross-hatching render gives them a very magical storybook kind of feel. I love it! It's really just the punishing difficulty of this game that ruined the experience for me.
8.5/10 - *whine* The game is too haaaard! ( T ^ T)
