Tech: Final Fantasy Tactics - The War of the Lions review
Normally, a port of a 10 year old PS1 game wouldn't garner a lot of attention, especially on the oft-ignored Sony PlayStation Portable. But when that 10 year old game is one of the most popular strategy-RPGs of all time, people tend to take notice. I picked up "Final Fantasy Tactics" for the PSP to see how it stacks up to the original PlayStation game.
I played the original about five years ago, so the experience is still relatively fresh in my head. It was and still is a massive time sink (no surprise there) and my dorm room was often filled with the sound of the endlessly repeating battle music. And, for the most part, FFT for the PSP is a faithful port of the original game - same story, same play mechanics, same graphics and sound, all shrunk to fit on the PSP's relatively small screen.
There have been some additions, though. The whole game has been nicely re-translated (the original translation was filled with errors to the point of being incomprehensible), and there are a whole bunch of nifty animated, fully voice-acted cutscenes that show key story events. Balthier from FFXII even supposedly makes an appearance, although I haven't gotten there yet. But by and large, this is the same game people played ten years ago (except with some annoying slowdown during spells and abilities).
If there's complaints to be leveled at the game aside from the inexplicable slowdown, it's that it didn't try and fix the underlying problems of FFT. The lack of any kind of penalty for moving in and around enemy forces means the game still often boils down to "surround the weakest enemy, kill him, wash, rinse, repeat." There is still a lot of grinding needed before your party can tangle with some of the tougher encounters, and the difficulty level ranges from stupidly easy to stupefyingly hard.
Rating: 82/100
I played the original about five years ago, so the experience is still relatively fresh in my head. It was and still is a massive time sink (no surprise there) and my dorm room was often filled with the sound of the endlessly repeating battle music. And, for the most part, FFT for the PSP is a faithful port of the original game - same story, same play mechanics, same graphics and sound, all shrunk to fit on the PSP's relatively small screen.
There have been some additions, though. The whole game has been nicely re-translated (the original translation was filled with errors to the point of being incomprehensible), and there are a whole bunch of nifty animated, fully voice-acted cutscenes that show key story events. Balthier from FFXII even supposedly makes an appearance, although I haven't gotten there yet. But by and large, this is the same game people played ten years ago (except with some annoying slowdown during spells and abilities).
If there's complaints to be leveled at the game aside from the inexplicable slowdown, it's that it didn't try and fix the underlying problems of FFT. The lack of any kind of penalty for moving in and around enemy forces means the game still often boils down to "surround the weakest enemy, kill him, wash, rinse, repeat." There is still a lot of grinding needed before your party can tangle with some of the tougher encounters, and the difficulty level ranges from stupidly easy to stupefyingly hard.
Rating: 82/100
posted by Mulliga @ 1:24 PM
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