I contemplated as to whether to review a six year old game, but I have been playing it a lot again of late, so figured it might be time for a review, as that’s what a lot of these posts seem to be.
This is an old game, by gaming standards, released for the Game Boy Advance in 2003.
Story
You take on the role of Marche, who is transported to a mysterious world, wherein he greets his friends but finds that the world has changed them all. He tries to correct it by destroying “World” Crystals, but is met with indifference from his former companions and your usual Final Fantasy monsters.
Gameplay
You garter yourself a crew (which is comprised of other species whom featured more prominently in Final Fantasy XII), otherwise known as a Clan and engage in turn-based tile-based tactical battles from the missions you take on. You make your own world map by placing locations where you like, so if you want to make Sprohm (the city with the prison) kind of like Alcatraz, like I did, there’s a small island to place it on.
Prison you ask? Yes, the world of Ivalice has a law system, whereby certain actions can’t be performed in battle and punishable by being sent to jail for a certain amount of battles.
Multiplayer also comes in with this via GBA link cable for either vs. battles or trading goods & characters.
Graphics
Graphics are never really too important to me in any game, but this is something that’s needed in reviews.
The graphics in FFTA aren’t bad for GBA graphics, but I wouldn’t have minded a cut scene or two for important events.
Soundtrack
The music in this game is not done by Square-Enix’s usually well-known musician, Nobuo Uematsu, but by Hitoshi Sakimoto and the sounds soon become familiar such as when starting a battle or entering a usual location.
There’s no memorable songs to me, but certainly not a bad soundtrack.
Replayability
There’s over 300 missions to do, and you can carry on after the main story has ended, there’s lots of missions to do, and plenty of job classes to keep you happy.
However, I couldn’t bring myself to restart the game and go through the main story mode again, but with all the missions to do and the quick dive-in gameplay style, you’ll find it hard to put down.
I do have to note, this game was damn near impossible to find even a year after it’s release, so you may not have much luck at all now.
Quick scores follow next in most reviews in case you’re too lazy to have read what I have spent my time writing.
Story: 4.5/10
Gameplay: 6.5/10
Graphics: 5/10
Soundtrack: 5.5/10
Replayability: 6/10
55%
- 0 – 19% Unplayable - why the hell did I even buy this?
- 20 – 49% Poor – Certain elements of the game hold it back
- 50 – 69% Average – More good than bad, but you might need to be a fan to really get in to it.
- 70 – 84% Good – A nice franchise or single game, that just misses out on being great because of a few flaws.
- 85 – 89% Excellent – You could play this for ages and be happy
- 90 – 100% Fucking Excellent – You should have this game and play it every single day.
Want me to review a game? Comment and let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
FFTA was actually one of my favorite GBA games. I thought the story score and game play score could have been better, seeing that it tells the origins of Ivalice, which leads to Final Fantasy XII (6-7 years after TA). Plus, it was great to play the Job System again and not deal with the futuristic crap from VII and VIII.
ReplyDeleteI suggest playing the games in this order to get the full back story of Ivalice: Tactics Advance, XII, Revenant Wings, Tactics A2, Tactics, and finally Vagrant Story
I'm actually playing XII at the moment, so I may just take your suggestion on board. :)
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