Final Fantasy Tactics A2

I'm an addict for SRPGs - I've had the game for about 3 weeks and I've racked up about 35 hours of play between Fallout3, class, and etc. I've not yet beat the game, however. I'm about halfway done with both the plot (Which is roughly 25 missions) and all the quests in the game (Which is 300). So... If that ratio of sidequest to mainquest seems off to you, I'd agree. Now, I think the big question about this game - Does it live up to the name Tactics or the name Tactics Advance? Well...

So, the game is much better than the original TA, I'll give it that. They fixed a lot of things that the original had wrong -- The lack of classes, the laws, how fucking annoying owning a territory was, all the random combat, the absurd easiness. However, it still gets a lot of things wrong.

First, Laws. No more RED CARD, shit, my character is now in jail. What replaces that system is a system where you pick a perk that helps you in the battle that goes away if you break the law. If you manage to not break the law in the fight, then you also get a few bonus items at the end of the fight. Also, if you break the law, you can't revive someone. A minor annoyance, but nothing terribly bad or good about the system. I almost prefer the first game's system, if only because the laws were more ... Hm. Made me switch things up more? I guess.

Second, the classes. In my opinion, the class scale for this game sorta does it wrong. Classes are broad, not deep, like in FFT/most SRPGs. I have 6 people ... And there's a bunch of classes that I don't use, as I don't have the right race or what have you. I really dislike their race and making classes based on those choice, but... I can see why they do it.

Now, as for level scaling/quests. There are too many quests or you level up too fast. No matter what you do, there will always be quests that the enemies are just 20 levels lower than you and you'll stomp on the enemies like it's nothing. If you rush through the plot, you'll have a bunch of sidequests you stomp. If you do a bunch of sidequests... You'll have a bunch of sidequests and plot you'll stomp. I appreciate things not scaling, as sometimes you just want to go "... :3" and beat faces in. However, there's a sidequest line, where you're supposed to be fighting the toughest guys from another continent. I'm 10 levels higher than their generals. The fights are pathetic. Those, at least, should scale to you. Always be a level or two higher than you, so you can't just destroy them. It'd be nice to worry about something, to think the fight wasn't in the bag at the beginning every time.

As to owning territory - Instead of fighting for it ... And fighting again every 20 days or however absurdly short the time span in FFTA was, you auction for territory. It works pretty well, actually. Once you own the world, you can use the auctions to get rare items. Neat.

Finally, the difficulty scaling. In FFTA, I thought the game was easy from roughly hour two. This game, at least, had me thinking it might be not too easy for the first 10 or so. I've at least... thought a fight might be hard. (Exception: When I fought a group of level 90 monsters. At level 45. Who automatically get 2 turns before your group to cast about 5 buffs on their entire group. And even then? I think I could take them in roughly 5-10 levels). So... This might just be that, compared to FFT being my first SRPG, I've played a good 30 of them since. Am I getting better, or is FFTA/FFTA2 easy? Good question.

Final summary: FFT > FFTA2 > FFTA. It's gotten better, but it's not astounding. I like it, it's a solid game, tho. But, again, grain of salt might be good, considering my love for all things SRPG.

The problem with Ports/Remakes.

So, after buying 2 ports/remakes, playing them for a few hours, and then moving onto different games, I've realized something I've never really thought about before. While I love both Dragon Quest 4 and Final Fantasy 4 - Playing a port/remake, no matter how different, just doesn't have that ... new game feeling. Part of the excitement of owning a new game is that it is just that. There's some new game mechanic to learn, even if it's just that game's implementation of an already done system. That's what excites me most about playing new games, I think. Show me something new and innovative, that makes me have to think a bit, and I'll be drawn in. I suppose that might be one of the reasons I like SRPGs so much - They tend to have an insane amount of customization and depth. Starting a new SRPG means digging into a system and learning how it works. Growlanser Generations, I think, makes a great example of this. It's one of my favorite games mostly because nothing I've played is similar. When I started to play it, I was floord, and played through both games in the next few weels.

So... End mini-rant/ramblings, I suppose.