FABIO wrote:

some loser who misses OMM wrote:

...besides the old Ogre Tactics one that they already released. I don't have a GBA so I'm sort of irritated, but FFT was one of the best games ever, if this new one's good it'll be the killer app that gets me to buy GBA. I bought FFT at cover price when it first came out (like $50) and it dissapeared off the shelves. Within a few months it was $100+ on ebay, then (more recently) Sony rereleased it as one of their bargain-priced games, so you can get an actual legal copy for $20.

The whole time I played FFT I had the strangest feeling that, despite all the standrad Final Fantasy character design elements, there was something to it I was recognizing from somewhere else...then I realized what it was: That jobs system is ripped straight out of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which is no criticism, it just suddenly made the character development optimization very obvious.

The one for GBA is crap. Rather than let characters take their turn based on speed or initiative, this one took a more basic turn based approach and had one side go, move and attack with all their units, then let the other side go. Gwa? Compounding this problem was the fact that attacking a guy from behind gives you a huge advantage (he cant counterattack). Since each side had alternating turns, you could pretty much get behind someone every turn unless he was against a wall or formed a VERY long line around him with all his characters. This led to some pretty silly duels of one character running behind someone, attacking, then the next turn the person he hit would walk around him and attack, and so on. It also ment that since each side could all move at once, your opponent could gang up on and kill one or two of your full health units in a single turn before you could do anything. And death is pretty much permanent in the game. I mean, you die the INSTANT you hit zero hitpoints, none of this getting three turns to revive your guys with a phoenix down. Remember how you absolutely could not afford to lose guys in FF:T and new recruits were utterly useless squires? Same deal with TO. I deleted the ROM after two battles, and this from someone who stuck with all EIGHTY hours of the PSX Tactics Ogre.

PSX Tactics Ogre was very good and very bad at the same time. Originally released for the SNES, you'll quickly see that this was the inspiration for FF:T (same people); the plots mirror each other almost exactly. What was great about TO was that it truly had several arching storylines. "Will you follow orders and slaughter this village? Yes/No?". Answering yes makes you feel guilty but gets you promoted to your nation's leader's right hand man. Answering no has the town's destruction pinned on you and puts you on the run for the rest of the game. There are several other such major branches, but since each run through the game will take about 80 hours, I never explored more than one. The bad was a very screwy and tedious levelling system; every hour of actual story battles was complemented by two or three hours of "training mode" which basically amounted to your characters throwing rocks at each other. Fun main game, gay and tedious levelling. Also worth mentioning is the absurdly hard secret dungeon. Remember the bonus dungeon in FF:T with 8 levels? Imagine the same thing only with one HUNDRED levels, complete with having to find the hidden switch in order to advance. Oh yeah and no healing in between levels. And if you leave the dungeon, you cant go back to the last level you cleared, you've got the start ALL OVER again. Guh