User Reviews (11 - 21 of 196)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Brilliant GBA game laid low by annoying "features".

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is a fun and addictive game...to a point.

Probably the best feature of the game is that it's perfect for the Gameboy Advance..or at least for frequent short play instead of long sittings. It's quick to hop in to, doesn't have a whole lot of plot for you to forget (this was kind of a downpoint, but having played the game on and off over about 3 months it's become a good thing), and you can make accomplishments with about 10-15 minutes of gameplay (or even save during game in a pinch). It's perfect for travelling.

The gameplay is fun and addictive. It's been a while since I played the Playstation original, but the classes seem better and more balanced, and more meaningful when you combine abilities. It's a great way to kill a half hour here and a half hour there.

Now the things that drag it down.

The Law system is by far it's most annoying feature. It's basically a list of things you can't do in a particular battle. There are two results to breaking said law: 1) for a minor transgression, you get a yellow card. after the battle, it will do somethingbad to your character like lower stats, etc. 2) more severe violations of the law (usually KOing someone with the illegal move) will take you out of the battle and put you straight into prison. The problem is that the yellow card doesn't effect your opponents, because what happens after the battle is irrelevant to them, and usually 2-3 enemies every battle have an ability that converts any severe violations into a yellow card, so they never get removed from battle. In effect, the Law system is a restriction on you and no one else. Also, if your main character ever gets a severe violation, it's game over for you.

The further into the game you get, the more annoying it gets to be because they become more general and more numerous. You'll end up in battles where Swords, Fight (the basic attack command), and color magic (white, black, red, etc) are all forbidden. Great, so you've got about 1 character that can do anything worthwhile, meanwhile the other team is all suited up perfectly to not have to deal with those laws. Sometimes in a long drawnout battle you'll forget what the laws are and accidentally break one. It sucks to get gameover just because after a 45 minute battle (because 90% of your moves are handicapped it gets hard to win quickly) you accidentally break some obscure law like attacking the same opponent twice in a row.

Which brings me to my next complaint. Not all of the laws are clearly spelled out. You'll remember what they are after the first time you break them, but knowing ahead of time is often not possible. For instance: "knightswords" will be banned. None of the offending weapons are labeled as such, so you don't get to know if you're going to break the law until you actually do. Similarly: "ganging up" has something to do with multiple allies attacking the same enemy; hard not to do when it's the last enemy on the board.

The Judge who enforces these laws (one in every battle) also is sort of annoying himself. He stands in the battlefield and takes a turn (and a space) like everyone else. He takes his turn extremely slow though...just sitting there for 20-30 seconds at a time most often, and then moving somewhere or rearranging KOed bodies for some reason. It breaks the momentum of the game.

Not the original...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 26
Date: September 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Do you remember when Nintendo was making portable games, and even watches, of some of it's original titles? The severely toned down versions of Mario and Zelda that entertained you while you were waiting for something, but were by no stretch of the imagination a replacement for the games that inspired them? THAT'S what Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game. It has a unique, original story. It has several new elements that add to gameplay, such as race-determined classes, battle judges, and a new magic learning system (A Final Fantasy game with a new magic system!? Yeah, I know, big surprise...)

But despite all of this, everytime I play this game, I find myself wanting to drag out my Playstation and plug in the original Final Fantasy Tactics. The feeling is so overpowering that I cannot play FFTAdvance at home; I have to play while riding in a car, or at a friends, or while out to eat. It's THAT lacking compared to the original! It doesn't have the intricate plot that the first one did. The range of character customization isn't nearly as great as the first one (it's actually rather disappointing, since I can only advance most characters along a path one or two notches.) There's also no need to develop specialty characters: the high levels offer nothing exciting, and I've gone pretty damn far with a 2 base soldiers, a black mage, white mage, and archer. Why do I want to upgrade to a Fighter if he can't wear armor?! You could do a lot of petty missions, but my characters have been powerful enought just to tear through the story missions like paper. There's nothing in the game pushing you to advance.

Basically, this is a fine Game Boy game. If I had to take a 5 or 10 hour plane flight, I can't think of anything more I'd want with me. Or for boring lunch breaks, or at family reunions; any time you need good video game distraction. But I will always think of this game as Final Fantasy Tactics Light, not Advance. Silver lining: maybe this will sell well enough that Square will do a Tactics 2 for Playstation 2. THAT would be worthy of praise!

Disappointing coming from a great company like Square/Enix

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 14
Date: February 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Let me start off by saying that I've been a fan of the final fantsy series since FF5. Each one has been different and had it's own good points and bad points. As for FF Tactics Advanced, the bad far outweigh the good. Let me tell you the good points first.

1. It's on GBA, meaning it's portable and that you can play it anywhere at anytime.

2. Player's are able to change jobs as in the original FF Tactics.

3. The graphics are pretty decent for a GBA game.

Now for the bad

1. The Story - the story for FFTA has to be the most thoughtless and simple ones for any FF game to date. Your character is warped into an alternate dimension where the Final Fantasy video game becomes real. Your objective now is to find a way back home (how creative). You join a clan of other characters and fight with other random clans throughout the game. You advance the plot by completing various missions. You eventually have to fight your friends from the real world who don't want to go home and convince them to go back with you. You can basically know the whole lame story of this game before you even get halfway through the game. I won't spoil the ending for those of you who haven't played the game (even though there's not much to spoil).

2. Laws - On FFTA the game has a set number of laws in each location and a judge watching the battle to make sure no one breaks them. At times you can cleverly use these laws to bind your enemies from doing certain things. However, later on in the game the game starts placing 3 laws in effect all at once. This slows down the battles greatly and sometimes the 3 laws could be barring you from healing, using magic, or even using the fight command itself! Sometimes they even barred me from doing dmg to animals in a battle where I was fighting 5 animals. These laws end up being more annoying than helpful especially if you're like me and want to build characters to their max lvs and stats.

3. Lack of Sidequests - This game has a huge lack of sidequests or other alternate things to do in the game. You can accept extra missions from the Pubs but half of them don't even allow you to fight, but rather dispatch a clan member to complete the mission for a certain amount of time. The extra missions where you can actually fight are often unrewarding and a waste of time. This game lacks a Dungeon or bonus area where enemies are stronger than the final boss like in the other FF titles (ie. Deep Dungeon of FFT, Via Infinito of FFX-2, Research Cen. FF8, etc.)

4. Sound - If you've played any FF titles before then I'm sure you know what I mean when I say that the music on this game is weak. The tunes on the other games were so good that you would go to some areas just to hear the music and would later find yourself humming the tunes. However, on this game that isn't the case.

5. Difficulty - Square usually tries to balance the FF games. Not make them to hard but then again not to easy either. This one falls in the category with the "kiddie game stigma" that plagues Nintendo today. The game is far too easy for anyone who's played and beaten the other FF titles. They made this one in order to ensure that all 6-14yr olds would be able to beat this game.

Overall I wouldn't recommend this game to a normal RPG fan. Get this one ONLY if you feel the need to have every Final Fantasy game in your collection or if you're not bothered by the huge number of flaws in this game (I would have listed more if I had more space).

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: February 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

To start this review off, I would like to note that FFTA(Final Fantasy Tactics Advance) isn't even close to as good as the original FFT for PSX. However, a good FFT lover like myself will tell you that's not saying much.

This game does take place in a similar world to FFT, but overall is different. The battle system still uses jobs, but this time, there are races. Each race it's own characteristics and some jobs available to only it. The way you learn abilities is much like FFIX in the sense that you have to equip weapons with abilities and then gain a certain amount of Ap. The real problem with the battle system is rather the lack of difficulty. There is, however, one excepsion! The totema battles, which are like the Zodiac Battles, which in turn are like Boss Battles, are incredibly good. They are the best boss battles in a video game I've seen since 2001. The Totema battles feature big, hulking enemies, good music, and seamingly impossible challenges.

The story isn't exactly great, and rather then throwing you into a completely different world right from the get go, you start in more of a present day period. After some nicely done starting scenes, you and your teenage friends are thrown into another world with magic(yes, it's one of those cliches). The story evetually does progress into something better, but the lack of story actually makes this game more appealing since it's a portable game.

Overall, this game is great. If you didn't play FFT, you'll find the battles enjoyable and pretty challenging, and if you did beat the original FFT, the Totema battles and new job classes are more then enough to get you to buy this game.

100+ hours and I'm not even half way through, AWESOME!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Seriously, this game has taken my life away. I play during lunch break, I play during work and sometimes even at night. This is easily one of the most addictive and all around best games I have ever played.

There are 5 races you can play as: Human, Verran ( a human-like species but with long ears like a rabbit), Nu Mou ( a great magic using race), Baanga ( a lizard-like race, just don't call them lizards!) & Moogle ( a standard species in nearly all Final Fantasy games ).

To level and gain new abilities for your Clan( party of group members in the game, a maxium of 23 at one time ), your Clan must study abilities from weapons, armor, magical items, etc. Each ability is put into a class for each character which is called a Job. After mastering 1,2, or even 5 kinds of spelles, techniques, skills you can move on to another Job and use combo of two classes and become even more powerful.

The battle system is turn based, which means you move your character, attack, use a spell, etc, then face a direction to end your move. It may seem easy enough so far, but The Judging System can mean the victory or defeat of your clan. Every battle has certian rules, for example, lets say Missle attack are banned from the fight, you will be penilized for using a missle( arrow attack ) but if you use the opposite of missle ( which is swords ) you will be rewarded with a Judge Point (JP). JP's can be used for Combo moves which deal masssive damage & with other characters which could lead into the hundreads of damage points, maybe even thousands... JP's can also be used for Totema, massive summoned creatures you get for progressing through the game, but I won't spoil any more than that.

Overall this game is one of the best RPG/Strategy games EVER!! It's addictive as hell & fun as hell. For only $35 its worth any penny, every Game Boy Advance (or SP) owner should pick this up. You won't regret it.

A Very Good GBA Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you haven't heard of Final Fantasy,then you must have been living under a rock for the last 15 years.Since it's launch on the SNES,it has grown into one of the most memoriable series on any game platform.If you want to fully understand the plot,you'll have to go out and buy all of the 14 games!

The game starts out with Marche,the "new kid". At school,the kids are playing in a snowball fight (you get to fight for the first time here).
After school,your friends,Ritz and Mewt come to your house with a mysterious book.After Ritz saying that she wishes that Final Fantasy would come to life,they leave.The next day,they...

I'm not going to spoil the plot.It's actually very good.
________________________________________
GRAPHICS:
Great.Very detailed,3D battlegrounds. The graphics and animation when a character uses a "Totema" are excellent.
10/10
________________________________________
GAMEPLAY:
Near identical to Advance wars. This game is a RPG,if you don't know already.
9.5/10
________________________________________
SOUND:
Very crisp.The sound effects are very well done,like when someone swings a sword,groans,ect.
10/10
________________________________________
REPLAYABILITY:
I'm not sure if you're going to be replaying this game much,as it is over 300 hours long!
5/10
________________________________________
CONTROLS:

Simple and easy to learn.
D-Pad,movement
A button,accept
B button,cancel
10/10
________________________________________
OVERALL:9.9/10

My only problem with this game is the fact that it is over 300 hours long.That'll take forever! Also,the missions and battles can take over 20 minutes to win.This game is for patient people.

Overall,I reccomend this game to the hardcore Final Fantasy fanatic,as well as the casual strategy game fan.

Fun, but not memorable...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a turn-based strategy game from SquareEnix.
The setup of the story is cute, quirky, fun, and at times even endearing. However, it doesn't work too much to tie together the battles. The main plot sort of arches over the gameplay, which are generally tangential subplots that don't contribute to the main story.

The battles are pretty standard fare, with the best aspects being the many classes, abilities, and items. Lots of stuff to "get" in this game, hehe.

Graphics are very good. Anime portraits are used to tell the story, and although most of the characters are supposed to be kids, they look rather metrosexual to me, haha.

Multiplayer for turn-based strategy is never very good. And this one is no exception. The game offers linking to trade items, but unless you have a friend who gets into this as much as you, I think this game will mostly remain a solo affair.

Good game, perfect to grind away the day with, perfect on a handheld, $30 a little too much IMO, but that's why I got it on sale.

Not the same as Knight of Lodis

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 16
Date: July 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've played the Japanese version of this game, and it's pretty good. This is the same style of game as Lodis, but is different in several ways: the art is far better, the strategy elements a bit deeper, and the story somehow reminiscent of fantasy films from the 80s.

A fan of the Playstation version of FFT, I can't think of anything to knock it for (besides the story, but that's a matter of taste. I just wish it had a more mature plot, something FF's seem to universally lack).

I'm going to buy the English version of the game just so I can figure out what's going on with the law system, and because it offers excellent gameplay.

awesome game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: November 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

its a really fun game although it may be hard to learn. its not too difficult nor too easy. its entertaining and addicting and provide dozens of hours of gameplay

It's GREAT but it's not as good as the original.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: September 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game, don't get me wrong. But the original was much more fun. MUCH more.

The judge points system is idiotic. I rather liked saving up Job Points and buying my own skills from the job list, and not having to learn skills by AP off weapons (Final Fantasy 3 anyone?) Not having Job Points or Job Levels is not much fun. Learning new jobs from learning skills, which is all dependant on buying new weapons and learning skills off them.... I don't know WHAT they were thinking with this idiotic design.

Some skills you learn off much weaker weapons, meaning you have to sacrifice a great deal of damage just to learn a skill. This design decision makes learning skills more tedious then fun. Being able to earn job points and buy the skills you wanted was an exceptional idea in the original and made the game a ton of fun. The new system is utter tediousness. The law system is irritating also, but it isn't quite as bad as some of the people who had played the Japanese release before the US one came out were saying.

Now for the good. 300 missions. Tons of gameplay time. Battles look surprisingly similar to the PS1 version of Tactics (even the walking in place animations for your characters, and the main character is almost a perfect match to Ramza in terms appearance). This isn't a game you have any hope of finishing in less then a week, unless of course you devote 24/7 to it with no sleep.

In conclusion, this is a GREAT game, and easily one of the best portable games ever released. But it simply cannot measure up to the original FFT due to some absolutely awful design decisions that make the game much MUCH more tedious then the original game. So while this is a great game, I simply cannot give it 5 stars. The Job system has been crippled and the Judge Point system (introducing combos to the game... hello, this isn't Street Fighter!) is rather redundant and no fun to use.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions