Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions | Classic Final Fantasy With a Strategic Twist

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions | A good remake of a great game

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Final Fantasy Tact...

	Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions Sony PSP \| Square Enix, 2007 average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In days now long past, the War of the Lions rent the land of Ivalice in two. And it is here that two young men of note first stepped onto history's stage. The first is a man named Delita Heiral, the hero who would draw the curtain on the War of the Lions, this dark act of Ivalice's history. The other, whose role is now forgotten, is a man by the name of Ramza Beoulve. Peer through the eyes of these two young men, and uncover the secrets that lie hidden within history's darkened folds. Originally released in 1997, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is a portable update on the classic turn-based strategy game that gave birth to the world of Ivalice. New features include all-new CG sequences, all-new jobs, new 16:9 widescreen presentation, new head-to-head multiplayer and new storyline elements that refine the genesis of the Ivalice Alliance.

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Classic Final Fantasy With a Strategic Twist

Summary:If you've liked the GBA or DS Versions of Final Fantasy Tactics, you won't be disappointed by War of the Lions. It's an almost direct port from the PSX version, but it doesn't disappoint. It can be a bit slow paced at times, but a complex and deep storyline filled with beautiful hand drawn cutscenes makes this a pretty emotional game.

Gameplay- Five Stars
Confusing at first, after the first hour, things will quickly sort themselves out. Every time you successfully perform an action, your characters will get both EXP (experience) and JP (Job Points, not Judge Points). EXP is obviously used for leveling up, while JP are used for advancing classes. Classes are the set of abilities that a character can use, i.e. the "White Mage" class allows a character to use White Mage JP to access stronger and stronger White Mage spells, such as Curaja or Holy. You can change the camera angles to get a better look at the battlefield or to plan your next move. I'll admit, sometimes waiting for the CPU to move was a bit boring, but you have to pay attention or else you'll find yourself losing people left and right. Gameplay can be frustrating when you lose a character. When someone in your party loses all of their hit points, then a three turn timer is activated; when it reaches 0, your character is lost forever, and a jewel or chest takes its place.

Story- Five Stars
The story is rather complex. I won't reveal it, but it's a classic theme: save the world. Hand drawn cutscenes add to the story. It's a deeply emotional game, and there is no happy ending. You follow Ramza in dark times as he defeats revived legendary monsters, kept in stones known only as the Zodiac Stones.

Online Play - Two Stars
You can play with a buddy if they happen to own a copy of the game, and go on cooperative missions together, or battle each other. There is no infrastructure mode included, but there is a means of obtaining it is you really want to play other people. You don't honestly expect an infrastructure mode for a decade old game, do you?

Final Verdict- Five Stars
This game really is epic, and is a perfect port from the Playstation One. If I could only own five games for the PSP, this would be one of them. There is almost unlimited replay value.

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A good remake of a great game

I played this through and it feels to me just like the original did on the playstation, only with some fixes to the dialogue and such. Basically to me, it just feels like they cleaned it up and re-released it for PSP. I'd have been thrilled to see this released with HD graphics for PS3.

Anyway, the game is a heck of a lot of fun, the graphics are good, etc. The only thing I don't like is it seems harder to adjust the angles to see where units are. It might be a software bug, or it might just be that my eyes are having trouble with the small screen size on the PSP.

Anyway, it's a great game, if you liked the original, you'll love this as well. Very very good game.

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Nostalgic, But They Were Right

This is essentially the same game I remember from 1997, with cleaned-up dialogue -- something I'd always wished for -- and the addition of some very nice animated cut scenes, and of course, new secret characters, extra party slots, etc. The story is finally comprehensible and easy on the eyes. I strongly disagree with people who claim that the dialogue is "Shakespearean"; I assume they mean it's too formal and archaic to follow easily, but if they think that, I guarantee you they've neither read nor seen any Shakespeare.

Unfortunately, They were right. A port or re-make of a game should attempt to meet or exceed the quality of the original game in every area, but the graphical slowdowns and sound effect changes in The War of the Lions are very real and very noticeable, at least to a longtime fan of the game. They are a step backwards from the quality found in the original. In the very first battle, for example, when a certain Dark Knight uses one of his special abilities, you can see the game's speed go from smooth to stuttering, and the sound effect for the ability -- which used to be an intricate magical noise, followed by a SHINK! as the effect finished -- has been replaced by an odd blooping noise.

I don't know why Square decided not to fix the slowdown or why they replaced some of the excellent sound effects with lower-quality ones, but I feel it's a huge detriment to a game that otherwise would have been a perfect 10 in my book.

I docked two stars from my rating of this game for three reasons, because they hampered my enjoyment of it: The slowdowns (they had time to fix this during localization, but neglected to do so), the sound effects (same), and the fact that Square neglected to fix it before American release, didn't bother to inform anyone of the flaw, and apparently don't ever plan on fixing it.

I would have given it only 1 or 2 stars had the dialogue not been cleaned up and extra content added. Fun factor is still four, because it's still essentially the same Final Fantasy Tactics I love.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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