Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
We've already peered into the depths of the import version of Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, the PSP remake of Square Enix's classic PlayStation strategy RPG. Now we've had some time to battle our way through the localized version of the game -- and it's an impressive localization, at once eclipsing the English version of the PS1 original and making the Japanese release from a few months back look only half-finished.
Technical Issues
The Japanese version of the game sold respectably in May, but it suffered from a number of notable shortcomings. The most frustrating was the constant slowdown that plagued the battles; seemingly every small action caused the PSP to stutter briefly, and many visual effects (particularly those from magic spells) caused the game speed to slow to a crawl. The U.S. edition of the game doesn't completely smooth over these issues, but they've been dramatically reduced; now the technical issues are about on par with the minor slowdown exhibited in the PS1 release and are no longer distracting.
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| SCREENS: Click the image above to check out all Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions screens. |
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A simpler (though no less significant) improvement comes in the CG cinema sequences sprinkled throughout the game: Formerly silent but for soft music, the movies are now fully-voiced. This changes the feel of the game considerably, sharpening the personalities of major characters like Ramza and Delita. The movies have seen a second change in the U.S. version of the game: The black screens of Ramza's silent, introspective text have been excised, presumably because they're more a Japanese storytelling technique and would have felt somewhat out of place in the U.S. version.
Disappointingly, the one other technical flaw of the Japanese version hasn't been addressed: The game's sound still lacks the reverb of the PlayStation original, giving the excellent score by Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata a slightly flat feel.
New features
New for remake (and something we didn't get to explore in the Japanese edition) is the two-part multiplayer component. The first part is the expected head-to-head combat in which two parties square off and compete to see who lasts the longest. The second is a cooperative mode which allows two players to delve into a dungeon together to complete set missions.
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| SCREENS: Click the image above to check out all Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions screens. |
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A few special rules apply to muitiplayer. No deaths are permanent -- although your characters may surpass the three-turn limit after being taken down to 0 HP, they won't be lost forever. Secondly, your opponent's creatures can't be poached, nor can their human warriors be talked into changing sides. Finally, the Calculator class is verboten (a tacit admission by the developers to a fact every Tactics pro knows: the Mathematics skill has the potential to completely break the game).
Multiplayer is ad hoc only -- no online play.
Two new job classes have been added to the game, although they require considerable effort to make the most of. The Dark Knight class only becomes available by gaining formidable amounts of experience in a wide variety of classes (including rather incompatible jobs like Knight, Black Mage and Geomancer); the trade-off is a powerful warrior capable of using advanced techniques, including the ability to sacrifice HP to inflict extra damage on foes. The Onion Knight class, on the other hand, is easy to earn but is limited to strictly physical attacks and earns no job points; instead, it gains strength as you master other classes. To make full use of the class and its massive bonuses, you need to master sixteen other classes, not including Squire and Chemist. So, good luck with that.
At the other end of spectrum are the two new recruitable characters, Luso from the upcoming Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and Balthier from Final Fantasy XII. They're much easier to acquire and greatly bolster your party's power. Luso is essentially Ramza with an ability to poach monsters, but Balthier is much better -- a combination Engineer and Thief with the ability to inflict high damage and status ailments from a long range.
