[NDS] Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - Grimoire of the Rift - Anandjones

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Developer(s) Square Enix
Publisher(s) Square Enix
Series Final Fantasy series Ivalice Alliance
Platform(s) Nintendo DS
Genre(s) Tactical role-playing
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer
Rating(s) CERO: A
ESRB: E10+
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Well, I picked up this game 1 or 2 days after it's english release, I must say, it's quite good. This game is Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (a sort of sequel to FFTA, hence the Advance or A in the title) which everyone has been waiting for (english version anyway). It is a spinoff of the main Final Fantasy series or franchise. It is the main Tactics series of games of relation to Final Fantasy by Square Enix. The Final Fantasy Tactics series is one of the best Tactics role playing genre of games so far.

It follows in the world of Ivalice, like in Final Fantasy XII and of course the previous FFTA on GBA, where a boy gets sucked into a book's "world" and appears in a unknown and interesting world (used in many other things) and it also has the same enemies as Final Fantasy XII, such as the Cockatrice and it of course uses many Final Fantasy XII terms such as the Bazaar and Loot etc and the name for the regular humans, Humes, as well as other races like Bangaa, Nu Mou, Viera, Seeq etc. and of course Moogles, which are used in just about every Final Fantasy game.
So, enough about me ranting on about the same choices of names (which probably made all the terms and stories and names easier).

So, keep on reading for my review on the game! Hope you enjoy it!

The story of the game is amateurish, a mischievous boy in the real world who is by default named Luso Clemens (who you name, and is the main character; the last name stays the same). He leaves his class, and goes to the library for his clean up duty he has to do.

He finds an old book on a table. It's full of pictures of swords and ancient terms, but when he flips to the middle, it's completely blank. Then the book tells the reader to write a person's name, so he writes his own name, then he get's teleported to the ancient world of Ivalice. He drops in on a fight in a forest type field between a clan of characters and a few enemies.

He then joins their clan, and one of the guys Cid (I thought he was old) helps Luso (whatever) get home. And it follows on from there. They've kept the choice of the animal-human type races in the game, which is okay I guess. I feel they didn't make any real big changes (only a few) to this game. This plot is quite similar to the one in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for GBA, where the orphans find a ancient book.

As the story progresses, you'll encounter more players, more enemies. Quests will become more and more difficult to complete, as expected from a Final Fantasy game.

Graphics are regular for a DS game, Rondo of Sword's style or 2d style, classic 90 degree angled viewing style like a common Final Fantasy Tactics game. However, the sprites or characters are normal (graphic wise, not design wise), the backgrounds or playing fields or even maps and towns etc. are very well designed, grass, trees, dirt, rocks and cliffs are highly textured, with lots of different shades, adding extra oomph when playing.

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Lots of nice lighting on objects or things part of the background, which are also interactive, or just are "speed bumps". Lovely water animations etc., looks really good. Even if you step or jump etc. onto these type of background animations or interactions, it still does something that will catch your eye; the water for example, jump into it, and it splashes and it makes a splashing sound which looks very well implemented. As well as animations for background objects which can't be interacted with, such as lamplights etc. which do indeed light (that's their purpose).

Also, like how playing fields are on a set map of X and Y, so basically on a field you can clearly see the edges of, which is then placed onto a random background. So you can't just keep seeing the area of a playing field while it prevents you from seeing everything, this limits you to the whole playing field and it's main boundary, edge boundaries anyway.

So, when I described the in background animations which are interactive as well, such as water, for an example, the water never falls off, but actually loops back up and up again, as I said that it's basically a piece of land which is the playing field on a nice angled background. Note that this not only applies to playing fields or battle maps, it also applies to cities, towns, places where you don't battle etc, as well as the region maps. The world map is basically locations and parts of regions on a drawn map.

A plus to the 90 degree angle viewing style, is that you can see more of what you're playing, so two sides to everything, unlike normal view, which you can only see one side. Also helps sometimes with gameplay, when you can't actually see something behind a wall or something large, with the 90 degrees, you can see nearly everything, providing a much better playing experience.

Characters, NPCs or sprites are well designed and drawn like the Chocobos which look great, even though they may be only 3 to 10 frames in a spritesheet, it's the movement etc. that counts; okay walking animations too. Awesome fighting animations and graphics, such as when you select an enemy to attack etc, the groovy grey and white looping animation makes me go wild, never seen anything like that on a DS before except maybe for Final Fantasy III or IV, let alone on a 2d game. It looks even better on a larger enemy. Also not too bad communication movements too, such as when some players etc. are having conversations, they move their head and so forth. Not as widely implemented like on other games such as Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger, but it's not really a big part of a game or something that is needed to make an game like a RPG great, just a nice little addition to conversations and arguments alike.

The graphics and 3d animations and such as the special attacks, even regular attacks or Arts of War etc. look great, really detailed and animated, not just a few pixels resembling a slash attack, a full on animation of a slash with little
scrapes and scratches too, even the screen fades or darkens to emphasize the attack, the animation of the hit player or enemy is all right as well. Also, attacks also build wicked looking animations on the same character as well, then builds on another.

Even some attacks, like a big jump from an enemy or player, when performed, the animations and graphics used are great, even for an example, the ground rumbles with a nice sound and look, and bits of the ground are smashed up, which they show, with such attacks. The best looking animations probably have to be the magick (even they use the same spelling of magic, like in FFXII), White Magicks look awesome, but it's gotta be the Black Magicks and such which look divine. Fire magicks look amazing, same with Thunder magicks. The best one has got to be Ice or Blizzard Magicks, this is probably the best example of 3d animations shown in battle, and to be used in conjunction with 2d graphics.

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The face portraits (ones you see when you selected a character) are nicely drawn, Sandee's portrait reminds me of Vaan somehow. Enemies are more better looking, by design (of course, as they are an enemy, not a puny player) and movement. Enemies move much better when attacking in general, as well as specials.
Text, boxes, cursors/selectors, and so on are regular, text I've seen before I think on FFXII: Revenant Wings, text boxes etc., and the several menus are basic enough, as well as the cursors which are just triangles and so forth, but this doesn't really need to be focused on that much to make a good game. Good menu animations so such as the various colour movements in circles and icons and such in the menus; for an example. Like the bouncy cursors on the menu though, as well as the exclamation popups and so forth. The colours used are quite mixed too, providing good choices for all rounder situations, some of them reminding me of woody types like in Children of Mana etc.

The start or main menu looks the best (of course), with great artwork and title text, sword cursor sprite looks okay, text regular. The behind animations are nice, like magick spells cast, or something to do with that etc.

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Character designer was Ryoma Itoo, I don't think Tetsuya Nomura did anything as there is barely any actual artwork.

Ahh, well, finally done on the graphics department, don't say I don't pay attention to detail , Enough about graphics, let's move onto sound.

Sound is great, better than what you would expect from a DS Game, but of course, the same from what you would expect from a Square Enix DS game; top notch composed tracks. Good, chirpy, lifting music, for battle and for conversations and fields and towns alike. Nice sound effects for cursor selections, cursor moving, ingame
interactions like water, and other little sounds that have something in common with the current situation you are in, such as when in pubs or public places; people chattering away or whispering or talking or whatever you want to call it for example, or sometimes, very quickly, the clanking of cups or plates etc..

Some of the cursor sounds are just what you would expect from this type of game, also many other games use the same style of sounds for the cursors, like soft beeps, such as Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, FFIII etc. Also, most of the tunes or music are olden based, so classic instruments used like in the Royal or Kings and Queens ages, let's say Medievil.

They have been composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto (Nobuo Uematsu is much better), as well as other composers and scorers under Basiscape, which is founded by Hitoshi Sakimoto as well. If you didn't know, some of the sounds and music sound similar to music from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and also Final Fantasy XII.

A soundtrack has already been made and released, which was last year, only in Japan I believe, if it would be available in other countries, I can't say myself that I would actually buy it though.

Now for gameplay. You can't actually move around yourself when out of battle, you normally just make some option selections and they'll will take you to other players, where you act on your own without to move around or find out where to go. Everything is easy to locate though, and there's a nice and easy interface of options and assorted menus and such, moving cursors around and moving to another location on the "world map", so everything is pretty much easy to locate and find, no real bad or hidden things in this game.

For battling, it is a tactics type gameplay, you take turns like in all RPGS (most anyway), and you move on a playing field, and attack and defend with weapons, special attacks, magicks and use items and others. This type of tactics gameplay is the most common and most popular, seen in the previous FFTA and also the other FFTs(oh really), the recent Rondo of Swords, and also even in Valkyrie Profile, as well as many other games out there.

You move in controlled steps according to how quick or fast you are in your total, and you use your environment around you as well as using other players or even enemies as blockages or distrations etc. A regular sprite or character such your own players or most enemies take only one tile on the map, but larger enemies take up multiple squares or tiles on the grid or playing field. Using blocked objects on the playing field can be a good or bad thing for both oppositions, such as high or higher playing fields, or things you wouldn't normally be able to pass or climb over on, such as rocks, fences, cliffs, all sorts of things. Objects on the field do not count as a tile or aren't on tiles, so they will reject your cursor.

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Nice addition of several levels in the playing field, adding extra functionality to the game, as well as extra difficulty to the game, okay not really as you can just simply go up and down from the several height levels or layers, except for the objects which you cannot go up on or climb or walk on, this is the case where it provides for more difficulty, but not necessary towards just you, it can also provide for or help for an enemy. This will only happen in some battles though as most playing fields are very limited in them, or don't have them at all or just keep them out of the usual battling tiles on the field map. There is a handy counter on the top left of the screen which tells you which current level of the field your cursor is currently on, slanted or sloped levels count as a half or .5 of a number. There's also traps on some quests playing fields, once triggered (by someone standing on one), it either damages or causes a bad status ailment. Your players and enemies can be hurt by this.

You can move your player, and then attack from there, and you can also attack first and then move away. Using both these methods in conjunction may be simple, but can easily provide a much simpler victory for you. After you have done all you can do with your player, you can end your turn with Wait, and of course, choose which way you want the player to be facing, as a attack to the back is more damaging than an attack to the front. You can't go through enemies, only your players, but once done, they quickly get out of the way, which is cool
The top screen just provides some simple information about the current battle, as well as the characters etc.

Stats work like usual, enemies and players attack each other to lessen their HP, Magicks cost MP to be cast. Speed allows for more range of movement for your character, Attack increases the strength of your character, Defense decreases the amount of damage done and so forth. A regular RPG type stat working game. So, no real hidden attributes in here. Speaking of attributes, they work the same, there's Fire, Ice, Thunder and so on, which are effective against certain types of enemies and so on. But you don't really come into contact that much with enemies with vulnerable attribute types anyway. Would be good to take advantage of this battle tactic though, can help a lot.

Equipment works like normal, you buy or use your loot to then enable to buy equipment from the shops, which you equip like usual, judging you have the right job on your character to equip a certain weapon or armour etc. of course.

There are also special attacks or Arts of War, which are skills or techniques learned or achieved, these are great to use, as most of them are attacks, which are much stronger than a regular attack, depending on the level of the Arts of War of course.

You get experience points at the end of your battle for each player that is currently active and alive, which add to all your current stat points. Some players grow faster than others, I'll let you find all this out by yourself. You have jobs, which you can switch to and from, providing you have the ability to do so for some jobs. Some jobs allow you to use certain types of equipment, some restrict. Some allow you to use White Magick, some allow you to use Black Magick or Red Magick.

They also have a battling "Law", which is a term or condition that you must not do, in order to get benefits or privileges for your clan, which is managed or watched by a "judge" who supposedly actually watches every battle. It's an interesting addition to battle gameplay, it may restrict you from using something like a Magick etc. but it's interesting enough, and doesn't bother you that much. Eventually, it will annoy you as sometimes it will restrict you from using Ice, Fire or Thunder, using 2 or more tile away attacks, so far range attacks and so on.If you break the law in any way, it will be noted, and displayed on your screen to show you that you have indeed broken one. So you will not get the benefits or previleges for your clan. There's a list in your Clan info which allows you to see
all your encountered laws.

The actually "bonuses" you get for not breaking a law at the end of your battle, are extra items, in some cases even rare items, and other assorted things like loot, weapons, armour, and helmets and whatnot. Remember, the Laws aren't compulsory to complete only for Clan Trials (which increase your privileges etc and require Clan Points from quests), you can still keep going on with the battle. Harder quests will have several Laws to make it more difficult for you, but provided you are correctly equipped etc., you shouldn't have too much of a problem.

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Basically, the battling of the game is very nice indeed, has a lot of additions, and you have a lot of options to choose from, and I like the use of the background as a pro or con to your favour in a battle. It's not used often, but it's nice to know you have the option. To tell you the truth, I actually like the Law or Lawbreaker option. I never really get into situations where I really have to use an ability and then find out there's a law against it. It provides a little bit of extra difficulty. I don't really like the jobs system, never have, never will, although I didn't mind the Final Fantasy III's job system. All in all, the tactic's gameplay is nearly top-notch, has a lot of pros and pro-cons (cons which are actually good) which make the game more interesting and difficult, even more fun to play (or just longer )

To get into a battle or quest, where it is not compulsory to do, such as a Clan quest taken at the pub for instance, you have to check at the places with quests (like the pub) and if you choose to accept one, you have to meet the quota ie Gil, and also do it in the limited days or limited time it has been set on, if it has a time limit of course. You can dispatch your players to do some quests separately, but you can't judge the outcome. If you fail a mission and want to do it again, don't worry, continue with the storyline a bit or just do heaps of missions, eventually it will reappear for you to do again. This is helpful with the quest on which you have to beat the Red Wizard, I thought it was easy, I was mistaken when I got pwned in the first 2 rounds.

There's also Rumours, which you can freely read, which provide hints or specific info about something. Some places such as your first visit to the shop, the shopkeeper will give a rumour and add it to the list, so make sure you take this info handy, some specific places that you have been to, or people you haven't talked to, it may be a wise choice to do so, just in case they offer a rumour, one that could also help you with a quest, an item or an enemy for instance. The rumours are a nice touch, although if they removed them, I wouldn't really mind. Good for the beginners though. Although, most FF games have some sort of help guide or wizard in the game somewhere so..

After the battle, you get Clan Points, which you can use to get some of the stat privileges etc. Which is a nice little extra, I probably wouldn't know the difference with a few Power points though. Of course the sidequests, would be the optional quests you can do, without having to continue with the main storyline. You can do them for ages, and they keep lining up for you to knock them down. Conversations are okay, they're not that long, thus adding one more to the list of reasons why it doesn't have good emotion or conflict between characters. This game is sort of attracting to play again, after you've beaten it, it gets quite old after a while.

Presentation: 9 - Everything is presented in a clear way. Easy enough navigation of menus and controls alike. Stylus management is a bit shaky, although it takes ages to play with the stylus anyway. You always know what to do, and you won't get stuck on using a feature or learning how to equip or do something, it is explained once you get up to it.

Graphics: 9 - Cleanly and excellently designed, the characters and sprites, the amazing backgrounds, and the uber-awesome foursome animations for attacks and magicks I love you Blizzard Amazing background details as well, interactions on level objects for the win!

Sound: 7 - Great composed music tracks, nice little various sound effects too. Most of the tracks are made from part of FFXII's and the previous FFTA's scores, so there's not much originality in these tracks, they still sound pretty great though.

Gameplay: 9 - The tactical gameplay in this game is awesome. Lots of controls, functions, additions and features make the battling experience more enjoyable, more difficulty and the extra background interactions with the player and the playing field, which makes everything more in contact and realistic.

Lasting Appeal: 5 - Although is game is great in all around aspects, I can't say I would actually play this game again, simply because there wouldn't be an extra things to do. The game definitely gets boring after a while doing quest after quest, if you keep playing at it for hours on end, great if you're a bit bored though.

Total : 39/50 - All in all, this game is pretty superb, with it's outstanding graphics and nice music, with the awesome feature packed tactical gameplay and it's great presentation and decent enough to play it again, this game is a recommended one by me. Only games with a higher score than 38 count folks The game scored a 34 out of 40 mark from popular Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, rated 9/10 by IGN, and rated 7/10 by Gamespot If you haven't picked this game up (or downloaded ), I suggest you do so, unless you aren't a big fan of RPGs or
Final Fantasy, but do it anyway. Note: There's also a mobile phone based on FFTA2,
what's with Square Enix these days..

-Anandjones

Quote: "Remember kid. The world ends with yo- Oops wrong game

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Love the review Anand... but i dislike the ratings, should be more in my opinion.

Great job though!

 

Yeah, I didn't want to be generous. The lasting appeal is really not that great.

 

ive had this game since its japanese release.

and you're right. the lasting appeal isn't that good.

i still haven't played past the 2nd quest.

 

Long games never have lasting appeal.

 

even my friend that has been DYING to get tactics A2 got sick of it after the second quest.

at least i was kind enough to let him play the rom instead of him wasting his money.

the game itself is good, just overly repetitive...like all of the tactics games.

i bought his psp and i got tactics war of the lions with it for free and even now i still haven't gotten past the 2nd mission because i always turn it off due to boredom.

 

Good review.

 

Noes, you got to it first!! All well, it's a fantastic, very detailed review, nothing short of what all of your other reviews are,

I'll keep my remarks to my review... but, for now, I'll say that FFTA2 will definitely satisfy fans of the previous Tactics games, but, for every step forward, there is a step back. Thankfully, I'm a fan with 300+ hours on FFTA. It's safe to say that I have no life.

 

Whoa! Kind words from a elite reviewer! But 300 hours?! That's a long playing time.

 

you mean it doesn't cap out at 255 like everything else? lol

 

Well all I can say is FFTA2 is really boring me
I love Tactical games but it seems FFTA2 is the same to me except they added stuff on the clan. I don't know I just rather play FFTactics: Knight of Lodis or FFT. I guess I'm one of the nay sayers...

edit:

Also dude! I forgot to add this, but you're not alone, XD
I played FFT/7 the same as your hrs :3 except it's not in TA

 

It's a great review. However, I think you put way too much detail on it. For example, about the graphics, you wrote 11 paragraphs. That's a massive amount of text, most possibly not suitable for a review, maybe a reportage or another type of text, longer than a review.

I hope you don't interpret me wrongly, Anand.

Also, watch out for spelling errors.

 

I don't really care, I rant on and on about even the smallest things, it's what I do I don't think there's too many spelling mistakes though.