Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (DS)

Hmm, I missed this IGN interview from about a month ago. I guess the full title translates to Final Fantasy Tactics A2: The Sealed Grimoire.

A few worrysome responses in the interview:

"Can players expect any touch screen functionality in TA2? I didn't notice any when I played it this morning.

Murasawa This time, we decided not to use the touch screen functionality.

Can you tell us a little about the story? Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was criticized by some as being light on plot, have there been any efforts to beef up the story?

Murasawa Because of the light-hearted features of the previous game, we decided to keep the same sort of mood. Our goal this time is to keep things light, at least that is what we're aiming for."

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That's really too bad that they're not utilizing the touch screen. I had it all worked out in my head, how it was going to work. You would tap a character to bring up their status on the top screen, as well as their moving grid, and then you would double-tap on the grid you wanted to move to. It could have been so elegant..

PS that is one giant bird.

orly.jpg

let's hope square-enix don't fuck this like they did children of mana

what am i supposed to play in the meantime? this is pretty much the only genre i still play, along with puzzlers and space shooters (i am swearing off "shmup").

i had hoshigami for the ps1, but it was... meh. i guess i will play those super robot games for GBA, but i need more turn-based "strategy"! even if it's easy as hell.

the art in this game reminds me of lupin the 3rd, or, at least, that of it which I've seen ever since I got cable. so, about 6 minutes of it.

you've played the fire emblem games right?

yeah... both of the ones in english, anyway.

Super Robot Wars-- not bad actually. It's no Front Mission 1, but what is? The two existing SRW games should last me a good month or so. Then it's Hoshigami, then... who knows?

i'm guessing you've already played disgaea/la pucelle?

i've been playing the shit out of the og FFT lately. i like it tho it doesn't hold up as well as I thought. it's soooo easy to exploit and there's so many gamebreaking elements (orlandu, chantage, calculator). basically it doesn't do much of anything to compel you to actually use tactics, except the first part of the game where all your characters are blank slates. a lot of the time i will create difficult scenarios just so it's not a cakewalk, eg. trying harder storybattles with nothing but priests and bards, this is the kind of thing that spawns all those ridiculous solo straight character lvl 1 challenges that hardcore fans come up with (esp for japanese rpgs which i guess are all e-z mode)

also i think i've decided that the more complicated a game is or the more elements there are to the gameplay, the easier it is to exploit. there's basically no way to cheat at Zelda except for the odd glitch here or there.

i've had FFTA for a while but i've never gotten very far in it; i have a first generation GBA with a screen that requires the direct light of a thousand supernovas to see anything.

also lol @ 14-year old me for thinking that this story was soooo deep and spectacularly written

it's really making me wanna pick up a copy of tactics ogre though, which i haven't played in maybe 8 or 9 years.

anyone played yggdra union??

I started playing yggdra, it was pretty cool, didn't get too far though.

and as for the NIS games, they are everything i hate about turn-based strats. there's no strategy, its' all getting your guys to high levels and creaming everything in sight. some other game had mechanics like this that were somewhat "skippable" ie. FFT which you can beat with wile and caution instead of hours of attention to repetition.

to go back to the super robot wars games, though, EVERYONE PLEASE PLAY THESE GAMES. Super Robot Wars Original Generation 1 and 2 have anglo releases, and they are seriously great. Better-than-average "storyline" (seriously, these games get convoluted-- I think they suffer a bit from "not enough space" syndrome, but aside from that, pretty damn well done) and play through scenarios like fire emblem, PLUS there are 'mastery points' for completing tasks in the missions that are harder, like beating a certain number of enemies in a certain number of turns, or destroying this or that before the baddies, etc. These games are Fire Emblems, but with robots, AND BETTER. SERIOUSLY.

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I plan to play this soon, but reactions seem mixed?

My reactions are becoming more positive the more i play but i still find it quite slow and it's certainly no Tactics for the PS.

For some reason since getting it I have found it very difficult to put down, desopite the fact that it isn't particlarly amazing. In fact I think I resent it a bit for this.

I resent you a bit for it.

Sorry, i don't mean that.

it's better than ffta, but there are still some infuriating things about it. i haven't played fft but given what i've heard about it i would expect the same quality from this, but it's a good way to sink a ridiculous amount of time into

i wouldn't expect the same quality from this

Yeah, I pretty muc feel the same-- better than FFTA, but it is basically THAT game and not FFT!

But oh my god webber you must play FFT. earning "job points" to BUY skills + no races = way less tedium, way more fun. the only thing i'd carry over form this game is the "missions" instead of sort of "random battles" like they have in FFT...

I still haven't played the A2. I'm gonna pick it up soon, though.

To me, the worst part about the whole FFT series are the missions you get at the pub, where you send off one of your low-level characters that you never use on some 9 day mission to find an ancient document for a village elder. BUT - if you have the correct special item (obtained by having the correct special item for some previous errand you had to run for a village elder), and the horoscope sign of your errand runner lines up with the date in the game, then you have better chances of success!

All of that is completely ridiculous. I wish they'd take the whole thing out and come up with another way to keep your unused characters leveling up.

Yeah, in this one all of the "dispatch" missions can also be, err, done manually. So they're lower-lvel battles you cna do wit your reserve units, and after a certain amount of time they repeat, so there's always a mission your crappy guys can enter... supposedly.

I remember there were some annoying missions in FFTA 1 that couldn't be done at a certain point, because you if missed or sold this or that early item you'd never get a mission later.

As good as FFT is (and it is great!) I think due to its timing in PS history, a lot of the incredibly annoying things about it - particularly the tons of grinding up your guys and the long long slowness of the battles - are conveniently forgotten, and the idea that FFTA actually improved this a bit is unfathomable since the story was so much weaker (and yet even FFT's story is too convoluted). I wouldn't recommend FFT without reservation to anyone in this modern age, as someone who tried, once again, to get through the whole thing 2 years ago and once again, lost interest before the final chapter.

i played through about 20 hours, and then didn't like the way i was leveling because i am ridiculously anal so i started again and have put another ~20 hours into it. i have just finished the mission where you fight the sand monster thing, which is a huge jump in difficulty from the rest of the game. i found a fourth thief dagger relatively early on this time so my team are well on their way to becoming dual-wielding killing machines. fighters are even better than they were in ffta.

But oh my god webber you must play FFT

fft was never released in pal countries :(

incredibly annoying things about it - particularly the tons of grinding up your guys and the long long slowness of the battles [...] as someone who tried, once again, to get through the whole thing 2 years ago and once again, lost interest before the final chapter.

bummer. The last chapter is by far the easiest, since your party gains a very powerful fighter near the beginning of it. I agree that the other chapters have those annoying things though.

boy is this game ever slow!

This game is absurdly slow but it makes my terrible commute relatively fast by comparison so I don't mind. Apparently I've played 40 hours now? Makes sense I GUESS but holy shit :/ I think I'm technically 2/3 through the game but the only reason it took that long is probably because I put the console down and walk away for an hour or two allllllll the time + I am really fucking dicking around a LOT, I am sure I could have EASILY beaten it by now.

Regardless I am really enjoying it.

anyone play tactics ogre?