Final Fantasy Sidequests Advance

Well, the end of Wild ARMs 2 is finally nigh, and I plan to pull off a victory sometime tomorrow.  I've decided to take a bit of a break and pander to my reader.


Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.  It has been said that this was the herald of the end for Sqaure's golden goose and flagship series.  That this was an abomination before gamers.  Hell, this is the one game that I can recall triggering grown men in real life devolving into pissy internet fanboys over.


The nay-sayers are fools.


FFTA is just plain fun, and a fine example of handheld RPG goodness.  It tossed out a lot of the annoyances and wonky mechanics that the original Final Fantasy Tactics, while keeping and polishing the better parts. 


It gave us all sorts of new and improved jobs/classes.  Granted, they're kind of samey after a while, but any game that hands us Paladins and Assassins without jumping through hoops is worthy of attention, much less things like good Archers and Gunners (at least in Final Fantasy, the ones in the Ogre Battle series are scary) and 'flavor' classes that are actually viable.  Throw in the fact that you have four new races to play with, further stepping away from the 'homo sapiens only club' that Final Fantasy was known for, and your band of blood-crazed warrior mages just got even more awesome.


Alright, the law system is kinda crap, and the story tends to come across like a PBS producer horked down two bottles of Nyquil before an ill-fated attempt to write a Sesame Street/Final Fantasy crossover which through delirium-fueled evil magic made it to a desk at Square Enix.  There does seem to be some scary logic to the whole setting, which I'll talk about below.


The game is pretty much Sidequest: The Game, and I'm alright with that, to be honest.  I like it a lot, actually.  You actually get to run a clan of adventurers about doing deeds of daring do, and wind up with all sorts of nifty goodies and abilities doing so.  There is an 'implied' crafting system; basically you go and fetch materials in missions and then do missions where those materials are refined and then more missions where you make the goodies.  Everything got little blurbs of lore, which warmed my little nerdy heart.  I like finding actual details about my stuff outside of plain stats.  All in all, it's loads of fun, wrapped up in nice bite-sized chunks.


Remember that in FFT, thieves sucked?  How that to be even remotely effective in snatching equipment, you had to do something like five hours of prep, then get into battle and still rely on clunky mechanics and positive thinking?  Advance did away with all that.  Stealing is close to broken rights out of the box, and gets broken quickly thereafter.  Remember how status effect spells retained their traditional uselessness (except for Seal Evil, that was fun)?  Advance made them efficient and worthwhile.  Combine the two and you how have a game that encourages you to literally rob people blind.


Considering how battlefield larceny is simple and lucrative, it's little wonder that this version of Ivalice is pretty much Saint's Row Final Fantasy Edition.  While it's loads of fun to play in, we have an empire that has a veneer of tyrannical monarchy over what amounts of an ever shifting socio-economic landscape dominated by a patchwork of armed gangs engages in all sorts of brigandry.  Seriously, its like what would happen if the Italian States were run by Jack Sparrow (granted, some of those guys were just as crazy and much much worse).  Screw the philosophical arguments, anybody not a named character was having a crappy and likely short life.  That said, it's an awful lot of fun to tear though, and at least it isn't Filgaia, Sanctuary, or any planet in 40k ever.


Oh, and you can build a Black Mage that dual-wields magic wands to beat things to death, without much effort.  Fear the Muscle Wizard!