Gamertell

Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis has your MP starting at 0 and regenerating. In my experience it’s a fairly effective tactic to deter spamming, because you either wait forever to get enough MP to spam later in the battle, or cast spells as you get enough MP to cast them, forcing you to wait a bit.

Also, after playing FFTA and FFTA2 one after the other, FFTA2 definitely has a lot of improvements in animation, battlefield detail and effects. It’s far from a rehaul, more like a bunch of touch-ups, but it’s certainly not all reused.

“#1: Laws against “attacking the weak,” “missing” or “critical” hits.”

Just ignore them, then. Forget about the bonus at the end. You’ll live. Breaking the law doesn’t screw you over any more, and laws are no longer random. You’ll never get a “Damage to Moogles” law when you have to KO a Moogle to win.

“#2: Random recruiting.”

There’s a mission you can redo as many times as you want that gives you a new party member whose race is based on the month and whose class is based on your answers to a few questions. That even include level 2 classes.

“#3: Battlefields can’t be rotated.”

They’re designed in a such a way that they don’t NEED to be rotated in order to see what’s going on.

“#4: Recycled sights and sounds. “

There’s new music and new characters and all of the abilities have brand new animations that take advantage of the DS hardware.

“#5: Jobs that must be unlocked through missions.”

Totally and completely not a big deal.

“#6: “Trading” is a lie.”

I didn’t even know that feature was in the game, it’s so completely insignificant.

“#7: MP starts at 0.”

That’s to stop you from abusing powerful spells. You only have to wait one turn to use Firaga, and that’s without channeling MP. It’s not a problem. It’s just a change.

You really have to be trying to dislike this game to think any of these faults (which aren’t faults at all) somehow eclipse the fact that FFTA2 fixes all of the nagging problems that made so many people hate FFTA. Things like the law system and dispatch missions. There are 400 missions now and almost all of them involve actually doing something instead of throwing a random member out to do it for you. I’m 100 missions in and I’ve been playing for 35 hours.

Come on. Base your opinion on experience or just keep it to yourself. The GameFAQs forums? Really? That place is like a hotspot for whiney little XXXXXXX.

“#4: Recycled sights and sounds.”

I guess paying extra money for all those ports and that had the same music and same sprites wasn’t a problem for you?

I don’t see how one can complain about this. There are a lot of series and franchises out there that have the same sprites/models, sights, and music with slight variations (FFTA2 has its variations and enhancements). The music, after playing Final Fantasy XII, which truly gives life to the world of Ivalice, makes FFTA2 fit better into this wonderful setting instead of make it seem like a standalone game.

“#5: Jobs that must be unlocked through missions.”

Are you serious about what you said here? Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was nearly the same way. In fact, it probably takes more time on FFTA to unlock certain jobs than it does on FFTA2. I am not even 10 hours in, and I have unlocked several jobs. And think about it; there are over 50 jobs. Many of those jobs are initially accessible.

You make everything out to be a hassle, which is simply wrong. Appreciate the game for what it DOES have to offer. You are really missing out.

You do realize you can avoid missing and landing critical hits by using A-abilities, right? Those laws are nothing. Besides, accuracy is a lot higher in this game than it was in the others.

It’s incredibly hypocritical of you to whine about some recycled sprites and music when you bought three versions of Final Fantasy VI, none of which have new music and one of which may have a few new sprites. (I’m not sure about the extra stuff in the GBA version.)

“Never before have I heard of a game where you enter a battle and your MP is at 0.”

Then you haven’t played many strategy RPGs, have you? Try Tactics Ogre some time. The game FFT obviously takes a lot of it’s gameplay from.

“This practically renders magic users useless.”

I’m using three of them in my party on hard mode. They’re far from useless.

You haven’t played the game, have you? I couldn’t help but notice you answered many questions with “I heard” and “I’ve seen in screens”.

You can skip up to 200 days using Lezaford’s cottage, thus repeating that recruiting quest indefinitely.

Bonus items gotten from following laws aren’t that useful. Items gotten from auctions are more useful, and far easier and faster to get, using Lezaford’s cottage’s trick.

If you don’t like having no magic, get your spellcasters Blood Price ability. They cast spells with double hp cost instead of magic.

But yes. I HATE unlocking classes.

And why do you hate the recycled sounds? Everyone loves the shop music.

“Yes, but early on those bonus items are helpful, yes? I’ve heard you can acquire items with skills that would normally take a while to get the bazaar items to make.”

They’re useful, but it’s not going to make-or-break your game if you choose not to follow a law once in a while.

“As for #2 - I’ve heard you have to wait anywhere from 20-220 days for quests to resurface.”

That quest shows up frequently, and you can skip different amounts of time (10 days, 60 days, 200 days) in like five seconds by going to one of the cottages.

“#3 - There were quite a few times in FFTA where rotation would have helped, and I’ve seen FFTA2 screens on Gamespot and IGN that look like it would hide characters or be awkward, especially if you wanted to use stylus control.”

I’ve never run into a problem seeing in FFTA or FFTA2 that couldn’t be solved by moving your cursor around.

“#4 - But the returning classes and characters have the same art and sprites, correct?”

Incorrect. They have the same sprites (many with new animations) and new art. Besides, what are they, like 20 pixels high?

“#6 - I enjoy multiplayer aspects of games, and I find it disappointing that Square Enix isn’t making better use of it in their games. (Here’s hoping for arena battles or 2-3 player multiplayer in Chrono Trigger!)”

Then the inclusion of actual multiplayer modes should more than make up for the lack of item trading, shouldn’t it?

“When gas is $4.30 a gallon where you live, you can’t afford to purchase the game and have experience sometimes. “

Then you can’t afford to have an opinion, either.

No, you really are not entitled to an opinion on this game. You haven’t PLAYED this game, therefor anything you have to say about it outside of the cover art, good or bad, is completely worthless. Your opinion holds no weight whatsoever. Exactly what kind of mindset do you have to have to believe that the right to talk XXX XX XXXX XXX makes a country great?

Yeah, I noticed you admitted that you had only played a minuscule and insignificant amount of the game. 2 - 4 missions equals exactly 0.5 - 1% of the game. Play about 10 - 20 times that and maybe your opinion would be one worth respecting (but still not much). Taking hearsay from the scum of the video game community and posting it as an opinion piece, however, shows a complete lack of journalistic integrity. I subscribe to 20+ video game news blogs for different points of view, but this particular article is among the worst I’ve seen.

Alright, so I made a mistake. I saw the multiplayer icon on the back of the box and assumed it’d be like the FFTA multiplayer. Fine. That doesn’t take away from the fact that you wrote an opinion piece on a game you barely played (and, apparently, not even in a language you can understand very well) and on top of that, you’re still missing the point. The problem isn’t that you don’t like FFTA2. The problem is that you have the nerve to pretend that you have the basis for a valid opinion on it in the first place. This article either A) shouldn’t have been written, or B) should have been posed as a question. Example: “After doing some reading on FFTA2, I’ve heard a few complaints regarding certain problems. How easy are they to deal with? Do the good points make up for the bad ones?” etc.. Instead, you just posted a list of criticisms you didn’t even give yourself the opportunity to form in the first place.

I find it incredibly difficult to take this seriously. I mean honestly, it seems like the whole way through you’re grasping for straws to find a reason to not like and/or get this game.

First and foremost, this game is undoubtedly better than the first FFTA, so if that was worth your money, this one definitely is. Besides, not a single one of those points seems like a valid reason to skip on the game. Maybe some negative points worth mentioning in a review, but no dealbreakers.

The law system is much better. Occasionally a stupid one pops up, but now at least 9/10ths of the time they’re nothing.

The recruiting is a tad annoying in the fact that I’d like to get those two new races already, but seriously, it’s not a big deal. Like some people said, there’s a quest for it anyways.

I’ve never found this an issue. If a tree is obstructing your view then just use your cursor to orient yourself and determine unit position. I’ve never had any issues.

Like someone said, some of the sprites are the same, but even those have new animations. I don’t know about the music, because I don’t normally pay attention to music in video games anyways, but whatever. If you’re going to pay for ports and rehashes, why is paying for a brand new game with a couple old parts so horrible?

The job unlock system isn’t that bad either. You get classes at a faster pace than you can master the skills to become them a lot of the time anyways. And assassin isn’t even that far into the game before you get it.

The trade system seems stupid, yes, but it’s really such a tiny piece of the game it hardly even matters at all.

And the mana issue is hands down the stupidest qualm I’ve heard about this game from people. So you can’t nuke the field with your illusionist on turn one, or double cast your summons from the get-go, big deal. First of all it balances out the pace of the battles much better, and once you get some of the MP halving skills and stuff the problem diminishes greatly anyways.

If you’re seriously not going to be getting this game based on a 5 minute play of the japanese version, which hardly seems representative of the game as a whole, then I feel sorry for you, because you’re definitely missing out on one of the best installments in the FF franchise in a good while and one of the best DS games as well. It seems like you’re completely ignoring all of the great things about the game that will honestly have to not even noticing that crap. Half of the things you mentioned hadn’t even crossed my mind, because I was enjoying the game too much. The only real issue you raised that I can respect is the law system one, but I really feel the laws are worth putting up with to enjoy the rest of the game.

Please. Once again, the problem here isn’t the fact that Jenni doesn’t think she’ll like the game. The problem here is that she somehow feels qualified to actually give an opinion on it anyway.

Nobody should ever, ever, EVER write an opinion piece on a game they haven’t played or a movie they haven’t seen or a book they haven’t read. These are all things that need to be experienced before you can know what you’re talking about.

Roto13, wrote, “I didn’t even know that feature was in the game, it’s so completely insignificant.”

Does that mean every feature you, Roto13, did not know about is insignificant? So then any game of which you do not have intimate knowledge is insignificant, too. Same with everything you have not seen, touched or heard. So any game system you never played is insignificant. Every movie you have not seen - insignificant. Any war in which you did not fight = insignificant. Any planet where you do not reside is insignificant. 99.999999999999...% of everything is insignificant b/c it did not involve you. Wow, you really are important.

But, of course, everyone in the world does not know who you are. If we did, we’d all send you a, “Sorry for your complete insignificance” card.

Considering I’ve played the game for a total of over 55 hours and I haven’t even come across that feature (which is apparently available from the start), yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty insignificant feature. Take your logical fallacies and XXXX XXXX XX XXXX XXX.

Bogus article or no, it does bring up some points that do need to be addressed, and that I do believe highlight the game’s faults.

Quest-required job classes is one demonstration of a larger problem the games faces.  The unnecessary restriction to recruiting characters, item learned skills, and yes, job unlocking all fall under the concept of strategic limitation.  Yes, they were in FFTA, and yes, most of the things that were carried over were improved, but that doesn’t excuse the problem outright.  This is a strategy RPG.  The crux of these games is in the options, and limiting the options of the player in any form is counter-intuitive to the type of game it is. 

Stupid laws are stupid laws, it doesn’t matter how scarcely you come across them.  9/10 times it isn’t a problem?  And what about that 1/10th time, when it actually matters?  Sorry to say, but it is annoying, to say the very least. 

But regarding the “review” itself, the title is “Seven reasons I’m not buying Final Fantasy Tactics A2”.  It should have been fairly clear that the opinions would be reflect that the author does not own the game.  Despite that, it is as the others say, the article is pretty ridiculous because of this fact.  I don’t see the usefulness of knowing someone else’s ill-informed judgments; I try to avoid them myself.

I also forgot to add another criticism of the game: the lying statistics.  I can almost guarantee that on a 99% chance to hit, you will very likely miss more than just once out of every 100 hits.  This gets fairly problematic when you actually are dealing with numbers that are in gamble territory.  I’ve counted the times I used the skill “beat down”, for instance, which lowers the hit percentage to roughly 50%, and I can guarantee, it was not 50%. 

The damage estimate is also misleading.  More often than not have I witnessed my attack be lower than the number shown.  If, on average, the attack is simply going to do less than the estimate, than just give me a lower number, don’t lie to me. 

I also encountered one small law problem, almost reminiscent of FFTA.  I hit a guy with a critical hit, knocking him back, and apparently, the games counts those as “distance attacks”, which was the law of that battle.  Fairly dumb.

The weaknesses and faults of this game could also be considered improvements. 

“Quest-required job classes is one demonstration of a larger problem the games faces.  The unnecessary restriction to recruiting characters, item learned skills, and yes, job unlocking all fall under the concept of strategic limitation.  Yes, they were in FFTA, and yes, most of the things that were carried over were improved, but that doesn’t excuse the problem outright.  This is a strategy RPG.  The crux of these games is in the options, and limiting the options of the player in any form is counter-intuitive to the type of game it is.”

In FFTA, I had an assassin before the fourth mission even began.  While amusing, it lowered the challenge that the game provided.  This is what SE was trying to fix in FFTA2, by restricting the more advanced classes until they’re no longer too overpowered for the game.  Similarly in Starcraft, players can’t immediately begin the game building archons, they need to tech up to “unlock” them.  Besides, shouldn’t a good strategist be able to handle situations with the cards that they’re dealt?

In regards to the statistics, we’re more likely to notice when we miss than we we don’t miss.  And just because something states that there’s only a 1 in 10 chance that you’ll miss, doesn’t mean that you won’t miss more than once.  I had a 20% chance to steal a ninja tabi from *MINOR SPOILER* each of Maquis’ different forms *END MINOR SPOILER*, and I still landed the steal 3 times in a row.  The damage that they show you is the median damage, not a guarantee that you’ll be hitting that much.

Other than that I’m not going to rehash what other people have said in the game’s defense already (such as MP starting at 0).  My two cents.

Based on what I have read,I would say you don’t like a challenging game. If a game had a near impossible quest you would call it dumb and choose to not buy it. Personally, I love the game, I’m addicted to it. Yea the laws have some problems but it forces you to have a hard time doing that battle. And if you don’t like a law you can just break it and make it go away, you only miss a law bonus which is most often a few items that you already have or don’t need. What you have done is chosen seven things that make you mad or make the game difficult to beat. O and one last tidbit, the recruiting system isn’t random, each job can be recruited during certain months.