Final Fantasy Tactics without Gravity pt.01

When you review a piece of art, what is the purpose of doing so? It seems like these days a lot of people try to "win" against it, picking apart plot holes or things that don't make sense, to come out as superior, either to the art in question or to others who didn't pick up on what they did.

But how does that serve the art? How does that serve other people? I don't think it does. I think understanding art, why it was created and what it makes us feel it and experience is a vital part of the human experience, and that's what I want to do.

In this series as I talk about different games, I don't want to focus on plot holes or inaccuracies for the sake of yucks or to appear smarter than I am. I want to ask three questions; what is message is this game trying to tell? How well does it tell it? And what can be done to make the message stronger?

I hope you join me in my studies of games, where I'll talk a lot about games, a little about life, and all of it with a passion to elevate the medium so that nothing can hold it back, not even gravity.

Final Fantasy! The definitive series of role playing games, or RPGs. They house some of gaming's greatest games! Final Fantasy 4 told the story of a dark knight's redemption from evil. Many people think the best game ever made was Final Fantasy 6, for its operatic and deep story line. Final Fantasy 7 bought the series to the main stream and told an intriguing tale of love and loss. Final Fantasy 8 is an attempt at a romance fantasy, and while flawed it's still a great game.

And I could go on, talking about FF9, 10, 12, and even some of the great aspects of 13 and X-2 (don't temp me, because I will!) But today we're looking at my personal favorite in the series, a spin-off called Final Fantasy Tactics!

Tactic's narrative is much, much different from other Final Fantasy games. Whereas most focus on a group of people trying to stop some evil monster from taking over the world, this game is set in a war, and is played out pretty seriously ... And I mean, yes, later it turns out the war was orchestrated by some evil monster bent on taking over the world, but still! I maintain it's a much different narrative than most games, and part of that is because the writer/director of FFT is a huge war enthusiast! 

The director and writer of FFT is Yasumi Matsuno, a guy who's primary hobby is studying wars and making dioramas of wars. This guy knows his stuff, and took his knowledge of real world wars and put that into the writing of Final Fantasy Tactics. And honestly, that make FFT one of the most well plotted games ever made.

Is it well written, though? Mostly, yet. But it is very, very complex, and you can get lost really easy if you aren't paying attention

The game opens on a historian telling you he's uncovered the truth of a long hidden history, which is what you'll paly through. During a time known as The War of the Lions. You begin with this gorgeous cutscene of these knights on chocobo. And no, I don't care that the tech is dated; it's still gorgeous. Honestly, the only thing bad I can say about it is the Nobody McWhogivesashift and his band of who cares? Seriously, these are the enemies in your first mission you you beat up. The only one notable among them is Fred Fuchs.

... No, seriously. the chemist is always named "Fuchs," or "Fukes" in the original PS1 version

The real first scene is inside a church, where a princess is praying, and her knight asks her to hurry so they can be on their way, especially since the hired swords are getting impatience. The banter between the knight Agrias and the lead mercenary Gafgarion is great, because it tells you exactly what kind of characters you're dealing with. Soon after, another knight of the Princess's enters the church wounded. Those chocobo knights from the intro have found them, and are attacking. Agrias, her two remaining knights, and the mercenaries, one of which is the main character Ramza, head into battle to protect the princess!

This first battle is pretty great because all your allies are computer controlled, so you get to see everything unfold and take in how this game is played. Basically, it's a chess board where you normally get 5 characters, with customizable abilities, but we'll talk about those next time. For now, we'll just talk about the basics

There are 3 types of actions, and you can use any 2 in a turn; move, act and wait. Moving is pretty simple, as you can move your character equal to their move stat. However, there's also vertical space to think about, which is where jump comes in. If you want to move 4 steps in front of you, but you're blocked by a wall with a height of 5 and you only have a jump of 3, well, you're going to need to go around it, buddy. Some job classes are better at moving, some at jumping and some are good at both or neither! You'll need to get use to them and plan ahead if you wanna make it far in this game.

The second type of action is, well, Act. This is where you can choose to attack with your weapon, or use a job class ability. Again, more on that next time. The final action is wait, which will end your turn there, but make it so your next turn comes sooner.

This is one of the jerkiest, yet coolest lines ever. It's a slight
step up from "smell ya later"

Anyway, this is just a tutorial battle, and you'll get through it no problem, especially since Agrias and Gafgarion are special knights who have super abilities that will WRECK the opposition! Plus no one can die permanently in this battle, so no need to stress out, ya know?

But when you finish the battle, turns out there was one last knight, who snuck in and has captured the princess! He leaves with the princess, but as he does Ramza spots him, and recognizes him to be Delita, his childhood friend who Ramza thought was dead.

This is such a good, effective opening. It's minimalist, telling you very little, even about the main character. Only informing you on what you need to know in the moment. It sets up a dilemma, and several mysterious that we want to know the answer to.

This opening has done what any good opening should do, creating intrigue, urgency and suspense right away, and leaving the audience wondering "what's going to happen next?"

WELL TOO BAD!! You don't get to know because the game's narrative immediately slams on the brakes to give you a flashback of Ramza's entire life story up to this point! OH, GOOD! I'm glad you did that! I almost got invested there! Won't be making that mistake again!

Seriously, this is where the narrative drops the ball hard. He had such a strong start, and now we've been yanked back in time with no real grasp on anything yet It's jarring as fuchs and makes it hard to get invested in anything

To make matters worse, it's where we've been dragged back too; A BLOODY HISTORY LESSON! Good! I am so excited for this! And it's a slow one at that! The text moves at a snails pace and it actually gets worse because when you hit the line "little money" the game decided it was going of the rails with excitement and just said "ZA WORLDO!"

Are. You. K.i.d.d.i.n.g.m.e?

 Also, this whole scene which lasts around three minutes dumps a bunch of words we've never heard before on us. Before we heard Hokuten and Galtona, but at least we could tell Goltana was the prince who hired those knights. Here we hear the terms Ivalice, Igros. Death Corps, Magic City Gariland, Gollionne, Prince Larg, Marquis Elmdor of Limberry... IT'S JUST SO MUCH!

Why are you throwing a barrage of nonsense words at the player right from the start?! I know it's telling me things that are relevant for the game's story later on, but I don't care! I'm fighting to stay awake and keep track of all the words I have to juggle now! And this happens all throughout the game. There's a lot of jargon you just gotta learn. And it's esepcially bad in Final Fantasy Tactics because a ton of the story takes place behind the scenes!

I'm not kidding. At one point in chapter 2, a character from chapter 1 dies. They just die! One day if you look at their journal entry they're fine, but the next they'll be killed in a battle completely unrelated to anything you were doing!! And no one tells you! Which is kind of a relevant because the next time you see them they've been revived from the dead, possessed by a demon from the fiery pits of hell!!

But I guess that's something you can just gloss over, right?!

... I don't know where that is...

Then they just show up again and everyone's like "aren't you dead" and I'm just sitting there, slack-jawed, wondering "when the fuchs did that happen?! No one told me anything!!" I just... I just don't know, guys...

*sigh* Anyway. It's time for your first real battle, and you have to be careful here, since you're basically evenly matched against the opposition. You have a slight number's advantage, but otherwise everyone on both sides is low level with pitiful skills, and if someone dies, they die for good (except Delita, who is a guest here). I hope one of your chemists can use phoenix downs, otherwise this fight will be rough.

After the battle you'll get your first look at the world map and can customize your party a bit. It's not much, but it's enough you can start getting used to it. Since there's only one place to go on the map, you start to head over there and... What? No... No, it's not... Is it?

This one line gives you more context for what's going on
then that entire history lecture at the start did

IT IS! It's another bloody flashback! Bloody hell! So now we're in a flash back to a flashback. No, this whole game takes place in the past, so this is a flashback, in a flashback, in a flashback! What were they even thinking with this nonsense!

But in all honesty, this is a really good scene. We learned in the last battle from in-battle dialogue (which is great, but more on that later) that Ramza's family is well known. And this flashback flashback flashback perfectly establishes how important his father was in ending the 50-Year war. Which, by the by, is a great name for a war. Because not only does it take form the real world 100-Years War, but you don't need to know anything but the name to know it was one hell of a war.

Here we establish a few things. We see Ramza's family for the first time, who will all be major players in the game's narrative. We learn that Ramza is only half noble, his mother being a commoner. And there a very small but deliberate line where Ramza's father asking if Ramza starts the academy in spring (the academy we saw him and Delita attending in the last scene). From that we can tell that Ramza's father died recently, and the 50-Year War has just ended.

We also learn that Delita's just a commoner, and the only reason he's hanging out with the nobility is because he's friends with Ramza. This may seem like a little thing now, but as we'll learn in this world, bloodline is everything. If you aren't a royal, you're nobody. And the fact that Ramza's father doesn't care about who gave birth to whom says a ton about who he was, and who Ramza is trying to be.

Head to the next area on the world map and you'll find your next story mission. Here a group of thugs have surrounded a young boy, and interestingly you're given a choice; help the boy or kill the thugs. You gain bravery if you help the boy (a useful stat, but can be gotten much easier later) but the condition for the fight is to save the boy, Algus. If he dies, you lose. Alternatively, if you choose to kill the thugs as priority you lose brave, but the mission is kill all the enemies, and it won't matter if Algus dies or not (he won't die permanently, anyway)

After the fight you tell Algus that you're Ramza Beoulve. And as I said earlier, bloodline is everything here. Upon hearing your name he begs you to help him save Marquis Elmdor, a guy you heard about earlier in that tsunami of gibberish, from a group known as the Death Corps, or Death Brigade in the remake. Delita says we should keep heading the way we were going and to tell Ramza's siblings about the Marquis's kidnapping.

And now, let's talk about some cool character building.

While we saw all of Ramza's siblings earlier, this is their real introduction scenes, starting with the eldest brother Dycedarg. The conversation begins with Dycedarg commending Ramza for his victory in our first fight against the thugs. While Ramza is grateful for the praise from his brother, his mind is occupided by the Maruqis' kidnapping, but Dycedarg ensures him that he is already taking care of it.

But when Algus suddenly stands up and requests a legion of men to rescue the Marquis, Dycedarg politely, but firmly, tells him to shut the Fuchs up (I love that they named him that).

This right off the bat tells us 3 things about Dycedarg;
1) He wants to do good
2) Good must be done in the right way
3) Don't cross him

What's amazing is all that stuff about Dycedarg comes out in just 4 lines. When it wants to this game can be really efficient with its dialogue, as we'll see.

But enough about Dycedarg, let's talk about Algus. Algus meeting with a foreign lord and asking for
100 soldiers tells us two important things about him. For starters, he's incredibly rash and prone to quick action. And 2nd, he's entitled as Fuchs (no, I'm not tired of this joke at all).

And that makes sense, given the next scene. Turns out he too was from a noble family, much like the Beoulves. But when his grandfather sold out his allies for his own freedom, his family name was disgraced and he and his family are ill-thought of now.

This bit is great because in 5 lines it tells us Algus' backstory and understand what's going through his head, but it gets across the main theme of the story. In just 5 lines, the game sets up a theme that will resonate until the very last scene;

What do you do when something happens to you that is out of your control?

Throught this game we see people whose lives are ruined through no fault of their own. Either from a byproduct of war or the misdeeds of a family member, people have no say in the terrible things that happen to them. So when that happens, what kind of person are you going to be?


What happened to Algus' family is emblematic of that; the entire family name was dragged through the mud because of the actions of one terrible person, and now Algus has to live with that, and choose who he's going to be going forward.

How the characters choose react to the horrible event that define their lives is what will eventually define them as characters, for better or worse. That's what makes this story, and it is spectacular.

This is when Zalbar and Alma, Ramza's other older brother and younger sister, arrive, along with Delita's sister Teta. Here we get reinforced how rank is everything in this society, as Teta says she's doing fine in school, but when everyone's left Alma confesses to Ramza that Teta is picked on for being common born.

Well, except for this line. Talk about a galaxy brain take

It's also here we learn that Zalbag is basically the cool brother, slipping under Dycedarg's authority to tell our heroes some in-tell, such as their loosing contact with their spy, and the ransom demanded by Death Corps. Zalbag suspects foulplay, as the Death Corps think of themselves as heroes to the people, and it's not in their nature to demand a random like this. Something more must be going on...

This is a really good introduction for Zalbag, since it shows he doesn't care as much about rank or heritage. He's nice to Teta and Delita, and sends you after the Marquis even after Dycedarg told you not to.

What I love most about this whole, long scene is that no one is protrayed as terrible people. Some of the people in this scene just turn out to be the worst sort of people you'll ever meet. Like, Shou Tucker levels of evil. But right now they all seem like decent people, and you understand where they're all coming from. And better yet, when their more malicious colors do come out, it's still in-line with the character development that we were just given! I am so happy to finally be playing a game that has great set-ups and conclusions! Yeah!

So, that's it for this first part of the study. Tune in next time, when we'll go after the Death Corps, rescue the Marquis, and get to the bottom of the conspiracy that Zalbag suspects!

Oh, yeah, and we'll also talk about how much freaking GRINDING there is in this game! Glob dang!

Until next time, take care 💜