95%PlayStation Portable

Great tactics game and can see why it's still talked about almost 18 years later (PSP release date, original is more like 27 years). Completed everything I could find from errands, to sidequests, to optional dungeons and enjoyed 90% of them, the story was enjoyable and I really enjoyed the jobs system levelling up characters and jumping between classes to unlock later ones while supplimenting them with previous class abilities (White Mage + Dancer was fun). It has it's issues, difficulty jumps, weird grinding and 110% make sure you have multiple saves for recent thing so you don't lock yourself into an unwinnable fight as that basically alleviates most of the issues as you can jump back grind a bit and go on. But most of it I can chock up to being older JRPG stuff so can give it a pass.

Basically, if you enjoy tactics gameplay just play this anyway you can, it's fun and charming.

100%iOS

Plays a bit better with Apple Pencil, but is slow to navigate. Would prefer a controller.

100%PlayStation Vita

Excellent!

100%PlayStation Portable

O primeiro RPG tático que já joguei é e uma pedrada história muito boa, personagem carismáticos e uma trilha sonora muito boa,minha única reclamação e que pra liberar o personagem do cloud demora muito.

75%PlayStation Portable

Got soft stuck on the last few battles and gave up because I didn't find the story compelling and didn't think it was worth pushing through. The last few fights get rough.

85%Emulated

A wonderful game that I haven't had time to finish.

70%Emulated

Hmm~ A good game, definitely fun in the first 10-30 hours. In the middle, becomes tough in a good way but with grinding to get to the higher classes, the game actually becomes far too easy and boring. The story was great in the medieval setting, but I really disliked the cartoonish and run-of-the-mill demon/bad guy story it turned into. And the ending was terrible imo, with Delita not being a good guy and leading the land to a better future but manipulating people as he was then murdering his wife :\ What the fuck? I wanted him to see the error of trying to manipulate others and gain Ovelia's trust legitametly, but no I guess he just had to be another bad guy. I think Ramza was too plain & not grey enough for a world full of people doing bad with somewhat good intentions. That Delita didn't learn from Ramza was dumb in my opinion.

100%Emulated

10/10
Final Fantasy Tactics is a game I don't think can be replicated ever again. To think a story can be crafted THIS well alongside a battle system that emphasizes on creativity and experimentation? I have played through a TON of the final fantasy games, and to realize that one of the best alongside 14 is a side game? Its hard to even capture how much I fell in love with this game after putting it off for so damn long.

Story
Final Fantasy Tactic's Story is easily one of the best stories not only in Final Fantasy, but of all the games I have played. While yeah it does take a bit to get suckered into, as there is a TON of world building and what Ivalice is, it is so damn worth it once everything clicked for me and I realize the type of story the game was trying to tell. The criticism of viewing a war as black and white, how history forgives and forgets the deeds of not only the good deeds, but also the terribly horrific deeds in favor of simplifying it into 1 character, 1 story. The power imbalance, Racism, Sexism, Oppression, pinning down one theme to this game would be a disservice to the story as a whole for this game. Ramza's Tragic tale from beginning to end was a joy and devastation to experience. if I had to have ONE issue, is it how the game dumps a ton of exposition at the beginning, making it a bit overwhelming at first to get hooked into the world. You are told about the 50 year war, the factions, the current kings ALONGSIDE the game's tutorial dumping you with a ton of mechanic, I didn't get SUPER hooked into the game till nearing halfway thru the first chapter. Without getting too much into spoilers, the split between royalty and everyone else, and ramza's realization that all of the factions... are no different from one another. Each faction had their good characters, while also having terrible characters that ruin their own image. The characters of a few, creates the images of a million. You can tell how much the writer despised people simplifying wars into 2 sides, good and evil, as they took great measures to create a world that showcases just how grey war can be, and how quick we are to sweep the heroes under the rug for a more simpler "hero" image.

Gameplay
Tactic's gameplay is so damn good it is insane. While most Final Fantasy games like to keep the mechanics of the gameplay simple, Tactics gets pretty wild (and a little bit TOO complex with the more obscure mechanics). For starters, the job system is back thank GOD. Being able to mix and match different jobs like black mage into arithmetician, or Samurai with Monks, the combinations are so much fun. Of course they main problem with having this many options is that some classes in this game were a bit TOO strong, making the latter half of the game turn into a breeze if you abuse some of the mechanics... like use cid (didn't use him cause I want challenge please). In general the game's difficulty is a bit all over the place, as chapter 1 is hella hard due to the lack of options you have combat wise, once you start to level the jobs it starts to even out, but jumps hella high with the boss fights due to how hard and punishing they can be. By Chapter 4 it starts to get easier due to the amount of broken story characters the game starts to throw at you, but cracks the barrel with the introduction of cid, which I've heard was only added as a backup for if you fucked up your characters, so cid can carry you throughout the game... I didn't use him for that reason. Still I loved the difficulty, with the only thing I would be worried about is how sometimes you are forced to do an encounter after an encounter for a story, and at the last bit forced to do a boss fight... If you don't save correctly and get stuck at the boss fight due to being underleveled... you are kinda fucked LMAO. Luckily I had multiple saves and of course, save states, but I can imagine the frustration if you relied on 1 save and then realize you have to start all over cause you were not prepared for the fight (don't make ramza a support focused character you will just be shooting yourself by doing that). Another complaint I have is the more obscure mechanics like unlocking some of the advanced classes, but especially the zodiac system where different compatibilities for each character changes their hit chances. I beat the game without having to think about that mechanic, but if you were to build around that system I would imagine how dumpfounded you would be, realizing you are missing all of your heals just because their birthright states they are not compatible with them.

Music
Outside of the 14 raid, I have never really heard the full ost for tactics. Experiencing it all, oh my GOD it is so damn good. Trisection, Antipyretic, Hero's Theme, Apoplexy, of course its the type of ost where I play it in game and it just kicks ASS, and it adds so much to the game. Of course it will mainly be ambience for me outside the game, but apart from that, the OST was just so good.
10/10

90%PlayStation Portable

Damn you, Delita

70%Emulated

I know FFT: WotL is one of the most famous Tactics game. But after playing Tactics Ogre: Reborn, it doesn't seem to have aged well.

The game does have a good story (although similar to Tactics Ogre), an awesome soundtrack (but it seems the PSP version feature a bad quality audio for some reason) and the classical Tactics gameplay with the feature that I most like, job change.

But all this shine, is clouded by some issues.

Here are the major problems:
- The grind nature of the game is for sure the worst part of the game, where your units only seems complete (and fun to play) by the end of the game OR if you spent half of playtime using Focus to gain JPs;
- The ridiculously stuff like missable buffs (you can even miss a Raise), AI that aims to only break/steal equipments instead of defeating you;
- And also the strange difficulty peaks, presenting battle that you could beat with eyes closed followed by battles where the enemies has 100% KO, Stop, Ultima, 2 hits with the chance to Disable and etc.
- Moreover, the UI, for sure it wasnt an issue at the time. It does have a very cluttered UI, having to access a lot of Menus to change Equipments, Jobs, needing to go back and forward to check some information. But the most awkward thing is that could not even access my Units's full stats, who has the biggest Physical Attack? Biggest Defense? Biggest Magick? I will never know..

- MOD SPECIFIC REVIEW -
Unfortunately it was recommended for me the Mod Tweak 2.52, but it didnt feel so good for a newcomer. The balance on the battles was strange, facing some enemies Lv.40 in the original game but Lv.75 on mine.
And the problem was that only some battles had their difficulty increase, so it was a series of battle where one was Lv75 and the others Lv40, and then another Lv.75. It was very messy.

So I can't even say how the original game difficult was due to relying on the community's recommendations of the "best FFT:WotL experience".

The mod seems good, but for veterans. If you are a newcomer, I recommend playing the base game with the slow motion fix only (and maybe the QoL stuff, like removing random encounters and 2x JP to reducing grinding slightly).

---------------------------------------

With that said, I would love to see a new Final Fantasy Tactics game. Preferrable with a new story, but I would also appreciate having at least a "Reborn" version of War of the Lions.

85%PlayStation Portable

Difficulty and progression systems are great, although the latter half of the game becomes too easy. Does the classic mistake of dumping lore on the player without making the player first care about the world. A simplistic story of class divide being bad.

85%PlayStation Portable

the Tweak mod is pretty good, I have no complaints.

90%PlayStation Vita

I played this game as a break between the NES/SNES pixel games (1-6) and going into the PS1 era Final Fantasy games through my FF legacy playthrough.

Final Fantasy Tactics WOTL was great. Story, dialogue, and (once again) music were all superb. Up until the very end the story had me very invested. Although it took a while before my brain digested all the names, faces and motives intermingling in the story, once it all clicked it became very engaging.

My main gripes with this game however are with gameplay. Difficulty is very inconsistent, the job system is hard to engage with without doing some mindless grinding, and the main story has a few moment that can easily see the player getting softlocked if they did not prepare a back-up save. For example, the first time I ran into this potential softlock was around the midway point of my playthrough (~20 hours in). I had to go through a series of back to back missions that ended with a battle that saw half my party blown up before even having a chance to act. I gave it a few attempts with different configurations to see if I could beat it without falling back to my back-up save to farm, but I couldn't manage to survive the turn 1 nuke in any of them. The issue is that the game prompts you to save after each encounter in the series of missions and locks you out from the open world. So if you only had one save leading up to the mission that gets you stuck, you'll be forced to start a new game.

Even with my gripes with the gameplay, I still enjoyed this game a lot and am considering giving it a second playthrough to try some of the jobs/side quests that I missed. If there was one game I would like to see get a modern remake of the FF games I've played thus far, it would be FF Tactics WOTL.

90%Emulated

This is easily one of my favourite JRPGs of all time. The plot is rich, the characters (for the most part) are much more lively and less-tropey than you'd expect, and the gameplay stands up even after 25 years. In particular, War of the Lions just does such a good job of keeping the original feel of the game while cleaning up so many little nitpicks and adding some really great new/revised content. Those voice animated cutscenes are a great addition, and the extra quests in the latter part of the game do a great job expanding upon the backstories of several characters. While I'd hesitate to call it perfect, it definitely comes as close to a flawless execution as the Final Fantasy franchise ever has.

Pro-tip: if playing on modded hardware or an emulator, do yourself a favour and apply the slowdown removal patch, it lets you have the smooth 60fps battles of the original PS1 title, plus all the improvements of War of the Lions with no downsides.

100%PlayStation Portable

Classic soundtrack. Interesting political story, and amazing job system.

60%PlayStation Portable

The worst of the Tactics games, but not a bad game, it's a slow grind from beginning to end

Slow fights, slow animations (even with the slowdown removal patch), slow AP gain (slower still in WotL), and unbalanced in a great many ways, from endless cheese strats to special characters making any sort of party development completely useless, it's certainly not a game everyone would enjoy (especially compared to the countless better TRPGs out there), but its main redeeming quality is that it allowed us to get the far superior Tactics Advance

100%Emulated

My favorite game of all time ported to PSP. The only drawback is the UMD load lag that comes from the system limitations. I recommend looking for an emulated version that bypasses those limitations. My favorite game of all time and the most enjoyable grind game I have ever played. Melts time like wax!

70%PlayStation Portable

Best strategy game I've played so far.

100%PlayStation Portable

Awesome story at the levels of GoT, awesome job system and phenomenal music. Really challenging most of the game as well

80%PlayStation Portable

Forgot how hard and grindy JRPG used to be. Despite that I love the yin and yang element of the story in this game. The start of the game was really hard if you didn't study the game's mechanics but once you get it just snowball from there.

100%PlayStation Portable

Um dos jogos com a história mais densa e complexa que já joguei, infelizmente não se encontra muito no mercado

30%Emulated

The story is nearly top notch. Delita deserves the hype. A bit of intrigue here and there, just as you get to know who everyone is it starts becoming extremely convoluted and takes a turn for the worse (will not be going into that issue as to avoid spoilers).

Gameplay leaves much to be desired.
Huge difficulty spikes in multi-stage story missions means EZ softlocking for people who are not in the habit of keeping multiple save files, extremely slow enemy turns (switched form a console to an emulator for a 4x speed toggle, battles still dragged on), some NPC healing gets ridiculous, even just having a character stand there takes at least 4 clicks, end-game mage job can take over 20 clicks to cast a spell properly, terrain can get in the way of the map, if there’s a grid w/ two available positions (ex: battlements above a gate) it can be hard to select the desired square of the two, jobs require HARSH farming to acquire/use, some status effects overlap in general debilitative effects yet require different items/spells to purge, many status effects are extremely rare yet extremely brutal …

Game drags on so long that Square just decided to give players a cheat character near the end of the game.
Some matches the devs embrace the loon by giving maps that the loon can end in a single turn.
Other times the devs seem to regret giving you the loon, and make the character basically required to beat the level.
RNG can put the player into extremely brutal random encounters.
The RNG can also make some character defense missions end on the first turn by the AI choosing actions that ends in the NPC dying before the player's first move…

I do not understand people rating this game so high, but I do get some of the praise for its story.

40%PlayStation Vita

couldn't look past dated graphics and performance issues on Vita

100%PlayStation Vita

Amazing classic game that holds up very well.

60%Android

I found this game quite boring to be honest. Couldn't continue to play it after 4-5 hours. I love tactical round-based RPGs but I just didn't see anything in the game that would intrigue me into playing more.

60%PlayStation Portable

This game gets mixed reviews. Im on the no so great side. This game is great for those who like to learn game mechanics, I'm more focused on a good story. This game is highly lacking there. Its shakespearian language doest help. The last chapter (4) isnt too bad in story though. Not great but not bad.

100%PlayStation Portable

It is a masterpiece. I love Ramza's personality. He doesn't have any special powers. But he really tried to overcome all his adversities. He was basically EPIC! Story is beautiful too. But what really made me love this game is the job class and the characters.

I definitely recommend you to play this!

100%PlayStation Portable

Amazing, simply amazing. It is one of the quintessential tactical role playing games.

90%PlayStation Vita

Excellent remake of an excellent game. Both Luso and Balthier are great additions to the party. The expanded character roster space is greatly appreciated. I was disappointed that you cannot steal from Elmdor in this version, but apparently that is true to the original Japanese game as well. The only thing preventing a perfect score is the awful slow down during every battle technique. Can't believe they released this game with such a painful bug.