February 1327, 2008

VIDEO GAME REVIEW

GAME: FINAL FANTASY TACTICS: THE WAR OF THE LIONS

PLATFORM: PSP

PRODUCER: SQUARE-ENIX

RATING: TEEN
Haakon SULLIVAN

PHoTo/PRODUCTION
CooRDINATOR

When the original Final Fantasy
Tactics came out for the Playstation
in 1997, most people found it to be
an enjoyable RPG-strategy experi-
ence and it was arguably one of
the best RPG-strategy games of its
time. Now on its tenth anniversary,
Square Enix decided to re-release
the game for its PSP system and it

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Bathing ina sink-is not the greatest Way
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7. fiver Captain Cranch gets old after-a
week of it

&. The worst showers aré when the *cald
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‘hot water” handle releases cold water:
Make sure.the plumbing works properly.

OFF the toilet seems to flush whenever
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14. Chicken every night? Meh. ;

15.You CAN do colors-and whites in
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water.

16.No. matter. what your budget: is,
there is always, always, always room in
it for alcohol. After the fourth microwave

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sure is enjoyable
to have a game as
great as this tag
along with you.

The story begins
in a church with a
knight protecting a
princess as she prays for the souls
of all who live in the continent of
Ivalice. Then a mercenary and a
young squire burst in and report that
their enemies have just approached
the church and that they will have
to prepare for battle. This is what
kicks off the legendary “Zodiac
Brave Story”, a story filled with
political intrigue, betrayal, and ac-
tion all mixed with some religious
overtones. The game script is a bit

STOP

odd though, as the writers seemed
to have tried to replicate an almost
Shakespearean kind of script, but it
seems a bit off.

The gameplay is neat as you lead
a rag-tag group of soldiers and
bring a portion of them into battle
each time. Each soldier has a job
of your choice (Knight, Wizard,
Archer, etc) with special abilities
that make each class unique from
the others. Leveling up each char-
acter with their jobs is most of the
fun as leveling up jobs unlocks new
jobs for that character to attain and
makes them more powerful for the
challenging missions ahead. The
missions involve each character in
the battle acting in turn based on a

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timer called the CT timer. On each
character’s turn, they can move and
do an action such as attack or begin
to charge a spell or ability. This sys-
tem creates a dynamic and steady
paced battle that, when combined
with thé job system, creates many
different strategies for the player to
attempt.

The graphics in the game are
terrible compared to other games
today as they did not update the
graphics as they formatted it for the
PSP. Even compared to other PSP
games, this game has bad graphics.
The sound effects have changed to
become higher pitched making it a
little hard on the ears at times and
the music is “midi-like” but easy on

the ears thanks to the work of com-
poser Nobuo Uematsu.

In general, this classic is yet again
re-made a classic for a new system.
People who played the old Final
Fantasy Tactics can enjoy what was
in the old version as well as new
features such as new cell shaded cut
scenes, new mission, and new spe-
cial characters. This game has been
said to take well over a thousand
hours in some gamers’ lives and
putting that addictive power into a
portable form may just have people
never put the game down wherever
they go.

START

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