Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (Playstation, 1998 / PSP, 2007)

 This is one of my favorite games of all time. I played it in early 1998 on the original Playstation, and it was a magical gaming experience. The great soundtrack and the unparalleled atmosphere gave it an edge over other strategy RPGs, while the gameplay and class/ability system were super-compelling and fun. Best of all, it doesn't have that stupid Judge system from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. If you've only played those games, do yourself a favor and check out the original. This one...is where it's at.

It got a PSP remake in 2007, and that's what I'm covering here. With a redone translation and some new additions like cutscenes and optional endgame stuff, this might be my favorite version of the game.

Originally posted March 2016, now remastered for 2025

The intro video is redone from the PSX version, with a more storybook style. I prefer the visuals of the original but I appreciate the effort.

This intro is something I remember well, as an old sage introduces the story of the game and you name your character. Most importantly, the music during this section is outstanding, the first in a long line of outstanding tracks brought to us by Hitoshi Sakimoto (Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII). The music in this game evokes SO MUCH feeling all on its own.

Sakimoto is without a doubt a close second as far as my favorite game composers go, with only Yasunori Mitsuda (Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger) ahead of him.

Third? Hmm, probably Koji Kondo (a huge amount of Nintendo first-party games)

We get another cutscene as Arazlam looks at maps and reads books. This game is the tale of an era of strife in the land of Ivalice. An era known as...

...the Zodiac Brave Story, when the fate of the world rested on a small group of individuals.

Here's Delita, one of the two main characters. He has a love/hate relationship with the other main character, Ramza (aka you) that reminds me a bit of the hero and Jowy in Suikoden 2. They're at the center of the Zodiac Brave Story. Ramza is a highborn noble, while Delita is "lowborn". He gets to hang out with nobles due to being Ramza's friend.

More incredible music plays as the game begins in a church. The knight talking here is Agrias, one of the game's strongest units. She possesses some extremely potent Holy Sword attacks that aren't really magical or physical.

Man, I love this PSP translation. The original PSX version did NOT read like this: 

The dark knight here is Gaff Gafgarion, a bastardly fiend who commands the Blood Sword. He's another OP knight, and a particularly annoying one since he can steal the health of his foes.

The first battle of the game isn't very interesting, but it does a good job introducing you to the game mechanics. In this battle, you control Ramza, but that's it. All of the other ally and enemy units are AI-controlled.

The fight also introduces Gafgarion as a badass dark knight who can absorb enemy HP.

The gameplay is simple enough. You move units around on the battlefield and have them attack other units. One odd thing about this fight is that the Ramza you play as here isn't the same one you play as once the game really begins. He's a higher level, which makes sense because this fight takes place a bit later in time. However, his Bravery and Faith scores are 45 and 57, while in the rest of the game they're 70/70 to start. Bravery affects general physical strength while Faith affects general magic strength. It's odd that they're lower here.

The meat of the game is the skill/class system. You can change between a variety of classes between battles, and each one has all kinds of skills to learn. The Squire class is pretty much the initial starting class, and as such the abilities it has aren't very good...with a couple exceptions that I'll get into later.

Not to be outdone by Gafgarion, Agrias attacks with Holy Sword abilities like Stasis Sword, which freezes enemies and does significant damage.

This fight ends up being a bloodbath, and so it goes in this game. Once a character falls, you have three turns to revive them or they're gone forever. THIS IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW.

Cutscene, as Ramza's friend Delita kidnaps the princess and takes off on a chocobo. Ramza isn't sure why his friend is doing this. Time to backtrack an unspecified amount of time for a while and work back up to this point in the story.

The game begins for real with a younger Ramza and Delita in military training. This isn't your typical Type-0 style game military academy where you train alongside girls wearing tiny plaid skirts, either. This is down-and-dirty, gritty, armor-on-our-boots military training. Everyone's suited up and ready for combat.

The game takes place after a massive war that led to a bit of a power vacuum. I'm not going to get into the story too much because it's something one should get from actually playing the game if they haven't, and if you have played it, then you know the story already. Mostly going to focus on the gameplay from here on out.

The generic knight class NPCs in this game have a striking resemblance to Rufus from Final Fantasy VII, something I noticed right away back in 1998.

It isn't a stretch, considering that FFVII had just recently launched at the time. That game followed closely by this game might be the best one-two punch that any game company delivered in the 90's, and is certainly one of Squaresoft's highest moments.

Before battles start, you set up where you want your characters to be positioned at the outset. It isn't much control, since the game doesn't give you a lot of space to choose from. Also, the maximum size party you can bring into most battles is five, meaning you're almost always outnumbered by the enemies. This is the one thing I don't like about Final Fantasy Tactics and I would have liked to see more battles with character limits of eight or so like Tactics Ogre. Sure, it makes the battles take longer and be more drawn-out, but it allows way more variety and experimentation. If you're gonna be limited to five, it'd be nice if the game at least also followed that rule and didn't throw groups of eight at you so often.

The first real battle is against a bunch of brigands. It's as easy as fights get in this game, and features the only battle theme in the game that I don't like. The rhythm is so repetitive that it gets annoying.

OUCH. Way to be a dick, Ramza. "No one loves you" he shrieks at his fallen opponents.

The overworld map is fun. By the end of the game it'll be full of location dots.

Ramza and Delita are the two most formidable characters at the outset; Delita can't be controlled in battle, though, and he makes a lot of bone-headed actions. The rest of the squad are basically jobber characters, though the chemists are useful at this point and can be turned into mages soon. I mean, they're only jobbers if you let them be, every character is full of potential. Unless their Bravery is super low, in which case...they're screwed lol

My first order of business is to level up Ramza's Squire class and get a few very useful grinding abilities that'll help me build up his other, better classes.

Namely, Accumulate and Yell (which is called Tailwind in this version). These abilities increase strength and speed, respectively. Spamming the latter will let Ramza make a bunch of actions for every one action that the enemies get, and spamming the former a few times lets him one-shot all of them. He just needs to stay out of their reach while he does the spamming, and he'll very quickly become unstoppable.

Most importantly, these abilities give a lot of JP, which will let Ramza quickly level up his other jobs. Unfortunately, they also give EXP (10% of a level per use) which isn't a good thing in this game. Leveling up makes your characters stronger, yeah, but random monster enemies level up with you and tend to gain power much quicker than humans do. So it's very easy to ruin your game file if you overlevel Ramza. At least the main story fights will be easier with higher levels, but sometimes the level-scaled monsters creep into those too.

There IS a way to de-level using a trap in Zeklaus Desert, at least, if necessary.

Ramza's adoptive father dies early in the game, and it's clear that he expects his sons to continue following his credo.

Ramza's father notes that Delita is a really good friend to Ramza, even if other members of the "noble class" look down on Delita due to his lowborn heritage.

The next battle is Mandalia Plains, another easy one. In this one you save Argath (Argus in the PSX version), a dickish noble frat-boy.

This is a good opportunity for some Tailwind-spamming, as Ramza grinds speed-ups for JP. The sooner I get his important Squire abilities and move him onto a better class, the better.

Argath expects Ramza's family to lend him a bunch of troops so he can rescue his own leader, and they're all like "lol no"

Alma is Ramza's sister...and the key to everything.

Tietra is Delita's sister, another lowborn youngster who the nobles have accepted. Well, "accepted", because she gets bullied at school for not being enough of a noble.

Delita wants to protect her, but he can't be everywhere.

Dorter City is the first really difficult fight in the game, and likely the first point where new players will reach an impasse. But I'll get to that in a moment.

With Squire abilities done, I'm able to change Ramza into a Knight for a small boost in power. Knights can equip basically all the heavy weapons and armor, which is their biggest strength. The downside is that their ability lineup isn't great, consisting mostly of Rends/Breaks that reduce enemy stats or destroy their equipment. Aside from occasional situational cases, it's better to do damage than reduce an enemy's stat by 1; it's also better to steal equipment from enemies (with the Thief class) than it is to outright break equipment. Same overall result (with a similar chance of success) only you get equipment as well (and it's often better than what you can get at that point).

The Knight class is mostly important because it's a prerequisite for the awesome Monk class. Getting a Knight to class level 3 (of 8) doesn't take long at all, even at this early stage, and from there you can switch to Monk and start dishing out some serious damage. Provided the character has high Bravery, that is. Just bear in mind that Monks can be a bit defensively weak / low-HP at these early stages.

The great new translation strikes again, as our heroes trek through the woods. You can see a Bomb over on the left there, one of the iconic Final Fantasy enemies that show up in this game.

With Knight done, time to switch to Monk. This is probably my favorite class. It's a highly-destructive melee fighter with attacks at both melee and range. Combine Monk Ramza with the teleportation ability from Time Mage a little later on and he can essentially assassinate enemies before they even get close.

Wiegraf appears for the first time here. He's a temple knight with the same magic sword abilities as Agrias, and the battle with him later on is probably the toughest fight in the game.

The battle of Dorter begins, complete with a nice gold "late afternoon storm" background. The big news about this fight...

...the enemy has both Archers AND Black Mages. One of the Archers even starts with the high ground to easily snipe your party.

The Black Mages have even more attack range, since their spells can hit multiple squares and they aren't bound by sight restrictions. If anything, this battle teaches you very quickly that range units and mages are important to your continued survival.

For instance, here we see Argath getting blasted with a Fire spell that also hit one of the enemy Archers. I lost this battle, but I'll give it another shot later.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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