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Depending on what you’re into, you’ll either love or hate Final Fantasy Tactics Advance because in the traditional sense – it’s not a Final Fantasy title. In saying this I mean that Final Fantasy Tactics Advance casts aside many things that we’ve become accustomed to over the years, such as the turn based battle systems and individual character levelling. However, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance casts aside these traditions for a reason, because as the title suggests it’s not just you’re average RPG – it’s a strategy RPG comparable to games such as the original Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance tells the story of Marche, a school boy who’s just moved to the town of St. Ivalice. It’s here that he meets the games other main characters, Ritz and Mewt. The three of them all have their own individual troubles, and because of this they’ve become outsiders amongst the other school children. However this all changes when Mewt finds an old, untitled book that tells tales of a fantasy world known as Ivalice.

Upon reading the book, Marche awakens the next day to find himself in the fantasy world that the book spoke about. Desperate to find his way back to his own world Marche begins an epic journey to find his friends and return to his home world; however things begin to get complicated when Marche’s friends prefer the fantasy world that they now reside in to the reality that Marche longs for.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance’s storyline might not live up to that of its PlayStation predecessor, however it still provides is with pretty solid story with some fairly decent characters so it definitely isn’t something to be complaining about!

Game play is a huge part of what makes Final Fantasy Tactics Advance so unique, for one it’s not like your average Final Fantasy game in the sense that it’s a Strategy RPG apposed to the usual Turn Based RPG. If you’ve never played a Strategy RPG before then you probably won’t know what I’m talking about – rather than putting you in control of a three/four man party, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance puts you in control of an entire clan. A clan consists of thirty members that you recruit throughout the storyline, although you can only use six of these members in any given battle. Throughout the game you’ll get the opportunity to recruit members from any of the games four races, and choosing members based on what race they belong to is important as only certain races can become certain classes; unlike in the original Final Fantasy Tactics in which any race could become any class.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance’s battles take place on an isometric grid, using the D-Pad you can move the cursor around and select units. Once you’ve selected a unit a series of shaded squares appear around that unit, these shaded squares are the distance that character move. To attack an enemy you have to be within one or two square’s distance away from them (depending on the class that character is), so when moving characters you have to consider how close to the enemy you’re moving them – because if you can’t actually reach the enemy to attack them, then you don’t want to move too close otherwise they’ll be able to attack you before you can attack them. Although Tactics Advance’s battle system isn’t that much different than Tactics’, it’s still an improvement as they’ve smoothed out parts of the battle system that were a little rough around the edges in the original.

Due to the fact that Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is on the Game Boy Advance, it can’t exactly have the best graphics; however it doesn’t do a bad job of them at all. I don’t blame Square Enix for opting with the same graphical style that was apparent in Final Fantasy Tactics, as it really does work well in this game.

Rating: 8/10


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