Square Enix's latest PSP title, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, is very familiar ground for PlayStation owners. This remake of the popular tactical role-playing game released in 1998 and set in the troubled lands of Ivalice, delivers the same wonderful gameplay that made the original a smash hit in North America, along with some new gameplay mechanics and enough polish to warrant another go at this adventure.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is a retelling of the Playstation classic about the period after the Fifty Years' War. That story remains mostly unchanged, but is enhanced with new graphics, a refined soundtrack, animated and fully-voiced scenes and a brand new translation of the game's dialogue. The result is a more fleshed out tale that evokes more emotion and drama as the events of the game unfurl.
The familiar characters also remain unchanged, though slightly refined. These include protagonist Ramza Beoulve and sister Alma; Delita Heiral; Princess Oevelia Atkaschathe and knight protector Agrias Oaks; the gun toting Mustadio Bunnasa and a cast of thousands of Chocobos, black mages, ninjas, geomancers and other specialty characters that bring the world to life and keep the action engaging.
It is the familiarity of the game that makes it the most appealing to long time fans of the game. The world map remains unchanged, along with how the controls work, the placement of random and scripted events, the town facilities (tavern, missions, outfitters, etc.), job classes, characters, locales, battle maps, etc. Everything is as it was before, but more refined and highly functional on the PSP. As a fan of the original, I had no problem jumping right in and playing the game.
As with the original, Final Fantasy Tactics for PSP offers turn-based tactical combat on a 3D landscape using a small group of heroes. The gameplay that made the original remains largely unchanged, and works surprisingly well on the PSP. As you kill the enemy in either scripted battles or random ones throughout the map, you'll gain experience and job points that go towards raising your level and unlocking new skills in your job class.
All the same job classes remain the same (from what I have seen so far in my play time with FFT) though some of the names have been changed (there is one new class revealed in one of the screenshots in this preview). There's the starting classes - Chemist, Squire, Knight, Black Mage, Monk, Archer and White Mage ; middle classes like the Time Mage, Thief, Orator, Mystic and Geomancer; and the more advanced classes like the Dragoon, Samurai, Ninja, Arithmetician, Bard, Dancer, and Mime. Unlocking these classes, along with all the scripted events remain exactly the same as the original.
