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Which Final Fantasy Tactics game should I start with?


MissShake
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So I officially have all of the FFT games (except for Revenant Wings I guess), buuut I haven't played any of them. Considering it's an SRPG and all that, I'm sure there are at least one or two fans here at SF. Which game should I start with? I was considering going in release order and playing War of the Lions first, but I wasn't completely sure.

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War of the Lions is a great game, though quite unforgiving. A few people would suggest against starting with it, since it may deter you from wanting to play FFT. The gba and ds one is nice, if not less complex and with a simpler story line.

I would suggest starting with the the GBA one just to get a feel of what the whole series is like and War of the Lions last, since you'd be disappointed with the other two's story after playing WoTL anyway.

I'd also direct you to the Tactics Ogre series, particularly Let Us Cling Together which you can find on the PSP. It's essentially FFT where you can bring more people into a battle and has a branching story. If you like FFT, it's definitely something you should check out.

Edited by A Random Player
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A1 is easiest and also it's one of those things where A2 has so much quality of life improvements over it that it would be really hard to play A2 before A1 imo.

FFT: WotL is full of poor design decisions but largely well-received. I'd play it last, since A2 isn't that hard either.

And yeah, Tactics Ogre is just a better-designed FFT made by the same guys.

Edited by Parrhesia
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The first advance game is a little questionable. I don't really get the sentiment of playing from worst to best.

Advance 1 is extremely low difficulty, and the story is the weakest in the series. It's just a take on "gaining strength to face real world and reject escapism".

It has bad gameplay decisions if you play without a guide- each class learns abilities by equipping items,(equipping brigandine teaches counter) but no item has its ability in its information screen and most items can be equiped by multiple classes, but only give you an ability if equipped as the correct class.

The game is still easy if played "vanilla" just with attack commands and movement though, I remember my first time through I ignored the job system and left the main character as a paladin and just by doing about 1/3 of the sidequests, he somehow gained enough experience to simply facetank the bosses with his sheer defense.

Also the maps are a little repetitive and not particularly creative since 90% of the game is either 4 on 4 or 6 on 6 battles, which are so short as a result that units like healers are literally ignorable, since battles simply don't last long enough.

Granted I think all three games are low difficulty, but A1 takes it lower than the other 2. FFT can kind of be challenging in the middle, but the second half of the game is basically a "victory lap" because it starts giving you overpowered equipment and characters. A2 just has questionable enemy composition and same unwillingness to let enemies outnumber you to make up for their AI.

I would recomend starting with A2, then doing FFT second, and playing A1 last, I think it would be a turn off to completing a 140ish hour project(all three combined) if you started with such a lukewarm game as A1.

Edited by Reality
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It has bad gameplay decisions if you play without a guide- each class learns abilities by equipping items,(equipping brigandine teaches counter) but no item has its ability in its information screen and most items can be equiped by multiple classes, but only give you an ability if equipped as the correct class.

You can see what gear gives skills before you buy it... If you hit the R(?) button, it brings up a side window that shows what skills the weapon/armour has and which class learns it. The only thing you may need a guide for in this game is knowing how many A-abilities from each class you need to unlock advanced jobs, and how to obtain skills for blue mages.

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A1>A2>FFT>Tactics Ogre. The only good point about FFT is its story. If you want character and gameplay, try Tactics Ogre.

GBA's Tactics Advance is a great game to learn the concept of the game, and coincidentially, a fantastic game to play. It's not necessarily the hardest without self-imposed challenges but theres a lot to do in it.

You can see what gear gives skills before you buy it... If you hit the R(?) button, it brings up a side window that shows what skills the weapon/armour has and which class learns it. The only thing you may need a guide for in this game is knowing how many A-abilities from each class you need to unlock advanced jobs, and how to obtain skills for blue mages.

Arguably, you might want a guide to get Morphing handling too, because it's kinda easy to get stuck in mediocrity, Beastmasters too in a way because you need Hunters, which you won't have access to for a little while.

Bangaa/Moogle/Viera classes all need basically 0 effort beyond assumptions to figure out.

Edited by Elieson
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I tried twice to "get into" Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and both times I was bored to tears. Must've been too slow paced for me. I had slightly more success with FFT: WotL, due to the more interesting world and god-tier music. However, if you play WotL on PSP, I recommend you mod it to eliminate the screen stretch and fix the lag issues.

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The PSX original is easily the strongest out of the three FF titles; haven't played Tactics Ogre so I can't really comment on that. In terms of enjoyment that one has the greatest ability to draw you into the world, but on the other hand, after playing it A2 and especially A1 can leave a lot to be desired especially in terms of story.

I know some might disagree with me on this point, but I don't think FFT is actually all that easy if you're going into to it completely blind. There are at least a few fights I can think of off the top of my head that you could reasonably be expected to lose if you knew absolutely nothing about the game other than what you had learned firsthand, whereas A1 could be beaten blindfolded and A2 is only really difficult at the start and even then only on Hard Mode. Of course, that said, there's nothing in any game I've ever played as ridiculous as the one and only Thunder God so FFT doesn't exactly get a free pass either.

If you do play these games, I say do it blind to have the most fun. Once you start looking things up its far too easy to break any of the games in two without even trying.

Oh, and if Tactics ever asks you to save after a battle always do it in a separate slot.

Edited by Deltre
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A1 > A2 >>> WotL for me.

I liked A1's story, and the laws kept me on my toes (this is a point of contention for most people, but I'm strange). It has its mind-boggling combos, but if there's one thing about this game, it's that Nu Mou aren't completely outclassed. . .

. . .like A2, where the MP system is basically a middle finger to them. While A2 had a lot of improvements, I found it to be a lot more snooze-inducing than A1.

WotL is one of those games where there's a plethora of poorly-explained things (Brave/Faith and its exact mechanisms need a guide, for one example), along with a system that highly encourages over-grinding. Yes, some of the classes are legit cool, but it's not worth going into who-knows-how-many maps just to get there IMO. The story tries to be something amazing, but it falls flat on its face IMO. For reference, my opinion of WotL's story is about the same as my opinion of Fates: Revelation.

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I'm a huge fan of original FFT; it has an amazing class system and a very solid battle system, is very transparent with most of its mechanics (did the game not tell you faith governed magic effectiveness both of spells you cast and spells cast on you? I thought it did). It doesn't have the best plot in the world but there are some pretty good aspects of it. Be warned that War of the Lions does make FFT worse in a few ways, in that there's slowdown on a lot of moves (apparently iOS/Steam fixes this), and the JP costs of some abilities and class unlocks reverted to their out-of-wack balance of the JP version (Fly costing 5000 JP, wtf).

Tactics Ogre is basically a worse-balanced version of FFT with a worse class system, and its plot is largely pretty bad, against outside one or two shining moments. I still found it quite fun! The remake of it does add some major polish improvements FFT needed, like being able to see damage projections before you move.

I thought FFTA1 was wretched and couldn't get into it at all. Never tried FFTA2.

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WotL is one of those games where there's a plethora of poorly-explained things (Brave/Faith and its exact mechanisms need a guide, for one example), along with a system that highly encourages over-grinding. Yes, some of the classes are legit cool, but it's not worth going into who-knows-how-many maps just to get there IMO. The story tries to be something amazing, but it falls flat on its face IMO. For reference, my opinion of WotL's story is about the same as my opinion of Fates: Revelation.

Already said my piece but I found this so funny because recently I'd been drawing parallels between the two games and they do have almost the exact same story. Of course, I personally think that one is told much better than the other, but that's an opinion :p

The game does tell you about Br/Fa too (I think Lavian/Alicia/Rad/Ramza in Ch1 but I can't remember). The worst offender is knowing job requirements imo.

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Already said my piece but I found this so funny because recently I'd been drawing parallels between the two games and they do have almost the exact same story. Of course, I personally think that one is told much better than the other, but that's an opinion :p

The game does tell you about Br/Fa too (I think Lavian/Alicia/Rad/Ramza in Ch1 but I can't remember). The worst offender is knowing job requirements imo.

I also want to say that the Tutorial actually tells you all of this. It's just so long that most people don't want to bother with it. And I never remember it being removed. While I believe that to be a flaw as it is needlessly wordy, it did give you some info on this, just not in a way that most can stomach.

The job requirements are the worst offender as the only way to know how to get them is through grinding. The first couple of jobs aren't so bad like Knight, Monk, Geomancer, etc. It's ones like Dancer, Ninja, Samurai, and especially Mime that are bad. WoTL makes it even worse with some like Dark Knight having such stupid requirements that you'd never unlock it without a guide.

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I will re-iterate - if you play A2 before A1, A1 will feel like pulling teeth because it is worse in so many ways, including from objective quality-of-life, graphical and mechanical standpoints. Also somewhat surreally you'll have about half the same soundtrack but with a soundfont made of fart-trumpets and screaming.

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Related question: since the SNES game Bahamut Lagoon was going to be titled Final Fantasy Tactics in the development stages, would you consider that one of the games you'd want to start with as well?

I'd rather go with one of the games I own, so no, sorry.

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Man, I'm more confused than when I made this thread D;

You're thinking about it too much :p play what you want. I think the point people are trying to make is that (generally) the sequels tend to be a little disappointing compared to the original/WOTL is all.

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I honestly think A1 is a good starting point. If the gameplay isn't gripping you there, then the more advanced systems in Tactics or A2 are probably still not going to be enjoyable.

Personally my favourite game of the set is A2 despite the weak story, but solid gameplay, but I wouldn't go into it without tasting A1 because the various tweaks to the formula between games. There are still parts of A1 I like more, but A2 is more polished. Inversely, Tactics is broken gameplay and very brutal so it is nice to dive into its easier counterparts first before jumping into something more intense.

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A2's story isn't as bad as it's given discredit for. It mostly suffers by comparison of not being that ambitious, compared to FFT trying and (IMO, at least) failing to be the War of the Roses.

Edited by Parrhesia
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I also want to say that the Tutorial actually tells you all of this. It's just so long that most people don't want to bother with it. And I never remember it being removed. While I believe that to be a flaw as it is needlessly wordy, it did give you some info on this, just not in a way that most can stomach.

The job requirements are the worst offender as the only way to know how to get them is through grinding. The first couple of jobs aren't so bad like Knight, Monk, Geomancer, etc. It's ones like Dancer, Ninja, Samurai, and especially Mime that are bad. WoTL makes it even worse with some like Dark Knight having such stupid requirements that you'd never unlock it without a guide.

There's a lot of little things that Brave/Faith cover, complete with exact numerical values (hidden item pickup rate, Chicken, units leaving, the difference in damage between low Faith and high Faith, etc.). IMO the Brave/Faith system was needlessly complicated for far too little reward. It's part of the reason why I'm not a huge fan of WotL.

---

I'm strange when it comes to video game stories. A1 is my favorite by far. A2 has some very nice moments, though it gets a bit complicated at points.

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