Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

Reviewed: ２００７年１月２７日

I loved this game for PlayStation. Unfortunately this is not the case for the PSP.

The game is unchanged for the most part. They included hand-drawn cutscenes, changed some characters names, some random monster names, some job names, and added a few new characters and job classes. Sounds great, right? Wrong!

My first major rant comes from the control scheme. No longer do you use L and R to rotate the camera, but you're stuck using the analog pad. It's not a big deal, but L and R are so much easier to use on the PSP than the analog pad. That being said, it's not that bad and I could have dealt with that if that was it. The thing that really grinds my gears about the control scheme is X for, "Affirmative/Yes" and ○ for, "Cancel/No." If you remember the original had it right with ○ for, "Yes," and X for, "No." Why is this a problem? Coming from the 8-bit generation of games where A (which became ○) was, "Yes," and B (which became X) was, "No," and a Japanese background where ○ is, "Yes," and X is, "No," this seems totally reversed! There's no option to change your controller set up

○ is "No," and X is "Yes."

They also changed the dialog around to be somewhat Shakespearian. This is really annoying. Reading what other reviewers had to say about this, the majority of the community seems to like it, saying that it enhanced their understanding of the story line. If it helps you understand, great, but personally, I didn't have a hard time understanding it on PlayStation, and don't really like the new script. They also changed some character names. For example, the character named Algus on the PlayStation version is now called Algath. Seems annoying to me.

Magic or any skill use seems horrible on the PSP too. The processor can't process it fast enough, so the sound and image don't match up properly. You might not realize this if you hadn't played the original. Most notably are Holy Knight skills where you see the sword pop up out of the ground and then fly upward. You see it first, hear it, but then due to processor lag, the sound finishes way before the sword flies up. This lag happens with all skills and magic used.

All in all, it's not a bad game, but I still prefer the original. You get a new "Hunter" character near the beginning of Chapter 3. He's annoying and has more skills than Ramza. There's a few other things here and there, but I won't ruin it for you if you're planning on buying it. I would recommend it if you liked the original, and can deal with the new control scheme.