I played Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions · 3:21am Feb 13th, 2021

A different Final Fantasy.

This game plays different from other Final Fantasy games. Towns aren't much of a thing in this game. They're basically menus where you can shop, hire mercenaries and take quests. The real stage are the battle fields. And they do some great scenes with these stages.

Another separation from typical Final Fantasy games is how combat works. The battle stage has terrain and elevations that you can use to your advantage, or can make the battle much harder for you. It's useful to know just where you stand in relation to your enemies, the range of your weapons as well as any magic/skills you may use.

And when a character dies, you could permanently lose them. So it pays to know what's going on on the battle stage at all times.

And there's the Job system. This isn't new to Final Fantasy games, but I believe it's Tactics that implemented it best. You start with a couple jobs available, and as you level up those jobs and combinations of jobs you unlock new ones. Every job has prerequisites that each character needs to meet to take that job. And you can give characters access to skills from other jobs they've already learned to greatly improve their versatility.

Jobs are improved by using Job points which you gain in battle (and silently by having characters use their job skills around each other). Each action grants both EXP and JP, and if you set things up right you can master one job per battle. Never mind that those battles will average three or four hours.

The War of the Lions introduced two new jobs to the game: Dark Knight, and Onion Knight.

The Dark Knight is tough and has powerful skills but those skills consume their HP instead of MP. So it's a trade off for what you want them doing.

The Onion Knight is useless ... at first. They don't get skills, they don't get to use skills from other jobs their defense and offense are garbage. Starting out they're absolutely terrible. But that job gets stronger by mastering other jobs. If you have a character that's mastered every job you'll have an unstoppable Onion Knight. Especially if you get their dedicated equipment.

I've played both the original PS1 version and The War of the Lions. And The War of the Lions improves the translation, touches up the story, and adds cinematics that really make the experience great. I love the original, but War of the Lions is the better version.

The story revolves around Ramza Beoulve, a child of a nobleman and a commoner, who is training to be a knight. As a soldier he doesn't get a say in where he's deployed and soon finds himself involved in a war for the throne. But this power struggle is just the face of something darker.

Zodiac Monsters (Lucavi) are trying to resurrect Ultima and Ramza's sister actually gets caught up in it. So regardless of the motivations of other creatures Ramza is going to save her.

There are actually a number of important characters, and they're mostly interesting and have some significance to the plot. Though it can get dark at times. I was genuinely furious when I knew what Gerrith Barrington had done to Rapha.

There's a couple characters I genuinely disliked in this game, but that's exactly because you're supposed to dislike them. And one that I hated who never seemed to stay dead, no matter how many times I killed him.

There are a couple fanservice characters, (no, not scantily clad girls. Characters from other Final Fantasy games) but their parts don't actually detract from the game. Balthier's entrance is actually pretty fun.

Honestly, I believe this game deserves to be on anyone's "best games" list. If you haven't played it I'd suggest that you do so. I bought a PSP specifically to play this game and consider the investment worthwhile. Though it is available on Android and Apple devices.