Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of The Rift

Well, I've made several post about the game now, and it's finally time to give the game a proper review of sorts. After clocking 102 Hours on the game, and still missing some things - It goes without saying that this game will definitely provide some bang for your buck. That is if you can deal with some repetition, and a fairly weak plot.

To start, FFTA2 shares a lot in common with the first Tactics Advance. It's set in the same version of Ivalice, thus it includes the variety of races that were introduced in that game, as well as some from Final Fantasy XII. It also shares the same lighthearted story and cutesy characters. Original Tactics, this is not. In fact the story is one of my only qualms with the game. It's not even as good as the previous game, even though I like the characters more in this one.

However the game exceeds where it counts, and that's providing a rich strategy RPG experience. Thanks to the game's seven races, and a multitude of job classes to choose from - there's a lot of variety to be had here. Each of the races have access to a set number of jobs, some unique to that race, and some shared among other races. You learn the abilities for these classes through equipment, which is acquired through a bazaar system identical to the one from XII. That is to say, you collect a bunch of loot from your encounters and trade them in for equipment.

The main story line of the game is surprisingly short with only 24 required missions, but the game more than makes up for it with the side quest. Seeing as how there are very few random encounters in this game, the majority of your experience will come from completing these quest. There has to be somewhere around 300 quest in total, and if this is starting to sound like Crisis Core - you'd be right. This is where the repetitiveness comes into play, however unlike Crisis Core I never really got burnt out on these missions. They aren't all that varied, but to me it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch from leveling up in the previous Tactics games through random encounters.

While the game's story might not keep you hooked, it's likely the quest to fully outfit your ideal team will. I can't count how many times I spent hours just getting new gear for my team, and doing quest to learn the new skills from that equipment. And as you can probably tell from my previous entry - I took some pride in the team I built up.

The only other thing I can think to bring up may be considered a pro, or a con depending on who you ask. The game is pretty laid back, I never had any difficulty completing any of the battles in the game at all. It might have something to do with the fact that I did every available quest I could, and was fully prepared for anything the game had to throw at me, but I found it to be a relaxing playthrough. This might be a turn off to some people though, so be warned.

All in all, I really enjoyed A2. I'm pretty sure it has a spot locked in for my Games of The Year list at this point. Even if it doesn't make the cut, I still think this is worth the price of admission for fans of the genre, or even people who might be interested in getting into the genre.