30 best Final Fantasy games

Best Final Fantasy Games #17 – Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

I have to admit; I wasn’t as big a fan of Tactics Advance as I was the original game. At first glance, I didn’t like how much it did away with the dark, gritty, color-neutral tones of the PlayStation original to focus on a story about four children whisked away to the Kingdom of Ivalice via magical book transportation powers, but the depth of turn-based tactical strategy was enough to overcome such qualms.

More importantly, Tactics Advance represented Square’s intentions to bring hardcore niche RPG titles to the Game Boy Advance to complement other strategy titles such as Advance Wars. The 34 jobs available gave the player as much team-based composition customization as its predecessor but added the extra challenge of Laws to abide by.

Just like the rule variants in the Triple Triad system, Laws handed out by judges provided a constraint for each battle that would be punished for disobeying and rewarded for special tasks accomplished. This gave Tactics Advance and its visually vibrant isometric tactical gameplay a strong sense of confidence to try a host of wonderful gameplay experiments across dozens of hours of play.