No problem It's almost like playing a book, the story has me hooked. I even read through the whole Chronicle to understand lineage and timeline of events, how nerdy is that lol
Not to disagree with Squarezero, but it sort of depends on which genre you like more. This is a strategy game - tactics, and FF3 is your traditional RPG. You can spend 100+ hours on either one, just depends on how much you like it.
I've heard people enjoy multiple playthroughs with this game, but what do you end up tinkering with each time? Or is it just unlocking a ton of stuff that you can't access by beating the main campaign? Looking forward to milking this game for all its worth!
Yeah wondering the same thing here. Not willing to spend the money on both, just unsure which one to get.
I'll try to make it as simple as possible: Tactics: A mature story about war, betrayal, class systems, ethics with an open ended battle system, i.e. tactical fights. 3dimensional fights, 2dimensional over world. FF3: The world is ending, be the young hero and find the crystals to make it whole again. 2dimensional fights, 3dimensional over world.
Would you say the story in Tactics is better? I'm assuming that because the original came out quite a while after FF3.
I spent a lot of time doing single job challenges/single character challenges. I found restricting myself to various jobs (no calculator!) was super fun and upped the replay value for me immensely.
Then I think I will buy this one for now. I like both kind of games, but years ago I played FF Tactics Advance and I really enjoyed it. If this one can give the same amount of entertainment it definitly worth it. Thanks you guys.
I really don't mind spending money on both games if they are high quality. I already have this one but was waiting to get FFIII because I thought it was going to go on sale. I was just wondering, in FFIII, is it like all of the RPGs that I have played with skill trees and finding different items for your character(s)?
I like it better, but they are two totally different contexts from two different periods in video gaming. FF3 is your average save the world as a young boy tale, but it wasn't average at the time. Tactics came out right after Final Fantasy 7, so Squaresoft during this period were messing around with these tales of morality, and who's really running this world, and down with "the man" mantra on through to even Xenogears where the scripts starting questioning what and who is God. I'm not knocking FF3, it's definitely a fun game - but it's a story you'll see a million times now because it defined it. The testing stages were 1, 2, then finally okay we perfected it in 3, now let's scrap this and make something truly unique in 4. Which is the main reason why people love 4 so much. They were still on this crystal kick but the plot was engaging. In conclusion, this is what will happen in FF3, you'll recover 1 crystal, then 2, then 3, then 4, ect. ect. the end. The tactics story is similar to FF7 except instead of being part of the rebel gang and uncovering corruption, you're a naive noble soldier uncovering corruption, Spoiler and those people happen to be related to you! How messed up is that. Also for those that enjoyed Tactics Advance, the story here isn't written for little kids, it's a little more mature. It's not about a boy, who falls asleep in the library and yada yada yada magically whisked away to some wonderland, and fights with a moogle. It's a true medieval setting.
If any people new to this game need help, hit up this thread: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=103058
Yeah, I agree with you. FFT is very critical on several levels-- there's a class warfare, a criticism of corruption in organized religion, and an existential crisis or two. There are clear-cut villains, but also many characters who are neither good or evil. It's almost nihilistic at times.
Wow thanks for the detailed explanation. I think I'll just go for Tactics and buy FF3 at a later date.
At 16 bucks, I was on the fence about picking this up -- especially after hearing the sketchy port results and the fact that I've basically played every iteration of FFT since the PS1 days (although I never got the PSP remake). I'm barely into the first chapter and all of the qualities I loved about FFT have come flooding back -- the story/dialogue, the music, the character designs, and of course the gameplay. So glad I took the plunge. This is also a much better version of the original simply because the story in the PS1 version was practically incomprehensible. Whereas now the PSP version (which I assume is what this is based off) has better localization, and really great cutscenes to give you more context. If you like TBS, this is nearly the console pinnacle.
Having had a quick play with the game now (I'm saving it for later, but felt it'd be rude not to have a taster-blast) I can say that, although it's definitely not as perfect as it could have been and there are certainly things that could have been implemented better, more intuitively, and better optimised for the host system, I'm clearly going to be able to more than live with them. And that's on a 3GS. Hopefully by the time I come to play it seriously the update will have taken care of at least a few of the niggles. But cheers to all those on here who persuaded me to take the plunge.
It's interesting to hear people tout the story in FFT! It's true, the improved localization of WotL makes the dialogue less... unintentionally hilarious. And the story is more mature than those in the Advance series. Though the story could be written in gibberish for all I care, lol - Just like the Advance series, WotL is about pure gameplay. Much has been made over the slowdown in this port; TA went so far as to call this a "hobbled" port I believe, lol. It's been exaggerated IMO. The occasional graphical glitches are unfortunate, but infrequent. The slowdown, while worse than in the PSP version, is a minor nuisance. You have to wait a half second or so before confirming actions in battle; the frame rate dips at that point consistently. It's a minor nuisance IMO. To put a finer point on it: If SE never updates this game, I'd be ok with that. Best buy in the app store by a long shot, if you haven't already gone the distance with a previous version of the game.
Game Impressions DISCLAIMER: I never played Final Fantasy Tactics before (never had a PSX or PSP, grown up from the Vic20 to C64-Amiga and then switched to PC)...and I discovered late SRPGs (I played the heck out of Wesnoth, but little else). I love playing good and engaging stories, no matter the genre (RPGs, FPS, Puzzles, Action Adventure, Point and click adventures) so, while not hyped, I heard good things about FFT story in the past, and was anticipating the release which happened while I was with no WiFi for some days...so until yesterday I had only read comments on this forum about the game...and honestly, I was really disappointed to the point I was skipping on this. Then I remembered one of the title I loved was Crimson Gem Saga (another PSP port devasted by reviews, plagued with abysmal controls that after an hour didn't bother me so I happily finished the game), so I though...it's a mere 16 dollars...I spent much more watching horrible movies or reading horrible books...so yesterday I downloaded the game. According to the in game counter, I'm already 7 hours in and I can't put it down. When I'm not actively playing, I'm reading the Chronicle to see if there are added infos. I'm reading Martin's A Dance with Dragons these days, and the story reminds me a lot his World. (this is an HUGE plus...reading the Chronicle seems reading a Ice and Fire wiki sometimes). I found the game (the whole game in every compartement) absolutely STELLAR and head and shoulders above many many MANY other games. Everyone has righly his opinions, but I was expecting a graphical mess, unreadable text, clumsy controls and overall an awful experience. On the contrary, I'm having an absolute blast, I found the controls *PERFECT* (especially after tweaking some options after the first 2 battles, it's silk smooth and super intuitive), graphically very pleasant (the cutscenes are INCREDIBLE, those alone justify the price imho) and the story superb. Gameplay wise, the game is MASSIVE (I left the tutorial after 2 hours) and I anticipate weeks and weeks of nice tactical gameplay, getting fond of my PCs (I already am..when someone dies it's a real tragedy). The thing that puzzled me most was the text. I have admittedly a good eyesight but it's perfectly readable to me...and there are TONS of in game cutscenes and tons of text to be read. About the game graphic...it's much better than I was anticipating and really nice in the context of the game...it's obviously no realistic HD graphic like Infinity Blade or Angry Bots, but I never expected that. Game aside, there are many nice touches I appreciate from the port...the super tiny memory footprint, the multitasking, the battery and hour indicators (I wish I could hide the hour indication....so I won't know how long I'm playing and be scared of it). I advice people on the fence to watch some direct feed on their device in HD (I did so on my iPhone 4, with a video from this very thread)...if you find it readable, like nice engaging stories and tactical RPGs, buy it...you won't find anything remotely similar on the Appstore (and I suppose in general). Just my 2 cents, now excuse me but I must decide wich route take on the massive and engaging world of Ivalice.
Nice review!! hehe... Same here! I am a huge FF fan but the old FF (I - III) are really a bit slow by today's standards (story and game mechanics wise). I LOVE CGS and find it easily to be the best JRPG on the iPhone.
