Storywise, Tactics excels over most games with its epic atmosphere and manner that it unveils the vast conspiracies. To convey the setting, once long ago, a vast war erupted in the land of Ivalice, which lasted for fifty years. Although both sides eventually cease to bear arms, the country's situation became worse. A year after the conflict ended, Princess Ovelia was kidnapped. As a result, the unfortunate event triggered an uproar which came to be known as "The Lion War" between two families: Gallione (who uphold the crest of the White Lion) and Zeltennia (possessing the crest of the Black Lion). A young man known as Delita was successful in suppressing the Lion War and was recognized during his era as a hero. However, rumor were treading suggesting that an additional figure was also responsible for diffusing the war; a young man known as Ramza. This is where the story begins as your mission is to investigate and unveil the events that truly happened.

   The gameplay of Tactics is relatively simple, with a slight learning curve. It harkens back to those old hexagonal strategy games; you remember, like Godzilla on the NES. However, it resembles Vandal Hearts more. In fact, it's almost similar to Vandal Hearts with better graphics. The entire area where you will engage enemies are composed of a rather large, four-sided battlefield, divided into several small squares upon which a character can perform actions. Each character can move, attack, cast magic, etc. only in certain ranges, thus determining how fast they can get somewhere and how far-reaching their attacks may be. In typical battles, you may have five characters on the field at once, and sixteen in your party total. The remaining elements of the gameplay system are designed in classic Final Fantasy fashion; the hit-points/magic-points are intact, as are the ever-streamlined menus. The game can even calculate how long an attack will take to unleash. Now lets dig into the system and see what makes it tick.

Tactics has two major pieces to its guts: the Job and Active Turn system, (AT for short). The AT function regulates the order the characters will be able to accept commands, to simplify: the units will take their turns when their AT charge counters reach 100. Since each character has a different counter recharge speed, there is no set turn order - the characters just go when they're ready. This affects factors such as magic and charge attacks, summoning spells, and so forth. To illustrate: Charge 10 requires a much longer period to pull off than a mere Charge 1 spell). Some higher-level attacks take more than a few turns to fire, depending on the character's speed. The other integral part of the game, the job system, lets the player choose what types of characters he desires in his party. The two basic types are fighters: Squires, Knights, Ninjas, et al. and the magic users: Chemists, White Mages, Black Mages, Time Mages and so on. Each character, of course, has a distinct specialty. For example, the Chemists are the only units who can use items (e.g. Potions, Phoenix Down), and are designated as the starting block for the magic users. Squires represent the all-around basic fighters who in the same respect, are designated as the starting point for the fighting classes. In order to advance your characters into the higher class, each must meet certain requirements. For instance, to become a Ninja requires the character to have already been a level 3 Archer, level 4 Thief and a level 2 Geomancer.

The cool thing about all this is all characters may earn Job Experience Points for any job. Given that your characters may choose an alternate ability to their primary job, this makes for some nifty combinations. Knights could use Monk abilities (specifically, martial arts) on their enemies and them hack away with their sword, while Black Mages could have Chemist abilities, thus they could revive fallen units with Phoenix Down and roast a few Imps with Fire3 (well, not at the same time). To make a small note regarding the AI; it's excellent. There were many occasions which I instructed a mage to unleash a devastating spell at a targeted enemy, only to neglect checking the AT chart to see when that particular someone's next would take place. As a result, the computer-controlled enemy would approach the mage, commits a martyr act, then in turn uses the spell's radius to kill my character when the spell goes off. Heh, it's evil...but I like it.

Moving onto graphics and sound departments; Square chose the practical route with Tactics' graphics engine. To illustrate, while you're still learning how the battle systems function (think back to how the format operated in Final Fantasy VII) before you can summon spells in order to appreciate the graphic splendor. The playfield consists of rich, textured polygons, which in contrast to the characters are composed of 2D graphic sprites. Not showing any criticism though, as it's quite apparent Square went to great lengths in designing this game. For example, as demonstrated on a number of battlefield engagements, stand out as true works of art. Furthermore, all the magical attacks, summon spells and specialized attacks which you'll be continuously using throughout the duration of the game are simply brilliant. Unfortunately, this brings up one minor setback, the camera angles. Though some perspectives are almost completely awkward to navigate, they are tolerable.

As for Tactics' sound, like the graphics, are genuinely excellent. I am under the belief that the PlayStation MIDI board was utilized, although it can easily be mistaken as a synthesizer, which was recorded on Redbook. I found the music to be magnificent and quite outstanding in regards to its composition and arrangement. Every instrument is portrayed exactly as it would if you were actually in an orchestra listening to the music in a concert. For this reason...it puzzles me as to why this same degree of excellence couldn't be demonstrated with FF VII

All in all, Tactics is a great game. The entire package is put together very nicely. It subtly includes all those little cool touches Square usually deposits in their games e.g. characters all walking in place (apparently the Final Fantasy tradition that seems to have been ignored of late). Thus, if you like strategy games and felt FFVII was a bit lacking in that respect, go out today and pick up Final Fantasy Tactics.

· · · Capt. Harlock