I’ve been a huge tactics fan since I first got Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis back in 2002. Since then tactical RPG’s have become my favorite style of game. So far I’ve played Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance and now Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance 2.

For those of you who don’t know tactical rpgs are played out on a isometric field. Movement order is based on a characters speed. You build up a team of several characters and jobs/classes more than you can put into play at any time. In A2 you can use up to 6 units/characters at a time but you can have many more than that in your clan/team.

The full name of the game is Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift but for the purpose of this review I’m just going to refer to it as A2. There were a few things I really didn’t like about the first FFTA game, one of them being the judges/laws system.

Any time you had a battle a judge would be present and there would be a random law such as “No Ranged Weapons” or “No Multiple Targeting”. You could use law cards to bypass these laws if you had the right one in your limited inventory. But if one of your units broke a law he/she would get a yellow card and if he/she broke the law again he/she would be sent to jail.

Thankfuly the Judge/Laws system in A2 is a lot more forgiving. At the start of battle you can choose a privillage such as Power up to increase attack power slightly, you gain better privillages via clan trail quests. There are no law card to bypass the laws anymore, but the punishment for breaking the laws isn’t as bad. Now when you break a law you loose out on bonus rewards at the end of the quest, you can’t resurrect KO’ed units and you loose your privillage buff (it’s still better than loosing units forever though).

I quiet like the job system in A2. You have to learn a certain number of skills in a job to be able to use a more advance job. Instead of learning skills via jp points you earn in battle you now learn skills from your armour and weapons. Once you master a skill (completely learn it) you can use it regards of what armour or weapon you have.

The bazzar system is also very cool. In every quest you get random unusable items from monsters and also as your reward for finishing a quest. You use these items to unlock weapons at the shop, so intead of getting better weapons from new shops as you quest, you can get them at every shop once you unlock them on the bazzar. Some weapons need to be unlocked every time you buy one from the shop however.

I’m horrible addicted to this game as I’ve been playing it for about 15 hours in game. I pick it up and a few hours go past and I haven’t even noticed. I hope square keeps making more tactics games as they seem to keep improving the forumla. I’m going to try to have an army of ninja’s in A2 like I had in tactics ogre.

I’m giving Final Fantasy Tactics A2: 9/10 
It would of got 10/10  but the judge system is still a tad annoying sometimes

According to Wikipedia

Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes is an iPod tactical role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix worldwide.

So when I heard about a tactical rpg that lets you make troopers from your ipod songs, I knew I just had to get it.

I’ve only clocked up an hour so far, but every aspect of the game has been enjoyable. Compared to other tactical rpg’s it has been a bit simplified in terms of inventory management and character leveling, but that’s expected on a game designed for the ipod.

The best part of the game definitely is making troopers from your music collection. It was interesting to see my Foreigner tracks turn into whimsical female archers and “Holy Diver” by Dio turn into a armoured warrior. It was also pretty amusing to see my girlfriends screamo tracks come out as pretty boy mages with angel wings. I also like the fact that if you listen to the same tracks you used to create your troopers, you get groove points which boost your characters in battle.

In other Square Enix news Final Fantasy XIII is also coming out on the xbox 360, woot!