Duke Revier's Grand Game Emporium

Up ahead, a cutscene revealed the desperate situation of the brigands, as they were openly defying their leader's orders under the misguided belief that they had a noble hostage who could buy them some security, if not a large sum of money. Their leader is furious, and vehemently orders them to relinquish their hostage; but news of the duo's approach reaches him, as well as the information that they had killed the leader of the earlier map, who happened to be his sister! Enraged by this piece of news, he decides to personally fight them and their retinue in combat! He was a considerable step up from all my earlier opponents, being able to freeze and kill my units at range, much like the holy knight in the intro. The team thankfully did have enough damage to beat him, but the fight was only won by desperately concentrating damage on him. Upon his defeat, he fled, but not before revealing that the protagonist's brothers had in fact stirred one of his people into kidnapping th...

 The journey back to the protagonist's family castle was pretty uneventful, though I discovered a rather curious bit of information: The tooltip for all of the knights' debuffs and equipment breaking skills implied that they could be used at range with ranged weapons. Hmm, this certainly made the prospect of training up an archer with knight skills quite interesting. Back to the story. Dycedarg was unsurprisingly livid about the lads shirking their duty for the sake of "adventure", and would've issued stern reprimands had it not been for his superior chiming up for them and strongly convincing him to not only forgive them, but to let them join their main campaign of attacking bandit hideouts. He reluctantly acquiesces to this, putting them in charge of attacking a small bandit fort. The intrigue deepens, as once the lads leave, both Dycedarg and his superior talk in hushed tones about how their rescue had unexpectedly aided them and that they needed to act fast be...

 Those who are aware of Suikoden 2's plot need little introduction to Jowy, and little convincing that he is a charlatan of the highest degree. His "career" is marked by little that isn't deception or underhanded murder, and he ends up pointlessly dragging out a destructive war that ends with his kingdom being decisively defeated by a stronger opposing force, led by the hero himself. Yet, strangely, I found the scene where he got redeemed and forgiven of all his sins oddly striking and appealing. So I decided to do a little soul searching and figure out exactly what about this scene impressed me so greatly. The idea of anybody being capable of redemption is of course nothing new. Many religions have stories talking about how even the most vile of people were saved by, of course, turning a new leaf and enthusiastically adopting the tenets of the religion narrating the story. The idea presented in these is fairly straightforward, both in explanation and appeal - redempt...

  The lads set off for Dorter. Along the way, they end up meeting a huge gaggle of monsters in its surrounding forest. These provided the most challenging battle so far, largely because they could and did often counter attacks with their own. Human units do not counter melee attacks by default, rather they have to learn it as a counter "ability". It's certainly an interesting interpretation and expansion of the counter mechanic in Tactics Ogre, which merely did the standard "counter every melee attack with a counter attack" system. The only problem is that I didn't have any counter abilities yet! Dorter added a bit of intrigue by introducing the idea that there were schisms in the brigand group, and that their leader clearly didn't approve of the kidnapping. It was also the site of the fiercest battle yet, with the enemy having significantly advantageous positions and powerful wizards on its side. The battle was won mainly on the strength of the protagon...

  The game chooses a rather interesting framing device, where the entire narrative is presented as an alternate account of history in contrast to the "regular narrative" often spouted publicly. We do not get to know much of this narrative, save that it involved a chaotic war that was eventually put down by a charismatic hero, Delita. Naturally, our historian-narrator chooses to focus not on him, but rather on our protagonist, who is apparently unknown to most people, and who is regarded as a heretic by the Church. For some reason, I'm allowed to pick his name and his date of birth. Then, we cut to a panoramic cutscene sweeping over many a scenic locale, from lush forests to ruined towns. Eventually, it focuses on a band of knights rushing through the lands, mounted on chocobos rather than horses. They eventually stop right outside a church tower, and it is here that both our protagonist, and their purpose, is revealed. The protagonist works as security detail for a prince...

 Alright, it's time to begin! Heh. Got you excited there, I bet. The tutorial is rather dull and uninteresting, like most tutorials are, but it's also a very in depth look at the game, and how it works. On that note, it's rather peculiar how people often skip the tutorials for strategy games, and then complain when they get walled by something they could've easily figured out in the tutorial. Then again, it's hard to retain information from something perceived as boring. I'm not sure what the best solution to this is, honestly. One of the things that caught my eye was the brand new inventory system. Instead of the freeform equip system of Tactics Ogre, they went with a more standardized and recognizable RPG equip system. In some ways this is better, but the familiarity also makes it a bit less interesting. Also, where are the consumables? Ah, I see. We shoved them into an obscure, far off menu, LOL. Well, if they're not equippable anymore, that can only mean...

 So I am playing Final Fantasy Tactics, and writing to the Internet about it. But, why? Isn't this a game "everyone" knows about? What could my perspective possibly add? Well, let me share a story. About five years ago, I discovered a colorful, intriguing game, called Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. It was a strange game where you controlled none of the battles, instead merely moved units across a map and sometimes casted powerful spells with cards. Most of the "gameplay" was thus merely in optimizing units for power and several strategic purposes. Despite its strangeness, or perhaps because of it, I fell in love with the game. But, despite my best efforts, I couldn't finish it. The gameplay eventually got rather tedious and uninspiring, and there simply wasn't much rewarding to keep playing through it. Later, I discovered that the man behind it, Matsuno, had created two other strategy games, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, and Final Fantasy ...