Duke Reivier's Grand Game Emporium

 Since I am halfway through Final Fantasy Tactics, I feel compelled to write about its class system, and compare it to how its predecessor, Tactics Ogre, handled the mechanic. Obviously, I should clarify that I've clearly not reached the "end" of the former's class tree, and my opinion could change in light of new revelations. But, having seen a fair share of this game's classes, and how they work in practice. I feel qualified enough to write this piece. Final Fantasy Tactics Classes, In A Nutshell The basic mechanics behind the class system are deeply layered, yet simultaneously oddly simple. Each character, barring certain special characters, starts out either in a basic fighter class (Squire) or a basic healer class (Chemist). Progression from these starting points is obtained in one of two ways: In the first, the player expends skillpoints to unlock skills from the class' skillset. Skills, broadly speaking, come in four types: a. Active skills, skills that...

 Now for the very final school of the game, the cold, clammy twin of the divine/deathly pair. DEATH Death is the realm of decay, evil and, well, death. Most of its spells either summon demonic creatures, turn foes to its side by raising them as undead, or weaken them. In this manner, it acts as the exact opposite to Life - that realm was all about strengthening itself, this is about weakening the world from within. Thus, it doesn't care about regular units much, choosing to fight either with its summons, or its curses. Common Tier 1. Skeletons: Cost: 25 MP Effect: Summons a skeleton unit to the overworld. Analysis: Death lays its cards pretty early with this summon - it's literally a spearman unit, but undead! Actually, they fight better than spearmen, having more figures, defense, the whole bevy of Deathly immunities(immunity to Death, Cold and Illusions), and Missile Immunity on top of that! That said, their stats are pretty horrid, and they definitely shouldn't be used a...

 We now move away from the "natural" elements and into the realm of divine and deathly duality. We're first covering the more lawful/"divine" side of it, the school of Life. LIFE Life is the realm of the divine. It expresses its themes through spells that "bless" their targets and either directly make them stronger, or protect them from deathly effects, usually from the Chaos and Death realms. It also has spells to similarly "bless" cities and either make them more defensible, or improve their economy. And, to top it all off, it has a bevy of appropriately "divine" summons. But its clearest focus is on its buffs, and as such, most of this list is made up of them. Thus, it is much more dependant on regular units than other realms, and picking the right race matters far more while playing this school. Common Tier 1. Bless: Cost: 7(in combat)/35 MP Effect: Grants 5 defense and 5 resistance against Chaos and Death spells, fire/lightning...

 It's time for the next magic school, and the last "elemental" one in the lineup. CHAOS Chaos represents the forces of hell. In practical terms, this means channeling fiery, destructive powers, summoning demonic creatures, and warping its own forces with demonic power. Chaos is a difficult school to play, as most of its Common tier spells are quite weak, but once it can climb out of that, it has some decent bases to work off of. However, its strengths are not particularly straightforward, relying either on combat damage, mass buffing units, or a mixture of the two. Common Tier 1. Animate Ammo: Cost: 5 MP Effect: Steals the ammunition of the targeted unit and converts it into casting skill. Heroes and summons ignore this effect. Analysis: Chaos really doesn't start out impressing with this extremely niche effect. It would be good if it affected more targets, either at once, or by type. Heroes and summons tend to be far stronger, and being able to kill their ranged dama...

 Some of you might remember that I had started evaluating the magic schools in this game to figure out their strengths and weaknesses. I picked Nature as that was a fairly straightforward school. The rest...aren't quite so clear cut, but they still have themes they try to convey via their design. Anyway, it's now time for.... SORCERY Sorcery loosely represents the forces of wind, water and most importantly, magic itself. Its summons have great control over water, and it manipulates wind to make units fly and even become swift transports themselves, but by far their most impactful spells are magical tricks that undermine the "rules" of battle. As such, Sorcery very much is the realm of trickery...and it kind of has to be, as it has little power backing it up. When they work, they work very well, netting it amazing rewards and letting it crush its foes with ease. But when they don't , it is in deep trouble. Now, it does have some nifty logistical spells too, and th...