Final Fantasy Tactics

The game is painfully slow and generally tedious to control due to how much menuing the game forces you to go through. What makes this more aggravating are small things in the gameplay like how white magic can miss or how it's unclear about the value of certain units. It's also widely inconsistent in how good the actual level design is, but it gets particularly bad in later levels due to dumb stats. The narrative is damn solid, even though its mostly a birds eye view of its politics.

Probably my favorite game of all time. The way you could mix and match abilities made for some crazy fun combinations and made re-playing the game always enjoyable. It was also easy to replay because there is essentially no filler, it's just all menus for towns / shops, the cut scenes, and then the combat was the focus.

Finally, a JRPG with actual stakes, where friendship means nothing and actions have lasting consequences. The combat is actually engaging, though a little limited compared to other tactical RPGs/CRPGs. The game's linear nature makes it less overwhelming, yet the open map gives a sense of freedom to go wherever you please, complete optional missions and find unique enemies and loot. The story is the strongest part. Fights start almost instantly compared to the painful FFIX fight intros.

Probably the best game of its genre, with only a few annoyances that slightly diminish it; there's way too many random encounters, which are all level scaled and unavoidable, and the progression system encourages min-maxing to such an extent that it gets slightly ridiculous.

The most fun battle system I've encountered in a strategy game, A lot of classes and customization and freedom

#10 Best by Average Percentile on Criticker

A decent try, but the Super Robot Wars series had done it much better before.

Final Fantasy Tactics is the gold standard for strategy RPGs. It was perfect then and it's perfect now. The job system is inspired and the tactical game play would never be outdone.

I started with the Advance games, and this one really does not screw around. It's much more difficult, given the fact that your party members can permanently die in any fight if you're not careful. But I only got about 75% of the way through, because there comes a point that the required grinding becomes unreasonable. People have told me the story is great, but I had to spend so much time grinding between each story mission that I could not possibly keep track of it.

An almost perfect Tactics based game. Endless replay value. Easy to beat the first playthrough. Then make it challenging by picking random jobs, or only using equipment dropped, stolen, or earned. The story was really great, too, if you could follow it.

A nice departure from what we expected from Final Fantasy at the time, still one of the best tactical RPGs ever. The job system is so good, so deep here, and the combat was a lot of fun. Story was a mess but I don't think anybody cared then or now.

My favorite game of all time and my introduction to tactical RPGS (my favorite genre). I played it so much as a kid I started to do challenges I found online like solo-class and Ramza only.