Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

In 1998, a tactical RPG by the name of Final Fantasy Tactics came out and absolutely blew me away. I loved that game. I beat it five or six different times, each time through giving myself a new set of challenges to abide by. My favorite run was the final one I did, in which I customized my party (to the best of my abilities) to emulate the cast of characters from Final Fantasy IV. I mean, yeah, if the past few months on Back-Blogged haven't given it away, I've always been a bit of a Final Fantasy fanboy. Anyway, in 2003 this spin-off (note: not a true sequel) came out, exclusive to the GameBoy Advance. I didn't have a GameBoy Advance, but bought the GBA adapter for my GameCube simply to be able to play this game. Now, I'm glad I bought the adapter, as it allowed me to discover the wonderful game known as Metroid Fusion, but Final Fantasy Tactics Advance just wasn't nearly on par with my lofty expectations. It was childish and dumbed down where it shouldn't have been, and the gameplay was expanded upon where it didn't need to be. It wasn't a terrible game, but it wasn't nearly what I had hoped or expected it would be. Let's make a quick comparison. The original Tactics game had an immensely detailed story with more characters than The Wire and more twists and turns than a Dan Brown novel. And plenty of the elements were mature and complex. There was a complicated civil war. There was social commentary on the rift and animosity between the upper and lower classes. There was a puppetmaster manipulating the major players on either side in the war, and as it turned out, there was a puppetmaster manipulating him all along too. There was a morally sound protagonist whose achievements went unrecognized and ignored, and there was an opportunistic morally gray character who became a hero in the eyes of most of the public. There was regicide and fratricide throughout. All things considered, Final Fantasy Tactics had an awesome (and incredibly underrated) story. Tactics Advance, on the other hand, was about a bunch of children who get transported to a fantasy world. Ugh. And then one of them recognizes the fantasy world, specifically, as "the" world from Final Fantasy, one of his favorite series of novels (wait, what?) and games. Quadruple ugh. What's with the meta? What's with this shitty set-up in general? Fortunately, the gameplay remains similar enough to keep this follow-up from being a total letdown, but I still prefer the sleeker and more streamlined approach of the first Tactics game. If every aspect of the first game was a "ten," then I'd give Tactics Advance an eight for gameplay and a two for story: a five, overall. So, yeah. This game was only half as good as its predecessor. But that's okay; said predecessor is one of my favorite games of all time. And a game half as good as a fantastic game is, at the end of the day, an utterly average game. I think what bothers and disappoints me most about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is that it received nearly universal praise upon its release, with the consensus being that it was a slight improvement if anything. I've still got this game's sequel, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, to log, but I doubt I'll jump into it anytime soon. Anyway, if I can leave you with any lasting recommendation, it would be to definitely give Tactics a try, but to also be warned that Tactics Advance feels like a child's attempt to recreate Tactics with a much more Disney-ish story and little more.