Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
I sunk multiple 80+ hour play through's on the original for the PS one, so when I heard they were re-releasing it on the PSP with added content and multiplayer I was sold. I actually got a PSP specifically to play this game. My room mate at the time also got it and we spent way too many hours playing the co-op missions over and over again trying to get the new gear that only drops from the new missions. The new content is actually really fun and really challenging. I just wish the PSP let you play over the internet so I could play this more often with other people.
I enjoyed Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS. I got the version for the PSP and enjoyed that as well. I don't think I was aware of added content or multiplayer functionality. I think I remember some minor changes such as names of monsters, I can't quite recall.
Yep! They added two new classes: Onion knight and Dark Knight. Onion knight is kinda lame and boring. While the job is level 1-7 it's incredibly weak and it's stats suck. Once it's level 8 though it has the highest stats in the game and can equip all equipment, including some special Onion Knight only gear that's crazy overpowered. Unfortunately, you can't use ANY abilities while in the class, which makes it incredibly boring. :\
Dark Knight though... is awesome and also overpowered, lol. It's like a toned down Orlandu that any character can become. The requirements to unlock it are insane though. You have to have level 8 in all the advanced melee jobs, master Knight and Black Mage, and kill (when they turn into crysals/boxes) 20 enemies. Still, it's worth it to make your generic characters that you may have grown attached to just as (if not more) powerful than the special characters. :)
Speaking of Special characters, there are also two new characters to recruit from other FF games. You can recruit Luso from FF Tactics Advance 2 and Balthier from FFXII. Luso is just a clone of the Main character with an added innate Secret Hunt passive. Balthier is a mix of a thief and mechanic, having all the abilities of both plus much better gear options (guns and knight swords!) and a special ability Barrage, which basically attacks 4 times at half strength.
There are two multiplayer modes that they added. One is a basic vs. mode where you fight another player. The other is a series of co-op missions that are actually very, very challenging and a lot of fun. You really need to bring your crazy overpowered builds into the later missions if you hope to beat them. When this game came out my and my room mate at the time both got PSP's and this game, so we played it quite a bit. :)
Cool. I don't know if I knew about the new additions and I've just forgotten or not. Have you played FF Tactics Advanced? I loved that game and it is why I got a Gameboy SP when it came out. Then I got FFTA2 and loved that as well.
I have FF Tactics advance, but I wasn't a huge fan of it. There were two main reasons I gave up on it. First up was that, while having abilities tied to your equipment wasn't that bad (see FFIX for a game with a similiar mechanic) the fact that nearly ALL the abilities were tied to weapons sucked. It took so long to learn each new ability that it was a serious drag on the pace of the game.
The other thing I wasn't a huge fan of was the Judges/rules system. It was an interesting idea but I think it was poorly executed. Throwing random rules into a match was nice to kind of spice things up at first but by the time you progressed into the game where they were throwing out 3 rules every match it became annoying. Plus some of the rules were pure bullshit, lol. Like when you get the rule "cannot attack monsters" and the enemy team has monsters on their side but the winning condition requires you kill the entire team. It also did not help that around that same time I got Tactics Ogre (also on Gameboy) and it was all around a MUCH better tactics game. Because I never really liked the first one, I never tried FF Tactics 2, but I did hear that it was much better than the first one.
Correction: I never tried FF tactics advance 2. If they made a sequel to the PSone/PSP FF Tactics I would be all over that.
Good points! I haven't played Tactics Ogre, but I've heard it's good. I'm aware there are a few versions of it as well.
Specifically, it was Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis for GBA. Great game if you can find it! Amazon has one new for the low, low price of $99.95 if you're interested. :P That game also had a neat multiplayer aspect that my (at the time) room mate and I absolutely abused to the point of being dirty cheaters, lol. Unlocking advanced jobs at level 1? No problem.
I also played the N64 Ogre game, Ogre Battle 64. It is a very different kind of game, it's kind of more of an RTS than a tactics game, but still really fun.
It's worth noting that Yatsumi Matsuno, one of the main people behind FF Tactics and Tactics Ogre is working on a new game. I posted about it not that long ago: http://cheerfulghost.com/WhiteboySlim/posts/1834
Wow! Isn't it amazing how expensive some of these old games are!? Hehehe. I saw your post about the game.