And why grinding shouldn’t exist. No, I will not stop, I can’t sleep.

Playing Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis on GBA has me thinking about this again: it absolutely blows me away to this day that I played a huge amount of Tactics Ogre(TO) on PS1 but could not get past the battle in Dorter where you see the swordsman guy. Got decimated by blackmages and archers. That’s still the tutorial. You can’t even buy gear for classes other than Squires yet. And I was at the same level as the enemy.

I got roadblocked like this in Tacitcs Ogre: Wheel of Fortune on PSP as well, because really what the hell? What on earth was wrong with Training?

So I get that the Training Battles from original TO are a cludge of a thing. Yes, it is kind of weird to set the game down and let it play itself to level your units. Probably shouldn’t exist, sure. The removal of this in every subsequent Yasumi Matsuno tactics game really shows off exactly why it was there, though: grinding in an SRPG is fuckin stupid. Quick question: how good would XCOM be if a story mission wiped your squad in two turns and told you to go grind random worldmap battles? Not fun! This is what Final Fantasy Tactics, (FFT) and also TO Wheel of Fortune and Reborn, actually expect you to do, apparently. Every time I have asked, this is the answer: grind random battles.

Grinding is kind of stupid in any game, “you must advance to arbitrary number to continue”. Some of it happens because a designer can’t really predict how a player will level, but whatever, it’s something to be done away with. Turn based RPGs that don’t suck commonly integrate Auto Battle so that if you need to grind it’s quicker. And turn based RPGs usually have battles that can go by in a minute or two.

Battles were already kind of slow in TO, but in FFT they’re excruciating. Lots of stuff is slower, with bigger fancier animations, the camera always swings around, so on. It makes a nine-tile magic spell in TO look fast. So immediately this is a dumb waste of time that takes forever, even before the XP curve forces you to do several. But also, that early in the game, when you only have squires, FFT is shockingly rude. I didn’t take any deaths but I came close many times. Battling those dumb forest creatures is a real slog at that point, which is why I gave up last time. Like, fuck any game that tells me to go grind tedious battles for literal hours before the tutorial is up.

It also doesn’t help that I think every single other element of FFT is worse than TO, that’s just a bonus. Why is gear locked to classes? Is it such a problem if a Knight uses a shortsword, for fuck’s sake? It limits your class choices to whatever is available in the shop basically. I thought switching my Squires to Knights might help me through that battle, but oops no gear at all!

Why is the squad size six tops and as small as four? Pokemon parties are larger. I can’t do anything, how can I split my forces for instance to do a basic pincer when each formation has at max three guys? Every early battle is “turtle up around spawn and let the enemy come to you”, riveting.

Why are the battlefields so small? 16×16? The GBA game has battlefields that are larger. Hell, TO has battlefields that are larger… I miss the huge castle ramparts with pockmarked fields leading up to a drawbridge, actually organic believable environments. (For an isometric game) There’s never any room to get away… As a result of this movement and attack ranges are limited heavily as well.

Why is healing a throwable? I know there’d be healing magic later but having early game healing be dependent on throwing potions is just hateful. I miss Kachua, who limps you through early TO with extreme range heals, to help get your game started.

Why is magic awful? What are those mages actually doing? They put their hands up, a marker appears at Ramza’s feet, and in a turn he goes up in flames. What kinda shit is this? How the hell do you counter that?

Why are Matsuno and the gang so obsessee with SKILLS? Take away a core mechanic, make it a SKILL!!! In TO everyone could throw stones, block hits, counterattack. Now all of that has to be specced into with skills? Which are classlocked? I really hate this to death, seriously. When every unit can counterattack, battles are deadly and you have to consider the counter before going in for a move. I miss it, now you can just bonk half the time.

Why is Wait Turn gone? This is a niche one but Wait Turn is so cool because your character’s class, stats and equipment all affect it, so while it’s innate to an extent you can influence it, move faster. Have lightweight, weakly-armoured high-speed killsquads. FFT’s turns are just decided by speed like it’s Shining Force II, which is fine I guess I just miss Wait Turn.

The end result is that I have the single dumbest take online: Tactics Ogre Good, Final Fantasy Tactics bad. I hear it said constantly that FFT is designed for beginners, but how? I have played many tactics games (Tactics Ogre, XCOM EU and 2, Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates, Shining Force Sword of Hajya, Valkyria Chronicles) and somehow I get stopped like five hours in. Real video game???

Even though a Skyrim or a Sonic Adventure 2 or an Assassin’s Creed 1 are way worse games that are way worse to play, and I really do not like them at all, Final Fantasy Tactics frustrates me infinitely. It really makes my lil gamer peabrain angry. It’s such a slam-dunk idea: graft the Final Fantasy job system onto Tactics Ogre. Awesome! But they seem to have fucked it up in basically every possible way and now I have this game that I hate. Grrrr, why?

How do I enjoy FFT?