Rating: ★★★★

Week Notes 033:

I’m excited for (and preordered) the Final Fantasy Tactics remaster that releases in a few days.

Week Notes 034:

I bought the Final Fantasy Tactics remaster against my better judgement (not really — I’d just hoped to have finished Baldur’s Gate 3 at this point). I was a huge fan of Tactics Advance as a kid and was always curious about Tactics, but rumors have swelled for years about a potential remaster, so I always put off playing it until the remaster dropped. I’m only in Chapter 2, but I really love it so far; it’s the fluid and customizable job system that I loved from Tactics Advance, and I’m more interested in the story than I anticipated. I’ve always heard that it’s super political, which it is, but there’s enough of a human angle in the relationship with Ramza and Delita that I find it compelling and am excited to see what happens next. I’d like to say I’ll be able to find time during the coming week to play it more.

Week Notes 035:

I’ve played a few more hours of Final Fantasy Tactics over the last few weeks. I’m still positive on it, but I’m missing the diversity of Tactics Advance — I liked having the different races in my clan, but Tactics seems limited to just humans.

Week Notes 039:

I’ve gone back to Final Fantasy Tactics. I’m still really enjoying it, though the long breaks I’ve taken have left me a little lost when it comes to all the different factions and individuals vying for power in the game’s plot. I really like a lot of the major characters (Delita, mostly, and Agrias), and so I’m choosing to focus more on their individual, emotional journeys rather than all the intricate political machinations. I’m keeping up with the broad strokes of the story just fine, but it seems like a notable change from the me of 15 years ago that read the entire Mass Effect codex, and I’m not sure what to attribute that to. The lore of Tactics is much drier, I suppose, and I think my priorities have changed along with the time I have to actually sit down and play games — now that my play sessions are fewer and farther between, I’m not really eager to spend them reading a damn book off the screen.

Week Notes 040:

I played a little more Final Fantasy Tactics. I am growing concerned about Delita; I don’t know where I am in the narrative (I think still Chapter 3?). I’m still loving it and wish I made more time for it (rather than spending all my time fucking around on the computer).

Week Notes 042:

I finished Final Fantasy Tactics and I’m left feeling a bit disappointed in its ending. I guess it’s reasonable for the game to not have a clean, happy conclusion, but much of it feels unresolved. Delita becomes king, but does he actually bring peace and equality to Ivalice? How can he tie together the many broken and separated factions? And then there’s the final scene with him and Ovelia — in many ways, it feels the writers set out to create something Shakespearean, and I suppose the post-credits scene fits in with that, but without any other proper context or build up, it comes completely out of nowhere. Ovelia’s motivations are entirely absent from the narrative, and so her stabbing Delita instead plays out entirely for shock value. It doesn’t track for me that Delita would stab her back after swearing that he would die for her all throughout the game, but perhaps it is the final sign that Delita has been corrupted throughout the narrative: his final act is one of vengeance and self-interest, reinforcing the theme that power corrupts absolutely and that ends don’t justify means. Delita constantly resisted being under others’ control and being used as a tool, and while he may have had actual affection for Ovelia, he still manipulated her and used her for his own ends. Ramza and Alma thus are the only ones who get any kind of “happy ending” (don’t even get me started on Orran, whose Fate of being burned at the stake is revealed in text with cheery music playing behind) because they escape free and untethered.

I can think around it and make it make some sense in my mind, but I’m unsatisfied. There were so many other characters for whom I wanted resolution — Agrias, Mustadio, Rapha, and so on… I realize there is a possibility that the player never recruits these characters or that they die in battle, but I’m still left feeling burned.