Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

If you ever thought turn-based strategy was dry and inaccessible, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance will convince you otherwise — and it does so with incredible depth hidden beneath a friendly surface.

Studio Square took its cult but rather tough tactics from the first Final Fantasy Tactics and sanded off the sharpest edges. The result, from 2003, is a more accessible but still immensely rich turn-based strategy set in a dreamlike version of the world of Ivalice. And that very framing is brilliant: a group of children finds an old spellbook and wakes up in the fantasy realm they had always longed for. The question of whether such an escape from reality is actually a good thing pervades the whole story.

The heart of the game is a job system with more than thirty classes, tied to five playable races. Each unit learns skills by equipping weapons, combines abilities from different professions and grows into exactly the shape you envision. The options for building a party are practically inexhaustible, and experimenting with them is fun for dozens of hours in itself.

The most discussed element, though, is the system of laws (Laws). Before each battle, rules apply that forbid certain actions — for instance using swords, targeting specific enemy types or healing. Break them and you risk a penalty. Some find it annoying, others see in it a brilliant tactical layer that forces you to think differently and improvise. Either way it's the unmistakable signature of this game.

There's a huge amount of content here: hundreds of missions, a combat arena, clan-building, gear collecting and the gradual unveiling of the story about what Ivalice truly is. On the GBA it's one of the most expansive experiences of all — it can easily keep you busy for hundreds of hours and you'll still be discovering new combinations.

Visually the game benefits from a clean, colorful style and pleasant isometric graphics that read wonderfully on a small screen. Hitoshi Sakimoto's music lends the campaign a suitably majestic air.

Why play: For the boundless depth of the job system and dozens of hours of tactical thinking in one of the most accessible strategy games ever released on a handheld.