Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions

 PSP
User Score
9.0

Universal acclaim- based on 456 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 390 out of 456
  2. Mixed: 40 out of 456
  3. Negative: 26 out of 456
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  1. Osidius
    Jul 7, 2012
    3
    This game has no value in the modern SRPG field. Issues include:

    1) The worst thing about this game is the AI. You often have guests - friendly AI controlled characters - on your team that screw up everything. For instance, one of them ran into a doorway, behind which was almost the entire enemy army. He was a strong fighter, so I positioned my White Mage behind him to heal why he    This game has no value in the modern SRPG field. Issues include:

    1) The worst thing about this game is the AI. You often have guests - friendly AI controlled characters - on your team that screw up everything. For instance, one of them ran into a doorway, behind which was almost the entire enemy army. He was a strong fighter, so I positioned my White Mage behind him to heal why he fought. I healed him, it came to his turn...and he used a potion on himself (to restore about 15 of his 78 hit points) and ran away, leaving the enemy army against my White Mage. Horrendous.

    2) You place your characters on grey square tiles before you even get to see the map. Random enemy placement often results in team members being in less than ideal positions.

    3) The camera is horrible. It works off the four angles of the board, so if an enemy is in between walls in the middle of the map you usually can't see them. Worse, you generally have to exit the command menu to actually control the camera.

    4) There's no easy way to check the turn list or AOE on enemies attacks. You have to exit the command menu, bring up another menu, find the character you want and click on them. This really slows games down, as enemies will often charge a spell within two seconds, so you're checking every move to see where you can and can't move and wondering whether they've locked the attack to the unit or tile. The enemy always knows what you've done, but there's no way for you to know.

    5) It's impossible to keep your team alive. Phoenix Downs restore a random amount of health, which is always less than a single hit from an enemy. Trying to restore an ally to health usually results in the death of your healer.

    6) Enemies rank off your highest level character. The game's tutorial suggests you keep a balanced team, but it's impossible when in one mission your entire army dies. You go to town, hire new warriors, find a random battle, and then die instantly because the enemies are 8 levels higher than you.

    I honestly have no idea how this was ever considered any good when it was released, but it certainly isn't any good now. All the Fire Emblem games are basically the same gameplay wise, but they are infinitely better than this. The same goes for Jeanne D'Arc, the Disgaea games and Tactics Ogre.

    I would never recommend this game to anyone. My biggest regret is assuming it would be good and buying it off the PSN, since I can't return it.    … Expand
  2. GlennG.
    Oct 11, 2007
    3
    Only people who had never played Jeanne D'Arc on the PSP would give this a high score. The controls suck. You can't position the playing field to easily see the players. Everything is too small, including the text and the figures. The game should have been redone, not just ported to PSP code. I think a lot of people played the game on the previous platform and are giving it a Only people who had never played Jeanne D'Arc on the PSP would give this a high score. The controls suck. You can't position the playing field to easily see the players. Everything is too small, including the text and the figures. The game should have been redone, not just ported to PSP code. I think a lot of people played the game on the previous platform and are giving it a 'nostalgia' boost in scores for the PSP version. Stick with Jeanne D'Arc and you'll be inifinitely happier, if you like TRPG's.… Expand
  3. H.P.
    Dec 3, 2007
    0
    Final Fantasy Tactics was my favorite PSOne game of all time. I spent a year looking forward to this game coming out. Here is how my first day witht he game went: -Went to BestBuy to get game. -Unwrapped game and put it into PSP. -Giggled like a little girl -Turned on PSP, watched cutscene, Great Stuff, (what's with the different dialogue?) -Started first level (Wow the graphics are Final Fantasy Tactics was my favorite PSOne game of all time. I spent a year looking forward to this game coming out. Here is how my first day witht he game went: -Went to BestBuy to get game. -Unwrapped game and put it into PSP. -Giggled like a little girl -Turned on PSP, watched cutscene, Great Stuff, (what's with the different dialogue?) -Started first level (Wow the graphics are worse than the PSOne, everything is stretched out, rather that it being turned into true widescreen it was just stretched horizontally) -Put in my FFT copy inot PSOne just to make sure I wasn't imagining things (I wasn't) -Beat first level, went on to next cutscene and the first bandit battle (Wow the dialogue is completely different and now has weird pseudo-Elde-Englishe tone) -Cringed -Took game out of PSP, put back into case. -Put up for sale on Amazon.com Auctions.… Expand
  4. AlexisD.
    Oct 21, 2007
    3
    I played the psone version on my psp for around 5 hours, but when I heard that they were making a UMD port for this game I stopped playing and thought I'll just wait for the UMD port. When I got my hands on the UMD, I was so dissapointed to learn that the UMD version of the game looked exactly like the psone version. They didn't change anything!! I was hoping it will be more I played the psone version on my psp for around 5 hours, but when I heard that they were making a UMD port for this game I stopped playing and thought I'll just wait for the UMD port. When I got my hands on the UMD, I was so dissapointed to learn that the UMD version of the game looked exactly like the psone version. They didn't change anything!! I was hoping it will be more colorful and suited for the psp but i was wrong. They just changed the cut scenes which is a real shame. This is a real waste of money. I wouldn't call this a remake. I was really expecting that they'll re- done the whole game but they just ported it straight from psone.… Expand
  5. DanP.
    Jan 20, 2008
    4
    This game hurts my eyes. I mean that literally. My eyes hurt after playing it for more than a few minutes. The reason is simple: the entire screen is blurry! For some unknown reason they apparently render the screen slightly smaller than the PSP's resolution and then scale it up. The end effect is that my eyes hurt after playing. Add in the ridiculously slow effect animations and the This game hurts my eyes. I mean that literally. My eyes hurt after playing it for more than a few minutes. The reason is simple: the entire screen is blurry! For some unknown reason they apparently render the screen slightly smaller than the PSP's resolution and then scale it up. The end effect is that my eyes hurt after playing. Add in the ridiculously slow effect animations and the complete lack of improvement to the game UI, and you're lefting wondering if Square-Enix did anything beyond recompiling the code for the PSP. Along with the poor video quality comes poor sound quality - things like thunder claps and roaring wind instead sound like high pitched squeals. It almost seems that no one at Square Enix ever tested this game on a real PSP, assuming they tested it at all.… Expand
  6. RhodyTobin
    Oct 10, 2009
    1
    This game has absolutely no polish. It seriously feels like nobody bothered to give it a quick play through before releasing it. The old problems (bafflingly terrible camera, convoluted mess of a story, complete lack of difficulty balancing, broken jobs and characters like the Calculator and TG Cid) combine with whole new ones (lack of quicksave in a handheld game, immense amounts ofThis game has absolutely no polish. It seriously feels like nobody bothered to give it a quick play through before releasing it. The old problems (bafflingly terrible camera, convoluted mess of a story, complete lack of difficulty balancing, broken jobs and characters like the Calculator and TG Cid) combine with whole new ones (lack of quicksave in a handheld game, immense amounts of slowdown during every single move that isn't a basic attack) to bring this terrible old game down to a whole new level. Don't let your nostalgia fool you. This game is unforgivably broken.… Expand
  7. HosenmangelWerner
    Sep 29, 2007
    0
    This game is too hard without cheats!
  8. In-between
    Jan 13, 2022
    2
    This stuff aged poorly. Clunky menus, terrible (truly terrible) AI, confusing class system (they did SO WELL in FFTA) and the story is indeed old by now.

    I was searching for another fft games aside from ffta and ffta2, but this one got me bored in like maybe 2 or 3 hours. Terrible.

Awards & Rankings

1
#1 Best PSP Game of 2007
1
#1 Most Discussed PSP Game of 2007
2
#2 Most Shared PSP Game of 2007

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
88

Generally favorable reviews - based on 41 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 39 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 41
  3. Negative: 0 out of 41
  1. games(TM)
    80
    As for consolidation and logical expansion, Final Fantasy Tactics: War Of The Lions achieves more for SRPGs than recent efforts from other studios. [Aug 2007, p.108]
  2. Pelit (Finland)
    92
    Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions has a brilliant storyline and addictively deep battle mechanics. The game is pure gold from the beginning to the very end. [Sept 2007]
  3. Electronic Gaming Monthly
    83
    But Tactics is still engrossing, time-consuming fun. [Nov 2007, p.116]
See all critic reviews »