Final Fantasy Tactics was made 20 years ago, and remains one of the best Tactical Role Playing Games on the market. 10 years ago, it was remade for the PSP and ported to IOS/Android. Now, in 2017, a professional board game designer takes a look back at the game to see what FFT could have been. What design choices emerge from hints left within the story… the art… the code?
FFT: Emergence is the result of this exploration. Here is a high-level overview of the changes:
Each job has been tweaked, with some being completely redesigned.
Every special character has been modified. Ramza, for example, slowly becomes a Dark Knight over the course of the story.
The Job Tree progression is more intuitive and reflective of character growth.
The “Dark Knight” job has been replaced with the “Magus”, an armor-wearing magician.
Magick charge time has been reduced across the board.
The Faith stat has been brought into balance with Bravery. It is only used for statuses and summons.
30 new abilities have been created.
16 abilities previously only available to enemies have also been unlocked.
Most equipment has received balance tweaks.
Fell Swords replace Bags in the base game. They reward characters with low Faith.
Every storyline battle has been tweaked to give players a greater variety of enemies and a smoother difficulty curve.