This is a game i can always come back to for another playtrough and have a good time. As someone who absolutely loves turn based strategy RPG'S (it may be my favorite genre), and loves to experiment, this series is a mix made for me. A while ago i did a 100% completion to get the postgame judge missions, and then you see just how deep this game is. There are some systems that you can miss out on completely when you do a normal playthrough, but are needed to get all the missions. For example monster capturing with a hunter and using the monster bank with a morpher, learning everything with the blue mage when you control monsters with a beastmaster, etc. Sometimes you can miss whole questlines by not checking the rumors regularly or not doing all the dispatch missions. There are so many references to the older main games, Square loves to do that. The graphics are colorful and gorgeous, peak 2d. There are some amazing music tracks in here. Some people seem to complain about the law system, but there are so many ways the game gives you to get around it. In the end the developers just wanted people to not do the exact same tactics each map. If this was the best system to archive that is debatable, but it's an unique system and nicely integrated in the story.

About the story: i can see how it can be hit or miss depending on the person consuming it (like almost all art and media). When i played this game for the first time i was around 12/13 and was in i think the most difficult period of my life. I sheltered myself from the real world problems (like bullying, which is the whole reason the final fantasy Ivalice world got created in this game!) and escaped into games. This story really resonated with me, for that reason. It can be amazing to work yourself up in games and lose yourself in them, but in the end you can't run away from the real world forever. I still love games a lot (evidently), but back then it was a reality check i really needed and i can't believe something that made such an impact on me was a spinoff of a spinoff and on the gba of all things. This game will always stay close to my heart, and i thank the writer(s?) to try subject matter like game addicition that you never see in this kind of game, or any game title for that matter.

Sure, the characters and story are both pretty uninteresting, and the battles can take forever with all the unnecessary title cards and entrances. However, it was just fun to play. Learning abilities through weapons actually made it interesting and worthwhile to take an otherwise uninteresting mission for the rewards, location placement gave the sense that you were building the world around you, the class system and equipment trees were fun, and the overall tactical gameplay was enjoyable. It's not a short game, and it could certainly do with some QOL changes, but I had a blast with this one!

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is a game that took drastic changes from the original Final Fantasy Tactics, but I think almost all of those changes made it a worse game than its predecessor.

There’s a couple good changes in the game, don’t get me wrong: you can finally cancel movement meaning that if you realize that moving to a tile isn’t enough to get in range to attack you can just cancel that and move somewhere else, which is the big QoL feature i wanted the most. Random encounters now appear on the map, which is cool! The game also feels like it was made with the GBA in mind: you’ve got a lot of missions (300), and they feel more compact, more designed around a mentality of being quick pick and play missions, which is fitting for a GBA game. The game’s tone is also way more lighthearted than FFT, which again feels more fitting for a GBA game.

Sadly, the story is not great at all. You play as Marche, a young kid who gets teleported in a magical world full of Final Fantasy inspired imagery, along with some of your friends (tho you’re separated from them), and your goal is to find a way back to the real world. A pretty standard isekai scenario, but none of the characters are really good. For example there’s one of your friend whose entire character arc is “i don’t want to go back to the real world because my hair in white in it and i have to dye it red every day”. There’s nothing really interesting or innovative in the story, and i don’t really care for it’s message on escapism which doesn’t even fit with the narrative that much imo.

And the gameplay is a big, huge, massive step back from FFT imo. None of the maps are really that interesting or memorable. The game UI is atrocious, there’s no button to automatically equip your best equipment, i don’t even think there’s a sort button either, seeing if an item is better than what you have equipped is so unintuitive it took me 10 hours to figure out it was a feature, there’s a lot of issues with the menuing in this game and none of it is due to the lack of buttons the GBA has.

Abilities have been reworked too: instead of spending JP to learn an ability of your choice, you learn them from your equipment, like in FF9. This system is awful. It makes sense in FF9 because each character has a specific class (Zidane is a thief, Steiner is a knight, etc..) so this system allows you to build their specific class as you wanted. In FFTA everyone can change job between fights, so it makes no sense. Worse even, some of the best abilities are locked behind equipment you can’t find without following a guide because you need to steal them (which requires getting the right stealing ability) or do specific missions or w/e to find them. I didn’t follow a guide, so i ended up only having the most basic of abilities which sucked.

The game is also very grind heavy. Unlike in FFTA, there’s no level scaling for enemies, and only doing the story missions with a few side ones here and there won’t be enough to have a good enough team for the endgame. I had to grind around 10 levels for it (which isn’t even hard, just boring), and even then the final boss had an attack targeting my entire team that one shot almost everyone.

Overall, this game isn’t really bad, it’s just very forgettable, and a lot of its design wasn’t enjoyable to me, especially coming from FFT. If you enjoy it at least there’s a lot of content in it, but for me, it’s just a disappointing “sequel” to an excellent game

One time, I was arguing with my buddy, and while we were running the ol' back 'n forth, he said something to the effect of "handheld entries in a series can never compare to their console counterparts". Now, I'm a big DS/GBA fan, so naturally I vehemently disagreed. But of course, as the open-minded, introspective, reasonable individual I am, I had to give it some actual thought later. Does his declaration really hold no weight? It's not too farfetched, consoles are far more powerful than portable devices after all. So I ran down a list of series I've played, and, though there were many exceptions, I understood where he was coming from. Many of these games (often despite their best efforts) can't compare to the scope and execution seen in their console counterparts.

So I played FFTA, keeping this in mind, and found that although it doesn't hold a candle to it's predecessor, it's a great game in its own right. Gameplay is noticeably watered-down compared to FFT, with job variety and the extent of customization being lower (as not all races have access to all jobs), and the combat being much easier, BUT I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun mixing and matching what I could and letting it rip. The story was VERY different from FFT too, but it was pretty touching (and not as hard to follow). It's also neat to see the origins (I think) of Viera, Nu Mou, Bangaas, Judges, and the new design of Moogles (which you would stay for later Ivalice games, like FFXII). I'm pretty sure I even recognized some locations too.

I realize I might be too liberal with the FFT comparisons but it's only natural, this is it's sequel. Regardless, FFTA tried to do its own thing, and I had fun, so clearly it did it pretty well.

Bundled with Final Fantasy I & II Dawn of Souls as a birthday gift, these were my official first entries to the Final Fantasy franchise (unless I count Chocobo Racing too which played a little earlier).
Be warned however, this isn't the Final Fantasy Tactics on the go people wanted, that would be War of the Lions released years later for the PSP, with some minor (or major, depends on who you ask) changes.

The story plays that Hero's Journey archetype with a flavour of "Isekai", and a dash of escapism philosophy.
The gameplay is great and quite addictif with the missions, and the race/job systems, much like Tactics, without however the Zodiac stats, and much more forgiving in general, it was meant to be play in short sections after all.

I recommended it wholeheartedly.

Gameplay: Great.
Story: Good
Controls: Great
Graphics: Good for its time
Length: Great. There's endgame content but it's repetitive.
Characters: Good
Mechanics: People say that the Laws/Judge system is annoying, it is, but I think it's what made the game unique and challenging. lol

Note: Played on RG35XX Retro handheld console.

Gameplay: Great
Story: Good
Controls: Good
Graphics: Good (for its time)
Length: Great