19th March 2007, 7:51 AM
FFTA is a condensed version of FFT, a very condensed version. It's nowhere near as strategic as FFT and it's mostly based on the idea of being able to play it quickly (most battles go for ten minutes if that).
For those of you that didn't really give FFT a chance, you dont know about the archers as an example. Using a bow that attacks in 5 panels in every direction can be brought to a 8 panel measurement just by getting up on a higher surface, the higher you get, the more spread to your bow's range. But then you have bows vs. crossbows. The crossbows tend to offer more status ailments than bows, but crossbows attack vertically while bows can shoot up and over obsticles.
Magic users are the most complicated. Haste can only be cast in a small panel range from the Time Mage, but as an added bonus that hight of that range is infinite. So if your Time Mage is on the ground level and your Knight or Dragoon is on top of a building (12 hights up) they can recieve haste. But then you have special abilities and equipment in the mix.
A dragoon 'ignores' height. So he can only move in a 4 panel range but infinitely upwards. Once you learn that skill as a dragoon you can then turn him in to an archer or magic user (or someone with high magic equiped with a gun) who ignores height and instantly find the tallest location on the map to snipe from.
These are early-on strats and are the least complicated of scenarios and you can see it's already much more complicated and strat-based than FE. As far as characters, i've played multiple FE games and so far none of them have compared to the story arcs and characters of FFT, like Delita's story arc or awesome characters like Orlandu, not to mention the main character's story. In FE you only get the 2-D 'puppet show' kind of cut scene, in FFT you get cut scenes inside the gameplay using the real time engine and the occasional CG cut scene. Just the story segments leading up the rat cellar alone are much more dramatic and interesting than the puppet show type of story in FE.
As someone who's played both games extensively to their end, I can tell you that FE just doesn't measure up to FFT. Not as a RPG, not as a RTS. FE just feels and plays like a simple RTS that was designed for kids to adults to dive in to while FFT asks the player to plan and think about their strategy well beyond the likes of FE (or even AW).
For those of you that didn't really give FFT a chance, you dont know about the archers as an example. Using a bow that attacks in 5 panels in every direction can be brought to a 8 panel measurement just by getting up on a higher surface, the higher you get, the more spread to your bow's range. But then you have bows vs. crossbows. The crossbows tend to offer more status ailments than bows, but crossbows attack vertically while bows can shoot up and over obsticles.
Magic users are the most complicated. Haste can only be cast in a small panel range from the Time Mage, but as an added bonus that hight of that range is infinite. So if your Time Mage is on the ground level and your Knight or Dragoon is on top of a building (12 hights up) they can recieve haste. But then you have special abilities and equipment in the mix.
A dragoon 'ignores' height. So he can only move in a 4 panel range but infinitely upwards. Once you learn that skill as a dragoon you can then turn him in to an archer or magic user (or someone with high magic equiped with a gun) who ignores height and instantly find the tallest location on the map to snipe from.
These are early-on strats and are the least complicated of scenarios and you can see it's already much more complicated and strat-based than FE. As far as characters, i've played multiple FE games and so far none of them have compared to the story arcs and characters of FFT, like Delita's story arc or awesome characters like Orlandu, not to mention the main character's story. In FE you only get the 2-D 'puppet show' kind of cut scene, in FFT you get cut scenes inside the gameplay using the real time engine and the occasional CG cut scene. Just the story segments leading up the rat cellar alone are much more dramatic and interesting than the puppet show type of story in FE.
As someone who's played both games extensively to their end, I can tell you that FE just doesn't measure up to FFT. Not as a RPG, not as a RTS. FE just feels and plays like a simple RTS that was designed for kids to adults to dive in to while FFT asks the player to plan and think about their strategy well beyond the likes of FE (or even AW).