Final Fantasy Tactics

Every so often, a game comes out that ends up defining something. Defines the year it came out. Defines its entire hardware generation. Defines an entire console. Or in the case of Final Fantasy Tactics, defines a genre. A title that will forever be used as the measuring stick for which all subsequent games will be compared to. Any and all strategy RPGs in the years since must face the same trial: is it as good as Final Fantasy Tactics? A genuine, bonafide instant classic in its own time, whose legacy and renown have only grown in the decades since. Tactics, despite being a spin-off, is arguably the best game in the Final Fantasy series, which is saying something, as I believe a wise man once said that it's easier to lead a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to find a bad Final Fantasy game.

Tactics is a great game. It is also a very dangerous one. RPGs keep my attention through two things: their plot, and numbers going up. You watch those numbers go up enough, and there's a reward for it. Maybe you become stronger. Maybe you learn a new ability. Maybe you can use new weapons. Maybe your Pokemon will turn into another Pokemon. There is always something. FFT makes numbers addicting. FFT is the final evolution of the Job system that began in FFIII, and was thought to have been perfected in FFV. Pick a job, learn its skills, then switch to a different job while still being able to use the abilities of the previous one. More numbers means more skills. More numbers means jobs level up. Jobs leveling up means you get more jobs to select.

You can have fighters that cast healing magic, but they can also learn the ninjas' ability to dual-wield, leading to magic using tanks that can hit twice with powerful weapons. Or learn the knights' abilities of breaking enemy equipment, and give it to a chemist, a class that can equip a gun, and now you can leave enemies without the added defense their armor gives them as your frontline moves in to do attacks that will hit harder with all that protection gone, with the Dragoon's ability to ignore the height of level terrain to snipe from the tallest point of the map. Or an Oracle that can deal damage up close with a Bo Staff, with the added ability to use mathematical formulas in order to cast devastating magic with no cost, while being able to counter enemy attacks with other magic spells, even ones you haven't learned yet. The amount of combinations that can break the game and turn your ragtag group of mercenaries into killers is what will take up all of your time. If you're like me, you will double or even triple the length of the game because of all the fucking numbers. And this is just the original Playstation game, I haven't even gotten into the PSP port, with extra jobs to unlock and new characters to use them with.

You spend 30 or more hours of your life, watching your little units become weapons of mass destruction. You search every map for hidden items, stealing rare gear from high level enemies, becoming stronger and stronger.

And none of it fucking matters.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a game about a young man named Ramza who very quickly learns what massive privilege he has, and the horrific cost his family charges others in order to keep it. Ramza will eventually draw swords against his own brothers if it means that the downtrodden will have a better life. His sense of justice will cost him his closest friends. He'll be branded a heretic by the church. He will become a fugitive and a pariah in order to expose the massive corruption at the top of society. This is a journey of Ramza doing what he believes is right, to doing what he knows is right. He does all he can, while the government and the church conspire and kill one another in their quest for power. Ramza will slay ancient demons collaborating with this leadership. He will risk life and limb and reputation, throwing away a comfortable life in the name of equality.

It will not matter.

While Ramza destroys the resurrected god behind all this bull shit, the game does not have the cliched ending where everything is fine. No, Ramza defeated an eldritch horror beyond comprehesion, but he could not slay the true evil: that which lies in the heart of man. The government is still corrupt, and they still need to keep a lid on everything that's happened. Ramza is still a wanted fugitive that has disgraced God. He and his sister Alma are forced to flee their home country and go into hiding, truly leaving behind everything they've ever known. The one man that plans to tell the truth about the events of this game is arrested and executed by the state, because Ramza's name and actions are an inconvenience; nobody can know that their country is riddled with corruption and prone to demonic influence. It will only be generations later that Ramza's story can be properly told.

All the work, the fighting, the suffering, the enduring, all for nothing. You don't matter anymore. You don't even exist. Your contributions to the world intentionally kept a secret. We've all heard about people that we were meant to never know. Rebels and activists moved to the fringes of history for a more sanitized history to be told. They might be people in your family tree. Might even be the bitter old person down the street. It sucks. So fucking frustrating to know that people in this world will not get the credit they deserve for a long time, if ever. You wanted to change the world for the better, and this is what you get: hated in your own time, and forgotten about afterwards.

I don't say that Final Fantasy Tactics is meaningless as an insult. I appreciate this ending. There's no big party afterwards where everyone is happy. A war took place, with thousands upon thousands of casualties, and the world needs something to blame, so it picked the man who survived. It's ugly, it makes no sense. Why does someone who did everything right still lose in the end? We, as a species, don't have an answer for this. Even in a realm of Sword and Sorcery, there is still no answer for this. That answer is for us to eventually figure out.