Ahh, summer vacation.
Or as I used to call it, the “Man It’s Too Hot Outside I’m Gonna Stay In the Air
Conditioning And Binge on Video Games” months.
And as much as I appreciated the attempts of schoolteachers to harsh my mellow, I know
one day they’ll understand that all that time spent breeding chocobos and making Quina
eat various things was well worth it.
It was a magical time.
Unfortunately for this kid, made to run errands to the library (and, in the process, vandalize
a very old-looking book), there is to be no summer vacation.
A much more magical time is in store.
Welcome to Ivalice, kid.
That’s a huge **** chicken staring you down.
You have one chance to survive: Make your time with this clan of adventurers what were
about to beat up said chicken for fun and profit.
Swear your allegiance to the Judge, push button, receive period garb, and proceed to spit-roast
and barbecue this butterball.
And thus, your adventure commences, somewhat like the last Tactics Advance chapter.
The primary difference is in motivation, though: while A1 told of a misanthropic kid who escaped
into a fantasy world because his reality was one of misery, A2’s plot centers around
a boy, stuck in the same fantasy world, presumably trying to find a way home but more than happy
to enjoy the fact that it’s a freakin’ fantasy world.
Much less angst, much more wide-eyed amazement.
And wide-eyed is definitely the way to describe this adventure.
Tactics Advance may have seemed a little bit stripped-down compared to the PlayStation
original, but A2 takes the smaller, cuter style and expands it by an order of magnitude.
Case in point, there are 56 jobs.
FIFTYSIX.
All the way from your standard soldiers, archers, and thieves, to five different colors of mages,
Cannoneers, Flintlocks, Vikings, Raptors, and the playing-card-wielding Trickster class.
And that’s not even getting into the unique classes, available only to plot-relevant and
cameo characters, like Bard, Dancer, and...
Sky Pirate.
Hey, while Balthier’s off doing his own thing, Vaan gets the spotlight.
He certainly didn’t see much of it in 12.
Mechanically speaking, the game follows Tactics Advance fairly closely: The gear you equip
makes new spells and techniques available; once you’ve fulfilled its AP cost, it’s
imprinted permanently on the character.
New systems include a Bazaar option in shops that allows you to make new weapons and gear
from the odds and ends you collect during your adventures, and a system of clan titles
offer new privileges and passive bonuses as a result of your renown.
The law system has been revamped for this new outing, and no longer uses a soccer-style
yellow-card, red-card system; instead, an infraction robs you of your “privilege”
buff, removes the option to raise fallen units, and costs you spoils at the end of the scrum.
Nowhere near as punitive, but it’s still worth your while to obey.
The net result is three hundred missions’ worth of awesome tactical action on the go,
with a much better sleep function thanks to the DS itself.
Of those, about thirty serve to advance the plot and get the kid back home, while the
remaining 270 are there just for fun.
90% of the game is just for fun.
Now that’s a story I can get into.