History YMMV / FinalFantasyTactics

---> '''[[SpellMyNameWithAnS Rapha]]''': Look, Marach! A new dawn is risen. Can... can you see it? So often we sat together talking, waiting for the coming of first light. We'd talk of the journeys we wanted to make together, wouldn't we? How when the war ended, we would go back and visit our old village. You remember, Marach, don't you? Don't you? [[PleaseWakeUp Tell me you do! Tell... tell me you'll still go]]!

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: The game may use chibi sprites for the characters, but the themes and settings are as dark as they can be that no child would understand or should ever see. War, betrayals, manipulation, lots of murder, and even implied rape are all in the game, even the graphical details don't show it. The sequels heavily dial back the dark themes and appear more approachable for children to play, though there are some darker themes that can pop up every now and then.

* Shipping: Canonically, Ramza and Agrias develop a strong platonic comradery, with no hint of romance, but they're a very popular couple in fanfiction and doujins.

* OneTruePairing: Canonically, Ramza and Agrias develop a strong platonic comradery, with no hint of romance, but they're a very popular couple in fanfiction and doujins.

* FanPreferredCouple: In Japan, [[HoYay Ramza x Delita and Agrias x Ovelia]] are quite popular. It's probably helped by that final scene between Delita and Ovelia where [[spoiler:''they physically stab each other'' (which WordOfGod says won't be fatal for either of them)]].

** Argath's [[spoiler: killing of Delita's sister at Fort Ziekden]] - even though it [[spoiler: rather brutally resolved the kidnapping standoff]]. The fact that he shows little remorse is the clincher.
** Speaking of Hashmal and Folmarv, he ''might'' have crossed it when he [[spoiler: murdered his son Isilud and massacred an entire castle]], but if not then, he most ''definitely'' did when he [[spoiler: raised Zalbaag as a zombie and forced him to fight his younger brother Ramza]].

** The sheer amount of the [[BlindIdiotTranslation translation errors]] vary between outright killing the seriousness of a scene and being hilarious. It's especially funny when you first encounter Isilud, in which Ramza's response to "hand over the stones you have" is "[[NoYou No, you hand yours over]]."
** In Riovanes castle, when Folmarv holds up his stone intending to slaughter Barrington and all the other guards because HeKnowsTooMuch... Barrington literally ''just walks away very fast'' in time as if he knows what's happening. The next time he's seen? He's confronting Rapha on the roof. A surprising amount of people [[FreezeFrameBonus didn't actually catch this]] - causing people to think that Folmarv simply ''missed the obvious person in the room with them''.
* PlayerPunch: [[spoiler:Tietra's death]] at the end of Chapter One, which also kickstarts Delita's actions throughout the rest of the game.

** Ramza and Delita have this even after they split, and especially to those wearing their ShippingGoggles.
** If not them, then Agrias and Ovelia, since Agrias does seem to have some sort of obsession over Ovelia; but that's technically {{Les Yay}}.

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: Why Byblos helps you out during the battle against [[BonusBoss Zodiark/Elidibus]], and afterwards offers to join your party, is never explained.

* EvilIsSexy: [[spoiler:Ultima, at least her High Seraph form.]]

** Near the end of Chapter 2, Folmarv tells Ovelia she's not actually Princess Ovelia but a commoner raised to be a puppet, as the real one already died. This is a huge reveal, one that shocks Ovelia to her core, and suggests future events could be shaped by the truth getting out. However, the reveal doesn't get referenced again in the original version of the game, and only gets a few passing mentions in the ''War of the Lions'' version, with few characters really commenting, or even acknowledging the reveal enough to make it seem like it was important, and by Chapter 4, it is never acknowledged again because o the focus on the Lucavi. Part of this is because Ovelia is a supporting character who doesn't travel with Ramza, preventing more direct focus, but it comes across as something you could remove it, and the story wouldn't change at all.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: During Chapter 3, various moments imply that the Auracite Stones are not AlwaysChaoticEvil, but that the stones react to the holder's desires, which is why so many holders became possessed by the Lucavi, as the stones respond to the ill intent in their heart, or their desire for power and use it to break free. This is shown by Marach being brought back to life after dying because of Rapha's grief over his death while avoiding being possessed by a Lucavi, something Ramza is startled by and even somewhat comments on. Despite this implication and idea, the game never uses it behind that single moment, and it never is discussed again, which leads to people feel like Marach's revival was an AssPull, and that Auracite's to be just evil despite it being implied otherwise.

** The script of the PSP version was rewritten to get rid of the cheesy script in the original, and to fit better with the rest of the [[TheVerse Ivalice-verse]]. They even added a SpoonyBard bit that didn't appear in the original:

** Belias is a hard fight, and he comes with several strong mooks in a small room. However, the fight is treated as the same level used for the DuelBoss with [[ThatOneBoss Wiegraf]], meaning any buffs Ramza has remain on him when the fight starts. Since a common strategy in that fight is to buff Ramza's Speed and Attack during the fight to be able to reliably beat Wiegraf, this means you start the fight with Belias with a fully buffed Ramza left exactly where he was last turn, meaning it's easy for Ramza to just walk up, and casually one-shot the Lucavi in a single turn.

* TierInducedScrappy: ''Final Fantasy Tactics''' notorious balance issues has lead to several jobs and characters being way overpowered or way underpowered, and typically mods rebalancing the game will have these jobs especially targeted with buffs or nerfs.
** '''High Tier'''
*** Orlandeau. He has ''all'' the swordspell abilities and great stats. He also joins the party with an Excalibur equipped, giving him automatic permanent Haste as well. His damage output breaks the game worse than anything except a Ninja with Martial Arts (or a Monk with Two Swords, though Ninjas do it better) or a mage with Flare/Holy and maxed out Calculator abilities, and the former is restricted to dealing that damage in 1v1 melee range while the latter takes ''a lot'' of grinding to achieve. You get Orlandeau just handed to you in the story, and he comes broken.
*** Ninjas, who pretty much outclass all the other non-special physical jobs. They're by far the fastest job among the normal jobs while Speed is the [[OneStatToRuleThemAll most important stat]] (and only Balthier and the AwesomeButImpractical mastered Onion Knight exceed that speed in the PSP port), they get innate 4 movement and jump to have tremendous mobility, they have among the highest physical attack, have innate Two Swords to let them dual-wield whatever while keeping your support skillslot free, and their Throw skillset gives them an instant and very powerful long-range attack as long as you have the gil to buy stacks of throwable weapons (which considering how easy money is to get in this game, you won't be struggling to financially support their throwing). Their 1v1 melee damage output is incredible as is (and the second hit ignores reaction abilities like the infamous Blade Grasp), give them the Martial Arts support skill and they can break the damage cap rather easily (especially if you have some means to boost their PA in-battle). Their only downside is that they're [[GlassCannon squishy]], but damage output gets high enough that tankier units only get to take one or two more hits anyway, and that doesn't really matter when Ninjas can reach and kill enemies before they get to act. Their tremendous stats and abilities also allows them to make better use of most other physical jobs' skillsets than those jobs can (with only Samurai and Geomancer being exceptions as their skills rely on magic), so it's typically much better to have a Ninja carrying another job's skillset rather than using that job instead.
*** For a specific skill that gets this, there's Gain JP Up/JP Boost. It's a support skill that when equipped will increase the amount of JP you get from all actions by 50%. Seeing how this saves so much time in unlocking jobs and learning all your wanted skills, and how LevelScaling random encounters become a lot easier to manage when you're accessing jobs and skills at far lower levels than you're expected to, it is essentially nigh-mandatory to run this as your support skill for all your units until they're at the end of their job progression and have nearly all the skills you'll want learned. The dislike here is that a lot of players feel it kills build creativity through the early and mid game when every unit is running the same support skill that gives no direct benefit in battle, while the alternative is having to spend ''a lot'' more time grinding ''and'' dealing with significantly tougher random encounters when all that extra grinding for JP is shooting your level through the roof too.
** '''Low Tier'''
*** Rapha and Marach, whose abilities were all but ineffectual in combat, and all they were good for (aside from cannon fodder) was Rafa's ability to find treasure in the Deep Dungeon. Slightly improved in the PSP version, where Rapha's Skyseer skills are much more powerful and accurate, though her brother is even worse than before. With proper planning both Rafa and Malak can actually become incredibly (Read: Cid-level) deadly, Malak more than Rafa though. However, the sheer amount of strategy involved to achieve this result is often [[MagikarpPower far more trouble than it's worth]].
*** Cloud becomes AwesomeButImpractical since by the time you get him, he's massively OvershadowedByAwesome and his abilities have a charge time ''and'' to use them, he has to use a specific sword that is weaker than swords you find in Act 2 AND can only be found with the find treasure skill in a specific area. By then, you have a lot of characters who get instant-use abilities that really ''really'' break the game.
*** Mustadio, as besides the issue of Guns functioning as a FixedDamageAttack, his special class' skillset, Snipe, is one of the worst in the game; it only has three skills, two of which just inflict either the Don't Act or Don't Move status to a single target, and the third is only effective against undead enemies, giving the Engineer job both little utility and low power compared to other jobs. Then the Engineer's other skills are just the Squire's with no alteration. The introduction of Balthier in the PSP port hasn't helped matters either, since Balthier is better than him in almost every way, in addition to being given a objectively better variation of his class as well. Making this sadder is that he's actually a rather popular character with a dedicated fanbase, but his low-level usefulness means others aren't so fond of him, especially since he is a required character to keep around to access side quests that give you several other special characters in Chapter 4, while in the Playstation version your party space was very limited.
*** Meliadoul becomes recruitable only after the point in the story where you can get Cid, who has her entire skillset as well as numerous other abilities that are more useful against nonhuman opponents. Her sole advantage is the ability to equip female-only equipment like the Ribbon and Chantage, as well as the upgraded Javelin weapon which, while awesome, requires her to be in 1-2 range of enemies while Cid and Beowulf could hit from further away. However, this changes in "War of the Lions".
*** Archers; they have mediocre stats, and even though the costless ranged attack they get in Bows is nice, Bows are pretty weak and you don't often get to fight in maps where they can really take advantage of their range (i.e. in maps with significant height deviation, you'll often be fighting from the low ground). But what truly pushes them to being a low tier scrappy is their skillset; Archers get Charge/Aim, which consists ''entirely'' of just charging their basic attack to varying degrees and is by far the least useful skillset in the game. Besides being just so lame compared to what other jobs get with their skills, this skillset doesn't give them any real additional utility and charge levels beyond the few lowest are most of the time impractical as they take so long to do. Plus unlike with magic, you can't target a unit specifically, so if they move out of the way before your charge goes off you'll just hit the panel they were on instead of following them. When it comes to the other few utility skills they can learn outside their primary skillset, Speed Save and Concentrate might be useful, but players will often only use Archers to get a couple quick levels in the job to unlock much more desirable jobs that have Archer as a prerequisite (such as the Thief and especially coveted Ninja). At least Archers have some early game utility before their damage starts falling behind badly and enemies get better at dodging arrows.
*** Squires; they're supposed to be really underpowered as they're the starting stepping stone for physical jobs, but compared to the other starter job for magical jobs, Chemists, they really got the short-end of the stick. When Chemists get the Item skillset for reliable and instant healing that isn't influenced by Faith, have inherent Item Throw so they don't need to use their support skill slot on it, and get to use Guns for reliable long-distance chip damage, they turn out to be viable support units in their own right up to the endgame even when far more advanced jobs are unlocked. But when it comes to the Squire's Basic Skill/Fundamentals skillset, while Stone Throw is useful for grinding JP at the beginning of the game, once you're past the beginning of the game and have enough skills unlocked to not need to rely on Stone Throw to get extra JP, the only always useful skill in their skillset is Accumulate/Focus, while Squires get no other bonuses, are very limited in equipment they can wear, and are significantly outclassed statistically by other physical-oriented jobs. So whereas there is good reason to keep a unit with Chemist as their primary job throughout the game and not just use Items as a secondary skillset, you'll have no reason to legitimately use a Squire again after the first few battles once your units have Gain JP Up/JP Boost and maybe Accumulate unlocked. Note that this does not apply to Ramza, who has a special Squire Job with good stats, access to all non-female Armor and Helmets, the ability to wield Knight Swords, and more useful skills on top of what Squires get (including the GameBreaker Yell/Tailwind as soon as Chapter 1).
*** In the PSP Port the Onion Knights; they're supposed to initially be a JokeCharacter, with their potential only being unlocked once you mastered every other job in the game besides Squire, Chemist, Mime, and Dark Knight (which doesn't just entail getting all those jobs to level 8, it means ''learning every one of their skills too''). If you actually go through that effort to unlock the mastered Onion Knight, sure their stats become far higher than every other job and they can equip absolutely everything, but they still can't use any skills whatsoever, so all you're left with is a unit that can just go walk up to and whack things really hard, while damage output isn't hard to achieve with other jobs; with the right setup and enough levels, other jobs can hit the damage cap reliably on top of performing other utilities, which you're going to be able to do by having to master nearly every other job to unlock the mastered Onion Knight anyway.
*** Monsters in general, who with their inability to use equipment, only having Counter as their reaction skill, and each having only between 2-4 set skills they can use (one of which is usually just a basic attack, and another that is only accessible when immediately adjacent to another unit with the Monster Skill/Beastmaster support skill), are extremely limited in their potential and utility compared to human units. A few especially powerful monsters can still make effective units though (e.g. Tiamats have incredibly powerful damage output from long-range that not even Ninjas can match, and Red Chocobos are a LightningBruiser with mobility that human units will have a hard time matching and have access to a powerful long-ranged instant attack in Chocobo Meteor), but most monsters are just straightup trash, and even the good ones are still overly limited.
** '''Mixed Tier'''
*** Black Mages. They initially appear to be {{Crutch Character}}s, as while their spells are devastating in the early game, around the midgame they start falling off as their weaker spells no longer do enough damage to be worthwhile as the power of magic increases at a linear rate, while their stronger spells are slower to cast, and since casters take extra damage with no chance to dodge if hit while chanting, their more physically minded opponents can close the distance and usually one-shot them. Even if the Black Mage lives through the hit, the splash damage from the magic will finish the job. Plus the Black Magic skillset offers little utility outside of offensive magic (having no support spells, and their only useful status spell is Frog), and is completely outclassed by Summon magic, as it features spells of various utilities, all Summon spells smart target (i.e. offensive spells won't affect your units and support spells won't affect the enemy), and they're much stronger with a larger AOE while having comparable charge times. However the Black Mage has by far the highest magical attack multiplier while having no speed penalty, so they thoroughly outclass all the other jobs at using any skillset that relies on MA, and thus there's little reason to not have a Black Mage carry a magic-based skillset you want to use, leaving Black Mages as the only real optimal end job for any magic-based unit. This get exemplified most by having a Black Mage with high Faith carry Math Skill; with Holy or Flare they can one-shot nearly anything even with bad Zodiac compability, while Math Skill allows them to target several or all enemies at once with Holy/Flare, and thus Black Mages suddenly become gamebreakers.
*** Calculators. Their Math Skill is broken - they can instantly cast most spells in the game for no MP, using divisions of CT, level, EXP, and height to select targets. However, to learn Math Skill you have to first spend time as a Calculator, and Calculators ''themselves'' are useless to the point of being a handicap; they have a lower MA multiplier than even most physical jobs so that they can't do much damage or good with their spells, they can't equip rods nor staves to boost their MA as much as other magical jobs can, and have an absolutely abysmal speed stat (having half the speed multiplier of an average job) that means they'll only get one turn for every two or three that any other class gets. If you go through the effort to grind out their Math Skill though, nothing stops you from having a much more functional job carry it, including the aforementioned Black Mage to absolutely trivialize the game to such a degree that the speedrun community hold a separate category for no Math Skill.

** There is a way to cheat the Job Point system in the [=PS1=] version. [[spoiler: Go buy a skill, get to the point where it asks you if you want to buy this skill. Then hold down the square button and press the up or down arrow to switch placement of skills. This may cause you to buy a skill you already own or you couldn't possibly afford. After backing out you will find that this has caused the game to glitch and you either have 9999JP, 0000JP which acts as an infinite, or that it has stolen away all your JP or given you a marginal amount more. The exact effects have been mapped out on other websites. Not all jobs can be glitched in this way due to not having enough skills to to roll over a page, but you may be happy to note that most of the more expensive and time-consuming jobs can. Have fun [[GameBreaker smiting people with Bahamut]] [[DiscOneNuke the minute you gain the Summoner class]].]]

* {{Narm}}: The sheer amount of the [[BlindIdiotTranslation translation errors]] vary between outright killing the seriousness of a scene and being hilarious. It's especially funny when you first encounter Isilud, in which Ramza's response to "hand over the stones you have" is "[[NoYou No, you hand yours over]]."

** The plot itself. Are the Lucavi demons a worthy addition to a Final Fantasyesque storyline, or are they an unnecessary addition to a plot that had until that point been grounded in reality? Or is the plot just reusing beats from ''VideoGame/TacticsOgre''?

** Unless you are doing a challenge run? Your party ''will'' include Orlandeau and Beowulf. And possibly Agrias and Meliadoul (''Especially'' in War of the Lions)

%% Barrington has been judged not to be a Complete Monster by the cleanup thread. Do not re-add this example without first consulting the thread.

** Wiegraf's signature move is Hallowed Bolt (Lightning Stab), a long-rage Holy-elemental attack that takes effect instantly. Because the battlefield in which you fight Wiegraf - alone, mind you - is so small, he can hit you with it on the first turn. A second hit from Hallowed Bolt will kill you, no matter what class Ramza is or what equipment he has. Literally the only way to survive Hallowed Bolt is to heal after every hit (Auto-Potion and Lifefont are both godsends for this), and then boost your speed stat up high enough that you can kill Wiegraf before he uses it. Agrias and Cid both have Hallowed Bolt, but they never get to use it to completely own a duel in the way Wiegraf does.

* FanPreferredCouple:
** Ramza and Agrias are a very popular couple in fanfictions and doujins.
** In Japan, [[HoYay Ramza x Delita and Agrias x Ovelia]], are also quite popular.

* SpiritualAdaptation:

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation/FinalFantasy Here.]]

** Tietra's death at the hands of a remorseless Argath after being ordered to shoot by a simarly remorseless Zalbag in the standoff with Gragoroth at the end of Chapter 1. Besides being the catalyst that changed Ramza's and Delita's path throughout the rest of the game, it really sets the dark mood for the game's story and established that the nobility, including Ramza's brothers, aren't the good guys in this story.

* ItsEasySoItSucks: A few battles can catch inexperienced players offguard, such as the infamous Dorter City Slums and the Wiegraf duel + Belias sequential battle, but the game as a whole suffers from this, especially for those that know what they're doing. While random encounteres scale with your level and can become brutal if you try overlevelling too much, story battles don't scale at all, and you really don't need to do that much grinding to quickly outpace the enemy quality in story battles, especially by the later parts of the game. Additionally the game has a ''crippling'' balance problem, and if you know which jobs and skills to go for and how to efficiently grind JP, you'll absolutely break the game in half before you're even halfway finished. Plus even if you have no idea how to best exploit the job system, every single scrap of challenge drops out of the game for everyone once you get [[GameBreaker Thunder God Cid]]. And rather than being some super-secret InfinityPlusOneSword character, you can't ''not'' get him, as he is just handed to you for free during the story. The only way for the game to retain the slightest bit of challenge after he joins you (about 2/3 of the way through the game) is to [[SelfImposedChallenge deliberately not use him]] (and that's assuming you haven't already taken advantage of the aforementioned balance issues to make an army of {{GameBreaker}}s).

** The Dorter City Slums. The game's first few levels have mostly Squires and Chemists (or in the Sweegy Woods battle, fighting plain old Goblins and Skeletons) with no really relevant special capabilities worth worrying about and relatively flat, simple terrain. Dorter Slums suddenly throws you into a pincer attack from Archers with the high ground, enemy Black Mages who can kill weaker party members in a single hit with their spells, and a Knight patrolling the ground to protect the Mages that is going to be far tankier than the Squires and Chemists you been fighting up to this point. Additionally you have the AI-controlled rgath taking up one of your roster slots, who alongside the AI-controlled Delita are prone to ArtificialStupidity and can't be grinded up in random encounters. Inexperienced players who charge into this map without any grinding or still have a team of Squires and Chemists without good JP investment are likely to get stomped their first time around, and maybe several times after that until they finally beat it.

** Similarly, only playing with [[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEDr4T5-4zw5TwxRvLN_iOH780TYQOTxbegocIyOYh0/edit?usp=sharing a randomly chosen set of Jobs]] and their learned abilities, only fighting in required battles without grinding, or only using Auto-battle for an entire game are fun challenges as well.