YMMV / Final Fantasy Tactics

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Argath comes back from the dead as Death Knight in a special battle in The War of the Lions. While he definitely deserves to be killed at least more than twice in one game, his last words are pitiable, crying for his mother as he goes to oblivion, the only person he ever cared for.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Here.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The first time you fight Gaffgarion, he uses the same equipment and weapons equipped onto him. So if you remove his gear, he'll have no way to use his abilities, especially if you switch him to a class that he has unlocked but has no skills learned.
  • 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 Duel Boss with 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—and the game gives Ramza enough clockticks to have an immediate extra turn at the start of the battle—meaning it's easy for Ramza to just walk up and casually one-shot the Lucavi in a single turn.
  • Ultima's final form has only one spell that causes a plethora of negative statuses. However, riding a Chocobo negates everything and all she can do is try and punch you with her mediocre attack rating. Amusingly enough, Ultima actually had some attacks programmed in that weren't really used by her default AI. Of course, given that by then, you likely have the game smashed into huge pieces on your living room floor, she won't have more of a chance to use them.
• Anvilicious: The game constantly throws anvil-sized sledgehammers onto you about how very wrong it is to treat people differently just because of your birthright, and that it's your actions that determine the kind of person you are.
• Ass Pull: Ultima "spitting" out Alma for the final battle. Again, none of the Lucavi have ever done anything like this before. Granted, they all were willing hosts, but given how big a deal it was for Ultima needing Alma's body, it just comes out of nowhere.
• Author's Saving Throw: While the "War of the Lions" version is divisive, a few additions were very much welcomed:
  • Many extra scenes were added - such as Wiegraf joining the Knights Templar, scenes with Delita and Ovelia, sidequests requiring Agrias, etc.
  • In the original version, Reis being cursed into a dragon is never really explained... the War of the Lions Version adds an extra sidequest.
  • Meliadoul was retooled so that she wound up Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in gameplay. An extra mandatory battle also has her as a compulsory guest character.
  • One of the extra story battles was also added as some extra Catharsis Factor, see Best Level Ever.
• Best Level Ever: One of the special battles in War of the Lions caught a lot of players off guard, not knowing it was there.... and people loved it since you get to beat up Argath AGAIN.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Why Byblos helps you out during the battle against Zodiark/Elidibus, and afterwards offers to join your party, is never explained.
• Breather Level:
  • The Araguray Woods mission that you rescue Boco in. You're just fighting some low level Goblins when you're already in Chapter 2, and have the overpowered for this point Agrias and Gaffgarion on your side as Guests, who will lay waste to the Goblins even if you don't do anything. Additionally while Boco isn't much stronger than the Goblins, he will act before them and his AI is smart enough to go huddle in a nearby corner where only one Goblin can attack him at a time, so Boco will have no problems surviving for a long time unless you self-sabotage by taking out Agrias and Gaffgarion yourself and then do nothing.
  • The Goland Coal City mission that you rescue Orran/Olan in, where not only is he faster than all the enemies and has a huge amount of HP that will take many attacks to bring all the way down, he has the Galaxy Stop/Celestial Stasis skill that he will use each turn, which after a moderate charge time will inflict the Stop, Immobolize, and Disable status on every enemy with a decent success rate. He will completely incapicitate at least one enemy or two each time for a few turns, and if you're lucky he might incapicitate every enemy before every unit even gets to act. You could possibly beat this map with just fresh level 1 generics or just letting Orran do it all himself, and would really have to go kill Orran yourself to have any possibility of failing with a trained team.
• Broken Base:
  • Charge times on spells. A lot of fans think it adds depth and complexity and think their removal in the sequels is dumbing down the games. Others think it's a Scrappy Mechanic that only serves to artificially pump the difficulty and limit classes.
  • The fact that MP does not recharge. Some think this encourages decision making, requiring healer(s) to be more conservative and make all their limited heal(s) worthwhile. Others think it makes mages suck because abilities that can be performed instantly will alays outclass anything that takes even one round of charge. The game's Schizophrenic Difficulty will also make it so that by the end you won't even need heals or buffs.
  • The War of the Lions translation. Is it an excellent translation that makes the game feel more dramatic and the Purple Prose very fitting? Or is it an overcomplicated mess with unnecessary changes and excessively-poetic dialogue that feels very sterile and emotionless?
    • The original script itself. Were its dead-on literal translations to the point and its informal tone worthy of some charm, or was it an incomprehensible mess of grammatical errors and mistranslations?
  • 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 fairly grounded in reality? Or is the plot just reusing beats from Tactics Ogre?
• Catharsis Factor:
  • If killing Argath at Fort Zeakden wasn't this enough, killing him AGAIN in Castle Limberry will definitely count
  • If the game was difficult, getting Orlandeau will definitely count as this.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • By far the most common strategy to win the Duel Boss against Wiegraf is to have Ramza either be a Squire with the Monk or Chemist subskill, or a Monk with the Squire subskills, and to equip Ramza with the Lifefont movement skill from Monk, Auto Potion from Chemist, and support skills to help Ramza survive longer. The idea is to have Ramza use Tailwind/Yell to buff his speed as high as he can, while moving constantly away from Wiegraf, until Ramza has increased his speed to the point he can get three/four turns for every one of Wiegraf's turns. Then, you spam Focus/Accmulate to increase Ramza's strength. Once it is high enough, Ramza can then start attacking Wiegraf, and down him before his next turn. Lifefont and Auto Potion are meant to make sure Ramza lives, if you have enough potions, Ramza will heal himself enough that Lifefont can stabilize him after he moves.
  • 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). And possibly Mustadio or Balthier.
• Complete Monster:
  • Hashmal(um) is second only to Ultima/Altima in the Lucavi and is the demon possessing Folmarv Tengille. The mastermind of nearly every misfortune in the game, Hashmal manipulates the massive war that claims countless lives so he can manipulate the resurrection of Ultima. Upon confronting Ramza, who had learned that the Glabados Church was corrupt, Hashmal massacred all present, including his host's own son. Tricking others into being possessed by the Lucavi and broadening the monstrous conflict, Hashmal kidnaps Ramza's sister Alma to use her as the host of Ultima, only caring about creating more death and destruction to revive Altima and unleash her upon the unsuspecting world.
  • Dycedarg Beoulve is a ruthless schemer obsessed with achieving more power for himself. The elder brother of the hero Ramza, Dycedarg slowly poisons their own father over the course of years to kill him and take control of the noble family. To gather even more power, Dycedarg helps plunge Ivalice into a brutal civil war against Duke Goltanna. Dycedarg proceeds to backstab and murder his partner before allying with the demonic Lucavi, even murdering his brother Zalbaag. Unlike most of the Lucavi, Dycedarg seems to be a willing host to his demon, and while he may claim to have good intentions, he is merely a hypocrite willing to resort to any means to obtain the power he craves.
  • Gerrith Barrington is a rapacious Grand Duke who believes that anything he doesn't possess is better off eliminated. Barrington had the village of siblings Marach and Rapha butchered, including their parents, so he could take the children in as his personal weapons and assassins. Using an entire string of "charitable" orphanages to further find children he can indoctrinate into his loyal agents, Barrington's true vileness comes from the fact that he is a pedophilic rapist who has been molesting Rapha—and potentially many other children—for years. Barrington hopes to eventually spawn a new child from Rapha herself for him to turn his lusts upon, and when the girl and her brother finally stand up to him, Barrington murders Marach and tries to once again assert his dominance over Rapha.
• Difficulty Spike: There are a few throughout the game.
  • 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 Argath taking up one of your roster slots, who alongside the AI-controlled Delita are prone to Artificial Stupidity 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.
  • The entire sequence at the end of Chapter III. You have to, in rapid succession, fight difficult Duel Bosses which your main character might not have been built to handle, then one of the game's most difficult bosses with your entire party, then an Escort Mission on the rooftops against two assassins with one-hit KO attacks that always hit. With no opportunity to retreat and grind between these battles, so if you have trouble on any of the later ones you need to reload a save before the sequence and start from the beginning... if you even have an earlier save, of course.
• Disappointing Last Level: Chapter 4 is generally agreed to be the weakest part of the game. Story-wise, it's when the Lucavi fully hijack the plot, and in many people's view, becomes a more generic "good guys vs. evil demons" story that mostly ignores the game's grey morality it been building up to this point, while it additionally feels rushed as more than a third of the game is crammed into this one Chapter and you'll just keep hopping quickly from major battle/plotpoint to the next (e.g. between Queklain and Velius, the first and second Lucavi fights, there's a whole Chapter inbetween, but between Zalera and Adramelk, the third and fourth Lucavi fights, there's only one battle). Gameplay-wise, while your units at this point should be nearing or at the end of their job progression and should be approaching or have outright Game-Breaker power, the difficulty here flatlines, as you're still mostly fighting just Knights and Archers while enemies still have barely any skills in general, and the boss fights, particularly the Lucavi, are huge stepdowns in difficulty after the terrors of Wiegraf and Velius. Plus Ramza gets access to Scream, a broken self-buff move that improves his Speed, PA, and MA every turn for free, allowing him to solo the game pretty easily from this point forward, and just in case Ramza and your other units weren't strong enough, the game hands you Cid with an Excalibur for free shortly into Chapter 4, who alone could trivialize the rest of the fights with little investment.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Behemoths, who have a one-hit KO ability.
  • Tauroses, who have a buttload of HP and the ability Wave Around, which hits all four squares surrounding it.
  • Mindflayers, who can cause your units to become confused and/or berserked.
  • Dragons, whose Breath Weapon can hit from two squares away.
  • Tiamats, who can pelt you with repeated dosages of fire or lightning.
  • Level Grind enough and you might run into the following random encounters:
    • A veritable army of Chocobos—the yellow ones heal HP damage, the Black/purple ones heal Status Effects (and can pelt you with rocks), the Red ones have Chocobo Meteor. It was so bad that Final Fantasy XII put a reference in the form of a level 99 Red Chocobo you could rarely find in Ozmone Plain.
    • An enemy party of eleven Monks on Grog Hill. The Monk class not only comes with a resurrection spell, but with a strong, long-range hits-everyone-on-a-line Earth-elemental attack. They're all wearing armor that absorbs Earth-elemental damage.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Agrias is possibly the most popular character in the game alongside Ramza and Delita, even though she is only ever plot-relevant for Chapter 2 and for over half the game she is no more important to the story than the generics in your party.
  • Despite having no personalities or even individual portraits to speak of, Lavian and Alicia - Agrias's two knights - often get developed roles in fanfiction. It's especially telling since Ladd - who is in a similar position - rarely gets this much acknowledgement, as when he does he's usually just Gafgarion's lackey who gets unceremoniously killed in the first fight against Gafgarion. Their popularity later got acknowledged in the PSP version, where Agrias' birthday event was added into the game, with her two knights being involved.
• Fan Nickname:
  • ROFL the Templar Knight: how else do you pronounce "Rofel/Loffrey"?
  • "Garfgarog" (or possibly "Gafgarog") for Gafgarion, which is often paired with Memetic Molestation.
  • Dracula, based on Delacroix's original name Draclau. Or Oogie Boogie for his appearance as Queklain/Cúchulainn.
  • The "Cowardly Lion" for Hashmal/um, among others (no, we don't mean that one), in reference to his underhanded tactics during the game.
• Fanfic Fuel: What happened in the year between Acts I and II? How and when did Ramza meet Gaffgarion?
• Fan-Preferred Couple: In Japan, Ramza x Delita and Agrias x Ovelia are quite popular. It's probably helped by that final scene between Delita and Ovelia where they physically stab each other (which Word of God says won't be fatal for either of them).
• First Installment Wins: While FFTA and A2 absolutely have their fans and defenders, the overall consensus is that the original was something unique. It's very common, for instance, to have people name the original FFT as their favorite game in the entire series (not the Tactics Gaiden Games, but the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: This game is basically the first game that comes to mind for Western gamers when it comes to a Tactical RPG by Yasumi Matsuno, since it has the backing of the brand name of Final Fantasy. However, in its home, Japan, all those couldn't surpass the popularity of Tactics Ogre, which has been there since the Super Famicom era and planted itself firmly as one of the cornerstones of Tactical RPG games, so most people there correctly deduce that Final Fantasy Tactics is the one copycatting Tactics Ogre, albeit in a more flattering manner.
• God Damned Bats: Any enemy with the Item skillset and the ability to use Phoenix Downs. Besides Phoenix Downs themselves being an extremely effective revival tool (instant, guaranteed 100% success rate regardless of all other factors, and completely ignores height variance), all enemies in this game are programmed to have infinite items, and they will prioritize reviving their allies above all else, so unless you're so much more powerful than the enemies that you can smite them all before the AI can act, you must Shoot the Medic First or you'll get stuck in these loops of these Item-using units reviving their allies infinitely. Fortunately these kinds of enemies are quite uncommon in the vanilla game due to the overuse of Knights and Archers in the story missions and how most enemies have their skills randomized with a very limited JP pool, but some mods focusing on ramping up the difficulty are known for actively exploiting this, creating long drawn out battles where both the player and AI constantly revive their allies with Phoenix Downs over and over (with the term "sandbagging" being used to specifically refer to this behavior).
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There is a way to cheat the Job Point system in the PS1 version for jobs whose skill trees are more than one page long. 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 smiting people with Bahamut the minute you gain the Summoner class.
  • Also, the PSX version has an item duplication bug. You know that awesome Infinity -1 Sword Cid carries? Try giving one to your entire party!
  • In one level of the Deep Dungeon, one of the random encounters includes a generic Male Time Mage. This would be unimportant except that, when killed, the Time Mage lets out the female death scream. If recruited (through the Mediator's "Invite"), the character has female stat growths and access to the Dancer Job, but all of their sprites are male.
  • One of your units using the Jump ability on a target with the Blade Grasp reaction ability causes the jumper to end up in the skybox, which the game treats as being at infinite height. Equip a gun on this "skywalker" and you've got a guy who's untouchable but can still rain death on basically anyone he wants to.
  • Speaking of Blade Grasp, it was programmed to work on all attacks the game considers to be physical. This means that a unit equipped with Blade Grasp can potentially ignore arrows, bullets, and some Monster attacks.
  • The Duel Boss with Wiegraf is infamously one of the hardest fights in the game, but due to an oversight with how the damage for the Holy Knight's abilities are classified, if Ramza enters equipped with the Chameleon Robe, which absorbs Holy based attacks, Wiegraf's AI will never use his Holy Knight abilities, and instead only attack physically. This can turn the fight into a joke as a result.
• Good Bad Translation: Leading many players to prefer the original translated script to the Purple Prose of the remake. "I got a good feeling!" "This is the way!" (This line and a few others even reappears in one of Vaan's conversations with Penelo in Final Fantasy XII as a Shout-Out.)
• Harsher in Hindsight: The guy who founded the corrupt church of Glabados, Ajora Glabados, who was also implied to be the Antichrist or at least under Demonic Possession of the Lucavi Ultima, was born on September 11. His actions in the game alone are bad enough as it is. It gets worse approximately three to four years later, with the 9/11 Terrorist attacks.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Thanks to Metal Gear Solid V and the War of the Lions re-release having voiced cutscenes, the fact that Delita Heiral played everyone like a damn fiddle becomes chuckle-worthy.
  • Cuchulainn's "How strange that I, the Undying, here should die" due to his Carnival Phantasm and Fate/Grand Order namesake being surprisingly mortal and surprisingly durable, respectively.
  • Folmarv, Meliadioul, and Isilud's surnames are Tengille - but the original version had their surnames be Tingel - which sounds similar to the penname of a porn author, "Chuck Tingle".
• Ho Yay:
  • Ramza and Delita. The closest of friends, they're still constantly thinking of each other even after they split, even more than Delita's erstwhile love interest Ovelia.
  • Agrias and Ovelia. Their dynamic follows a strong Lady and Knight dynamic, with Agrias seemingly have an obsession with Ovelia.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Ramza. He knows that No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. He doesn't care.
  • Tietra has shades of this, despite her nature. In her first scene, she's telling Delita she's settled into classes well and everybody's kind to her. Then Alma discreetly tells Ramza that Tietra's been putting on a brave face to reassure her brother, and the other girls have been remorselessly bullying her.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: 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 Thunder God Cid. And rather than being some super-secret Infinity +1 Sword 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 deliberately not use him (and that's assuming you haven't already taken advantage of the aforementioned balance issues to make an army of Game Breakers).
• Jerkass Woobie: Malak/Marach is a more definite example as despite his attitude, he has been manipulated by Barrington to quite extensive effect and still shows love and concern for his sister.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The entries at Complete Monster above are heinous, but they're more acknowledged as effective villains. Argath is hated even more, though the game did intend him to be hated, surpassing the hatred towards of the heinousness of the Complete Monster above is unexpected and a tall order to finish, yet he did it.
• Magnificent Bastard: Delita Hyral, who, in a game full of competing masterminds, finishes the story standing on top of the Gambit Pileup, out-maneuvering everyone else to become a king by marrying the reigning princess Ovelia, while using the hero Ramza to actually do the hard work, playing off Ramza's accomplishments to claim his triumphs as Delita's own. Delita betrays those he feels he has to in order to rise to the top, ending by placing himself on the throne. While he soon realizes that he is utterly alone at the top, Delita manages to secure a place for himself on the throne despite his commoner birth in the ruthlessly classist land of Ivalice.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • L...i...t...t...l...e... m...o...n...e...y. ^ExplanationAfter the initial prologue battle and before Chapter 1 begins, there is an Info Dump where on the English PSX version the words are typed out at an infamously slow pace, and at one point when typing out just the words "little money", it inexplicably slows down even more, with it taking over 10 seconds just to type out those 11 letters. You can see it for yourself in this video here that shows how much slower this Info Dump is than in the Japanese version. "L i t t l e m o n e y" also gets used as a response to why this problem or the other many problems with the localization exist. There was a rumor that this instance was a deliberate hint by the translators to their employers for a pay raise.
  • Ramza's Chapter 4 outfit has armor that covers his legs but not his rear end◊, giving him the appearance of wearing assless chaps (which is rather amusing in hindsight considering a later Ivalice game). They are known among Tactics fans as "the Buttpants".
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Argath's killing of Delita's sister at Fort Ziekden, even if that 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 murdered his son Isilud and massacred an entire castle, but if not then, he most definitely did when he raised Zalbaag as a zombie and forced him to fight his younger brother Ramza.
  • If Gerrith Barrington didn’t cross the line when he razed Rapha and Malach's village, he definitely crossed it when he forced himself onto a 13-year-old Rapha.
  • Dycedarg crosses it by poisoning his father to death and making the death seem like an illness.
• Narm:
  • The sheer amount of the errors in the PS1 English translation 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 "No, you hand yours over.."
  • In Riovanes castle, when Folmarv holds up his stone intending to slaughter Barrington and all the other guards because He Knows Too Much... 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 didn't actually catch this, causing them to think that Folmarv simply missed the obvious person in the room with them.
• Nintendo Hard: A borderline case, but Tactics can be very unforgiving to players who don't think their JP spendings through. Anyone who buys their abilities unwisely is going to suffer some nasty combinations of Awesome, but Impractical and/or Useless Useful Spell.
• Player Punch: Tietra's death at the end of Chapter 1, which also kickstarts Delita's actions throughout the rest of the game.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Meliadoul in War of the Lions. Her Divine Knight skills (which are also shared with Orlandeau) were awesome, but only usable against human enemies because anything non-human (like boss monsters) was immune. Orlandeau was able to use Agrias and Gafgarion's abilities, which meant he could still hold his own against such enemies, while Meliadoul couldn't. War of the Lions makes it so that they do work on non-human enemies, thus the question of "Why use Meliadoul when you already have Orlandeau?" easily became "...Why not Both?"
• Ron the Death Eater: In fanfiction, Ladd is typically portrayed as a treacherous thug who gets unceremoniously killed once Gafgarion turns against the party. In-game, he's...just a regular Squire with a pre-built name, absolutely no characterization whatsoever, and is as loyal as every other generic unit in your party.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Here.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • The Straight Character Challenge, which involves picking one class. You then play through the game using only the Action, Reaction, Support, and Movement abilities of that single job-class. Better than it sounds, as it breathes completely new life into the game.
  • There's also the Solo Straight Character Challenges, with all the constraints of the SCC with the additional difficulty of only using Ramza, Level 1 challenges, and a variety of other suggested challenges pioneered at the GameFAQs board. The depth of the job system and the AI quirks of the enemies make it possible to beat the game with almost any set of characters given adequate preparation and lots of free time.
  • Similarly, only playing with 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.
  • The MR4M challenge, where you play Ramza as a Mediator/Orator and you only use monsters for the rest of your team, which can have additional optional restrictions as well for added challenge (e.g. no duplicate monsters, only using one monster from each family, not using overpowered monsters like Tiamats, and so on). While monsters can sometimes just smash enemies with little strategy, a lot of battles can get quite a bit trickier when monsters have much more limited options, particularly with lacking support skills to heal each other and restore status problems, making Ramza have to work overtime as the only viable support unit in the group.
• 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.
• Signature Scene:
  • The beginning prologue battle, that ends with Princess Ovelia getting kidnapped by Delita regardless of you repelling the attack, which then gets punctuated by Delita's iconic "Don't blame us, blame yourself or God" line.
  • Tietra's death at the hands of a remorseless Argath after being ordered to shoot by a similarly remorseless Zalbag in the standoff with Gragoroth at the end of Chapter 1. Besides being the catalyst that changes Ramza's and Delita's path throughout the rest of the game, it really sets the dark mood for the game's story and establishes that the nobility, including Ramza's brothers, aren't the good guys in this story.
  • The 1-on-1 duel with Wiegraf and the sequential Belias battle. Story-wise, it's the climatic conclusion to Wiegraf's Tragic Villain plotline. Gameplay-wise, it is perhaps one of the most infamous That One Boss in gaming history that softlocked the game for countless hapless players that couldn't beat him and only had one save file so they couldn't backtrack to grind or get better equipment, and in turn made it a habit for everyone who played the game to keep multiple save files in every game that allowed it to avoid getting stuck in such a situation.
• So Bad, It Was Better: Some fans prefer the original translation of the Playstation version over the updated and better written translation in the PSP remake. Besides nostalgia, they tend to find the "Blind Idiot" Translation the former is rife with amusing and think some of the plain-spoken lines actually fit the characters' personalities and mood of their scenes better (e.g. Delita's "Don't blame us, blame yourself or God" to Agrias after kidnapping Ovelia at the end of the prologue), while thinking the PSP remake's Ye Olde Butchered English goes over the top to the point of annoyance and absurdity. Because of this there are still people who prefer to play the Playstation version despite mods existing that fix the slowdown issue in the PSP version, and there exist mods that add the PSP version's new content to the Playstation version so that people can enjoy it with the original translation intact.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • It's been compared to Berserk's "Golden Age" arc, with similar themes of rising up to nobility, a mundane setting getting rather biblical with monstrous religious-themed demons, and even similar scenes of characters bonding by making whistles from leaves/grass. Of particular note is the Lucavi and the way they merge with humans via the Zodiac Stones and a Deal with the Devil, which is almost exactly the way that the Behelits and Apostles work in the aforementioned series.
  • The highly political nature of the story, alongside the war based on the historical Wars of the Roses, also make this a comparable video game adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire.
• Stoic Woobie: Zalbaag, given the difficult decisions he's had to make in his noble position and asking Ramza to kill him, after Hashmal brought him back as a zombie.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Brave Story" sounds a lot like "Warren Report" from Tactics Ogre. Not surprising as they are by the same composer and serve the same function.
• Tear Jerker: So, so many. Each Wham Episode usually comes with a Tear Jerker, if not more than one.
  • Of particular note is Rapha mourning Marach's death. The guy may have been a Jerkass up to that point, but you really feel for his sister.
    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? Tell me you do! Tell... tell me you'll still go!
  • The ending of the game, more specifically Ovelia's (understandable) paranoia that Delita is just using her and will eventually kill her as he does with everyone else, which leads her to try and kill him, and Delita in turn stabbing her (but not killing, according to word of god) in self-defense. While Delita does many questionable things throughout the course of the story and his actual feelings for Ovelia open to interpretation, it's hard not to feel sorry for him. He questions whether Ramza's path made him happier in the end, with the strong implication that Delita's quest has ultimately left him hollow and alone.
  • On a more gameplay related example, dismissing people from your party often has this effect, as the game makes you feel really terribly about dismissing them: almost all of the humans ask you to reconsider, but the monster friends' reactions are even worse. The worst part is that, if you have ONE monster, it'll start to spawn eggs, meaning that you'll have to give the hatchlings the pink slip if you want to have room in your party. The dialogue is designed to make you feel as bad as possible:
    "It seems excited. It might think you were going to give it a treat."
    "It's confused about you telling it to go home, mostly because it doesn't have a home to go to."
    "It's looking at you with sad eyes."
• That One Attack:
  • Wiegraf's signature move is Hallowed Bolt (Lightning Stab), a long-range 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.
  • Shirahadori (Blade Catch), a reaction ability as opposed to an attack, can get super annoying when you're attacking the Marquis Elmdore, as he has a high chance of automatically blocking any of your physical strikes. This is another move you can use for yourself with the samurai class.
  • Suffocate (Stop Bracelet), an One-Hit KO move used by Celia and Lettie that never misses. Bad enough on its own, but during the Riovannes Roof battle, you fight Celia and Lettie with Rapha as a guest, and her death will lead to a Non-Standard Game Over.
  • Blood Suck is a rare but extremely nasty status effect. It turns the target into an undead vampire who goes crazy and starts sucking the life out of nearby targets—friends or enemies. And friends get turned to vampires too if they get Blood Sucked. If your whole party is vampirized it's game over! Status effects usually don't spread, let alone game-ending ones.
• That One Boss: Here.
• That One Level: Here.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • There's a lot of evidence that at some point in the game's development, Valmafra/Balmafula was going to have a bigger role and even participate in battles. And yet she abruptly exits the story only to appear again in the epilogue. This lead fans to ask "Why?".
  • All the special characters that you can recruit will become completely irrelevant to the plot once they permanently join your party and get little-to-no dialogue from that point forward, even the ones that were playing a part in the story and weren't just bonus characters recruited in side quests. The worst of this is Agrias, whose characterization and role in Chapter 2 was enough to make her one of the game's most popular characters, but after she joins your party before Chapter 2's final few battles she'll get nothing more than a few lines of battle dialogue in the story battle immediately after she joins, making her a complete nonfactor story-wise for over half the game (at least Mustadio, another special character that joined in Chapter 2, got his own sidequest line in Chapter 4). This is probably the case because of every character in your party but Ramza is able to permanently die and it would have been too much effort to alter the plot based on which characters were still alive, but having more sidequests if you still had the character around like what Mustadio got or having these characters permanently "retreat" instead of crystalizing so they could still be involved in the plot would have been appreciated.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • 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 of 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.
  • During Chapter 3, various moments imply that the Auracite Stones are not Always Chaotic Evil, 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 Ass Pull, and that Auracite's to be just evil despite it being implied otherwise.
• The Woobie: Rapha, Ovelia, Tietra, Wiegraf...
• Vindicated by History:
  • Reception to it was underwhelming initially, possibly because it was both a spin-off and everyone was still focused on Final Fantasy VII which had come out not too long beforehand. Over time the game has developed a small (compared to other FF's at least) but very devoted fanbase who praise its interesting political storyline, unique Darker and Edgier take on Final Fantasy, and its rich, layered battle and job system. Its remakes and re-releases helped spread its reputation, and it received a proxy Colbert Bump due to being based on Wars of the Roses, the same Real Life conflict that inspired A Song of Ice and Fire and its TV adaptation, and sharing a number of themes with those works. Finally, Tactics has become one of the only spinoffs (along with Type-0) to be featured just as prominently as the main series entries in modern crossover titles like Dissidia and Record Keeper. On top of this, Final Fantasy XIV had an entire raid series devoted to Final Fantasy Tactics as well as Final Fantasy XII, which had fans who had played the game before liking it if they didn't before as well as new fans coming to love the game.
  • To a lesser extent, this happened twice. In 2007, the PSP version (War of the Lions) was released... but it was an arguable Porting Disaster due to the slowdown (which wasn't fixed that much for some releases either). The script also received some backlash for being too wordy, and for not keeping any of the iconic lines in the original translation. But some people warmed up to it, however anyone playing it today over the original Playstation version is strongly recommended to play it modded with a fan-made patch to fix the slowdown.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: 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 if 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.
• Woolseyism: The PSP re-localization. See below for details.
  • 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 Ivalice-verse. They even added a "Spoony Bard" bit that didn't appear in the original:
    Ramza: My brothers do not want this fight! Set down your sword, Wiegraf, and my brothers will treat with you!
    Wiegraf: Ha! No spoony bard could spin a sweeter tale! You say your brothers do not want this fight? Tears then, for the world you see is one beyond my weary sight.
    (The original (mis)translated version remains highly popular, though.)
  • The original version itself also named Meliadoul & Orlandeau's abilities fancy names such as "Icewolf bite" and "Hellburst punch". Many people like these names better - even fans of "War of the lions".

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