I'm a couple hours into #FFTA2, so some thoughts;
-The story's a lot more bare-bones than FFTA. Luso doesn't seem to care that he's been sent to a different world, and there's only really two other characters involved in the plot and neither of THEM particularly care either. FFTA had a cast and a preamble and a *reason* for going to Ivalice, and TA2 just kinda... Shrugs at the whole idea.
-There's a huge list of classes, many of which struggle to have a unique identity. And a lot of skills just... Don't feel useful. I only need so many ways to inflict debuffs, guys.
-There's a nice variety of Laws, but the fact that they apply only to you feels unbalanced. And it's not always clear what exactly triggers a Law -- like my broadsword crit earlier
-I'm still not a huge fan of the "learn skills from equipment" thing in a TRPG. It's fine in a turn-based character RPG, because each battle takes a minute or less. But when each fight takes 20-30 minutes as it does in a TRPG, it feels like learning things takes FOREVER.
Really it feels like TA2 carried over a lot of the flaws of TA more or less unexamined.
The biggest thing I'd do with a hypothetical Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 3 would be to introduce a way to dynamically alter Laws during battle.
The idea being that these Laws would apply to both sides of a battle and that their purpose would be to add another layer of tactical thinking. IE, what is the enemy's strategy and how can I use the Laws to disrupt that. What Laws can I enact to maximize MY combat effectiveness and minimize the enemy's.
The thing about #FFTA2 is that it never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It's completely and utterly inelegant.
You get sent on a mission to disarm some mislaid traps on a battlefield. Whoops, there's monsters here! Okay, well, kill two birds with one stone, right? Get the monsters to step on the traps!
Nope. Monsters don't trigger these traps.
Okay, can we just punch them? Or use magic? No, of course not. Some sort of special command maybe, I think, desperation starting to kick in?
No. The game wants you to step on them. Each and every trap. Go and stand on the traps. Punk.
What you CAN do is kill all the monsters first and THEN step on the traps, ensuring you can safely heal after incurring damage. But once again the game has an opportunity to have a player-hostile system get used tactically! Aaaaaaaand fumbles it. Good job.
The *really* weird thing is this is the second in a quest chain where you're disarming traps, and in the FIRST quest the monsters are fairies and the game *SPECIFICALLY CALLS OUT* that the monsters don't trigger the traps because they're flying!
So when the second quest rolls around and the monsters are Goblins, you think, aha! NOW we guide the monsters to the traps and trigger them!
No. Fuck you. Goblins don't trigger the traps either. Loser.
Yeah, that's one of those missions where you're pretty much forced to ignore the judge and hope none of your characters run out of HP.
I'm pretty sure the broadsword crit thing is a bug. Knockback doesn't mean long-range; it wasn't long-range *before* the knockback occurred.
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