So was FFTA-2 any good?

[Pike]

Asking this because I dumped about 300 hours into the original FFTA; loved the living daylights out of it back in the day, but I've never played the sequel and I was just curious.

If I liked the original, will I like the sequel? Or do they royally screw something up? I've no idea, you guys tell me~ :raichu:

[VeloZer0]

I have heard people describe FFTA2 as better than the original in every way except the core story being weaker. I didn't like either, so you probably aren't interest in my opinion. :D

[Fynn]

The main story line sucks. Some side-quest story lines kick ass. The system is improved overall. There's new types of missions and all that stuff. It's a lot of fun.

[Pike]

Hmm, well good thing I didn't play FFTA for the story then~ I just ran my clan around the map purposefully to bump into other random clans so we could fight.

Thanks for the feedback so far! :monster:

[aquatius]

The story in FFTA2 is passable. The gameplay is vastly improved over the original. It's more challenging, engaging and there's much more to explore.

[Wolf Kanno]

Its much more structured in the gameplay department. The missions are now more story focused and several are connected to each other, so it no longer feels like a bunch of mercenaries accepting random missions. They also dropped the Important Item element for missions (thank god) so you don't have o worry about cleaning your inventory so you don't accidentally lose a rare mission item that locks you out of certain missions. Instead, the game uses a calendar system where certain missions become available only during certain months of the Ivalice calendar.

Two new races are introduced, and while both are not nearly as well developed as the original races, they do have some very unique classes and vary up the setups. All the normal races averaged about 2 new classes. Nu Muo lost the horribly time consuming Morpher class. For the most part, as usual like the first game, the Humes and Viera got the best new classes and easily the least amount of balancing, so they are horrifyingly overpowered by end game.


The game introduces a revamped Bazaar from FFXII, where you collect materials from monsters and missions and use them as materials to build new equipment, and unlike XII's system, this one actually tells you and lets you control what items you want to use to make equipment as opposed to you having to find the recipe on your own and drop the items in and hope you get the item you want instead of getting two useless items that happened to use the same ingredients. This gives you more control over what equipment you get but don't expect to have all equipment available by the end. You'll have to farm for some of the stuff.

There are new optional dungeons with cool optional fights from famous Ivalice monsters and a new Clan system where you can actually auction to get territory. There are also new Clan trials that net your Clan new benefits in battle. In fact the Law system has been redone where instead of obeying laws so characters don't go to prison, it instead just nets you more items when you complete the mission, lets you keep your Clan benefits during battle, and allows you to revive party members during battle. There is also a weird new element in combat that virtually cripples the Nu Muo race. Both you and the enemy start off the battles with 0mp and every round you regenerate a small amount. So mages can't do anything for the first few rounds. Its more annoying than detrimental to the game though.

Story-wise, the game's main plot is pretty weak, it starts off really strong but then kind of peters out halfway through with a poorly used villain and a giant space flea from nowhere (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere) as the final boss. The more story focused side missions make this much more bearable as you get some pretty awesome stories like humorous ones like the Bangaa Bugle newspaper missions, or helping an all female singing party of well skilled warriors. You also get more serious stories like the one pertaining to Frimelda the Legendary Swordmaster and dealing with a foreign crime syndicate.

[Rowan]

Ive played both. I agree with what everyone else has stated. The gameplay elements are superior to the first tactics. The bazaar and way you obtain items from killing enemies gives you a better sense of fullfilment from each battle. The story though is where the game is let down. The story for the first tactics was much better. You will play through A2 and probably finish the story in less than 10 hours if you focus on it. But if you're like me and have to complete all the other missions, you will be playing 100+ hours. Great game overall.

[Pike]

:D you guys are great, thanks for all the answers! I feel like I have a pretty good overview of the changes now. I think I'll definitely look into picking it up at some point, if I have extra money someday and can find it.

Otherwise, I can just keep playing the original, which I still love <3

[Skyblade]

The main story line sucks. Some side-quest story lines kick ass. The system is improved overall. There's new types of missions and all that stuff. It's a lot of fun.

Actually, I'm not sure the main story "sucks". I just felt like it was really, really poorly edited.

Just looking through the story, it actually has quite a bit going for it. The problem, however, is its length. Someone, somewhere, got the idea to cut the main story to only twenty missions, and that just ruined the game's main plot. You spend the first half of the plot in basically a tutorial mode. Trying out various mission types, being introduced to new characters, and new mechanics like the auctions and the airships. Then the plot really starts to pick up, and, almost immediately, collapse.

There are a number of cutscenes near the end of the game which feel like they do not belong. It seems that a number of things which were originally planned to take place in further story missions insted are being given to you as exposition. The Whitesilver Magicite, the attempted assassination of Baron Beltorey, and a couple of other plot points were rushed out really quickly (those two were explained in a single cutscene!), and you don't get to appreciate them or really understand them, which is in stark contrast to the depth of story and development elsewhere in the game. And the Neukhia itself seems to practically come out of nowhere and have practically no relation to the rest of the game at all.

If they had given us another 10 missions, I think FFTA2 would have a really good, solid plot. Which is a shame, because the main plot is pretty much the only place this game fails.

[Loony BoB]

It's sort of like you guys are describing the Pokémon series. /random