Tag: Squaresoft

Final Fantasy XIII Review

written by David Steffen

I have been a loyal fan of the Final Fantasy series of games for a long time. I played the original Final Fanasy on my brother’s NES. The first one in the series I really got into was Final Fantasy VI which I knew as Final Fantasy III in the American numbering scheme, released for the Super NES in 1994.

For those who aren’t familiar with the series, they are a series of menu-controlled turn-based RPG games. They are a series only in the sense of their naming. Except for one or two exceptions, the games do not have any continuing plotline between them. Each game starts afresh with a new world, new storyline, new game mechanics. The quality of the series is a bit uneven from game to game, but even the lows are pretty good, and the highs are really really good.

So, with great anticipation I picked up Final Fantasy XIII more than a year after it was released, and gave it a chance.

The verdict: a waste of $20 (at least I didn’t buy it right away, or it would’ve been a waste of $60). In the low points of the other games in the series, it is generally because of bad difficulty balancing, so that you have to do to much experience building to be able to make progress. Here, the biggest problem was that the game was just boring, right from the very beginning, and it lacked all of the good qualities that made the other ones appealing.

I played Chapters 1 through 3 of the game, which took maybe 4 hours, and made note of many flaws, many of them too much to take for much of a game, but all of them together and I just gave the game up entirely:
1. The map was entirely linear. Often there is a short introductory linear section to help you get a feel for the game and to help get the plot rolling, but never for this long. Final Fantasy is about exploration. Making everything linear ruins it. All it is now is boring fight scenes bridging the gap between cut scenes. Attention Squaresoft: cut scenes are not the point of the games.
2. The fight sequences are set up in such a way that the player isn’t really needed. You get extra points and extra items if you beat enemies fast enough. You can set your secondary characters to class behaviors so that they will do certain things automatically. So you have to waste huge amounts of time just button clicking your primary character while the other characters behave automatically. There’s very little reason to pay attention.
3. The game is over if your primary character dies. There’s no reason for this–there are items that bring characters back to life, and your secondary characters should be able to revive you. There’s no reason for this, and it makes it so that a momentary slip-up at any point can stop you.
4. The save points are so frequent, it just adds to the lack of challenge. Maybe they added more of them when they realized the #3 thing was too restrictive.
5. The motivation of all the characters is just completely unclear right from the beginning. The game takes place in a war-torn district of a city. Squads of troops are coming through with the intent to wipe out the entire population, and some pockets of rebels have set up a resistance to save who they can. One rebel, by the name of Snow, asks for volunteers. Among the volunteers is a mother, who ends up dying in an attack, falling off a bridge even though Snow tries to save her. Her son, Hope, for no reasonable reason, decides that Snow is to blame despite his obvious efforts to save her.
6. The game’s inciting incident depends on all of the characters being incredibly stupid. All of these people know that approaching the magical artifact called the fal’Cie will end badly. Everyone who approaches it has a chance of being turned into a l’Cie, and given some kind of quest. If you fail to do the quest, you are punished by being turned into a zombie-like monster. If you complete the quest, you are..um… rewarded… by being turned into a crystal statue. So, it seems pretty clear that the obvious path is to NOT APPROACH THE DAMNED THING. Yet half a dozen of these characters all decide to it, for little to no reason, when they know full well the consequences. How am I supposed to relate to these people?
7. The plot summaries don’t match the actual visible events. For instance, Hope, the young boy who I mentioned in #5. In the actual cut scenes, the boy seems a bit standoffish and understandably grief-stricken. Then, after each section ends, there’s a summary opened up in the menu to read, and in those summaries it talks about this kid as though he is filled with rage and desparate for revenge. Which didn’t come through in the actual game. I can only assume that the person tasked with writing the summary had no direct contact with the people who directed the cut sequences.

 

This reminds me, I’ve played all of the games in the main linear numbering series of this game, from Final Fantasy I – Final Fantasy XIII (excepting Final Fantasy XI because it was not really a Final Fantasy game, being a MMORPG). I should write up a summary about which of the games are the best and why.

Review: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

written by David Steffen

Overview

The original Deus Ex game was one of my favorite games of all time. That one came out in 1999, and was a first person shooter (FPS). At least, the basic format was FPS; really it allows a much more versatile gameplay experience. In that game you played nano-augmented anti-terrorist agent JC Denton. Each mission of the game involves specific objectives, but those can be reached in a variety of ways, whether by playing the usual FPS blast-through-the-front-door strategy, or shutting down the security system by hacking, or bribing a guard, or through stealth. You can read an article I wrote about it here.

Then, in 2003, a sequel was published under the name “Invisible War.” I’d rather not talk about that one. It was a huge disappointment after the great first one. If you see a cheap copy, save it for something else instead.

Then “Human Revolution” came out in 2011. This story takes place in 2027, 25 years before the first game in the series, before nano-augmentation is available, in the age of mechanical augmentations (think hydraulics and dermal plating instead of nanites in your bloodstream). Your character is Adam Jensen, head of security for augmentation designer Sarif Industries. In the opening scenes, Sarif industries is attacked by a team of supersoldiers. Adam is severely injured in the attack, losing several limbs. The only way to save his life is through augmentation. Six months later, while he’s still recovering, Sarif calls him back into duty. The company has been attacked again, and they want to make use of his new augmented abilities to handle it.

The overall gameplay is similar to the original Deus Ex, with the versatility of gameplay allowed, and with augmentation upgrades.

I’ll have one section with a general spoiler-free review, followed by one that has spoilers (including help with the boss battles).

Spoiler-free Review

Human Revolution is much better than Invisible War. It sticks much more to the gameplay and style that made the first game so popular. As is often the case, it doesn’t quite recapture the novelty of the original. For one thing, part of the appeal of Deus Ex was a plot full of conspiracy theories, involving every popular theory from Area 51 to the Illuminati to the Knights Templar, and so on. I don’t know if they just used them all up for Deus Ex, or what, but I felt like it lost a little bit.

The augmentations are still fun, and they’re a completely different set. Some are cooler than the original game, some less so, so there’s plenty of new room to explore in that area. Some abilities are definitely improved–especially auto-regenerating health as a default augmentation. In Deus Ex, if you got injured, you’d have to just search for med kits, and there would not be much you could do if you couldn’t find any–you could easily get stuck in an area with only certain death awaiting you.

One thing that’s quite a bit different is the hacking abilities. In Deus Ex, improving your hacking skill just gave you a time limit while in a hacked system. Improving your skill was choice, but it took no real strategy or skill. In this game, every time you hack, you have a layout of network nodes. To break into the system, you have to break into the node of the computer that holds the passwords. To get into that node, you have to break into other nodes to get to it. With each node, there is a chance that the security system will catch on, and will start tracking you, at which point you have only a short period of time to finish your hack. So that adds some extra challenge and strategy. And there are plenty of opportunities for hacking, from doorways to PCs to security hubs, and so on.

Really, there’s only one thing that’s wrong with the game: the boss battles. Apparently they outsourced the programming work, and you can tell, because the boss battles are almost entirely unlike the rest of the game. I get the impression that they gave the game engine and set of weapons to the third party and told them nothing about the rest of the game. Tough boss battles in a standard FPS are expected. In most of those games, you are expected to play as a killing machine and the bosses are built to be a challenge for that kind of tough character. But in this game, it is completely valid to play a nonviolent stealthy style of gameplay. So it is a very unpleasant surprise when you hit that first boss battle and you have an inventory full of non-lethal slow-loading weapons, and a set of augmentations that only help you be sneaky. In Deus Ex, there were fights that were like boss battles, but there were always other ways to resolve them without an actual firefight. I did manage to beat all the bosses in Human Revolution, so read the next spoiler section if you want to know how I beat each of the bosses.

Spoiler Section

I took the nonlethal approach through most of the game, though I did slip into violence in 2 or 3 places where I was cornered by large amounts of armed enemies. Non-lethal, slow-loading weapons (some of which are short range) aren’t so good in such situations, so I tried to keep a shotgun in my inventory.

Through most of the game, I kept the following in my inventory (I upgraded my inventory size to the max very early on):
–stun gun (short range non-lethal)
–PEPS (cone of effect non-lethal)
–Tranquilizer rifle (long range non-lethal)
–shotgun (lethal, very effective at short range)
–revolver (lethal, upgradable to exploding bullets, compact with explosive power)
–gas grenades
–EMP grenades
–ammo for all those weapons, as much as I can carry

And I usually use the non-lethal takedown augmentation which is pretty much free to use, whenever I can get close enough to use it without being seen.

There are a couple big experience bonuses you can get if you play the way that I do:
Ghost–No hostile sees you on your way to the objective
Smooth Operator–You don’t set off any alarm on your way to the objective

Boss Walkthroughs

Barrett–This first boss fight really caught me off guard. I admit, I went to look online for some times. None of which I found particularly helpful. This boss fight starts in a particularly irritating way–with a cut scene that leaves you standing in plain sight in front of the boss. Barrett is a tank of a man, slow moving but with an automatic weapon grafted onto his arm and packing a heavy arsenal of grenades. Don’t bother trying a takedown on him, he will pick you up and take a big chunk out of your health in the process. The room is medium size, with plenty of pillars to hide behind, and a couple offshoot rooms. Since you start the fight in plain sight of Barrett, hiding behind the pillars doesn’t make him forget where he last saw you. Just because he’s built like a tank doesn’t mean he’s that stupid.

So, after dying about 50 times in an hour of gameplay, I finally found a strategy that I could make work. It helps that the room is well-stocked with equipment, but first, you have to get Barrett off your tail so you can get a second to put something together. Keep in mind, too, that after you kill Barrett you will still be in the room until you choose to leave, so if you want to drop some of your inventory to make room for other equipment, feel free to do so (this is true for any of the boss battles).

Okay, so here are the steps that I took. For this to work, all you need to take into the room is a stun gun with a few darts:
–As the fight starts, duck behind the pillar to the right to get out of Barret’s line of fire.
–In that corner you’ll find gas barrel. Pick it up, wait for a gap in Barrett’s firing pattern, and throw it at him, hitting him directly if possible.
–The gas will throw him for a loop, while he’s disoriented duck into the corner room that was on the far right side (from where you started). If you’re quick he won’t see you go back there and he’ll just wander around the main room shouting at you.
–Back in that room is a weapons locker with a shotgun (thank goodness!) and some shotgun ammo. Pick those up.
–Outside the room is an explosive barrel. Peek around the pillars, wait until Barret is nearby and facing away and hit him straight on the back with the explosive barrel.
–From here, the stun gun is your friend. Don’t get too close–he will throw you down. Just get close enough that your targeting reticle turns red, then zap him. He’ll be disoriented for a few seconds.
–Quickly use the quick-inventory button to switch to the shotgun. Fire off 3 or 4 shotgun blasts to his head.
–Switch back to the stun gun and zap him again, repeat with a zap and several shotgun shells. Three or four zaps with shotgun blasts to follow should finish him off.

Federova–I learned my lesson from the first fight, and started toting the shotgun and revolver. Also, it’s a very good idea to get the dermal plating augmentation that gives you electricity resistance.
Federova is the stealthy one of the group. She has a cloaking augmentation, she has some hard hitting attacks, and she loves hit-and-run attacks. But, the stungun-shotgun combo works well on her too. The fight takes place in a server room with a thin layer of coolant on the floor, which is handy because when she cloaks and runs away from you you can follow her rippling footsteps. She tends to attack, and then try to avoid you, to recharge her batteries, so if you can catch her, that’s the best time to attack. Or, you will usually get a voice warning from Eliza (another character in the room) when Federova is going to charge you. Either way, zap her with the stun gun, fire a few shotgun headshots, run and regroup.

Oh, and that electricity augmentation is useful because she can zap you through the coolant.

Lather , rinse, repeat, and you should have no problem.

Nammir–This one is BY FAR the hardest boss fight. Especially if you make the same mistake that I did in an earlier quest. As the game goes on, your augmentation glitches get worse, with your head’s-up display keeps twitching. You were given the mission to go to the LIMB clinic to update your biochip. You better hope you avoided that mission or this fight will be much, much harder. That biochip has a backdoor in it that lets the bad guys shut off your augmentation. And that’s ALL your augmentations, even the ones that you started the game with. That means no health meter, no ammo display, no takedowns, no radar. And it happens when you’re fighting the character that is easily the most augmented person in the game.

It took a while to get the hang of this, but I found a strategy that seemed to work pretty consistently. One little extra bit of help is that you can carry a turret into the fight area to help you a little bit. In the main area of the level, there’s a turret in the middle of one of the streets. Behind is a security terminal. If you hack the terminal, you can turn the turret against enemies, and if you have the strength augmentation you can carry it to the fight area.

Before you leave the area, get your biggest gun ready, and frag grenades if you have them. I used my revolver (with exploding bullet upgrade), and I had two frag grenades. You have a moment at the start to get off a few attacks. I tossed a frag grenade, and fired off a couple shots, then I got out of the center of the room. The center of the room is the most dangerous, that’s where you’re most vulnerable. Get to the outside wall and just start doing laps. Luckily, his strategy is pretty easy to counter. He doesn’t fire while he’s giving chase; he chases, fires off some shots, but not while he’s chasing. If you see him ahead of you, fire off a few shots, then turn and run. If you hear explosions or sounds behind you, turn, find him, fire off a few shots, then turn and run. Repeat, you might want to keep a few saves if you can get the occasional breather. I think that your health regeneration aug still works, but it is a little hard to tell since your health display is faulty.

If you can make it through this fight without augs, you have made it through the hardest part of this game, by far.

Hyron–And the game finishes on the easiest boss fight. Which is at the end of the easiest level of the game. The only enemies in the final level are dumb zombie-like humans that rely only on melee attacks and only charge directly at you.

The real target that you want to kill in this boss fight is behind a wall of bullet-proof glass, so you first have to take out the security system. The security system consists of three human drones that are in pods around the central pillar. The pillar is protected by three turrets that are on a rotating track that runs around the pillar. Everything becomes significantly easier if you take out the turrets. I did so with the revolver which has an exploding bullet upgrade. Each turret took maybe 4 or 5 hits. Now the room’s unprotected for the moment. There are three computers in the room which you can hack to open each of the pods. You might have found the login passwords in the level, in which case you can use those, otherwise you can hack them like normal, then blast the drones as they are revealed. When each one is opened, some zombies will come out and attack you, but they’re easy pickins. Once all those are out, then the floor will electrify in intervals (which you can ignore if you have the electricity immunity upgrade). A few security bots will come out, so if you have some EMP grenades or explosives you’ll probably want to take those out. Eventually some explosions will shatter the bulletproof glass, and then your target is unprotected.

 

Niche Game: Kingdom Hearts

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

Kingdom Hearts is a parallel world story, with a twist. The game is a joint venture between Squaresoft and Disney, released in 2002 for the PS2. The main character, Sora, travels from world to world, and each of them will be very familiar, because each is the setting of a Disney movie, from the pride lands of The Lion King, Wonderland, and Neverland. Besides the worlds, there are also many cameos from Disney characters, and characters from Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy series.

The protagonist of the game is Sora, a fourteen year old boy. His friends Riku and Kairi also play important roles. At the beginning of the game they are all living on Destiny Islands, and they want to leave the islands to explore the world outside. One night, shadowy creatures appear, the Heartless. He discovers the magical Keyblade, which is his weapon throughout the game, a giant key that he wields like a sword. He’s separated from his friends as the Heartless destroy Destiny Islands.

Meanwhile, in another world, King Mickey (yes, the mouse), heads off to deal with the Heartless and sends his knight Goofy and his mage Donald to go find the key to stopping the Heartless. They seek out Sora, and join forces with him. You always control Sora directly, never his companions, but you can equip them, and set their behavior during battle. Donald’s attributes are based around magic, as he learns various spells as he levels up. Goofy’s primary weapon is a shield–yeah I know it’s weird. Though Sora technically carries the same Keyblade throughout the game, he can add different charms to it that will change it’s attributes drastically, changing the length, the appearance, the power, and even adding extra attributes like extra mana for abilities.

In each world, the Heartless take on new and varied forms which match their surroundings. So, in the pride lands they take the forms based loosely on African animals, in Neverland they often appear as pirates. I like this variation, all tied together by the “Heartless” logo they wear as a badge. Besides the minor Heartless enemies, each world generally has a big boss, also going along with the theme of that world. The objective of travelling through each world is to use the Keyblade to seal the keyhole, the heart of each world that the Heartless seek to destroy.

Different from most Squaresoft games, the fights in the game are real-time, though there is a menu item for performing actions like casting spells and using items. There are also hot-buttons to help speed up these side actions. You never control your two companions, all you can do is set their equipment and attributes. When visiting other worlds, sometimes a hero from that world will travel with you, and can temporarily replace either Goofy or Donald as your fighting companion. In addition, some characters are available as summon magic, where you call them up (Goofy and Donald temporarily disappear while this happens) to bestow some powerful effect and then disappearing. I liked the real-time aspect of the fighting system. It kept the game much more exciting from moment to moment, and much of the challenge is figuring out ways to defeat each unique type of enemy and dodging their attacks.

The one element of the game I wasn’t really impressed by was the Gummi ship. It’s your method of transportation between worlds. The transit ways are filled with enemies that attack you as you fly through Gummi space. You build your Gummi ship from scratch out of spare parts you find or buy along the way, including armor, weapons, radar, etc… It wasn’t that it was a bad element, but it just didn’t really seem to relate to the rest of the game that much and was just a diversion from the important parts–all the different worlds.

There’s quite a cast of voice actors for this game, including Haley Joel Osment, Hayden Panattiere, Billy Zane, and Lance Bass. They all did a really good job at their parts, making the characters seem real and helping to bring the game alive. Many of the Disney characters are voiced by the “official” Disney voice actors for each part.

The theme song, Simple and Clean, was composed and performed specifically for this game release by Hikaru Utada. I love the original version of the song, and the graphics of the sequence (though unfortunately with a remix instead of the original) at the beginning of the game just make it even more awesome to watch. When I first played the game I sometimes just watched them over and over to hear the song and see the sequence.

The plot is a reasonably good, though the main character is a bit corny at times. I loved to see the Disney villains working together across movies, Captain Hook and Maleficent, among others. Maleficent (from Sleeping Beauty) is one of my favorite villains of all time; I love her voice, her look, her power, everything about her. These villains were worked into the plot and blended seamlessly with the Squaresoft characters and the Heartless, despite their different animation styles.

Kingdom Hearts II was released in 2006 in the US, and used many of the same concepts, revisiting some of the same worlds as the first game, while expanding the ground covered. Despite their efforts to add fresh worlds and plot elements, it just came off as more of the same, so I give it a “meh,” despite the addition of Christopher Lee’s excellent voice acting abilities. It’s not a terrible game, and it was fun to see some of the new worlds they covered–such as Tron–but overall it just came off as more of the same to me.

Finding a copy of Kingdom Hearts shouldn’t be difficult at all, probably 10 bucks or less on eBay. It’s totally worth it. Enjoy!

Niche Game: Final Fantasy Tactics

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

I trust in Squaresoft to provide RPG games with intricate plots, interesting characters, varied special abilities, lots of room to explore, and heavy but surmountable challenges. The Final Fantasy series is a particularly shining example of this, especially Final Fantasy III (titled VI in Japan), VII, and X. Each of those games deserves an article in their own right, so I’m not going to dig into them here. Final Fantasy Tactics is an offshoot, not included in the main numbering of the series titles, but the numbering doesn’t matter much anyway. Despite their numbering, none of the games really have anything to do with each other plot-wise. They do tend to share much in the way of game mechanics, NPC races, monster types, some character naming, and other aspects, but otherwise the games have nothing to do with each other in terms of continuity.

Most of the games in the Final Fantasy series have a very artificial battle system. I’m not saying they aren’t great games in their own right, but the battles generally consist of the enemies lining up along one side of the screen and the players lining up along the other. When each character’s or monster’s battle timer fills up they have the opportunity to perform some action. If they choose to attack, they run over to the other side, slash the enemy with sword (or whatever weapon) and then run back to their own lines, as though they could charge unimpeded into the midst of an enemy group like that.

Final Fantasy Tactics uses a completely different battle system entirely. It is still turn-based, but the real interesting part is the use of terrain. The layout of the level has as much effect on the outcome of the battle as the strengths of the enemies or the skill of the player. In particular, holding the high ground is very important if either side has ranged fighters. Archers and mages are incredibly effective if they gain a little height, as their attacks gain a great deal of range when shooting at a lower location. Also, they’re harder to hit–if they’re high enough off the ground, an archer’s arrow won’t even be able to reach them.

Using the terrain takes some getting used to. In one of the first levels, your enemy is standing on top of a house throwing rocks down at you. To really face off against him, you have to go around the back and climb some crates on the back of the house to get up there. Until then he’s a constant annoyance, pelting you as you try to fight other enemies.

As each player’s turn comes around, they can move once (the range dependent on their class and the terrain, among other things), and perform an action (such as attacking, casting a spell, or using an item). Use these moves wisely, as that character will be a sitting duck, stuck in one place, until the next turn.

Another strange thing about the game is your ability to hire fighters to join your ranks. Your main character is always involved in every battle, and is the center of the plot, but you can bring along 4 other units to any fight. Any human unit can change character classes between fights, allowing you to customize your little army to a large degree. And as you play the game you can unlock new and unique character classes, each with their own special abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. You unlock these by creating obscure combinations of levelling up other character classes–to get the more interesting classes I needed to look up hints online. I would recommend doing so, because some of the classes are fun enough to make the game totally worth it on their own.

The game is based around a really good skill system. You build up ability points as you fight, which can be applied to different skills for each class. You can get them all in the gradual cheapest first order, or save up for a whopper of a skill. Either way, I like purchased skill based systems like this, they make the experience building into an interesting resource management challenge in themselves.

By far the best class in the game is the Mediator class. He doesn’t have much in the way of offense or defense, but what he does have is the unique ability to talk enemy characters over to your side. This works on both humans and monsters (but not bosses). It’s a great double threat, because not only do you reduce your enemies’ number by one, you also add one to your own group. This is the only way your group can ever number more than 5, so that’s another huge perk. Also, this is the only way you can get monsters on your side. And once you have a couple monsters, they randomly breed and lay eggs, creating new monsters. And for the human initiates, once the fight is over, you can strip them of their valuable equipment and get rid of them. The mediator’s talk skill has a fairly low rate of success, so you’ll want to have a well-rounded party to be able to fight and heal and all that good stuff even if he accomplishes nothing.

Besides the hired hands you get along the way, there are also plot-important characters that join your party. These guys tend to have their own special skills, not held by anyone else, though you never know if the plot is going to kill one of them off or make them leave your party. These guys are the real powerhouses of your group, and you should make good use of them.

When I first started playing this game, I had an idea for experience building that turned out to be a terrible idea. I hired several extra people for my party, and tried to rotate them all in and out of the current party to make them level at equal rates. In other games this would’ve worked fine, but the trouble is that the game-makers decided to increase the challenge level with the overall experience gathered by your party. The monsters are set to keep it challenging if your small party are the only fighters, so I soon learned that the more I tried to increase experience in a well-rounded way, the enemies got tougher at a much higher rate than I was. So my advice is to keep your active party small, and just keep those people around as long as you can.

One thing that really annoyed me in this game is the low success rate for white magic. Imagine you’re in the middle of a tough fight. Your archer is dead. Your knight is severely wounded. It’s your white mage’s turn, and he can either try to cast a cure spell on the knight or cast a life spell on the archer. He starts casting the spell, which takes a while–he stands in place and mumbles for a while. After this interminable wait, he finally casts it, and “Miss”. Well, your archer’s still dead and you’re knight’s soon to follow and your white mage has just wasted a turn. Arg! So I ended up relying mostly on items. Most of the character classes are only able to use items from one square away, which really limits their usefulness, but the alchemist class can throw items for several squares. Items always succeed, as long as they’re successfully administered (that is you don’t try to throw them through a wall or something). And the action occurs instantaneously. But an alchemist isn’t useful for much else, so I like to make one of my special plot-characters into an alchemist. He still keeps his inherent skills, but also has the ability to throw items, so he can be both a killer and a healer, as the situation demands.

Finding this game shouldn’t be difficult. A quick eBay search comes up with many hits, though if you want this particular game you will want to be careful not to get the PSP or Game Boy Advance or DS sequels. By using the following search string I was able to get a list mostly of just this version of the game:
“final fantasy tactics” -advance -rift -“war of lions” -“war of the lions”
I saw it on there for a Buy It Now price as low as $15 with plenty of open bidding going on for other identical items. And there’s always the possibility of getting a ROM for it, though I’ve never dabbled in Playstation emulators so I can’t give any advice on that route.

This game is definitely worth playing if you want an RPG that incorporates more battleground strategies instead of artificial “I stand over here and you stand over there and we’ll take turns” fighting style. Try it out. You won’t regret it. Enjoy!