Stop me if you've heard this one: A knight, a black mage, and a white mage walk into a bar. The knight has 'haste' cast on him. The black mage has a staff that gives stronger power to fire spells, and the white mage is pretty much just a white mage. Spotting a lovely geomancer sitting at the bar alone, the knight nudges his buddies. "Watch how it's done, boys," he says, as he walks over to the woman.
"Excusememadamehowareyou?!" He says, the words flying out of his mouth as quickly as he can speak them.
The geomancer turns to the knight, and looks his fidgety figure up and down. "Uh. No thanks. You're clearly on haste, and I don't like men who finish quickly."
The knight walks back to his laughing friends downtrodden. The black mage scoffs.
"So much for showing us how it's done. My turn."
He walks up to the geomancer and lights a fireball in his hand to get her attention.
"Looking for a little fire in your life? Trust me, once you've had black you'll never go back."
"Maybe. But I get the feeling you'll leave me with a burning sensation. No thanks."
The black mage walks back, recieving a consoling pat on the back from the knight.
"Well white mage, your turn I guess."
The white mage smirks and shakes his head. "No thanks."
A few moments later the geomancer walks up to the white mage and asks him to go home with her. The black mage and knight's mouths drop.
"You want the white mage? Why?!"
The geomancer turn to them.
"Protect means we can be as rough as we want. Shell means we don't get more attached than we want to. Arise and raise mean he'll always be ready for another round. Regen means he won't get tired easily. And, of course, Esuna means I won't catch anything. He's the obvious choice, boys."
As the two leave to the sad-faced knight and black mage, the white mage turns around.
"Sorry, guys. She's a geomancer. She just wants someone who can rock her world.
Okay, okay, stop groaning. Yes, I wasted too much time on this post making that joke that only RPG players will understand. Yes, the remaining time will not be enough to truly discuss the intricacies of Final Fantasy Tactics, a game that you must basically get a degree in to beat. The study hours will be long, getting your ass whupped on levels that sometimes feel impossible. The grade will be exacting but fair. If you fail, when you fail, you will know that the failure was your own and no one else's.
The questions, the decisions, are endless. Should you keep training this guy as a knight, or should you move on to the next class for what will hopefully be better gains and better abilities further down the road? What's over that next horizon? You want Ramza to have such and such an ability before what you assume is the next major battle coming, but what if something even better lies in the next class?
And this describes one of the indescribable pleasures and frustrations of Final Fantasy Tactics. The damn game is just so damn big. The decisions you make feel like they're life and death, especially since the game has no qualms about letting you dead-end yourself if you save poorly. Let's not even get started with the different classes that are available. The game is set up so that even if you aren't sure if you like any given class, you can never be sure that the next class that follows it isn't awesome. Therefore, there's never a reason not to level up a class.
However, there's always a reason to consider which class you level up first.
Then there's the story....
Well, I suppose this is my only major criticism of FF Tactics. If you put it down for a month or two, you're finished. The story is so convoluted that you won't remember it if you put it down. At the same time, it's a massive game. So you will put it down. I had to restart FF Tactics four times before beating it. A lot of people I know have similar stories.
Ultimately, the game is so fantastic that this doesn't matter. It's depth and interest do lie mostly in its gameplay, but the story is not to be ignored. This is game design at its finest and most intricate.
Forget Warhamer. X-com is great, but it's not the granddaddy (not even the original). That honor belongs to FF Tactics, which is unimpeachably one of the best games ever made.