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Tactics was this weird little hybrid of fantasy RPGs with turn-based strategy games. The basic game play goes something like this: you have a squad of guys with a mix of classes, be it warriors, mages, archers, enchanters, healers, etc who are trying to kill a group of monsters or other form of bad guy. The catch is, your group is made up of characters that can be hybrids off all the available skill sets with in the game. You can have ninjas that cast black magic, archers that can summon dragons, or warriors who can steal an opponent's armor right off their back. At a base level, you are essentially playing chess, but it's like chess squared once and then squared eighty times more. Like I said, it's my favorite game.

I had heard about Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance a long time ago, back when they were first talking about Nintendo and Square getting back together after a long separation. I was ecstatic. My favorite game would finally have a sequel. The more I heard, the more I learned that Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance was going to be more of a direct port than a new game. Luckily, this turned out to be completely false. The Tactics on the Gameboy Advance is its own unique game, worthy of its namesake and parent title.

When I first picked up FFT:A, I was unsure about what I was getting into. I had heard they had made some pretty massive changes from the first game. Oh boy, had they. But, after playing away a large portion of the past few months with it, I can safely say they are all for the best. Instead of the one human race, FFT:A has five distinct races. Each race has its own unique strengths and weakness, but more importantly each race has its own classes. There are a few overlapping beginning skills, but the fun and complex classes are attached to a single race. That's not to say that there aren't classes that don't closely correspond between races For example, only Humans can be Paladins, but the Bangaa can be a Templar - which is very similar. This attachment of classes to races adds an extra level of depth that was missing from the first game. There's no possibility of creating a single super-unit because there are only a few incredibly powerful skills for each race. In order to make a truly successful party you need to mix the races and classes together.

The hybridization of individual characters is still there, however. All of my main melee units have Steal as their secondary ability, ensuring I can steal the best armor and weapons from my enemies. That's especially important in this game because of the new way that characters learn skills. You no longer just pick a skill and learn it, but rather you learn it by having a weapon equipped with that skill on it. For example, if you wanted to learn the skill Powerbreak on your Fighter, you would have to equip the sword with that skill on it until that Fighter learned the ability. Then you could swap out for another sword with a new ability on it, thus expanding your Fighter's arsenal.

The downside of this is that a lot of the powerful skills are held back until later on in the game. They do this by hiding them as rewards for missions and battles or by granting them as rewards for leveling your clan. That's something else they've added with this game. Before, you were leading a rag-tag bunch of outlaws. Now, you're leading a clan of well…outlaws. You send them out on missions solo or use them in combat against other clans. As you complete more missions your clan levels in an assortment of areas that control how well you do on quests. Certain missions can only be done if you have certain items, and you need to do missions to get those items. See how this works? In all there are something like 300 missions to complete, plus a constant flow of rival clans to fight.

In combat you move your units around a beautifully detailed isometric map, taking turns dealing damage to foes and healing your own units. It's here that the tactics of the game really start to come into play. Warriors can deal out large amounts of damage, and absorb a lot, too. Mages can deal insane amounts of damage at long ranges, but have limited magic pools and few health points. Then there are the non-traditional units that really defy simple description. Combinations of mages, archers and meleers that deal damage in strange ways. Underestimating those hybrid units have gotten me killed on more than one occasion. As you progress in the game the battles get more and more complicated because of the game's Law System. The Laws are rules of engagement for the clans of the game world. They forbid you from using certain attack types or skills and penalize you if you do so. Depending on the level of the infraction you can either lose some stat points or a reward or even be sent to jail. At first the laws are a minor inconvenience that make sure you've got at least one secondary unit if you can't use one of your regulars, but as they start to compound you'll find yourself with a full assortment of back-up units incase the laws knock out the usefulness of your big hitters. If you don't feel like diversifying you clan you can always use an Anti Law that neutralizes or adds a law to the rules of battle for the day. As the game progress you'll find yourself hanging on to the Anti Law cards like a miser onto solid gold. They can really turn the tide of battle if you knock out one or two of those pesky laws that are crippling your forces.

This is the sort of game I love, one that is fun to play on many levels. You can pick it up for a second and play a few rounds of combat then save and move on. Or you can sit for hours micromanaging your unit's skills and equipment. The action is not as fast paced as that of a twitch game, but ultimately it's just as challenging. However, the steep learning curve may not appeal to everyone who doesn't have the time to get used to all the nuances of the game. Anyone who does will find a rich and rewarding game experience.