The reason I own a Gameboy SP.

Even if I have no clue where it currently is!

It was for a sequel to one of my favorite games. It's a game beloved by many who play it. It's the return of Square/Enix to a Nintendo console. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance! My grandma got me a Gameboy SP and FFTA for, I think, my birthday. I loved FFT, and I knew I wanted its "sequel." I played it quite a bit when I first got it, but I've barely thought about it since. I was not a fan of it, as it felt like such a dumbed down version of FFT with a blander story. A few years later, I stumbled upon a fan theory that blows the game wide open. Will this change my viewpoint of the game? Let's find out!

The game begins in a small, snowy village. We'll soon learn this is the town of St. Ivalice. A handful of kids are out at recess for a snowball fight, but one kid isn't happy with his team. One of his teammates is a timid boy who's attached to a stuffed rabbit named Mewt. A girl on the other team gets insulted at the bully's sexism and scolds him before offering to swap teams. At some point, we get introduced to ourselves, the new kid, Marche. He and Ritz become quick friends defending Mewt before the snowball fight starts. Our teacher, Me. Leslie, enters to referee the battle, and we get a tutorial of the game. It's standard TRPG stuff, so I'll skip the details. After a round, the game jumps to a cutscene. Our Irish opponents are hyper fixating on poor Mewt. One of them even hides a rock in a snowball. The teacher ends this and asks the bullies to see him in his office.

At the end of the day, Marche, Ritz, and Mewt are planning to hang out. Mewt wants to buy a new book, and his friends want to see it. It's an unknown book about magic! Marche has to see his sickly brother, Doned, so he can't make it. Instead, Ritz and Mewt will buy the book and meet at Marche's house after. As we leave, we see an altercation with a strange man begging for his life. That's Mewt's dad. Marche leaves after, and Ritz mentions Marche has no father.

Doned isn't ill, but he has a condition that keeps him in a wheelchair. The two brothers have a moment before our friends show up. We get a glimpse of the book, and it's filled with glyphs, incomprehensible words, and pictures of strange entities. No one's sure what it's about. The four kids discuss how cool magic would be, and then they bring up what their favorite worlds are. Mewt says, "Final Fantasy"... It's dinner time, and the tea kettle has been ringing for an hour, so everyone leaves.

We see more of St. Ivalice, and it looks really nice. Great graphics for the system! The scene lingers on Newt's book before the landscape changes. The snowy village turns into a desert, and the people are replaced by the strange entities from the book. Doned flashes before disappearing. Marche begins to float before poofing away himself.

He wakes up in a strange location, wearing stranger clothes. He wanders around the town before bumping into a "lizard." The "lizard" takes offense to this word, and Marche tries to inform him he has no idea what's going on. Other citizens flee the square. Before a fight breaks out, a small animal tries to save Marche. He soothes the bangaa, but they still want to engage. A judge teleports in, and we get a deeper tutorial from before. Laws, special moves, and other things are discussed. Our "stuffed animal" friend, Montblanc, saves us with magic and even invites us to his club. He teaches us that Ivalice is his country and a few other things. The gist is we're not in Kansas anymore. We join the moogles clan, which I (re)name to Clan Centurio. From here, we learn more about the world. I go on a few missions, which are the game's battles and how the plot is advanced. I went flower picking, beat up anti science thieves, saved a professor from zombies (who share a name with our St. Ivalice bullies), and stopped an evil ice mage from killing everyone. This kicked off Clan Wars, which I'll get into...

... tomorrow!

The game's a lot slower than I remember. I'm super not happy with the lack of a fitting room. How am I supposed to know what items are better!? FFTA has a job system, but jobs are linked to races, which is kinda limiting. There are also not many of them. There are 300 missions in FFTA, but only twenty five of them are story ones. Don't expect a deep update every day, but I'm still looking forward to this. It's a game from a franchise, substory, and genre I enjoy. It can't be THAT bad?