The devs keep referring to Final Fantasy Tactics but I've never played it, so it doesn't really provide me with much information.
Any Watchers playing this? Please share the impression
Eventually it's a bit unique in Tactical Games, it's jobs systems and some Final Fantasy used jobs systems too, perhaps you played one.
In Tactical games, party building is a problem, the more builds are possible, the more it's difficult to tune difficulty for combats and it's major for Tactical games. And then came Tactics Ogre and later Final Fantasy Tactics.
So first point, it's a tactical game with a lot of building possibilities which is quite rare for tactical games.
The job system is that any character can learn all the classes, and a character can select a main class and some key abilities picked from all classes known by a character. In FSAM it's two passive and one counter. Plus everything bring by main class selected. Such system is prone to grinding, which is tedious for most western players and it's a major problem for FFT and Tactics Ogre. FSAM achieve what I thought impossible, make a FFT like game with no grinding required at a difficulty challenging enough.
Another aspect is 3D terrains, so many tactical games just give up on heights and just use flat terrains, in FFT, more than in Ogre Tactics, the terrains have a lot of relief and add a lot of complexity to the gameplay. FSAM is almost on par with this approach, except that LOS is ignored and then obstacles and fog of war too. But the terrains are still a lot more complex than usual tactical games with flat terrains or even with more simple relief.
And the last aspect is there's a lot of work on tactical value, from depth to diversity.
But don't except anything else like for story aspects, and frankly neither in FFT which has an overhyped writing, a lot too constantly serious, and abusing of killing characters up to make it too much a routine you don't bother on finally.
