And here I thought this whole thread was going to have nothing but "Zidane is a poopie head", considering what I've seen so far. :lol: Nice to finally see someone else who considers not only Tactics, but also IX, the better of the Playstation era games in the series.
Not to mention, for all the crap that IX gets about Necron, several of the other FF games pulled the same "Bigger Bad Out Of Nowhere!" stuff. Hell, what about Chaos in the very first? Cloud of Darkness in III? Zeromous in IV? And even to a degree, Yu Yevon in X! A sudden appearance of an "lolSoRandom" isn't a new thing for the FF series.
I love Tactics, I hate IX. Fantasy, sci-fi, steampunk. I didn't give a rats rotting tit about the setting. I cared about the characterization and plot. IX was horrifyingly bad in that regard. The plot seemed like it was thought up with for ages 6-12, not the audience that had been growing up with the series and had grown to expect something a little more geared toward their level.
Tactics, shoddy translation aside, was great. A nice, layered plot with many important players throughout.
Square has learned from their mistake of IX and have matured their storytelling slightly, but they still have huge issues with character development. Though if I want a game where a main character is not the same person by the end of the game as he or she was at the start, I'll go to the Tales series.