Arcadian Atlas Review - Lite Tactics

mmorpg.com:

When I was asked to review Arcadian Atlas, the first thing that came to mind was “Wow, this looks like Final Fantasy Tactics.” Anyone who’s ever discussed RPGs with me know that Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite game in the series and what I consider to be one of the greatest games ever created. The characters, story, class system, underlying themes, and hidden secrets come together to create a masterpiece that still holds up today. Unfortunately, Arcadian Atlas does not live up to being a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics.

The biggest problem with Arcadian Atlas is that it tries so hard to be another game that it doesn’t do enough distinct things to stand on its own. Furthermore, everything that it does is just a worse version of something else. That isn’t to say that the game is objectively terrible, but it is definitely mediocre and with so many great games out there, mediocre isn’t enough.

For those of you who might be unaware of Final Fantasy Tactics, it’s a turn-based strategy game developed back in 1997 by Square Enix with blocky terrain features and hand-drawn character portraits. It throws a profound cast of characters into a war-torn country that is eventually plagued by a world-ending plot caused by magic crystals.

It features a deep, customizable class system, lots of hidden dungeons and characters, and is essentially an allegory about religion having unchecked power. The game’s biggest fault is that it was only released on 2 major platforms, PlayStation and PlayStation Portable, and recently received a mobile port, which is probably not the best way to experience it.

Now, back to the review at hand… Arcadian Atlas features similar low polygon, blocky terrain features and characters with “art