6-24-2008		10-25-2007
	6-27-2008		-

The last day of school, and Luso is helping the librarian, as punishment for repeated tardiness and mischevious behavior durring class. He then chances upon an old book. Being curious, he flips through the pages, marveling at the pictures of wizards and beasts. He notices then that the latter half of the books pages are blank. On the final written page, it says: "Who will be the hero to complete the story." Being a mischevious kid, Luso writes his name in the book. He is suddenly transported to the world of Ivalice, and falls right into the middle of a battle. Saved and befriended by Cid, his journey to return to his home world begins.

The third Tactics installment, as well as the direct sequel to Tactics Advance was released in 2008. It has been given great reviews overall, with comments like "When it all clicks, Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is a well-oiled adventure combining good design and fun gameplay that any strategy/RPG fan will appreciate." from Game Informer. Famitsu gave it a 34/40, and a 9/10 from IGN. It appears the world of Ivalice has definitely gotten something right.
There is a return to the isometric turn-based tactics battle system, with some interesting changes to it. For instance, some enemies now can take up multiple squares, due to their size. Challenge anyone? Also in the world map, they introduced what are called area maps. These are places within a location, where random battles can occur, and is similar to the world map of Tactics.
The graphics of TA2 are a leap above its predicessor, thanks to the more powerful DS. TA2 also still holds to the beautiful coloring of the sprites and detailed backdrops of Tactica Advance. The images are crisp, clean, and just pleasing to the eyes. It is certainly great to see Square taking this series with brighter colors, to offset some of the dark points in the story.
The story itself is similar to that of Tactics Advance, in the fact that your character, Luso, is transported to another Ivalice through the Gran Grimiore. But that is where the similarities end.
This time, you are transported to a real time Ivalice, rather than a fantasy one. And rather than Luso wanting to find his way home immediately, he seems more tuned to the thought of exploring Ivalice, than actually getting home. This made the game feel fresh and new, without taking away from the fact that it was a sequel. There was enough taken from the old, to keep it true to the overall story arc.
The music was great in TA2, and was composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto and other composers under Basiscape. The biggest complaint seems to be the obvious borrowing of musical scores from Tactics Advance, as well as XII. It would seem this was done, to give it a more tied together feel. These games all do take place within Ivalice, and thus it would make sense to keep similar scores for say characters who are in multiple titles the same.
With TA2, Square has seemingly created yet another awesome game. Usually compilations get overly boring after a while to many people (VII), but it seems the Ivalice Alliance has been spot on from the git go. We currently do not know if there is another title being made for this series, but they have done something for cell phones called Crystal Guardians. So far three chapters have been released for this mini title.