final fantasy tactics is the only good final fantasy

i have played many games that could claim to be the next final fantasy tactics. i didn't hate all of them, but every single one of them just made me want to play final fantasy tactics again.

the fire emblem series shares a lot of similar concepts – grid-based positional strategy, turn-based battling mechanics, a swords-and-wands fantasy aesthetic. but i found the game boy advance games dull, and could not really stand the “surrounded by anime girlfriends and boyfriends” dynamics of three houses.

i've tried a few disgaea games and find them both tonally off-putting and mechanically far more complex than i want. tactics tip-toes you into granularity as best as it can and allows certain linear paths of development as a crutch if you need it; looking at disgaea's skill trees and statistical systems has always felt to me like being kicked headfirst into a waterfall. ditto tactics ogre.

final fantasy xii claims to take place in the same world, and tactics director and writer yasumi matsuno served a writing role. but ultimately it's closer to the ivalice of the tactics advance games: more storybook, less grimy, and the gameplay isn't fft at all, but instead an mmo-inspired wrinkle on the classic final fantasy formula. not bad, but not evocative of what i'm looking for.

the tactics advance games themselves, ostensible sequels that build on the gameplay and job-system mechanics of the original, are good in their own right, but the story and aesthetic don't match up for me. the pseudo-3d landscapes and restricted sprite work strays far from the original look and feel, and in these games ivalice is a literal storybook, rather than a war of the roses-inspired world of grimy and complex politicking and ugly lies and legacies.

i haven't played triangle strategy, and that's not just because it has such a dumb “we forgot to remove the placeholder” title. the aesthetic, a continuation of whatever square enix was doing in octopath traveler, is less nostalgic to me and more like someone smeared particle effects all over decent pixel work. the bits of story i've gathered through trailers and previews feel more akin to fire emblem than tactics–some missing bit of maturity, tripping over the line from complex to cringeworthy.

i know these are not fair assessments; these are games and franchises i either haven't played or haven't given nearly enough time to feel lived-in or comfortable. but i look at them, and all i want is to hear trisection and to get ramza to start spamming accumulate.

you know what games do get close to kindling in me the feeling of playing tactics? of all things, it's the dark souls series. they share nothing in common mechanically, but the souls games linger in dark, crumbling worlds of wasted sacrifices and dead kings, and their storytelling is so opaque as to allow the player to fill in the blanks on their own. the scope is grand and intimate all at once; the music is haunting and carefully deployed. they can feel easy and almost rote sometimes and maddeningly, cruelly difficult at others. “god is dead, and he wants to kill you” would be as decent a plot synopsis for tactics as it would be for any souls game. they're not at all the same kind of game, but for whatever combination of these reasons, souls games linger in my mind in a similar region to tactics.

final fantasy tactics is a weird alchemy of tone, visual style, and gameplay. part of this is surely just nostalgia talking, but finding a new game at this exact same intersection has been my white whale forever. maybe instead of playing ahab, i should remain content to revisit the tactics that already exists. lord knows i will, again and again, content or not.