I wasn't the world's greatest fan of Final Fantasy XII, in terms of gameplay. It was a title with a lot of good ideas that weren't implemented especially well, like the License Board. In terms of story, though, Final Fantasy XII is perhaps the most impressive entry in the franchise. The long production cycle and numerous plot revisions resulted in a story that, while full of familiar "Star Wars" references, defied a lot of RPG story conventions while also showcasing a fantastically likeable cast of characters. On top of this, Final Fantasy XII pushed PS2 performance, graphically, about as far as it's ever going to go.

This means that Final Fantasy XII's DS sequel, Revenant Wings, has a very tough act to follow. Seemingly, there are numerous other strikes against it, too. Instead of the full 3D of, say, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker, Revenant Wings uses very low-res 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds that are occasionally quite impressive. Instead of being developed in-house by Square Enix, Revenant Wings was primarily developed by an outside group called Think & Feel with no prior experience working on Square Enix IP. Their only prior game published in English was the promising but utterly disappointing The Con for the PSP, and beyond that, their only work an import-only RPG called Monster Summoner. Finally, Revenant Wings makes some curious decisions regarding storyline and characters. Where Final Fantasy XII was an epic adventure, Revenant Wings is written as a light and sunny adventure story that takes more than a few cues from the comedy-adventure manga, One Piece. The art style is bright and cartoony, and Basch and Penelo in particular have received some truly drastic redesigns.

All of this said, my concerns about Revenant Wings being a slapdash, money-grubbing sequel in the Final Fantasy X-2 vein melted away once I got my hands on a copy of the game. I had played the E3 demo and found it charming, but that demo only presented the game's very first, very easy battle. The full game is at once breathtakingly expansive and charmingly intimate. The characters here feel warm and human in a way Square Enix's epic adventurers rarely do; even the super-popular Balthier emerges feeling less like high fantasy Han Solo and more like a real, if very stylish, person. In all, Ashe, Balthier, Basch, Fran, Penelo and Vaan return as playable characters, with game-exclusive newbies Filo, Kytes and Llyud debuting.

Revenant Wings's gameplay is similar in style to Final Fantasy XII's, but hops genres completely into the realm of RTS. The emphasis on strategy in this game is largely tactical, with resource gathering minimized, and a few levels only allowing you to deploy the named characters. Named characters usually function as leader units, leading an army of Espers (aka Yarhi) that automatically attack enemies or heal the party, depending on type. Espers range in power from lowly Rank Is, like Chocobo and Cactaurs, to the demigod-like Rank IIIs, including the likes of Ultima and Odin.

Characters have so many affinity points, and Espers each cost so many points. You may summon Espers endlessly from summoning gates (essentially, resource points) of which your characters have taken control. Enemy characters can also try to seize control of summoning gates, and a few levels make use of a "Soul Crystal" mechanic that causes characters on either side to reincarnate endlessly until someone's Soul Crystal is destroyed. Some levels don't have gates or crystals, sharply limiting your resources, and a few don't even let you summon your Espers at all!

Gameplay tends to follow a formula that's addictively simple at low levels, and then becomes maddeningly challenging toward the very end of the game. You begin each level by selecting the five characters you want to use as Leaders, and then equipping them with the weapons, armor and accessories you think are best suited to the upcoming battle. Then, select the five Espers you want to take into battle with you. You can choose up to one Rank III, two Rank IIs, and two Rank Is to fill out your army. Which Espers you have to choose from depends on how much Auracite you've invested in the game's License Board equivalent, the Ring of Pacts. Once you've spent Auracite to seal a pact with a particular Esper, then you can choose to take it into battle with you. Spending on Espers unlocks other Espers of a similar type, and some Espers are secrets unlocked by completing particular battles or side-missions. Your characters gain experience as you level up, and your Espers tend to be roughly the average level of your characters.

You deploy and command your team by using the stylus and occasionally the X button to quickly select all units. The stylus fills the role of the mouse in traditional RTS, allowing you to lasso groups of units and then click to send them off to automatically attack an enemy. Selecting a particular unit opens up a menu, where you can give them more detailed commands, like using a particular spell or ability on a certain target. Leader characters have Gambits you can set, which let you order them to automatically use one of their seven personal abilities, whenever the ability's "recharge meter" is filled. Which Gambits you set has an enormous impact on gameplay, since some characters (like Penelo and Ashe) get a blend of potent support and offense abilities that fit different types of situations. You can change Gambits on the fly when necessary, or click to order a character to use a personal ability while his or her Gambit is set to something else.

Once you've micromanaged your party, then battle is a simple matter of lassoing your characters and sending them to attack whatever target you deem fit. You need to pick targets carefully, since even if you have an advantage in levels and equipment, you can easily get overwhelmed by drawing aggro on too many groups of enemies at once. Most levels have a "trick" to them that needs to be worked out, either a particular character or Esper you need, or a particular method you need to use for approaching the goal.

While the core game missions are fairly simple, the side-missions can demand deliciously exacting strategies. Toward the end of Revenant Wings, this difficulty gets a little ridiculous, as side-missions increasingly demand that a player grind for particular weapons or just for experience rather than deploy careful combinations of characters and Espers in a tactical way. There is the Midlight's Deep dungeon, exclusive to the American release, to help a player level up quickly, and it also features some finely designed battles that really serve to challenge the upper limits of a player's skill.

Still, overall there's a feeling that some levels weren't designed with the limitations of Revenant Wings's fairly simple damage engine in mind, and it's all too easy to lose a battle and feel that it was the fault of the interface or pathfinding rather than a lack of skill or poor decisions. While the 2D sprites used for characters and Espers are very charming and well-animated, in large-scale melees, they pile up on each other such that your screen becomes little more than a writhing mass of HP bars. Clicking on individual targets becomes impossible. Even more irritating is watching a super-powerful Rank III Esper fail to go after an attended target ... because something about the sprite's geometry makes it impossible for him or her step around the other monsters you control to get at the target. Sometimes trying to order lesser monsters out of the way is useless, since the AI prioritizes aggro over user commands.

These complaints are minor in light of how fun the vast majority of the game's levels are. Commanding your units is simple and feels very responsive most of the time, the controls only breaking down in advanced levels. The story is engaging, teasing interesting connections between the Ivalice of Final Fantaxy XII and the Ivalice of Final Fantasy Tactics. The characters are extremely likeable and entertaining, and playing around with forging weapons for them (from gathered materials) and using their abilities in challenging battles is incredibly fun. I spent a solid week addicted to Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, a feeling that would not subside until I finally beat the game and saw the vague but not dissatisfying ending. Even then, I felt like going much further into the challenging optional missions than I usually would bother, simply because this title is so much fun when the gameplay works. This is well worth a DS owner's time and is easily one of the best things Square Enix has published for the NDS system.

Score: 9.0/10