When it comes to both the gameplay and the controls, simplicity is the word that first comes to my mind. The strategy on the other hand, it's a different story.

Part of my job is rating games on how easy or difficult it is for the game to be learned. Because of that responsibility, I only use the manual if I get stuck somewhere. As far as I can tell, FF Tactics is one of the simplest games to learn.

Learning to move your characters around is easy. Learning to attack, heal, cast spells or defend is equally easy. But ... Final Fantasy Tactics - The War of the Lions is one of the most strategically involved turn-based games that I have ever seen. If I have to compare FF Tactics to another game, it would have to be chess. As a matter of fact, I am going to go as far as to say that it is more difficult then chess; in chess there are no area-of-effect (AoE) spells.

AoEs hurt everyone in its range, including friendly units. Even the caster is not immune from an AoE spell. So if you are not careful, you can end up killing your party before the enemy has a chance to. Not just the offensive spells are hard to master; even the healing spells can be tricky. If the heal-spell happens to land in an enemy's range will not only heal your characters, but the enemy units as well. Because of that, sometimes it is actually not a good strategy to heal your party members. Also, because of the way that AOEs work, sacrificing characters can be an effective strategy. For instance, moving a targeted character next to an enemy unit (or group of units), can be a devastating move.

Another interesting factor to FF Tactics is the character buildup. It is one of the few role-playing games that has this kind of control over the character development. Everything in FF Tactics is based around your characters, and your characters are based around their jobs (professions). Two basic jobs eventually branch out into a conglomerate of possibilities. Squire is the "job" for any fighter based character while Chemist is the "job" that spawns casters (mages).

Specialized characters do unique things. For example, thieves steal; anything from money to items. Knights, due to the magnificent armor that they can use, make excellent tanks (strong characters that can run in and take a hit). Archers can be very powerful fighters, especially useful because of their long range. And the mages, well they can do just about anything. Want a great healer, go the white magic route. Want a pure destructor? The black magic arts is the way to go for that. Want a cross-bread? Well in FF Tactics that aspect is possible as well. While your primary job determines most factors, you can always train and equip a secondary job. So your evil black mage can actually become the party's healer if the white magic skill is equipped as his secondary skill. Because of this diversity, character creation is almost limitless.