Some people ask me why Final Fantasy Tactics is so great. After all, it’s hardly as critically acclaimed as Final Fantasy VII was, the game’s about 10 years old, and it’s incredibly hard to conquer.

My response, for the most part, is: exactly. This is the game I’d love to lock myself into a Venetian hotel with and just play until I’ve completely beaten it.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a game where, if its style appeals to you, you don’t care if the game was critically acclaimed or not. These days, some entire companies (Atlus, NIS America) are almost exclusively devoted to making games that attempt to be everything that Final Fantasy Tactics was on PSone, yet only rarely do the imitators come close.

Sure, the game’s about 10 years old but I still take it out and play it from time to time; having it remade and re-released on PSP will only make that easier; the graphical facelift is merely a bonus.

And yes, Final Fantasy Tactics is hard to beat. Damn hard. It’s a game that will dare to challenge you to battles that last for an hour or more, and still find a way to wipe out your party, causing you to have to fight the battle over and over … and sometimes, over again.

The push in videogames these days is to make games easier and easier to win and breeze through. Final Fantasy Tactics is the antidote to such watered-down game play. I’m relatively certain that once the PSP comes out, the new version will keep me challenged for the next decade, the way the first version did since it was released on PSone.