I’m thinking about picking up FF Tactics Advance. I loved the original Final Fantasy Tactics (for the strategic gameplay, not for the absurdly convoluted plot). But I hate games where you create the world map yourself-- I couldn’t stand Legend of Mana for that reason. So how is Advance? Does the story make more sense than the original? Is the gameplay as good? Is the create-the-map aspect central to enjoying the game, or something I could mostly ignore?
The original story made perfect sense… you just had to play the game at least 2-3 times and pay attention to every little thing. 
Then again, that’s one of the things that made the game so excellent.
FFTA is… alright. It’s worse than FFT in virtually all conceivable aspects of the game, but it’s not especially terrible. The whole map thing is something you could mostly ignore, I’d think. I just never found the gameplay or story compelling enough to go back and finish the game off after I got distracted by something newer and shinier.
I enjoyed it, but then I’ve only played a few minutes of the original and I can’t compare the games. So… I can really do no better than point you to the reviews over at gameFAQs. A few of them have comparisons to the PSX version.
I do know that there is a sequel to FFT:A for the DS which is currently in production at the moment, so that could be an incentive. Though, IMO, I’d say skip 'em both and pick up something else (like Riviera: The Promised Land) instead.
Tactics Advance is more or less enjoyable. It definitely doesn’t compare to the original FF:T, but it’s a good enough game on its own. As far as the map thing, I just grabbed a template from GameFAQs and followed that. The Judge system (which restricts one or more types of actions per fight) is a pain, though. You learn to work around it, but IMO you shouldn’t have to do so. Still, it’s more FF:T-style gameplay, so for me it’s quite playable.
I hated it, and I’m a big fan of strategic RPG’s. I loved the original FFT, love Nippon Ichi games, and so on, but FFT:A drove me insane. I think that the judge system really just ruins the game; the rules are irritating, random, and usually suck all of the fun out of a battle.
The judge system is a system by which “judges” throw out a random rule at the beginning of the battle that you have to follow. While this seems like it might mix things up and make the game more challenging, the rules are often things like “no item usage during battle” or “no physical attacks in battle.” I’m not even kidding, I got nailed with “no physical attacks during battle” on my very first battle when I had like three characters with maybe one spell between them. Why!?
What’s this about you have to create your own map?
Is that it? To play the game, you have to make up the map?
Why would anyone think this would be a good thing to implement in a game?
-FrL-
Frylock, the worldmap is predetermined with something like 30 empty spots and routes between them. Each time you learn of a new location to travel to, you can drop it in an empty slot. Depending on where the new location is dropped, you can sometimes find items there. What makes this silly is that there are a few ‘optimal’ layouts that you really have no idea even exist unless you look at an FAQ, which allow you to gain access to some rare/unique items. If you didn’t know about that, it’d be a completely random and trivial part of the game.
As a rule, anyone who has played the original hates FFT:A. I had not, and loved the Advance version, including the judge rules, which was a fun way to mix things up. And I loved the translation - I thought the dialog was surprisingly natural for a Japanese RPG.