I have tried to play this game for 20 years

[ILLBEDANGED]

every time i do i get super frustrated with the way the game plays. i realize it's tactical and that's not really a genre i've had a lot of time with. any suggestions for how to play this game would be great. every time i boot it up i think man this game is so great except for the part where i play it. help a absolute newb. TY!

[Panther_Gunn]

Have you looked through any of the walkthroughs for the game?  When it originally came out, I had a subscription to PC Gamer.  They had articles in two separate issues detailing the lead up to the release, which got me very excited for it.  Each issue came with a disc with different things for many of the games reviewed in the issue -- one of the issues that covered FF had the Character Tool and a bunch of meshes & skins on it (including some of Gryphon's Egyptian skins).

The issue they had with the walkthrough helped me a lot.  It told you where all of the power-ups were on each mission map, what the mission was like, and their recommendation on characters to use.  In later missions, my all-purpose team was Alchemiss (Repulsion & Aloft), El Diablo (Ignition & Hellfire), Microwave (super slow but really useful powers), and Bullet (Speeding Bullet & able to run away most of the time after hitting someone with a pole).

I ended up using Pause *a lot*.  And fairly frequent saves.  A little tedious at times, but it allowed me to get the most points I could.

And don't be afraid to search the Forum Archives for any questions you have.  You have a better chance finding answers there than current posts.  If you don't find what you're looking for, ask.  There's a couple missions that were pretty frustrating for a lot of people.

[bearded]

Pause. Give your orders, pause again. It can almost be turned based, but make sure your pause is set to freeze, not slomo.

[bearded]

Or, with a good ai, you can have the heroes play without your intervention. I've got the code for that if you want it.

[UnkoMan]

Like the other said, pause set to freeze is your best friend. I spend tons of time paused, then watch them go.

Also, it's good to find characters you really like and level them up only. If you're using a walkthrough you can sort of see whose powers would be good for coming people, etc.
I think I had lots of fun with Liberty Lad and Ant, tossing bombs all over, but that's highly unpredictable.