Playing Final Fantasy Tactics A2 with "Shrike" romhack. Overall a big improvement that irons out a lot of the issues with FFTA2's original (very uneven growth rates, very uneven class ability balance), but it's still FFTA2 under the hood. One subtle tweak that goes a long way is that each tribe, bar human, has an innate elemental resistance and an innate elemental weakness. It makes elements so much more meaningful when they previously only really mattered with monsters or the very rare humanoid with an item equipped. It also makes shared jobs a bit more distinct than just what secondary abilities that it could have. The resistance might at first seem like it just makes some abilities worse against certain tribes, but the ability to resist allied splash damage is a lot more useful than you'd expect and lets you be more aggressive than you normally would.
As for FFTA2 itself: This game was always 3 steps forward 2 steps back from FFTA. It fixed some horrible balance (speed growth>>everything else, the 1HKO abilities are almost as accurate as anything else), the "300 quests" aren't as full of filler/non-interactive dispatch missions, the protagonist isn't as insufferable, the new jobs round out the less developed or mono-build tribes, the law system is changed from totally random things being totally forbidden to essentially bonus objectives (if you follow a per-battle law you're rewarded, if you ignore it you aren't actively penalized), the larger and more varied maps with a greater variety of objectives. On the negative, the two new tribes are both pretty monobuild, the protagonist isn't really the protagonist most of the time since he has no concrete goal and sits around watching other people with actual arcs, the non-generic characters look even more hideous in full detail and even less distinguishable at map size (generics generally look fine), and it waits for way too long before letting you recruit new party members.
There's also a lot of sidegrades or mixed bags: The loot and brazar system, where you get random components you can trade in to unlock new items at the shop, is an improvement over FFTA's relatively static shops and the original FFT's gear treadmill, but it still means gear progression is mostly random since its tied to random loot (each piece is used for multiple items), you don't know what an item does before you trade for it (easily avoided with save states, but still annoying because there's no real reason to not save beforehand and reload if the item demanding your only example of a loot item turns out to be useless to you. It's also really annoying to have key abilities (white mage's ability to cure stats effects, black mage's non-basic magic attacks) be unlocked at random. On the plus side, this randomness can get you to try out classes you normally wouldn't: This playthrough I got a lot of blades (the games have 25 weapon types and 9 are different classes of "sword") so I used Gladiator and Mog Knight when I normally don't bother with them. The Shrike hack helps here since it makes most classes have multiple weapon options instead of just one, freeing it of the issue where weapons were only used by a couple of classes and useless if you weren't actively using those classes (and worse, making those weapons judged entirely by their linked class: Cards could be the best weapons ever, but if only a single meh class uses them they're as bad as the class). Laws still aren't a particularly interesting mechanic and the new system is generally just "meh" (especially before you have backup members or a wide variety of abilities to work around some of the bigger restrictions) instead of actively a pain in the ass.
Edit: Forgot to mention the big new mechanic in A2 that's a slight improvement with its own issues, the new MP system. The idea of having each unit start a battle at 0 MP and gain 10 each turn is a good idea that does a lot of make lower level abilities and the item command (for popping ethers and no MP healing) more useful while making MP costs actually matter past the early game. The problem is that the game never really did enough with it, and it made speed even more important. Expensive abilities rarely justified using them over slow and steady ones or ones from classes with no MP cost for their ability even when you did have the MP for them. Half MP, MP Channeling, MP Efficiency and (worst of all) Blood Price made the mid-price abilities usable every turn at minimal cost. Again, the Shrike helps iron this out: More classes that normally have no MP cost to their abilities now have a few powerful abilities that cost 11+ MP (such as Thieves getting a Charm effect for 18 MP, or Fighter having their ranged attack ability now cost enough they don't beat Archers at their own game but still have it as an option) that are nice toolbox options you can't just spam. More costly spells are also improved.
