Played both. I'm with Kaz216. FFT was so much easier once Monk/Ninja combo is reached. With Thunder God Cid and a really good healer majority of the fights were easy.

FFTA unfortunately didn't have any power combos that made the equivalent. I suppose that's becuase of the power combo in FFT.

Much of what Kaz pointed out is so painfully true. I always benefited from being level grinder. So come the Monestary Library, Garion, Wiegraff the fights were no serious chore. My wife and friends however are another matter. Both of them had to restart the game from either Garion or the Monestary Library scene because they didn't have the level and there was no opportunity to grind.

It's also too hard to straight quest through FFTA. Tried and failed miserably.

The early part of FFT is pretty hard at first -- but once you work out a strategy and hope you guest characters don't ruin it then you should be able to complete the battles...

Then latter on the game gets easier and easier as you manage to get multi-tile abilities which do good damage AND have effects like rend weapon/head/speed/etc.

I disagree. The combo Hunter+Bonecrusher(or Strikeback)+Weapon AtkPlus is very easy to get and is deadly. Last Quicken is easy to learn and if you put it on anyone who knows a healing spell you are almost invincible. The story gives you the Nosada (you don't have to seek it, you get it when you reach Smithing to 20, which is very easy to do), which teaches you Double Sword to a Ninja, making you deal a lot of damage.

I can't remember exactly (I've won it at least three times), but probably in the beginning I'd do some sidequests, and from the middle of the game (when I'd already gotten tired) and onwards I'd try to rush as fast as possible, fighting only the story battles.

I agree though, that FFT is harder because there are no sidequest to level up, so the levelling involves grinding. But you have to admit that without grinding, FFT becomes impossible to win, at least in the beginning. FFTA is possible to win without doing many sidequests

The only time FFT is easy is when you have power-leveled and have Thunder-God Cid. The sidequests however are challenging, especially midlight´s deep. FFTA was easy throughout the whole game, if you fought other clans and did sidequests it became a cakewalk.

In FFT you really need to learn the most useful abilities for each job and know how to unlock further jobs, otherwise you´re screwed. The game is up to the fight in Eagrose castle difficult because the Lucavi and their human form kick ass: strong long-range attacks, area attacks causing status ailments. When you play it for the first time, you´ll have to restart many fights because you´ll need to equip yourself with the right abilities, items and eventually even change jobs. That rarely happened to me in FFTA.

It's hard for the first few battles, once you learn some abilities and get a good team going you'll have a good time with that game, much better then God of War on the PSP, GoW on PSP is way shorter, a bit of a button masher, and the story is no where near as good as FFT IMO.

I'm with zexen_lowe and noname220 on this one.
And I played/am playing both extensively.
FFTA has absolutely no difficulty, while the difficulty of FFT is exactly like zexen_lowe said.

And no, FFT is not hard because of bad programming or the like.
FFT is hard even at later levels and still require tactics, at least in the random encounters.
There are some random encounters I remember (red chocobos, dragons) that will be challenging and could destroy any of your team unless you have good tactics skills and good well equipped characters.
You can toast the last boss and still be destroyed in random encounters if you're not careful.
FFT definitely is not easy, and far harder than FFTA. FFTA is a walk in the park, really.

Of course, all of this implies you don't let any of your character die in battles.

Actually, I can understand why FFTA can seem hard, that's because your stats depends on which class you had when leveling up. That's why grinding like described here works in FFT, but in FFTA, it will only give you crap characters. In FFTA, you must get Speed above all if you don't want to be toasted in later random encounters or even story battles with Assassins, who can kill most of your characters before you can even move if your speed is not enough.
Actually, it's the same problem in FFT, but IIRC your stats don't depend on the job you had when leveling up. Correct me if I'm wrong.

i play the gba fft on psp :)
might get the fft for psp
"hi square-enix" hahahaha