I started WOTL for the first time a couple of weeks ago as well. However I have beaten the original version a bunch of times.
Final Fantasy Tactics is more difficult than either of the Advance versions, however it is far from possible. You do need to come up with more advanced strategies than, "charge all your high level characters into the middle of the battle" though.
Some newbie tips:
Every character should spend time as a Squire and a Chemist at the beginning of the game. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is changing your party members into knights, mages, etc too early.
Squires have some of the most useful abilities in the game:
- Your first priority should be learning Focus. EVERY CHARACTER should learn focus. It boosts your attack by 1, and allows your members to earn exp and JP on turns where they are unable to attack or cast spells. Sitting back and letting the enemy come to you while you cast focus a couple of times will make your team a lot stronger regardless of their level (note that this strategy doesn't apply to maps where black mages/summoners/or archers start close to your party). When I finally promote my units to more advanced classes, I often equip the squire skills as their secondary job skill type since focus is so useful.
- After Focus, your next priority should be learning JP boost. jp boost will give you something like 1.5x the JP from every action. At the highest levels, this results in over 40 JP per turn and is crucial to mastering the magic classes, which often require 6000-9000 JP to learn every skill. Every character you have should have JP boost equiped at all times. At least until the later portions of the game. The only exception to this is with Ninjas. I find that equip sword, and the attack boost it gives you (especially before ninja blades are available to buy) is worth earning less JP.
- Early in the game Move +1 and Counter Tackle (or whatever it is called) are useful skills, but they are superceded by Thief and Monk skills later on.
Chemists are the only class that can throw items without equiping a skill. They also have a very useful counter skill.
- All support and magic characters should have auto potion. Auto potion gives your character a chance to consume a potion every time they are attacked. In the original Final Fantasy Tactics, I think you need to learn how to use potions, hi-potions and x-potions before they were available as auto potions, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. You may want to choose counter attack over auto potion for your armored classes that can take a few hits, but auto-potion is a lifesaver for squishy units. One last thing. I believe that your units will use whatever is the lowest powered potion in your inventory when activating the auto potion skill, so sell off all of your regular potions when you can afford hi-potions (and those hi-potions when x-potions are available).
Don't restrict characters to a single class. It is better to learn the best skills from several classes, then spending the time mastering them all. You only need to level the secondary classes (White Mage, Black Mage, Knight, and Archer) to level 3-5 to unlock advance classes that use them as a pre-requisite (the exception being Dark Knights that require a masted Knight and Black Mage job, and are really an endgame goal). EDIT: I wanted to mention that it IS worth mastering black and white mages. Just not necessarily right off the bat.
Make Ramza a super hero. If you underlevel Ramza, you are going to have serious problems beating several maps. I typically make my Ramza a Ninja, with equip sword (knight skill that you should get in the process of unlocking monks), ignore height (dragoon skill), and auto potion. Ramza has additional Squire skills that unlock as the game progresses, so Squire abilities are a useful secondary skill set for him.
