Final Fantasy Tactics is often heralded as one of the best strategy RPGs of all time, known for having one of the best stories among Final Fantasy games. It was simple to understand but challenging to master its combat, with tons of unit choices and room for player expression. It also quite possibly had one of the most widely known, “You should have made a second save file” moments in gaming history. The Ivalice Chronicles is a remaster of this well-known SRPG, making one of the greatest stories in Final Fantasy available for a new generation of players.
The story of Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the best parts of the package. This is a story about prodigious income inequality, a fight over the crown, and of a man willing to do anything or use anyone to change the world. It can’t be understated how tight the story is in Tactics. Right from the jump, you’re thrown into the impressively designed universe of Ivalice, and you’ll be watching characters learn and begin shifting allegiances within just a few hours of starting the adventure.
A medieval world with sword and sorcery, Tactics is a story of political intrigue, betrayal, devil possession, and Judeo-Christian allegories. You play as Ramza, the youngest noble of a distinguished house that’s served the Kingdom of Ivalice for generations. Delita, Ramza’s best friend, is a commoner, and both he and his sister Tietra were brought into House Beoulve to be raised alongside Ramza. Both of the boys are enrolled into one of the best military academies in the land, but due to escalating tensions between Ivalice’s military and bandits and also insurgent groups like the Death Brigade, both Ramza and Delita are thrust into the cruelties of war well before they’re emotionally ready.
What surprised me the most about revisiting Final Fantasy Tactics, despite playing this game to completion on my PlayStation dozens of times, is that I didn’t remember the story starting off so strong. Perhaps it’s due to the improved translation better conveying the core conflict of the title’s first chapter, but Tactics wastes absolutely no time introducing players to its oppressor vs oppressed dynamic. Delita becomes disillusioned with the ways in which the nobles view commoner lives, and Ramza learns by the end of the first chapter that just being kind can’t resolve conflict, and that reforming an unjust system may require spilling blood.
The first chapter of Final Fantasy Tactics steeps players deeply in the politics of Ivalice, as a whole, and then the second chapter and beyond will be a twisting rollercoaster of new bonds and betrayals that comes off so well-written that it’s hard to believe this tale was originally spun in 1997. The Ivalice Chronicles is based on a new Japanese script for this remaster, utilizing the same middle English prose of the Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions version from the PSP. Back in 2007, there were some complaints about the purple prose of the PSP version compared to the PlayStation original, and The Ivalice Chronicles has rewritten a number of lines to read more naturally while still maintaining the middle English dialogue of The War of the Lions.
For example, in the original PlayStation release, when kidnapping the princess during the prologue, the abductor originally said in English, “Don’t blame us. Blame yourself or God.” The Ivalice Chronicles version has him say, “If you feel wronged, blame yourself or the Father” which is quite close to the PlayStation translation, but still suitably written for a character that grew up in a noble house. As someone unsatisfied with The War of the Lions version, I felt both the written text and voice acting did a phenomenal job to present the player with the deeply political conflicts of Ivalice.
The Ivalice Chronicles also features some new in-battle dialogue to flesh out character moments, that was written by Yasumi Matsuno himself. Enemies will openly mock Ramza and his companions for their idealism, and characters who joined and were then silent for the rest of the game will now say something if you bring those units into battles against their own fathers, correcting an injustice almost 30 years later. Of course, if you don’t want to play with any of these additions, selecting classic mode will cut the voice acting, extra dialogue content, and use only The War of the Lions script, if that’s more what you were wanting for this remaster.
Beyond story content, Final Fantasy Tactics is no slouch there either. Tactics is a turn-based strategy game that involves units taking turns striking at each other from across the battlefield. You can move, use one of your character’s attacks, abilities, or spells, and will control what direction your units face after they end their turn. Hitting enemies in the back, from higher elevations, etc., can increase your hit chance, which is predominantly why the archer in the third battle of the game tends to give new players fits. Thankfully, there’s a new easy and hard mode in The Ivalice Chronicles should you find the challenge to be too much or too little.
Players can really control the difficulty of The Ivalice Chronicles because you are free to grind out levels and new jobs at your leisure. There are a whopping 20 different jobs your characters can use (not including the special jobs only a singular character can get, like Holy Knight and Machinist), and you can build your fighting squad however you’d like. The thing is, Tactics is not a game that overstays its welcome, so unless you seriously grind, you are very likely not going to master all of the jobs by the time you see the credits. If you’re into extreme grinding, however, you’re absolutely going to adore Final Fantasy Tactics. Some of the most fun you can have in this title is seeing what combinations of jobs and abilities you can equip to make the most busted builds possible out of what you have.
Many early jobs, like Squire, will lead to more physical-based occupations, like Knight, Archer, and Monk. Chemist, the other starter job, will lead to several magic-based jobs like Black and White Mage, Summoner, and Mystic. You can effectively build your units however you want and will still be able to reach the end game and its bonus dungeon, I beat Tactics over 10 times before I discovered that Samurai was actually a magic job, and laughed all the way to the credits with a Black Mage that had Samurai’s Iaido command as her secondary.
There are many fun and funny combinations of jobs in Final Fantasy Tactics, and even with minimal grinding, you’ll still likely have several jobs mastered by the end of the game- it’s just that mastering all 20 jobs available to each character and doing de-leveling tricks to permanently boost your stats are absolutely things you can do, they’re just completely unnecessary for 99% of us who play this. You can even do what I did: Have so much fun revisiting the story that you skip every single optional battle, only realizing at the tail end of chapter four that every enemy is at least 30 levels higher than you, but it doesn’t matter because your characters are built well. It’s hard to lose when your Ninja is punching for hundreds of damage points, though if you really enjoy grinding and mastering classes, you can have a Black Mage debilitate an entire battlefield with the spell Holy and the power of math.
In terms of gameplay, one of the largest complaints about strategy RPGs is that they tend to be on the slower side, which is likely why The Ivalice Chronicles included a fast forward feature to get through battles a fair deal quicker. There is also a clean user interface that displays turn order information on the side of the screen, which is a major improvement from the original game (you could view turn order, but it was tucked away in menus). You even have battle retry options available with plentiful quick saves in case you’re trying to farm for a specific item or doing some treasure hunting, especially useful with finding the rare treasures in the post-game dungeon. Quite possibly the best change in this remaster is that the developers removed any chance of getting softlocked if you only kept a single save file but were stuck in a relatively infamous duel in the fourth chapter.
The Ivalice Chronicles also has visual novel bits that were originally Japanese-only available in game, to further expand the worldbuilding of Ivalice. There’s even a new State of the Realm menu which can give players a quick understanding of what characters are doing at different times because there are usually multiple different forces moving for and against Ramza’s party simultaneously, and I could see this being helpful for those who got lost in the political minutiae of the plot.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles retains basically everything I loved about this game from 1997, but it improves upon it in many ways. Unfortunately, if you really loved the PSP version, some of the content from that version is missing here. Balthier and Luso as well as the Onion Knight and Dark Knight jobs, are not present in this entry. The lack of this content may be a deal breaker for some, but it doesn’t take away from the overall quality of this package.
The visuals of The Ivalice Chronicles have been redrawn in a higher resolution, but it may take a couple hours to get used to as there seems to be both a smoothing and dithering filter over the graphics. The music, comparatively speaking, is still intact and is as perfect as the day the game released on the PlayStation over two decades ago. Tactics has an extremely competent soundtrack with Ramza’s theme being of the most beautifully utilized leitmotifs in a single game: You can’t listen to Precipitous Combat and not feel pumped with a sense of immediate urgency.
The Ivalice Chronicles lives up to the standard that this phenomenal SRPG set up back in 1997 and is definitely worth a look for those who enjoy strategy RPGs, tightly designed and well-told stories, or enjoy grinding to make the most overpowered creatures to ever be present in a strategy game. The story and dialogue still holds up nearly 30 years later.
Developers: Square Enix
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series X