Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles review — "Blood is the price of progress! It is the ink in which history’s pages are writ!"

Final Fantasy Tactics has always been a deeply personal game for me.  I’ve beaten it… well, when you read the rest of this review, it’ll become clearer how many times, and every time I find some nuance in the story that I hadn’t seen on the previous play through.  It marks several moments in my life as I came to grips with my own time serving in the military.  It also marks several moments that had me reflecting on my life afterwards. It tells the story of how each person has a place in this world, and things are not always as straightforward or clear as they are when you are in the middle of living it. Moreover, not every person is good or bad, but shades of everything in between.  We all have a role to play, with each of us being the sum of our experiences, upbringing, and values.  Nobody is all good or all bad, and nowhere is that more true than in this game.  Arguably it’s one of the best games to ever come out of Square, and now Square Enix has the difficult task of not only resurrecting it, but updating it for an entirely new audience.  Let’s talk about Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles.  

Born from the mind of Sakaguchi-san, Final Fantasy Tactics was Square’s desire to expand on the world of the traditional Final Fantasy turn-based tactical game.  Sakaguchi was busy overseeing multiple projects, so he was on the hunt for someone who could execute on that vision, bringing his design to life, and that’s where Yasumi Matsuno joins the party.  Matsuno-san was working at a company called Quest, and having brought to life a successful game called Conquest of the Crystal Palace, was given the opportunity to make a completely new type of game – a tactical game called Ogre Battle.  It’s in this game, and the sequel, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, that Matsuno honed his tactical skills, refined the turn-based grid system, and really nailed down deep storytelling.  Let Us Cling Together was almost across the finish line when Matsuno realized that he had a unique opportunity – the chance to work for his idol, Sakaguchi-san.  Before the game shipped, he leapt at the chance and joined Square as Director over a new game simply entitled Final Fantasy Tactics, with Hiryoki Ito set to co-direct.  Before he could bring this new game to life, he’d need a few more team members.  

Matsuno wanted to tell a serious and gritty story, much like he had for Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre.  He would need a dream team of people who could help him do that, and so he recruited folks who had worked with him on his previous efforts. Akihiko Yoshida and Hiroshi Minagawa joined the team from Quest, and would be in charge of character design and art direction, respectively.  As the team would be focused on a battle between people instead of fantastical monsters, Matsuno wanted a specific type of musical score, so he recruited Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharina Iwata, rather than using Final Fantasy mainstay Nobuo Uematsu.  The party assembled, it was time to bring Final Fantasy Tactics to life.

The fact that this game exists is one borne of sheer force of will.  The team has always wanted to bring it to a modern audience, but the problem is that the source code was lost.  To make this a reality they’d need to rebuild the entire game from the ground up.  There are advantages and disadvantages to this.  The original PlayStation version of the game was used to bring Ivalice Chronicles back to life, and when you open this new remaster’s main menu you’ll be presented with that option – Final Fantasy Tactics (Classic) and Final Fantasy Tactics The Ivalice Chronicles (Enhanced), with the former being a faithful recreation of the original.  Both games would be built using the Cryengine, meaning they’d be building two versions of the same game, but with the same core.  That meant less tech debt carried forward, but also it meant having to make another difficult choice in the bargain – what to lose. 

There are multiple versions of Final Fantasy Tactics on various platforms, but the two most common are the original release on the PlayStation, and the War of the Lions edition on the PlayStation Portable.  This PSP version added a number of fixes to the original, some additional content (extra story battles, side quests, and a few events), two new classes (Onion Knight and Dark Knight), and two playable characters – Baltheir from Final Fantasy XII, and Luso Clemens from Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. Sadly, much of this has been cut as the team used the PlayStation version of the game since more of that code was recoverable than than the portable counterpart. These characters and classes aren’t too much of a loss, and there are so many classes to choose from that you won’t feel their exclusion.  The loss of additional content is equally a thimble out of the ocean. That said, I can’t predict the future, but I’d bet some enterprising person could add these to the PC version via mods in the future, so make your platform purchases accordingly.  That said, let’s talk about the other big change – the script.

The Classic version of the game will use a script pulled forward from the PSP version of the game, worked on by the likes of Joseph Reeder, Tom Slattery, Phil Bright, and Michael-Christopher Koji Fox. That means characters like Algus and Teta have been renamed to Argath and Tietra, some places and events have received similar updates, and some overall clarity polish throughout has been applied, as seen in War of the Lions.  The Ivalice Chronicles instead uses a hybrid version of both the War of the Lions and a fresh coat of polish.  Matsuno and team knew that adding the voice work would have a transformative effect on the script as the player transitions from something they’re reading into something they’re hearing.  He likens it to “the difference between a novel and a play”, and he’s right – it’s better for it.  

I do have to commend the team on their restraint on the script.  While minor adjustments we just discussed are made, the gritty and engaging story is fully intact.  There’s easily between 60 and 80 hours of content here for the main story, and another 20-25 hours for side content for completionists, and all of it is chock full of compelling characters and meaningful storylines.  There are sad and shocking moments, there are happy and insightful moments.  It’s a deep and meaningful story about the disenfranchised working class desperate to rebel against a powerful and corrupt government.  It’s about not fully understanding which side is the “good” side, and watching that flip back and forth at a moment’s notice. It’s about nobles, peasants, bandits, criminals, and how each has their part to play – not everyone who is a villain is a bad person.  It has a relevance that continues to be more gripping and meaningful to me the older I get.  For reasons I’m going to enumerate below, now you’ll be able to experience all of it for yourself if you couldn't get through the punishing mechanics of the original.  It’s a story worth experiencing, and in my opinion, easily one of the best (if not THE best) story in the Final Fantasy series.  You can leave your comments about how wrong I am in the section below this review – let the debate begin.  

The Square Enix team chose Creative Studio III to handle this rebuild of Tactics, with Naoki Yoshida and Kazutoyo Maehiro as Directors, and Kayoko Yokoyama as Co-Director. Naoki Yoshida has worked on Final Fantasy XIV and XVI, as well as Fantasian: Neo Dimension, Far East of Eden, Bomberman, and Dragon Quest X before joining Square Enix. Kazutoyo Maehiro’s roots run very deep, serving as Event Planner on Final Fantasy Tactics, Main Level Designer for Vagrant Story, Quest Planner on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Main Battle System Designer for Final Fantasy XII, and ten other Final Fantasy roles between then and his role as Director on Ivalice Chronicles. Ayako Yokoyama brings a completely fresh perspective to the series, having played the game for the first time when being put on the project. Her credits also include a number of RPGs including Dragon Quest and the Mana series.  There’s a great interview on the Square Enix site with her as she discusses the challenges of jumping into such a storied game as Tactics.  A daunting task ahead of them, let’s talk about what’s new in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, as there is a great deal more than just a visual uplift, though we’re going to talk about that first.

Final Fantasy Tactics was built for the original PlayStation, with all of its limitations of the time. Yasumi Matsuno-san has a love of dioramas and he wanted to put the player inside of one - a large departure from the approach to the battle scenes he’d used in his previous works like Tactics Ogre or even Bahamut Lagoon. This diorama approach would be a blessing and a curse as Matsuno knew immediately that the only way this would work would be if it ran at 60fps – unheard of in the days of the original PlayStation.  Yes, Sony’s new console had better specs than the Super Famicom/SNES, the limitations of CD-ROM read speeds meant dialing back some of the map sizes or the number of characters that could be on the screen at any one time.  While he was able to achieve this dream, it was certainly a challenge.  Obviously with modern hardware this limitation is hardly pushing the hardware, but that just gave the Square Enix team the chance to push the visuals more than a bit.

The majority of the upgrades are obviously being lavished upon The Ivalice Chronicles.  The game will feature the same visual style, and the original is a straight port as you’d expect (ya’ know, aside from it being a remake).  Ivalice Chronicles on the other hand gets a solid uplift as they’re clean and without a ton of rough edges.  The hard circle shadow that once felt like a gaping maw ready to swallow the character underneath it, is replaced by a softer shadow that looks far cleaner.  Faces are animated along with their voice work (more on that in a moment), and small flourishes like dialogue boxes that shake or have spikes on them to indicate severe distress or anger occasionally appear.  Particle effects appear to showcase heavier attacks and spells, and every surface has a new texture applied. Gone are the nasty color bands that serve as backgrounds, replaced by soft gradients.   It’s very, very clean and really highlights just how jagged those original diorama blocks really were.

The world map has received a major uplift, with the map itself being more reflective of the land it is meant to represent.  Similarly, icons for settlements are now representative of the places they are, such as castles, villages, and towns.  In short, it feels more like a map than a collection of dots on an otherwise disconnected underlay.  

If you found the UI, lore, mechanics, or any other elements of Final Fantasy Tactics to be difficult to parse, then you’ll be happy to see a nod to Creative Studio III, and ultimately, Maehiro’s other work, Final Fantasy 16. Now empowered with an extensive encyclopedia of every term, tactics, character, backstory, nations, regions, creatures, and much more are detailed in painstaking detail. Another item ported from Final Fantasy XVI, the “State of the Realm” makes an appearance here, telling you precisely where the story is in its arc, who the players are, what’s at stake, and what lies ahead.  This is a crucial tool if you’re coming back to the dense storyline after a brief respite from the game.  

While a great deal of polish has been applied, there is another brand new element that only Japan has gotten to experience up until now – sound novels.  Maehiro was also in charge of these for the original release, and now nearly 30 years later, they’ll make an appearance for the rest of us.  These adventure books were meant to be fun supplemental content outside of the main game. I never imagined I’d get to see these for myself, but here they are. Congratulations to Maehiro and the team for bringing this forward for a whole new audience.

One of my favorite additions to the game is a visible turn order.  Displayed on the side of the screen instead of tucked away in a submenu, you can now see who is going when, their health, and how casting a spell or using a skill might change that order.  This change to CT (charge time) visibility is a huge improvement, and one that I simply cannot see losing should I ever want to go back and play the original – it’s that big.  Similarly, character stats, skills, equipment, and more were previously locked behind layers of menus in the original game, but are now easily referenced – perfect for seeing your options for the fight ahead. You’ll also see a predicted outcome for any actions you’re about to take – another improvement that can make for a smoother experience for newcomers and returning players alike.  

Yet another improvement I greatly appreciated is the ability to get a look at the map before assigning my team.  You can see the types of enemies you’ll be facing, albeit not a detailed look.  It’s enough to give you a clue who you should bring before you commit.  You can also make adjustments to classes, equipment, loadouts, skills, etc. without needing to exit to make those adjustments, reducing the back and forth present in the original.  This brings me to a huge improvement that created a barrier for a great many players – soft locks. 

There is one specific battle (if you know, you know) that kills a run for many people, and if you faced it without being prepared, your save was toast – a soft lock as you couldn’t proceed. Similarly, you’d occasionally face consecutive battles that could make for some unforeseen and permanent deaths to complete.  These have both been fixed as you can now fall back at any point by simply selecting it from the menu.  This will allow you to return to the overworld map, regroup, bang out a few more levels or job skills, and return when you’re ready.  Similarly, random battles have been removed to a degree, with the ability to flee being available if you aren’t ready for a fight. It’s a more forgiving system without ruining the overall difficulty of the experience.  You can also now save during battle, which is another great quality of life item as some fights are lengthy, or you might sense an upcoming event and feel like you might want a rollback point. 

Mechanically there are a number of improvements to the battle system.  You can now apply up to ten markers to foes to track their movement or ability ranges. This allows you to check if you really are out of range before committing.  You can also reset your movement if you flub it, so you are no longer bound by your choice until you commit the turn.  Joined by a new tactical view that lets you flatten the map for a top-down look, and a camera that is a little further back, and you’ve got a perfectly balanced system that still retains the constricted diorama of the original.  

Graphically the game is a huge step up from the original, but it’s the voice work that really will amp this game to the next level, in my opinion.  We’ve already talked about the minor revisions to the script for a spoken rather than read experience, but there’s an entirely new voice cast to bring it to life.  The original featured no voice work at all, but War of the Lions introduced a bit, albeit just for a few main characters, and only for specific scenes. That has changed.  Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is not only fully voiced for every single character in the game (including minor NPCs), there are a great many interstitial voice lines added for battle sequences to enhance them.  They don’t add any additional story elements, but they do add emphasis when a character unleashes a power, casts a spell, or even falls in battle.  It changes combat from a nearly silent affair to something with some punch, and I’m glad to hear it. 

While none of the original voice actors for the game have returned for this outing, this new cast will be familiar if you’ve played more recent Square Enix titles.  Thankfully, the crew they’ve selected are magnificent.  Joe Pitts is Ramza Beolve, Gregg Lowe is Delita Heiral, Eleanor Bennett is Princess Ovelia Atkascha, and Emily Cary is Alma Beolve.  Hanna Melborn is Agrias Oaks, Ben Starr is Dycedarg Beolve, Harry McEntire is Mustadio Bunansa, Timothy Watson is Cidolfus Orlandeau, Paul Panting is Goffard Gaffgarion, Ben Allen is Argath Thadalfus, Huw Parmenter is Duke Bestrald Larg, Kevin McNally is Duke Druksmald Goltanna, and Mathew Ducket is Orran Durai, with Cody Christian returning as Cloud Strife.  If you’re inclined, there is an entire Japanese VO you can enable, of course, though I’m not going to list them out here. 

I was surprised, given Square Enix’s penchant for doing entirely new orchestral scores for their remasters, to hear that the soundtrack has not changed.  I, for one, am glad to hear it as I love the original.  There has been what appears to be some light post-processing applied to clean up some of the rougher edges, but if you loved the original, it’s here to stay.  There are some additional adjustments to sound effects (the rotation effect sound for one) but these are also, from what I hear, relatively unchanged.  

There are a few other Quality of Life improvements made here.  You can now speed up conversations, auto-play them, or even skip them entirely – useful if you’re replaying, I suppose.  Cloud Strife was also a late-game character you could recruit in the original, but he’s been reworked to appear far earlier and thankfully comes pre-equipped with the Materia Blade, meaning you don’t have to go fetch that for him to be useful.  The circular ring that was once the job map is replaced by a far easier to read flat version, joined also by a Job Tree that shows precisely how to unlock character jobs you know, as well as showing that there are more to discover.  It also shows what classes you’ll need to upgrade, even if you don’t yet know the prospective outcome.  The amount of JP needed to upgrade has been rebalanced.  Teleport now requires FAR more XP than before, but others such as summons are easier to acquire. Enemies also have their skills rebalanced, and their AI is smarter this time around, so expect them to use more nuance in their attack choices.  There is one improvement, however, that is sure to have a lot of people breathing a sigh of relief – difficulty levels.

In the original game there was only one difficulty level, and it was fairly unforgiving. The Ivalice Chronicles has three - Squire, Knight, and Tactician.  Squire is for folks who want to enjoy the story a bit more, with a bit more forgiving damage numbers in both directions and rebalanced fights.  Knight is standard, which is balanced just slightly lower than the original difficulty level.  Tactician is hard mode.  This mode is closer to the original, albeit with re-balancing as well.  For example, that Calculator / Arithmetician superbuild you had before might not be as effective, but other classes will be more effective than they were.  The team is aiming for a more balanced approach this time around, but only time will tell if they nailed it – I sampled it and it feels like what I’ve described, but I’ve not beaten the game three times to fully test it out.  Let’s talk a bit more about Jobs for newcomers and for those returning to the series who might need a refresher on how they work.  

Astrologian, Archer, Mediator, Geomancer, Arithmetician, and many more classes round out a whopping 34 job classes in Final Fantasy Tactics.  Each class has specific strengths and weaknesses, and spelled a massive evolution to anything attempted prior as the jobs themselves, as well as the individual skills therein, are not actually pre-selected, instead being open to player choice.  Moreover, these would be something the player could tackle in almost any order once the prerequisites were met, meaning there was no reliable way to predict with what classes, skills, or characters the player could bring to any individual fight.  It must have been an absolute nightmare to balance the 400+ individual skills, but balance it they did…well, for the most part.  

Given the flexibility of the Job system, it’s not only possible to create wildly unbalanced characters, it was actually encouraged.  It not only reinforced the game’s narrative that everyone from every station and walk of life is useful, but also gave the game real longevity in a day and age when guides and the Internet were not so prevalent as to spell out whatever those most powerful skills and combinations might be.  Nowhere is this more true than the Zodiac system.

The original game introduced a system whereby each character not only had an assigned sex, but also a Zodiac sign, Bravery, and Spirit stat.  Returning veterans may not even know or even fully understand this stat system, and frankly you don’t need it to fully enjoy this title.  That said, there is a bit of a hidden mechanic tied to all of these things.  I’ll spell it out in speed-run format – male characters ramp up physical attacks / skills faster than females, thus making them better physical attackers than females.  As such, their Bravery skill goes up faster as well.  Conversely, females make better caster classes as their Spirit stat raises faster, and they hit harder with magic.  Stats above 70 are preferred, but not equally.  A character with high Bravery will dish out better damage, but will also deflect it better.  If that same character also had a high Spirit stat, they’d take more damage from spells, so it might not be wise to have your front-line fighters sporting high spirit stats. And so it goes, albeit conversely, for caster classes who should also have lower Bravery stat.  The Zodiac system looks more complicated than it is – again, speed run time.

You’ll pick the birthdate for Ramza, the protagonist for the game.  This will assign a Zodiac sign for him, represented with a symbol next to his name card.  Characters (but not monsters) with the same Zodiac signs will get along well enough, but they’ll get along best with characters from the polar opposite of the Zodiac chart.  They’ll also have another pair of signs they get along with moderately well, and another two that they’ll be less likely to synergize with.  This means less success with spells, lower healing amounts, more failed dodges, etc.  A very valid approach is to fire the whole crew once you reach the first town, sell all their gear, and then use it all for recruitment money to find and bring aboard the right team.  Another pro-tip would be to leave them all as the Squire class until they learn the JP Up skill which improves the amount of Job Points earned through actions – another wide departure from almost any RPG on the market.  

In most games you earn your experience at the very end of battle, being rewarded for your work and surviving till the end.  Tactics instead rewards each and every single action you take.  Swig a potion?  That’s some XP and job points.  Push another character, whip a rock at them, stab them, heal them, cure their poison, whatever your action, it’s a learning experience, which is why you’ll gain XP, Job Points, or both for some actions.  It does create some funny moments, however, when you need to grind up levels of job skills as you’ll spend a bunch of time smacking around your own team to power / skill up, then healing them only to repeat it all over again till you crush that last cowering enemy on the battlefield.  Another pro-tip from me is that the enemy level is keyed off of Ramza’s level, so leaving him off the battlefield ensures easier fights to grow your crew without pushing the narrative or the difficulty higher.  

The team was careful to preserve other aspects of the original game for old-school players like myself.  I’ll give you an example – Ramza’s Tailwind skill.  An otherwise fairly unremarkable early Squire skill, Ramza earns a skill called Tailwind that allows him to add +1 to his speed.  Not a huge game changer, right?  Well, if you’re mindful not to get hit, and use it over and over to the point of abuse, eventually Ramza would have multiple moves per round. In fact, at the upper end, he could be doing four full turns for every turn an enemy took – devastating to the overall balance of any battle.  And yes – with a little bit of planning, this even works on the aforementioned you-know-who fight, making an otherwise seemingly impossible fight into one that is entirely trivial in nature.  While it’d be easy to call this a bug, or to patch it out as an unintended imbalance, the team has left this and several others like it in the game.  It takes real work to uncover these, and the rewards are obvious.  By the time you’ve found them you’ve likely mastered the game anyway, so where’s the harm?

Creative Studio III has done something I thought impossible.  They’ve not only resurrected what was considered a “dead” game, they’ve improved it in every meaningful way.  From top to bottom, every aspect of the game has been retouched to make something that is very much the original at its core, but with modern improvements that retain the charm and challenge.  The additions to the formula like a visible turn order are impactful, modernizing the game, but without changing the game’s character.  While we will lament the loss of Balthier and Luso, as well as two additional classes, the feast on display here is more than enough.  Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles truly is the ultimate version of Final Fantasy Tactics, and I couldn’t be happier.

Given how many times I’ve played Final Fantasy Tactics, I also wanted to ask somebody new to the series for their opinion.  I invited Sr. Editor David Flynn to join me on this adventure for his perspective: 

I have tried to play Tactics multiple times, usually giving up around the time Ramza gets a new outfit. I’ve never had a head for strategy games, but I do love the stories they often tell. With all the praise this game gets, that’s my main reason for trying it again and again. I love the themes of class that are still relevant to this day, but I never felt like I really knew what I was doing gameplay wise other than making number go up by throwing my guys at the bad guys. I never just wanted to look up the plot on the internet either, despite having some spoilers from Final Fantasy XIV’s Ivalice Raid series, so I always considered it a white whale of sorts. 

The Ivalice Chronicles, alongside some tips from Ron, make it much, much easier both to play and to digest the story. While I am disappointed the content from War of the Lions isn’t present here, the game still makes an amazing first impression with a gorgeously animated opening cutscene somewhat reminiscent of that release’s style. The sprites also look great, though I’m usually partial to original sprite work rather than smoothed over versions, the sprites do look like they were made to look like this through a CRT. Environments look a lot less blocky too, which is a bit jarring at first but I think the look works.

As a relative newcomer though, something I’ll never get used to is the camera. It’s locked to 45 degree angles, which always hides something on the battlefield from view.  It’s also somewhat nauseating when the camera switches angles automatically several times in a row while the enemy is taking their turn. With all of the quality of life options The Ivalice Chronicles adds, I do wish one of them was an unlocked camera.

The quality of life options that are present, and there’s a ton, do make the game much easier to grasp. Tactics is still a difficult game, but with in-game tutorials I feel like I can actually surmount these challenges rather than just throwing myself at walls over and over. Even if things like Job Abilities and leveling aren’t as thoroughly explained as I would like (Ron’s tips on not leveling Ramza too much and having my units attack each other for EXP were immensely helpful), the tutorials give me a basis of knowledge I can use to figure everything else out, which in turn helps me appreciate the depth of strategy on offer here. 

This isn’t something I really expected from this remake, but the addition of voice acting helps me appreciate the story as well. Having both text and voice simply makes it easier for me to pay attention, and I can tell a lot of care was taken to make sure the voice actors are carrying across the proper emotions of each scene. Obviously that’s what voice acting is supposed to do, but you’d be surprised at how often you can tell that two voice actors were never actually in a room together to act off of each other. I don’t know if that’s the case here, but I think it speaks to the quality that I can’t tell.

I played the game on Nintendo Switch 2, as I prefer portability if possible, and the game feels right at home there. The upgrade is free if you purchase the Switch 1 version, and it looks and runs great on the new console, especially on the gorgeous, 1080p screen. It also makes jumping into a map or two to grind or see some story that much easier.

While The Ivalice Chronicles isn’t going to change how I feel about the genre as a whole - I still played on easy mode and had a tough time - it certainly falls into the “exceptions to the rule category” now. The story is gripping, profound, and still deeply relevant in a somewhat depressing way. The gameplay too is incredibly enjoyable, though still very grindy. Job systems are always a delight and Tactics provides enough freedom and limitations to really make you think about how you want to build a unit. I really enjoyed my time with the game, and can now finally see why people think it’s so special.