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The 90s were the golden era of SRPGs. You got Shining Force 1 and 2 blazing the way on the SEGA Mega Drive, but the floodgates really opened up on the PlayStation. Kartia, Hoshigami, Front Mission 3, Vanguard Bandits, Brigandine, Vandal Hearts, Tactics Ogre…and of course, Final Fantasy Tactics.
While most of the SRPG franchises have vanished into the mists of history (please SEGA, we need another SRPG Shining Force!), Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics have held strong. That’s mainly because Square Enix keeps them relevant by releasing remakes/remasters every decade or so.
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles is the latest in line. It’s not a remake, but neither is it a remaster. It’s a rebuild – a reconstruction of the original Final Fantasy Tactics for the PlayStation, but redone with modern coding.
Why go to the trouble of redoing everything, you ask? That’s because Square Enix lost the source code for the original.
Yeah, cue the Picard facepalm meme here.
Was it worth all that trouble?
What is FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles?
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles is a single-player strategy RPG (SRPG) developed and published by Square Enix for the PC, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch consoles.
Our review code was kindly provided by the kind folks at Square Enix! Thanks so much!
Despite playing the original when it came out, I wasn’t really a big fan of Final Fantasy Tactics. I preferred Tactics Ogre, or if you’re talking about Squaresoft SRPG series, Front Mission 3. The sci-fi setting for that blew the rather generic setting of Ivalice…plus the plot had the game’s characters come to Singapore! That was a novelty!
While I’m still waiting for the Front Mission 3 remake to hit Steam, along comes FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles!
As a faithful rebuild of Final Fantasy Tactics, I just have one question. Why?
I mean, Final Fantasy Tactics is good, but Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (which was an updated version of Final Fantasy Tactics with added content and features) was clearly the superior version of the game. I don’t see why Square Enix totally ignored that and just went back to the original and eschewed pretty much all the extra content that version brought to the table.
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles already includes the original version of the game, so why not make the rebuild the definitive version of the game? It’s a really puzzling choice and one I honestly don’t see the point of.
It’s not like FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles is a 1:1 recreation of the original.
It features a ton of quality of life improvements. Redone visuals, voices for the lines (both in English and Japanese), a more refined script, updated UI, a turn order preview, and a way to fast forward scenes and battles.
These new additions alone make the game feel quite different from the original. That’s even before you go into gameplay tweaks like Cloud being playable earlier, and some Job Skills needing more points to unlock.
So why isn’t the extra content just not brought over? Hell, why not have a toggle for players who want the extra content and for those who don’t?! Simply executed, both camps would be satisfied.
We’ll never know the true answer behind this.
As mentioned earlier, one of the new highlights of the game is the new script.
I didn’t think it would make much of an impact, but the writing (combined with the voice overs) really stand out. The game’s plot of class warfare wasn’t particularly deep or intricate to begin with, but the new script really helped to make the characters better.
Ramza, Delita and the main cast feel like people. Yeah, Ramza might be a bit too dramatic, but all in all, the story’s much better now that it’s been reworked. The plot is much more upfront with who is good and who is bad, instead of letting you make your own assumptions on character motivations.
I still think Delita is as much of an asshole in the reworked script as he was in the original. It’s quite sad that Final Fantasy Tactics’ epilogue is only available in a raid in Final Fantasy XIV, where we finally see Ramza vindicated. Square Enix definitely should’ve adapted the raid into a cinematic or something and inserted it right at the end of the game, so you don’t have to go mucking about on the interwebs for the true ending.
The original’s auto-battle also returns, with tweaked settings. You can just let AI duke it out and grind XP and JP while you do something else. It’s not perfect though – there’s a lot of quality of life issues that should’ve been implemented.
Top of the list, the UI definitely should’ve been better. Everything feels really clunky. It’s an issue with the original game and it’s back here.
Too much button pressing!
Want to take somebody off Auto-Battle? Pause the battle, highlight the unit, press RB then select the option to revert to manual. So many steps just to do ONE thing.
Want to initiate Auto-Battle? Select a character, select the Auto-Battle option, select the setting. Again, why so many steps?! Why can’t there just be a toggle to turn off Auto-Battle on and off, without needing to configure everything for every single battle?
In fact, why can’t I make battles harder to make grinding more efficient?
While you can trigger battles to grind manually, you can’t determine how many enemies in them. Sometimes there are a lot, sometimes not. A way to pick which you prefer for every battle would’ve been much appreciated.
Why do I have to hold the RB to initiate fast-forwarding? Why isn’t it a toggle? Speaking of which, why can’t I skip conversations in battles?!
Speaking of battles, why is the camera still obstructing the view? Why doesn’t the game automatically make the environment transparent if the view is blocked?
For all the talk of improvements, there are still chocobo sized issues that really should’ve been fixed.
Thankfully, the score hasn’t been touched.
The original’s phenomenal soundtrack is back and despite it being nearly 30 years old now, is still as grand as it was back in 1997. The hummable theme, the clarion call to that kicks off every fight. The late 90s were truly Squaresoft at their best musically! Between this, FFVII, FFVIII, FFIX, and Xenogears’ music, the company was untouchable back then.
The game’s visuals have also been upgraded to be high resolution.
The characters sprites look fine (if a little too plain) but I still hate that the characters all have no noses. It was a particular pet peeve of mine back in the day, and it still hasn’t changed. It might be an artistic choice, but it ruins what is an otherwise incredible art design.
The Bottom Line.
In trying to emulate the original Final Fantasy Tactics, FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles stumbles a bit. Instead of making the game better, Square Enix’s reluctance to add in beloved content and other tweaks stagnates the game.
There’s really no reason the updated version shouldn’t have everything in it, especially as FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles also includes the original PlayStation version.
Questionable design decision aside, FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles is a great SRPG, if you can overlook some of its flaws.
TLDR:
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles does a lot of things right but also gets some wrong.
The Good:
- The music.
- The flexibility.
- The new script.
The Bad:
- UI issues.
- Nothing from War of the Lions brought over.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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