Cliff Notes – Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles review a story eternally retold
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Enhanced Remaster: The game features a new script and voice-acting while maintaining the classic gameplay, highlighting its enduring quality and relevance in tactical role-playing.
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Narrative Depth: The story explores societal inequalities and political themes, remaining impactful and resonant decades after its original release, despite some pacing issues.
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Quality of Life Improvements: New features include a visual turn order indicator, autosave, and adjustable difficulty modes, enhancing the overall gameplay experience while some elements from previous versions are notably absent.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles review – a story eternally retold
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles – enhanced but not remade (Square Enix)
Square Enix’s legendary tactical role-playing game gets its most substantial remaster so far, with a new script, new voice-acting, and the same classic gameplay.
The suggestion that there should be no politics in video games might as well be a demand for no stories of any kind, given that the only ones of any substance have at least some level of social commentary to them. It’s a particularly silly insistence because almost as soon as video games started to have complex narratives they began to delve into politics, and no more so than in Final Fantasy Tactics.
We’ve lost track of how many versions of this game we’ve played over the years, which is ironic as the original PlayStation version was never released in Europe, after its initial Japanese launch in 1997. Although it was by no means the first tactical role-player (apart from anything it was heavily inspired by Yasumi Matsuno’s previous title Tactics Ogre) it was the game that popularised the concept, as used in much later games such as Disgaea.
Despite the age of the original game, this is not a full remake but yet another remaster, referred to as an enchanced version. As such, the changes are relatively minor, beyond upping the resolution and smoothing out the visuals. The biggest addition, which has also necessitated some alterations to the script, is voiceovers for all characters. The fact that so little else needed to be changed speaks volumes about the game’s quality and longevity.
If you’ve played any tactical role-playing game in the last 30 years you’ll be shocked at how little they’ve evolved from their origins. There are deviations from the formula, most notably Fire Emblem – which predates the series – but the vast majority of similar games are almost functionally identical to Final Fantasy Tactics.
Battles take part on small, rotatable 3D maps (all the characters are just 2D sprites sitting atop) and you and your allies take turns to move and attack. The maps are divided up into square grids and a character’s position and facing is vitally important, but ultimately all you’re doing is moving each ally once per turn and telling them to attack or perform some other battlefield function, such as healing.
None of that has anything to do with mainline Final Fantasy games but the job system is very old school Final Fantasy (Final Fantasy 7 came out the same year, but the job system is inspired by Final Fantasy 5 on the SNES). That means 20 character classes in total, with dozens of very different skills and abilities to unlock and master.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
There are other similar games with more options and gameplay elements (too many, in terms of many of the later Disgaea titles) but the only real gameplay failing with Tactics is that’s very slow-paced. Despite the simplicity of the controls everything seems to take just a bit longer than it should and that’s also true of the storytelling – which is often going on at the same time. Which is why the new fast-forward option is one of the most welcome new features of this version.
We have very mixed feelings about the narrative of Tactics, despite the underlying story being highly compelling. It’s an exploration of societal inequalities, with ordinary working class citizenry mere pawns of uncaring politicians and religious leaders. The story was inspired by social conditions in Japan at the time, but it’s a tale that’s far older than a mere 28 years. Which is thy the narrative feels just as relevant today as it no doubt will in decades to come.
The glacial pacing is one thing but what’s always bothered us is the very inauthentic sounding olde English dialogue. We assume the original is probably written in an older style of Japanese, like in the Shōgun TV show, but the attempts at faux Shakespearean dialogue have always come across as toe-curling, even if this latest translation is the most refined so far. Hearing everything spoken aloud also helps a great deal, with the actors doing their level best to make the dialogue work.
It’s not all fighting (Square Enix)
Nevertheless, some people may be upset that the original script is not included, while the multiplayer modes from The War Of The Lions edition on PSP, and its two extra job types, are also missing, along with various characters unique to that version.
The game also struggles to know what to do with the original 2D artwork. The character portraits, in particular, can look very odd since everything is smoothed out, in the style of some modern arcade conversions, with the actual pixels blended away as if everything is painted artwork. That seems to be the idea anyway, in some cases it ends up looking like the original pixel art has melted.
You can still play with the original graphics but only in the unenhanced version of the game, that more closely approximates the original PlayStation version (but isn’t that either). We would’ve much preferred the option to mix and match the old graphics with the new interface, but sadly that’s not possible.
In terms of unequivocal improvements, the game now includes a visual indication of turn order, similar to more modern games, that sits on the left of the screen (the original interface was designed before widescreen TVs were a thing). Also, when selecting an enemy to attack, you’re given a rundown of things like estimated damage and the likelihood that they’ll be able to counter, which is handy.
There are also new difficulty modes, a very useful autosave, and the ability to avoid the permadeath of characters. As was normal for games of the time, Tactics is not very forgiving and you should feel no shame for picking the lowest difficulty, not least because it takes a lot of level grinding to get a character up to their full potential and you don’t want to have to start that again from scratch if they die.
The Ivalice Chronicles is the best version of Final Fantasy Tactics so far, but it is fairly easy to imagine one that’s even better, whether it’s via small changes to this remaster or an actual remake. But tactical role-players don’t usually command the sort of budget that makes that easy, so this will certainly do for now. It’s not our favourite Tactics game but it’s the most historically important and the one that has the most to say for itself.
Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles review summary
In Short: The quintessential tactical role-playing game is revived for a new generation and while it still has its flaws, the bedrock of both the gameplay and the narrative remain as solid as ever.
Pros: The game’s elegant simplicity remains as engaging as always and the new voiceovers are a welcome addition. Underlying plot has just as much bite and relevance as it did three decades ago. Greatly improved interface and quality of life options.
Cons: The dialogue is still an acquired taste, as is what they’ve done to the pixel artwork. None of the features or additions from the PSP version have been included.
Score: 8/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix Creative Studio 3 (original: Square)
Release Date: 30th September 2025
Age Rating: 12
There’s plenty of talking on the battleground (Square Enix)
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