A PlayStation 1 classic gets many enhancements in this remake
What Is It? Final Fantasy Tactics The Ivalice Chronicles (FFT) is a tactical RPG which follows the story of Ramza Beoulve as he works to prevent another full scale war in the kingdom of Ivalice. The game is a standard bearer in turn based tactical RPG combat decades after its release.
The Ivalice Chronicles is a remake of the 1998 SquareSoft PlayStation game. It keeps true to the original art style, but updates it to smooth out many of the rough edges of the early 3D graphics era original. The game also adds voice acting, new conversations, a “speed up” button during battles, and new quality of life interface updates. The original PlayStation experience is also available in this game, when you first boot up you will choose between that and The Ivalice Chronicles. Note for the big fans, both versions use the War of Lions translation.
Final Fantasy Tactics was the first review I wrote for this site. Pardon for the meta commentary, but it is fun to read today, a whole ten months later, as I was committed to writing only short reviews (a stark contrast to this, which is the longest review I’ve written for this site, by a decent margin). I would loosen that requirement a bit over time, but it’s still fun to see where this whole thing started. All of that review still stands, this new remake is the same game at the core. Please head over there for the basic information.
The main additions to this remake are in the voice acting and the updated interface. The voice acting is well done and even features some fun cameos if you dig deep enough, no complaints here. The interface is a massive improvement, specifically during battles, which is where you’ll spend dozens of hours. The updated-but-not art style looks great as well as it finds a nice balance between preserving the original style but making it look good on modern systems. The game also features some balancing fixes as well as different difficulty levels.
The crux of the game, and what will determine whether or not you will enjoy it, comes down to how much you enjoy experimenting with the 20+ different jobs. Each has their own set of abilities which can be physical attacks, magic, healing, magic-like attacks that don’t cost MP, and so on. Each character can equip abilities from their current job as well as from one other job, they can also unlock the ability to equip weaponry that is typically specific to only one job. Want a ninja who can wield a gun and cast massive summoning spells? You can make it happen!
You can play the game by maxing out some basic job types and building a strong group around those, but you will be missing most of what the game offers. This sense of experimentation, or optimization if you prefer trying to do everything as quickly as possible, is what gives FFT legs. It certainly helps that the random battles scale with your party and remain fun and frequently challenging throughout. On more than a few occasions I threw out a nonsense party simply based on who I wanted to level up only to get soundly destroyed by the enemy. I would always send out a strong party in my redo and wipe the floor.
Beyond experimenting with jobs and pushing the main story forward through clearly marked map locations, you can chase a few side quests along the way. I don’t know the requirements for triggering them, but I am glad I did as they are fun and reveal some amazing new characters to add to your party. There are a few other side systems to explore such as poaching and errands. These are relatively minor but each have their own rewards for engaging with them.
The Best Part: The incentive to grind. I don’t mind occasionally grinding in a traditional RPG if the combat is fun, but it’s not something I typically want to spend a large portion of my time doing. That gets thrown out the window in FFT, where I spent dozens of hours playing optional battles to level up. It definitely helps that this version added a fast-forward button to speed up movement and other animations, but the main driver here is the incentive around grinding. Specifically, getting to unlock all of the jobs and set up ridiculous combos for your characters. The jobs and their abilities are unique, tangible, fun rewards for spending dozens of hours having your chemist throw potions at people. Experts of this game will know the shortcuts, but us common folk will simply earn JP the ol’ fashioned way; taking the characters into battle and doing stuff. The grinding eventually becomes the entire game if you are in deep enough, as I definitely was. By the start of the fourth chapter I had 20+ characters in my crew and wanted to see them each reach their full potential and ninja-chemists, time mage-thiefs, geomancer-bards, etc… If I did not enjoy the grinding, and the rewards for doing so, my experience with FFT would be wildly different.
The Worst Part: There is a real barrier to entry. The remake removes the chances for saving yourself into a soft lock by allowing you to back out of successive story fight areas, but there are still very difficult fights that will likely frustrate new players. This is especially true for people who are trying to stick to the story battles as they will be woefully underleveled and without the requisite FTT knowledge required to overcome a weaker party. There are also so many “hidden” systems in the jobs and their abilities. Did you know the Mystic’s physical attack rating is tied to their magic attack skill level? I didn’t, until I complained about the questionable utility of the job and I was informed by friendly internet people. The deep mechanics are the reason the game has stood the test of time and so many people play it on a regular basis, it also makes a first playthrough a bit daunting.
The Verdict: I owned FFT as a kid and thought the concept was fascinating, as were the battles. I didn’t, however, spend the time to properly understand the game’s systems and therefore would play the first handful of battles a bunch of times as “this time I’m REALLY going to get into it!”
I finally started and finished the game a few years back and had a good enough time. The whole time I had the feeling that this was a game that was best enjoyed on second, third, twelfth, etc… playthroughs. Using this remake as my chance to play it again, that sentiment definitely holds up.
It isn’t that there is no fun to be had the first time through, as anyone can certainly enjoy the characters and their stories, along with the fun battle system. There is, however, so much going on in the job systems, their interactions, and how to leverage them that the first time through feels like you are throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Again, there is fun in that, but another playthrough with some knowledge to start to create a more cohesive team is a whole lot more fun.
As someone who has only recently started replaying old favorites, particularly in the RPG genre, I am delighted to see the value in doing so with a game like Final Fantasy Tactics. Rather than having FFT live in my head as a “pretty good game that does a lot of stuff I didn’t fully understand” I can now say that I actually started to grasp a lot more of the mechanics the second time through and fully understand why the people who love this game tend to play it over and over again.
The Ivalice Chronicles is a great package, providing both the original experience as well as an updated one with quality of life improvements on top of great voice acting and small bits of new content for the diehards. If you are a massive FFT fan, you probably already own The Ivalice Chronicles. If you are curious but have never played it, The Ivalice Chronicles represents a wonderful jumping in point, just be prepared that you might get hooked on a 40+ hour game and want to play it over and over again.
How to Play: PlayStation 4/5*, Xbox Series, Switch 1/2, PC
*console played on for this review
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