Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles review for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC

What makes a great remaster/remake? Is it completely faithful adherence to the original game in every way, with some flashier graphics? Is it a dramatic shift to the modern day, keeping some of the original “soul” while fully updating the experience for a modern audience? I believe the right answer is a balance between those two things, with a shift to either side depending on which game is being remastered. Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles walks the line between completely faithful original experience and modern masterpiece better than perhaps any other remaster in history, and Square Enix has once again raised the bar for just what to expect from these types of games.

I have not played a version of Final Fantasy Tactics since the original, so was not entirely sure what to expect. When I booted up The Ivalice Chronicles for the first time, it looked exactly the way I remembered. Even on an OLED TV, the game has a gorgeous CRT-like filter on it that allows it to look crystal clear while also retaining all of the character you remember from the original. The first choice you have to make is whether to play the Ivalice Chronicles version, which is the remaster, or to play the Classic version. Aside from simply testing the two out, there is absolutely no reason to play the original version, in my opinion.

Having the game fully voiced also adds a layer of modernity to the game that never felt lacking in the original, but would have certainly been missed in this current release. The voice acting ranges from fantastic to downright bad at times, but any game with such a large cast is bound to fall into that category. Luckily, the more egregious accents and vocal choices are few and far between, so it doesn’t take anything away from the overall experience.

The story and combat are still the stand-out stars in Final Fantasy Tactics, with the dense narrative of political intrigue, the abuse of power by those who hold it, and questions of birthright and family name all still holding even more true today than they did in 1997. All of these themes could have been presented in answer to the current political climate, but they all predate this current spate of political malfeasance, so it feels prescient rather than reactionary. The focus is on Ramza, noble son of House Beoulve, as he navigates the world while grappling with just what it means to be a noble son, and what his responsibilities to his family and to the greater good of the world as a whole all mean.

The narrative reveals itself through endless twists and turns, betrayal and intrigue are around every corner as you progress through the story, and each new twist adds another layer to the tale. I remember taking notes when I was younger and played the original game, just to help keep track of who was involved with what and allied where and betrayed whom, etc. The Ivalice Chronicles solves this with their State of the Realm feature, which lets you pause the game and see all of that information immediately, with the ability to actually scroll through chapter by chapter, event by event, to see how those allegiances have shifted throughout the course of your playthrough. If you want even more information, detailed index files are kept on every character, every location, and every event you might want to learn more about. This nearly limitless information is not at all required reading to enjoy the game, but it is yet another layer of effort and quality that has gone into making this not only the finest Final Fantasy story ever told, but one of the most accessible, as well.

Combat can be tough as nails, or a walk in the park that you can run on auto. It starts with the three difficulty settings and only gets deeper from there. You can play the game on Squire, Knight, or Tactician difficulty, with each one getting progressively more difficult. These settings can be changed on the fly, as many times as you would like (as long as you are not in already in combat.) In addition to the simple difficulty changes, the way you are allowed to approach encounters is accommodating and lenient as well. If you are struggling with a fight, you can quit out of it and return to the world map to grind some levels or buy better gear. If your party wipes, you can immediately try again with the same characters or switch out to use different characters with different jobs that might be more appropriate for the situation.

The depth of the Final Fantasy Tactics job system is its own layer of difficulty mitigation. Spending time ensuring you level up the best jobs for your characters and learning how they fit together can make a seemingly impossible fight trivial. Learning how each job interacts with the others and which skills you want to invest in from other jobs to make your current job more effective are key to crafting a satisfying team that can succeed in the tough fights that this game throws at you. Having the turn order up on the side of the screen is another massive help, with the ability to see exactly when in the turn order your delayed attack will hit, or which area you need to try to get away from before the opposite happens. This, coupled with the freedom to make your moves, see what’s available, then freely reset, keeps the combat feeling fair even when you are up against a vastly superior opponent.

Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles manages to take one of the most beloved fantasy RPGs of all time and update it for a modern audience, without losing the soul of what made it so special in the first place. This is a near-perfect remaster of an already near-perfect game, and I found myself marveling more than once that it even exists at all. The overhauled graphics are gorgeous, but don’t diminish the character of the original release. The story is more relevant today than ever before, but it isn’t a response to our current times, it was a warning from the past about what would come to pass if we allowed things to continue unchecked, as they have. The updates to the writing and the addition of voice acting are almost always a welcome change, and the quality of life improvements go beyond simple UI updates. Everything that you could ever want from a Final Fantasy game is here, and it is one that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

Note: Square Enix provided us with a Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles code for review purposes.