Game Reviews
It seems like only yesterday it was early 1998 and I picked up Final Fantasy Tactics for the original PlayStation from my local gaming store. I was immediately blown away by the epic soundtrack, the seriousness of its tone, story and characters, and just how deep all of those were along with the strategic combat.
Now nearly three decades later and after the awesome retooled “The War of the Lions” port on Sony’s PSP that later found its way onto iOS, we finally come to the ultimate edition of this classic in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. Old schools fans like myself will fall in love with it all over again with extra features and touches to make it even better, while newcomers will quickly learn why this is one of the best entries in the Final Fantasy franchise.
The story kicks off in the land of Ivalice where there’s lots of trouble brewing for its citizens, as there’s numerous kingdoms and their families clashing with one another on who should be running things and why, plunging the land into a chaotic civil war. This leads to a princess getting snatched away to make matters worse, and it falls to you, Ramza Beoulve, a son of a highly respected and noble family, to get her back and fight to make the land stable again.
Naturally this isn’t going to be easy, but thankfully Ramza has some awesome allies to help him out, such as his best friend Delita that comes from a lowborn family, but is closer than a brother to Ramza. You’ll also come across other characters in your quest that will lend their swords and spells to bring peace to Ivalice, and you can even buy and create your own army one recruit at a time and assign them “jobs” aka classes to further enhance your playstyle. You can also go crazy with it, such as making a mage that can use swords, or a samurai that can wield magic, and more.
These allies will come in handy once you take to the battlefield, as you’ll have to position them and use their attacks, skills, and items strategically to overcome all sorts of enemies and other challenges that appear. While it can be daunting at first, once you get used to the way battles are carried out, you’ll quickly understand why these moments can be so addicting as there’s so many ways you can attack and hinder your opponents.
From luring enemies into traps, to making friends with wild Chocobos and using them to attack the enemy, you’re sure to have a blast figuring out the best and most fun ways to win each fight. To make things even better, Square Enix added some quality of life improvements to the combat UI layout, making it quicker and easier than ever to issue commands to your characters, select items to use, and more.
They’ve also touched up the graphics with high-definition textures on the settings and characters that look nice without overdoing it. My favorite new addition to this version is the reworked script that comes complete with voice acting for every line of dialogue, and how it features the character’s portrait next to the dialogue with animated mouth flaps when they speak.
I know it’s such a small thing in today’s world of games, but this alone drove me to replay this grand adventure to the end as I wanted to hear every new line that’s spoken. Square Enix went even further to make sure the voice acting is top notch, and they clearly succeeded as it felt like I was listening to a Shakespearean play as I made my way through the story, which I’m sure is what they were going for. They even managed to sneak in famed voice actor Ben Starr aka Clive Rosfield from Final Fantasy 16 as one of the main characters that’s a welcomed and major plus.
Another cool aspect about this title is that you can also select the original PlayStation version if you want to go back and see how it originally played with none of the graphical touchups, voice acting, quality of life improvements, and such. Despite not giving players the option to immediately switch back and forth between the two version on the fly (you have to pick one or the other before playing), this is still a nice bonus to have, though some won’t like that the War of the Lions version wasn’t included as well.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is as close as we’ll get to having a perfect version of this beloved classic, despite missing a few things. The touched up graphics, script, voice acting, and quality of life improvements make it a must play for old school fans that grew up with the original, as well as newcomers that will quickly learn why this is one of the definitive Final Fantasy games.
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