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I never actually got the chance to play 1997’s tectonic Final Fantasy Tactics. Too busy fumbling through my introduction to first-person shooters in GoldenEye or listening to a polygonal Falcon yap about pride, Square Enix’s (then simply Square) now legendary Final Fantasy TRPG spin-off flew right by my foundational gaming experiences. This, in part, explains my complete ineptitude for tactical decision-making, maybe, but it’s also almost exactly what Square Enix is now hoping for in 2025 as it gears up to drop Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles next month. Landing somewhere between remake and preservation effort, Ivalice Chronicles.
With roughly 45 minutes to poke around the game’s introduction and one mid-game battle, and without the historical knowledge or even nostalgia of the original to compare notes, it’s difficult to capture exactly how the Ivalice Chronicles will land with true believers. There is a lot of weight to the first game in the series; its status as both critical darling and cult classic, its decades-spanning impact on the tactics genre, and its mythical status among those in the know that its writing and general story were radically adult and nuanced, for the time or otherwise. This mythologising has been compounded further by the game’s unavailability outside of fan preservation efforts, the original locked to region-specific PS1 consoles and its adored remake, The War of the Lions, having last seen the light of day on the PSP back in 2007.
What this means for a player like me is a somewhat jarring, if ultimately charming, first-time experience with the game as cultural status collides with actual mechanics. Before that, though, The Ivalice Chronicles sets the mood with a banger of an opening cutscene; Chocobo riding knights dash across atmospheric countryside in a reworked animation style as the game’s theme builds to a crescendo. It is, pretty immediately, arresting and plants you firmly in the game’s fantastical war-torn setting. Briefly, Ivalice is struggling to her feet after the incredibly named Fifty Years War, a conflict that saw the land torn apart by warring royal families and so on. What makes Ivalice a fascinating setting, though, is its focus on post-war fallout, the social and economic ruins in which its tale actually takes place. We got such a small look at this acclaimed narrative, but the bones seem great. Director Kazutoyo Maehiro’s words on how its themes are still relevant in 2025 only give me more hope that it will hit.
Building to that hit might take a moment, though, as the game’s opening tactical encounters starkly remind you how far the genre has come in the past 30-odd years. This is a feature, not a bug, when we’re looking at game preservation; there is naturally going to be a learning curve as players readjust to systems as conceptualised decades ago, whether through non-contemporary control schemes, or here, as relative simplicity. Played from multiple isometric angles, you’ll gather up a party of fantastical little dudes and put them through grid-based paces as your opponent does the same. Alongside genre staples, the simplicity of the encounters I played was initially strange, but there’s a refined focus to battles that made them approachable and fun all the same.
The Ivalice Chronicles is giving players the option of a tune-up, though, as the Enhanced Mode is stacked with new quality of life improvements as well as visual and narrative upgrades. From the ground up, the game will offer new difficulty modes to better suit different playstyles, a streamlining further seen in the new tactical camera positioning (which allows for a broader view of the battlefield) and the ability to fast forward through non-player turns. It, naturally, quickens the pace of the game in some interesting ways, but it’s also indicative of how much Square is attempting to onboard new players, ideally sidestepping that adjustment period to older titles entirely.
The shift to HD displays has also necessitated a UI overhaul, and so far it seems to be both aesthetically clean and legible at a glance, with things like turn order nestled nicely to the side of the screen now. The pixel work is also gorgeous, hovering somewhere between painterly and retro; it’s got a truly unique vibe that you can’t appreciate till you see it in motion.
Enhanced Mode is also, blessedly, fully-voiced. Everything from cutscenes to minor dialogue exchanges has been punched up with likeable VO work; the biggest boon being to in-battle exchanges wherein your characters will have entirely fresh barks at play. Again, it’s all fresh to me in a sense, but the little troupe of archetypes I spent the hour with did feel surprisingly…contemporary.
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Whether this is the timeless writing or the VO, it’s hard to say, but it’s nice to see so much effort going into a game famous for its narrative component. If you were the kind of kid who came up on the original, though, or just someone with a keen eye for game preservation, Ivalice Chronicles is also sporting a Classic Mode, which is what it says on the tin, only with the War of the Lions translation applied. Given that the PSP port had its own set of new additions, it’s kind of a shame not to see a third mode so that each stage of the game’s history could be better reflected, but this remains a better effort than most.
Such a short demo makes it next to impossible to talk about exactly how well Final Fantasy Tactics has made the leap to modern hardware, and without years of nostalgia to colour my lenses, it’s even harder still to decipher the full worth of this remake. But what I can say is that I would very much like to play more; I want to see how wild the summons get, I want to push at the edges of the battle system and find the line between genre foundational text and years of change since, and I want to know what happens to these kids and their war. I want to play Final Fantasy Tactics, and I’m glad The Ivalice Chronicles is going to make that easier.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is out on September 30th for PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch 1/2, Xbox Series X and PC. You can grab it from Amazon for $79 with free shipping HERE.fi
