Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Review – Quality of Life Updates Shine

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Review

Final Fantasy Tactics was originally released in North America in early 1998, one year after Final Fantasy VII popularized the JRPG genre. It was the first Final Fantasy-branded game after VII. For many players, it was their first game in the strategy JRPG genre. There were other strategy JRPGs before it, like the Shining Force and Ogre Battle games. But major series like Fire Emblem hadn’t been introduced to North America yet. To many players, Final Fantasy Tactics remains the undisputed champion of the strategy JRPG genre. Now, in 2025, it’s finally being released on modern consoles as Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles.

Final Fantasy Tactics is the first game to take place in the world of Ivalice. It has a self-contained narrative, but it’s worth noting that other games, like Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII, take place in the same world. Final Fantasy Tactics’ story is about the War of the Lions. The game begins by telling us that history tells of a great hero named Delita. But there is someone else important to the war’s history named Ramza, who the church calls a heretic. We play as Ramza. I don’t want to go into too many details, but the game’s narrative is one of the main reasons to play. It’s a great story, and the way it’s told really drives the player forward. It’s a Squaresoft story from when they were at the height of their creative power.

Strategy JRPG Gameplay

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles’ gameplay is the pinnacle of the strategy JRPG genre. It’s the system that has influenced all tactical JRPGs since. The director of the original version was Yasumi Matsuno, who previously directed Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre. Final Fantasy Tactics takes the base gameplay of those two games and adds the job system from Final Fantasy III and V. Keep in mind, North America didn’t get any of these games until after Final Fantasy Tactics, except for Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen on the Super Nintendo.

Combat is traditional strategy JRPG gameplay. The player’s party and an enemy party appear on a tile-based map. On each player unit’s turn, they can move to a tile within their range, wait, or use an ability. Abilities include attacking and job-specific skills. The job system is what makes Final Fantasy Tactics unique. There are 19 jobs a character could potentially use. Each one has its own set of skills, and can be leveled up to the point that the character can change to another, potentially more powerful job. It’s incredibly addictive experimenting with new jobs and abilities. One of the game’s strengths is using this system to have the player build a small army and figure out which combination of units is best applied to each battle.

Two Versions

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles has two play options: an enhanced version and a classic version. The classic version is a solid remaster of the game’s PS1 version. It has remastered widescreen graphics and remastered music, as well as some bug fixes. There’s also some restored content from the Japanese version of the game that we’ve never gotten before in North America! There are some items that unlock “choose your own adventure” sound novel sections. It’s a real treat to finally get to play these. The classic version uses the translation from Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions for the PSP. But it doesn’t have any of the added characters or jobs from the PSP version. It’s a shame that there aren’t three game options for players who might miss the War of the Lions content. But the two versions we have are an incredible feature.

The Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles’ enhanced version has an insane amount of changes, while still respecting the original version of the game. Most of this article will be spent discussing these additions. The most important change to Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is the inclusion of a job skill tree. In the classic version, it’s a complete mystery as to which jobs are unlocked by other jobs. But the enhanced version has a built-in skill tree, so the player doesn’t have to go to an online FAQ or get an old strategy guide.

Quality of Life Updates

There are tons of updates to Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles’ UI. It’s cleaned up and looks very modern. In battle, the most welcome change is that the player’s turn order is right on the screen at all times. In the classic version, the player has to go into a sub-menu to see the turn order, but now all the information is always laid out on screen. The player can see health bars, and who’s charging attacks, in addition to turn order.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles’ enhanced version is very friendly to first-time players. There are constant tutorial explanations for gameplay, which are completely absent in the classic version. There are three difficulty options, which can be changed outside of battle at any time. Battles have an incredibly welcome fast-forward feature. There’s also a mid-battle autosave feature that functions like a rewind. If the player moves somewhere by mistake, they can load a recent autosave to undo it. Battles can be quit and retried at any time. This is incredibly welcome during sections of repeat battles, where more level grinding might be necessary for victory.

New Battle Conversations

There are lots of bug fixes and rebalances throughout Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. There were some jobs that were fairly useless in the classic version, which are now totally viable in the enhanced version. Before battle, the player can see the battlefield while choosing units. Pressing R2 gives a bird’s eye view of the battlefield. There are new battle conversations for story characters, which flesh them out a bit more. This adds replayability for long-time players wanting to experience new content. It also keeps characters a little more relevant who have joined Ramza’s ranks, but don’t have a huge part in the story after they’re recruited.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles’ world map has been vastly improved. The player can choose whether or not they want to accept random encounters. This is huge because some battles can take a while, and it was annoying when they repeatedly occurred while the player just wanted to quickly travel to another location. This also makes level grinding easier, as the player can just walk around accepting the battles they’re looking for. Pressing square on the world map brings up a list of locations, so the player can see what’s available in each area. Locations can also be selected from this menu, so Ramza can just fast travel.

A Little “War of the Lions” Content

Some other notable improvements in the enhanced version of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles are the ability to mark favorite units in Ramza’s army. It’s also possible to make job-specific favorite equipment loadouts. There’s also an ‘optimize equipment’ option now. Lastly, it’s possible to recruit Cloud from Final Fantasy VII as early as Chapter 4 now. This was a change made in the War of the Lions version. As far as I could tell, the translation for the classic version, and being able to recruit Cloud earlier, are the only War of the Lions features in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. Again, none of War of the Lions’ new characters or jobs are found in the classic or enhanced versions of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles’ graphics have gotten an overhaul. I really love the graphics in the classic version. The pixelated sprites are incredibly detailed, and they look great against the chunky 3D environments. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles blends the sprites and 3D models seamlessly, while maintaining the look of the original. I really appreciate this, as other remastered Squaresoft classics like Super Mario RPG updated the graphics, but lost the uniqueness of the original visuals in the process. Options are always appreciated.

Gorgeous Presentation

The opening cutscene has been redone with a pencil outline/watercolor-painted filter, and the results are stunning. If someone wants to see the original CG intro, they can easily play the classic version. Character portraits are now animated, and they look great. They don’t lose any of the look of the original illustrations. This goes well with the entirety of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles being voiced now. Every bit of dialogue from every cutscene and every comment made in-battle, is voiced. All of the game’s dialogue has been re-translated, so this is an even more accurate translation than the War of the Lions translation used for the classic version. The music is one of the all-time great video game scores, and the remastered soundtrack sounds incredible.

I really tried to note every change in both versions of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. There are so many quality of life improvements, while honoring the original version as much as possible. I’m so proud of Square Enix for including the classic version along with the enhanced version. It’s amazing that the sound novel sections, which have never been in any North American version of Final Fantasy Tactics, are finally officially translated. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is a loving remaster of the most beloved strategy JRPG of all time. If you have any love for the genre, it’s a must-play.

***PS5 code provided by the publisher***