The Ivalice Chronicles is far from the first time I have played Final Fantasy Tactics. I played the original 1997 release numerous time, as well as the War of the Lions remaster for the PSP. If you’ve played either of those versions, this is the best version of Final Fantasy Tactics I have ever played. For anyone not familiar with the game, let me explain why The Ivalice Chronicles – which is technically a remake and not merely a remaster – is worth your time and attention and even more relevant now than when it released.
Final Fantasy Tactics as a story is quite unique in that you are not making history, but recounting it. The framing story is that the events you witness and play took place long in the past, and are the true history of the world, covered up as blasphemy, and the main character branded a heretic.
Ramza Beoulve is a young noble, thirdborn son of his house, born to his father’s second wife. He has three siblings, his sister Alma, and his two elder half brothers, Dycedarg and Zalbaag. He was raised to live by a code of honor and ethics by his father, the late Count Beoulve. Currently a member of a mercenary group, Ramza has been hired to protect and escort a princess. Bandits attack, part of the exact plot to kidnap her that Ramza was hired to prevent. The man throwing the princess on Chocoback is then revealed to be Ramza’s childhood friend, Delita, the man whose death was part of the reason Ramza renounced his name and became a mercenary in the first place.
What follows – starting with a flashback to the very events that lead to Ramza renouncing his name out of guilt – is a story of class warfare between nobles and peasants, warring political factions (church included), and of corruption at every level, including by supernatural powers. Betrayal from those closest, alliances from the most unlikely sources – Ramza has to deal with it all. Conflicts range from peasant revolts over being refused pay, branded traitors and bandits to the fate of the world, and then back to the fate of Ramza’s sister. The story except is amazing, and somehow even more relevant today than when it was first released. The entire voice cast has also done an absolutely amazing job, adding lots of life to The Ivalice Chronicles’ colorful cast of characters. Ramza especially shows amazing progression from a naive idealist to hardened but hopeful as the game progresses.
The Ivalice Chronicles is a tactics game, obviously, meaning you move your characters on a grid and command them to attack enemy units with a change to hit. But it also has incredibly deep mechanics, even for a tactics game. First off, as you might expect in a Final Fantasy game, characters have jobs. These range from the most basic of basics in Squire and Chemist, to the expert jobs like Ninja, Calculator, Dancer and Bard. Basic jobs lead into higher level jobs, naturally, but each job also has its own unlockable skillset and support skills, which you can mix and match – and which enemies can also mix and match – to create devastatingly effective combat units and team strategies. Jobs also dictate what state growths and equipment a character can use, so the job you select for a unit can make them massively different from battle to battle, down to determining how quickly they get turns.
In The Ivalice Chronicles, every action happens on the tick of a clock. Characters get turns when their clock ticks to 100, allowing them to move and use an ability, some of which happen instantly, some of which must wait several more clock ticks to fire off. The higher a character’s speed stat, the faster their clock ticks fills, the more often they get turns. Fortunately, the turn order is always visible on screen, allowing you to track which units are about to get their turns, and it’s a lot more readable than it was in the original Final Fantasy Tactics, one of many quality of life improvements from The Ivalice Chronicles. The other major stats unique to Final Fantasy Tactics are Brave and Faith. Brave governs a lot of things, but primarily the likelihood of special abilities working properly, so higher is better unless you’re trying to find special items on the map or getting so high units leave your party. Too low is also bad, as it will lead to characters turning into literal chickens and leaving the party. Faith affects magic., the more faith a character has, the stronger their magic will be, but so too will magic used against them be more effective. Too high or low faith will also cause desertions. There’s tons more mechanics, monster recruitment, raising, poaching, status effects, the death counter, crystalization, and more, but to discuss them all would mean we’d be here forever. The long and short is that The Ivalice Chronicles is mechanically quite deep and exploring that depth is very satisfying.
When it was first released, the UI for Final Fantasy Tactics had charm, but it was far from the most intuitive of interfaces. With The Ivalice Chronicles, it’s had a complete overhaul. While the charming job wheel is gone, the job screen that replaces it is much easier to read and navigate at a glance. The job tree helps you understand how to unlock new jobs for your units, the Skill learning menu is greatly simplified and navigation vastly improved, as is the item and ability equip screen. There are tool tips for tons of combat niche interactions, and there’s a history to help keep track of the very many complicated events that happen on and off screen in the story’s plot.
The Ivalice Chronicles also offers three difficulty modes, the middle of which is roughly equivalent to the experience of the original game, meaning there’s a built-in challenge mode for anyone wanting a challenge, or if the game is too difficult, you can turn the difficulty down for a map and back up whenever you like. Speaking of whenever you like, you can now choose whether or not to engage in random battles, and you can force them on a map by selecting a non city location while you’re already there.
Infamously, Final Fantasy Tactics could take quite some time to play, both due to being a complicated tactics game, and because the game could take a very long time calculating its next moves. Both of these problems are solved in The Ivalice Chronicles, with enemies making their decisions very quickly and a built-in fast forward button. There’s even an autobattle system in place if that’s your jam.
The only thing I wish Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles had was the additional classes, characters, and modes from the PSP port, but given that we’ve gotten an amazing remake of Final Fantasy Tactics already, I can’t be too mad these are missing. Maybe they’ll be added in a DLC. All in all, The Ivalice Chronicles is amazing. Play it.
Tim reviewed Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles on the Switch 2 with his own purchased copy of the game.
