Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles: Review of a Myth's Return!

Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles: remake or remastered?

Not many titles are on the list of unforgettable masterpieces, and for this writer, one of them is Final Fantasy Tactics, released on the first PlayStation way back in 1997. Today, after much anticipation, you can read the review of Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles, a remake of the game that has garnered so many fans over the years. To be honest, at the time it was only possible to play the American or Japanese edition, given the complete absence of a conversion for the European market. In 2008, however, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions arrived in Europe, an expanded edition that allowed even local gamers to experience the adventures of Ramza (our main character) and his companions. Just to give an overview of the saga, we also mention Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of Rift, released respectively in 2003 and 2007 on Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS, where good gameplay was not accompanied by a noteworthy plot, but one much more frivolous than that of the brand's first installment. 

But let's return to the protagonist of this article, Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles, which stands halfway between a remake and a remaster of the original chapter, at least in terms of technical results. According to Square Enix, the original code was lost over time (and here you can hear my heart break), with the result that the team working on the project had to rebuild it from scratch, using so-called "reverse engineering," a system that recreates the original code starting from the final version of the game, and then works on it according to its needs. Thanks to this process, The Ivalice Chronicles offers two game modes, one identical to the original and one revised and corrected. Be careful, however: we are talking about a work based on the original title and not on the PSP edition, so don't expect the additional content seen in The War of The Lions, but a product faithful to the first edition. 

Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles: an epic plot!

For those unfamiliar with it, Final Fantasy Tactics is a turn-based strategy game set in Ivalice, a world where several Square Enix titles take place, such as Final Fantasy XII or Vagrant Story. Our story is set at the end of the terrible Fifty Years' War, with Ivalice on its knees from the war effort made by all parties involved. With the death of the king, a bloody struggle for succession begins between the two dukes Goltanna and Larg, known respectively as the Black Lion and the White Lion. Amidst all this, we play as Ramza, the younger son of a very important noble family, a fraternal friend of Delita, a fighter of more humble origins. Both characters are part of a much more complex situation, where there are various forces at play: the Church, some powerful noble families, and rebel groups. Ramza and Delita will become main actors in the events, partly due to their inclinations, partly due to what fate has in store for them, in an intricate series of circumstances worthy of the best fantasy novels. Today as yesterday, the plot of Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles is of absolute depth and explores non-trivial elements capable of making the adventure unforgettable. Friendship, class struggle, changes in perspective, faith, corruption, political intrigues, deep and well-written characters: everything contributes to creating a fresco that has nothing to envy to the most acclaimed literary works. 

The graphics are two-dimensional, with all on-screen elements recreated with what we could define as "2D HD," thanks to a remake that perfectly captures the original style, doing a job that seems to "simply" bring to our eyes the images of 28 years ago as we would have imagined them in high definition. As you can see in the accompanying screenshots, including a side-by-side comparison of a screen taken from both the new and old editions, the rendering is decent, but without particular peaks, although with bright colors and a style that immediately harks back to the glories of the past. I also note an optimization of the menus and dialogue windows, in order to make the whole experience more enjoyable. I take this opportunity to also talk about the soundtrack, born from the staves of maestro Hitoshi Sakimoto in collaboration with Masaharu Iwata. The work done on the new version is decidedly limited, with the tracks having received a very basic revision. If you were hoping for an instrumental remake, unfortunately you will have to settle for much less. Here, the treatment received by the soundtrack can be taken as a general example for all of Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles: a very high-quality product was taken and updated with an effort that I wouldn't say minimal but still limited. Of course, the dialogues have gained voice acting, both in English and Japanese, but the opportunity to add the Italian language was missed, an element that we would have definitely appreciated, given the large quantity of texts and the complexity of the plot.

Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles: when gameplay is a gem

The gameplay of Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles is practically identical to the original: on three-dimensional maps that develop both horizontally and vertically, our characters will try to get the better of enemies by exploiting two phases, one of movement and one of action, deciding which of the two to use before the other. We start by choosing the deployment to put on the field, having to select a specific number of characters from those in our ranks. We will have the opportunity to recruit troops between battles, choosing from characters created by artificial intelligence. These will become part of our troops and we can manage them until they are killed in battle, which is why it is advisable to try to preserve your units so as not to lose all the experience they have accumulated. In Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles there is a permadeath system that, however, gives the player the possibility to resurrect companions with special items and magic within three turns of death on the field. If these pass without us remedying the death, they will be permanently lost. On the other hand, the strategic component of Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles is extremely high, and going into battle without adequate preparation means heading for certain death. Compared to the original, we have three difficulty levels, but even at the medium one, we will struggle to bring home victory without dedicating ourselves to a bit of grinding between one plot episode and another. I note some additions related to quality of life, such as the ability to speed up combat and the very welcome automatic save, but I would have liked more camera rotation during clashes.

The core of our battles is the job system, that is, the ability to change the class of each character in order to make them learn new abilities. Each job allows you to unlock skills that can be linked to the character even when you choose to change specialization. During combat, you acquire experience points, which level up characters, and Job points, which allow you to unlock abilities. Each character has several slots dedicated to different types of skills: one skill linked to the active job, one to a secondary job, one for movement, one for support, and one for reaction. Try to imagine the myriad of options and possibilities that are created, multiplying everything by all the characters we can recruit. The jobs are also numerous, and as the game progresses and characters grow, we will unlock new ones among warriors, ninjas, mages of different types, and so on, for an enormous variety of options. Furthermore, on the battlefield you will discover various ways to manage the conflict. Enemies are of different types, and we will encounter many monsters that we have come to know in the various Final Fantasy episodes. Over time, we will learn the specifics of our opponents and will be able to use our characters' skills in combination, exploiting the various qualities of the jobs to implement very fruitful tactics. The gameplay of Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles is varied, layered, and extremely satisfying, today as yesterday, and represents one of the cornerstones of Square Enix's production, and although one might have expected something more regarding the work done in this remake, it is enough to ensure that we still have a very high-level product in our hands. Would we have preferred more attention? Certainly. Does Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles remain a first-magnitude star? I also answer this question affirmatively. To replay (or play for the first time) a title of this caliber, we can also make some compromises.