Review: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles (PS5) – Still the Benchmark for Turn-Based Tactics

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Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is the best way to experience one of the most important and beloved strategy games of all time. This collection includes a beautifully updated version of the original PlayStation classic, Final Fantasy Tactics, with full voice acting and enhanced graphics. You can also choose to play the original, charmingly pixelated version from 1997 and enjoy its captivating story of political intrigue.

It’s disappointing to remove content from the 2007 PSP remake of Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, even though the developers believe it helps them stay faithful to the original game’s intent.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles revisits the compelling world of Ramza Beoulve, a nobleman’s third son, and his longtime friend, Delita.

Delita begins as an ordinary person, but grows to envy the advantages held by the nobility. This resentment fuels his involvement in the brutal conflicts and civil war that tear apart the kingdom of Ivalice – a war later known as the War of the Lions – and he draws Ramza into the fight alongside him.

The game tells its story in a unique way, presenting events as a rediscovered history where Delita is celebrated as a hero. Ramza’s role is intentionally hidden at first, due to complicated political circumstances. Players follow the action through Ramza’s eyes in a turn-based combat system, and the story unfolds over four chapters with many surprising twists, providing dozens of hours of strategic gameplay.

Honestly, most of your time in this game will be spent in combat, and it’s seriously amazing – one of the best I’ve ever seen. Battles take place on a grid, with different types of terrain you need to think about as you try to get close enough to fight. Each unit gets a turn to move, do something like attack or use an item, and then turn to face a direction – and the cool thing is, you can do those things in *any* order you want, giving you a lot of control!

Ramza isn’t the only fighter in Final Fantasy Tactics. The game’s deep job system lets you heavily customize your team, creating a variety of characters to handle everything from direct combat to support roles. You’ll find familiar classes like White Mages, Summoners, and Dragoons, but also more unique options like Geomancers, Orators, and Arithmeticians.

As the story unfolds, you’ll meet characters who will fight with Ramza. Some will become permanent members of your team, and many have special classes like Machinist or Holy Knight. These classes give characters unique strengths and determine what skills they can use and learn.

Besides gaining experience and improving basic stats like health and magic points, using a job’s special abilities rewards you with job points. These points let you learn new, more powerful skills.

Once you learn a skill, you have it forever and can use it with any job. The game truly shines when you discover how different jobs work together, and the most powerful strategies involve becoming proficient in many jobs with just one character.

The world of Ivalice is built from a network of locations like cities, castles, and hidden areas, all shown as points on a map. As you play, you’ll unlock new places to explore, while some areas may become inaccessible, either temporarily or for good. You can return to previously visited locations to gain experience and improve your skills, and you might even stumble upon surprise events.

As a fan, I’m really excited to hear that shops in the big towns will be getting fresh, awesome gear regularly! It sounds like building up my character will be about more than just fighting and watching cutscenes, though – a big part of the game will be about finding the right equipment for each of my character’s jobs and customizing them. It’s cool that they’re making that a core part of how the game works!

One of the biggest reasons people love Final Fantasy Tactics is its compelling story, and that still holds true today. The plot is complex, with many characters and groups to keep track of, but thankfully, the game includes a helpful Chronicle feature that lets you easily follow who’s who and what’s happening.

A comprehensive encyclopedia and event log will help you keep track of all the characters and their relationships – you won’t mix up Duke Larg with Duke Goltanna, or even Ramza’s complicated family history with Lords Dycedarg and Zalbaag. Plus, a regularly updated world map will show you the current power dynamics, letting you see which factions control what territory and how that relates to Ramza’s position.

It’s a bit disappointing that this version doesn’t include the extra content from the original War of the Lions PSP release, particularly if you have fond memories of that version. This means you’ll miss out on beautiful animated cutscenes, extra character classes like the Dark Knight and Onion Knight, multiplayer features, and bonus side quests – including the ability to recruit Balthier from Final Fantasy XII. However, you can still add Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII to your team, but it will take some effort.

Interestingly, the elaborate, Shakespearean-style writing from *War of the Lions* was kept for *The Ivalice Chronicles*, but it was adjusted to fit the spoken dialogue in the Enhanced version. The Classic mode preserves the original game’s poetic language, though the older graphics can look dated now, and you can’t earn Trophies in this mode.

Final Fantasy Tactics can be very difficult, and you’ll often need to spend time leveling up your characters to progress, especially on the normal difficulty setting. The game now offers different difficulty levels: “Knight” is the standard, “Squire” is easier for a more relaxed experience, and “Tactician” is much harder for those seeking a real challenge.

The Ivalice Chronicles includes some welcome modern features that make it a much better experience than earlier games. Being able to speed up battles is especially helpful, because fights can otherwise feel frustratingly slow.

The redesigned interface makes it easier to anticipate what will happen when you take an action, and automatic saving prevents you from losing your progress if a battle doesn’t go as planned. Plus, a new combat timeline shows you exactly when each character will act, which is crucial for effective strategy.

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2025-09-24 16:08