Posted by Mike Egan
https://theworksofegan.net/posts/2025-09-30-final-fantasy-tactics-the-ivalice-chronicles/
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, the long-awaited remaster / re-release of Final Fantasy Tactics is finally out today! My Best Buy pre-order of the Switch version ended up showing up on Saturday (another reason to love physical releases), so I've had a couple of days to check it out and form some early impressions. I'm by no means an expert on FFT, but I've put just over 40 hours into the original on PSX over the past three months, so I have thoughts!
First, let me join the chorus of those singing the praises of The Ivalice Chronicles' presentation. The inclusion of a "Classic Edition" alongside the new "Enhanced Edition," nice QOL features like a timeline in battle and the ability to undo movement, and some truly impeccable voice acting all make this feel like a release that was handled with care and thoughtfully modernized.
Having played Tactics Ogre: Reborn, which in a lot of ways felt a bit like a test run for the future re-release of FFT we all knew was coming, I was very curious to see how Square would handle the visuals, especially as the character sprites from the original FFT are so iconic and beloved. In Tactics Ogre: Reborn, all of the original pixel art was smoothed over with a filter that ended up making everything look a little muddy. Not terrible, but just a little too smooth. And look, I get it. Having grown up playing games on CRTs, and having been specifically playing the original FFT on a PSX hooked up to a CRT, I can tell you that pixel art that was designed for the natural softening of a CRT screen does not look the same—and in my opinion, does not look as good—on a sharp, modern, hi-res display. So the desire for some artificial smoothing is understandable.
It's a bit of apples and oranges, because one game was originally released on the SNES, and the other on the PSX, but to my eye, the smoothing used for The Ivalice Chronicles looks much more restrained and natural than Tactics Ogre: Reborn. The higher pixel count of the sprites themselves is probably saving them a bit here, but it ends up looking like they found a very happy middle ground between smooth and sharp that I think looks very good. There is, however, a sort of tilt-shift focal effect on top of everything, that you can luckily turn off. You can find it under "Focal Effect" in the settings menu, and you can set it to "Always On," "Off for Battles," or "Always Off." I love me some tilt-shift, and I'm not an HD-2D hater or anything, but I really don't feel that it adds anything here.
Back to the topic of things looking very good, there's also a brand new opening cinematic rendered in a really pretty 3D-for-2D style that evokes the game's original character and concept art. After digging into the Events menu in the Chronicle, which is how you keep track of characters, places, events, and all the proper nouns of the world (there are many), I discovered that certain scenes of the game's plot are also animated in this new style, which I think are only viewable through this menu? I could be wrong, but be sure not to miss it, they're really nice looking!
The Ivalice Chronicles' Enhanced Edition makes a lot of updates to the UI to help get across more information during battles, and otherwise smooth-over and modernize other elements like unit management and story tracking. These are mostly nice, but there are a few places where I miss the friction of the PSX version, and at least one place where they've added new friction where there was none before.
For instance, in the PSX version, when encoutering a battle, you would first be taken to the squad selection screen, where you would pick and arrange the members of your team that you wanted to bring to a given fight. After confirming your selection, you'd be shown the name of the battlefield upon which you were about to fight, which would be shown for a good beat, before fading off with the music. There'd be a moment of silence while the battle loaded, and then you'd be there. In the new Enhanced Edition, you're taken to the battle map straight away, and get to place your units directly on the map. In a way this is nice, as you weren't able to see before exactly where on the map your units would appear, but in my experience, this was rarely a major hindrance. The new order of things feels too rushed, and doesn't give the unit selection screen's music enough time to breathe.
The old version felt like it was setting the stage for each fight in a really effective way, with a place for everything and everything in its place. The unit selection screen, and the music that accompanies it, with its "ding-dang-dong" introduction is a time to get your head in the game, and re-familiarize yourself with your units. A liminal space between the map and the battle area in which you could take a breath and prepare to transition from one kind of play (managing units, equipment, and information in various menus) to another (isometric tactical combat). It was slower and more frictive, but it felt like that friction had a purpose, both mechanically and narratively.
One other, slightly more nit-picky detail is that in the Classic Edition, which presents the PSX original as-is with the PSP's War of the Lions translation, the menu on the map screen is shown in the center of the screen rather than the top left, and without its heading of "Menu." Again, this is a minor thing, but it just felt ugly and clumsy to me. Maybe this is how things looked in the PSP version? I truly have no idea. But it was noticeable to me because FFT is a game I consider to have some really great presentation and menu design.
The one place I've noticed things being made a little more fiddly in comparison with the original is in the game's shops. In the original, when going to a shop to outfit your squad with new equipment, you can enter the "Fitting Room," and flip through each member of your squad, giving them each new pieces to try on to see how they affect their stats, and watching the total price of everything you have equipped go up and down as you add and remove pieces. When you're done, you pay the lump sum for everything at once. In the new Enhanced Edition, you can still enter the fitting room to try things on, and even choose to see the optimal set of gear for each unit, just as you could in the original, but you now have to pay for each unit's equipment one at a time, rather than all at once. You're not able to select items to purchase for one unit, and then flip over to another unit to select items for them.
To me, this makes it more difficult to weigh which pieces of equipment you most want to spend your limited resources on, because it removes the chance for you to see the total amount you'd be spending on your ideal loadout, realize it's more than you want to spend, and go back and remove the less important things from your "cart." It's an odd choice in a game where most every QOL update is made in the name of speed and efficiency. I was able to speed through a shopping trip in the original by prioritizing the things I really needed, and this new system just slows me down. I suppose time will tell how much this actually affects things in the long run, and whether updates to the economy necessitate pinching pennies at all in the Enhanced Edition, but it still seems strange to slow things down in this way.
One big update that I really like is the way information is presented on the new map screen. Battlegrounds are rendered as simple dots, while settlements are given larger, more city-shaped outlines, making it easier to tell them apart and get a lay of the land. Mousing over each location shows its name and a short description in the bottom left of the screen, objective markers are placed atop locations that will progress the story, and a persistent objective is displayed in the top right of the screen, telling you what you need to do next. On top of all of that, you can press a button to view a list of locations filtered by Settlements, Battlegrounds, and Miscellaneous. Most helpfully of all, the list of Settlements shows which types of weapons, armor, accessories, and items are available in the shop, something I was always forgetting and having to hunt around for in the original.
Finally, one tiny detail I love, that I noticed while I was writing this, is that you can access the main menu in the Enhanced Edition by pressing whatever button sits where the triangle button would be on your given controller. At least, I assume this is the case, since it's accessbile by pressing the X button on Switch. I love this because the main menu is introduced, and listed in the UI, as being accessible via the Start button. But having put 40 hours into the original, I've gotten used to pressing the triangle button to access the menu on PSX. The option isn't listed anywhere in the Enhanced Edition, and it doesn't really matter all that much, it's a tiny thing, they just let you do it. Maybe because they knew hardcore fans would be expecting to access the menu via triangle, maybe because the developers themselves kept trying to access the menu that way, maybe there was just one really vocal person on the team who wouldn't shut the fuck up about accessing the menu using the triangle button. Whatever the reason, I think it's nice. It feels like a subtle little way of indulging players who might not even realize they still have that bit of muscle memory.
Overall, my impression of The Ivalice Chronicles is extremely positive so far. They've made changes where things could be smoother, and reverent to the source material everywhere else. The inclusion of the Classic Edition as a completely separate game you can pop into at any time is really nice to have, both for anyone who wants that experience, and just as a historical document on modern hardware (though it isn't exactly the same as the PSX release). Square have done an incredible job of updating this game for modern hardware and sensibilities, while still being respectful of the game's beloved original release. If you've always wanted to play this game, or you just want to relive a classic, this is probably the perfect way to do so.
https://theworksofegan.net/posts/2025-09-30-final-fantasy-tactics-the-ivalice-chronicles/
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