Re-releasing a classic game isn’t as easy as you might think. People talk about preservation, but that’s largely solved—you can just download a ROM. Hell, Final Fantasy Tactics, the subject of longtime fan demand, was a ROM you could pay for if you had a PlayStation device, for years. But that doesn’t count; it’s the remaster that folks really want to show up for. But is that really preservation?
When you add bells and whistles, move stuff around, make changes—is it still the same game?
Case in point: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is here, giving one of Square Enix’s most renowned stories the red carpet treatment for the first time. (Since handhelds and mobile don’t always count.) I sound a little bitter because The Ivalice Chronicles leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve been having a great time revisiting one of the GOATs in a new form, but it feels off. There are caveats I find hard to excuse in 2025, and head-scratching decisions I’m forced to acknowledge while still feeling conflicted about.
This doesn’t really feel like a remaster in the way I’ve grown to respect Square Enix for, considering how they treated the likes of SaGa, Star Ocean, and even early Final Fantasies (I think the Pixel Remasters are great; fight me).
A Tale of Two Tactics
The Ivalice Chronicles is split into two options: Enhanced and Classic.
With Enhanced, you’ll find a bunch of tweaks and changes meant to—well—enhance the experience for a presumed audience that wields “modernized” like a giant hammer in a Looney Tunes bit. You get voice acting, a brand-new localization, difficulty settings, a totally new UX, widescreen visuals, and so on.
You also get a gag-inducing filter on all the old art assets that smudges lines and details into oblivion for the sake of… I’m not really sure what. Adding mouth animations to the character portraits is a particularly severe insult-to-injury situation, reminding me of those old late-night TV bits with a human mouth superimposed onto a still image. It obviously doesn’t look that bad, but that’s what comes to mind when I see it.
I continue failing to understand why we must be so cruel to old pixel art in projects like this, especially in an age where pixel art is so popular you can find it on t-shirts at Walmart. But here we are again.
That said, there are plenty of things to like about the Enhanced version! The voice acting is quite good and justifies the script finagling, mostly done to make listening to actual humans reading aloud sound more natural.
The new UI provides a lot more information, making planning, menu navigation, and getting the most out of Tactics’ systems in battle a smoother experience. And having difficulty settings is a godsend for this game, which features an inconsistent level scaling system and some particularly gnarly mechanics, such as permadeath and equipment breaking—probably big concerns for Square Enix when considering how to offer Final Fantasy Tactics to newcomers.
As an old player myself, I appreciate being able to revisit a story I’ve experienced before with a bit less pressure upstairs. I wish I could turn off the ugly filter, but Enhanced is still my preferred way to play.
You Can Play the Original—Kind Of?
This brings me to Classic mode, which ruffles my feathers again. If it were simply a straight ROM of the original game, that would be fine—and if you read Japanese, it kind of is. But for some reason (legal, perhaps?) the original localization is almost entirely replaced by the War of the Lions (PSP) rewrite, albeit with some of the changes made for Enhanced mode included as well.
So, you get the unfiltered visuals and original UI, but not the original script as it existed in 1997. If this is meant to be an option for folks like me—who are interested in history and preservation and aren’t into things like the ugly filter in Enhanced—then it feels kind of insulting. Especially since War of the Lions itself only really appears in this set in this way, with some of its unique content missing from both versions.
It’s weird to have such a scatterbrained and locked-down remaster, especially when I compare it to projects like Square Enix’s own SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered or the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series, or other companies’ efforts like GungHo’s Lunar Remastered Collection. These projects show much more confidence in blending the old and new, or aren’t afraid to offer a CRT filter option to properly smooth dated visuals. Lunar in particular does what The Ivalice Chronicles attempts, but much more elegantly and with tangible respect for the original—and for people who want to access it, warts and all.
Still a Banger, Though
To be clear, as gripe-heavy as this review is, I’m not suggesting this is some kind of dumpster fire. There are missed opportunities that feel big to me as someone who cares about these specific details, but these misses don’t compromise what Final Fantasy Tactics is at the end of the day.
If you haven’t played this game before but are a fan of SRPGs like Fire Emblem, you’re in for a real treat. This game has real writing—the kind of storytelling that has something to say and isn’t afraid to say it. It’s a political story about the harm class division inflicts on people born on the wrong side of the equation, and the very real sacrifice and pain it takes to do something about it.
Characters have complex motivations and flaws. It’s the kind of story that doesn’t feel good by the end, but leaves a lasting impression. That’s all here, and a sloppy filter won’t change that.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles feels like a massive ship that’s undergone a bizarre restoration process—half reasonable repair work and half gaudy attempts to improve where it wasn’t needed, sometimes making things worse. There’s a lack of control over the whole thing that feels frustrating compared to simpler, cheaper projects from competitors.
It’s not a remaster, a port, or a remake. Instead, it’s the classic video game version of (one of my favorite books) John Dies at the End’s opening. This is the triumphant return of a life-changing experience many young nerds had on the PlayStation circa 1997.
Is that true? Maybe, maybe not. But Final Fantasy Tactics is brilliant anyway, I reckon.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is available on September 30, 2025, for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S. A PC code was provided by the publisher for this review.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146061/final-fantasy-tactics-ivalice-chronicles-review-score