Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles: Review of a wonderful remake

In recent years, game designer Yasumi Matsuno has not been creating new games, but the legacy he has left in the industry is enormous. In the late 1990s, he was the director of projects without which the turn-based tactical games of this century, as we know them, might not exist at all.

And although his Tactics Ogre was already innovative in many ways, it was the 1997 Final Fantasy Tactics that gained much greater popularity. This is easily explained by the huge number of fans of the brand — six months earlier, Final Fantasy VII was released, which almost every gamer knew about. Now a remake called Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is available, and you can check out the game, which is still considered a masterpiece, on all current platforms.

A story that has not lost its relevance

FF Tactics has many merits, and they remain largely unchanged in the remake. In particular, the story, which impressed players at the time of its release with its well-developed characters, the scale of the conflicts and the political intrigues that are fascinating to watch, has not been rewritten. Only now, absolutely all of the story lines are voiced by professional actors, including Ben Starr, who won the hearts of fans after playing Clive in Final Fantasy XVI.

The game is set in the kingdom of Ivalice (its first appearance in the series), which has just emerged victorious from a 50-year war.

After signing a peace treaty with the kingdom of Ordaalia in the east, Ivalice found itself in an unenviable position: debts, reparations, transfer of territories — in short, fertile ground for internal power struggles against the backdrop of instability in the region.

After the king’s death, the so-called War of the Lions began — Dukes Largus and Goltanna, who have different ideas about the future of Ivalice, are fighting for the throne. The former believes that the only heir to the throne is the late king’s two-year-old son, while the latter promotes the candidacy of the monarch’s adopted daughter.

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At the same time, we are told the story of Ramza and Delita, two close friends who trained together as knights at the military academy. Despite the fact that one of them is a nobleman and the other is a commoner from a family of farmers, at the beginning of the game they get along well and serve Largus until a tragic event destroys their alliance.

After that, the guys begin to see things differently — without spoilers, their paths diverge, to put it mildly. But this is only the beginning — further on, the player will increasingly encounter betrayals, treachery and other events that make even minor characters interesting.

This is a very intense, dark and at times epic story about the cruelty of war — and although Delita turns out to be a more interesting character than the protagonist Ramza, it is fascinating to watch the development of both of them.

But be prepared for the fact that the characters in Final Fantasy Tactics love to talk. There is very little water in the dialogues, especially when it comes to the cutscenes — there is no feeling that the story is treading water and the characters are talking nonsense. However, when the dialogues start right in the middle of a battle, it can be tiring at times.