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Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles is burdened by the unenviable task of trying to improve upon a masterpiece while not adding any new imperfections. Based on nearly an hour I spent playing it at a recent demo event, it mostly succeeds on both counts. The magic of the PS1-era Square Enix classic is mostly preserved, now buoyed by HD graphics, voice acting, and modern gameplay refinements. Do I have some nitpicks? Absolutely. But I’m also currently in the home stretch of finishing my dozenth playthrough of the original Final Fantasy Tactics and I’m not exaggerating when I say I can’t wait to play it all over again with the Ivalice Chronicles remaster later this month.

Out September 30 on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC, Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles takes players into a tactical RPG about navigating a world cleaved apart by war, ideology, and monsters. It’s one of the most grounded stories in the Final Fantasy franchise, with characters fighting about the politics of class and privilege while still delivering a magic-infused epic about demonic foes and powerful crystals. Think of Game of Thrones as an abridged Shakespeare play and you’ll get the idea. Everything’s divided into scenes playing out across bespoke 3D dioramas. Some revolve around dramatic soliloquies and betrayals. Others are grind-based battles where you control customized warriors sort of like a mashup of chess and Dungeons & Dragons.

Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles is split into two parts. One version is the original, where gameplay is left untouched but the localization for the War of the Lions version on PSP is substituted in for the script. Another is the enhanced version which includes all of the modern tweaks, including an updated script with voice acting. Would I have preferred a third option to play through the original PS1 Western translation, as terrible as it was, alongside the others? Sure. As a Final Fantasy Tactics mega fan I can imagine a version of The Ivalice Chronicles that presents the game’s legacy as its own history to be explored, a la Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master releases, rather than simply offering what the developers consider the best versions, but this is not that.

Square Enix

My demo took place in the enhanced mode. The first section started over from a fresh save file. I selected the hard difficulty, one of the new features for the enhanced edition. To be honest I didn’t notice a huge difference in the first two battles I was able to play. Those include the opening at the Orbonne Monastery and the first full-fledged battle in Garland City as cadets. It felt like the units in the second fight were slightly buffed and the AI was playing a little more cutthroat, but I couldn’t tell you for sure. The proof of that mode’s quality will be in how later battles unfold. I did make frequent use of a new fast-forward option that lets you zoom through everything unfolding during battle, and a life bar feature which makes it easy to see each unit’s hit points hovering above their head.

I also noticed units occasionally getting little commendations saying “Practical Application Complete”  upon completing a certain action. They’d pop on the the right side of the screen like achievements. A Square rep declined to confirm if those will have any effects on gameplay. Also, the countdown word bubble that used to appear over a unit’s head when it was KO’d has been replaced with hearts instead. Those empty with each passing turn until the unit turns into a crystal or treasure chest if they don’t get revived in time. Battles let you know who was the MVP of the fight at the end, too, a neat way to feel closer to my star trooper when I accidentally let her perma-die later on and am too lazy to restart my save.

The second part of the demo took place at Zeirchele Falls in the game’s second chapter. Here I got to choose from an array of different units already outfitted with lots of abilities. I chose the Geomancer, Archer, and Thief to test out some of the remaster’s tweaks to job balancing. I’m sorry to say that while the Archer’s aim ability (charge in the original) now has a lower wait time per level, other abilities seem mostly unchanged. The Geomancer’s magic attacks still do very little damage relative to the alternatives and my Thief failed to evade any attacks despite constantly going into a defensive stance. My sense is that any fans expecting a deeper overhaul of the job system will need to rely on mods on PC instead.

Square Enix

Which brings us to the real bread and butter of The Ivalice Chronicles: its graphics, writing, and voice acting. Here I was a bit surprised. Playing on PS5 merely feet away from a large display, the game looked better than I expected. Compared to the “smoothmaster” feel of some of the trailers online, the experience in person is more like looking at a watercolor. Some of the  sprites and map textures do feel flattened in the move to HD, but it mostly works outside of the fonts which look too clean and crisp set against the game’s soft silhouettes and parchment paper dialogue boxes. Instead, it was the voice acting that felt like more of a mixed bag. Maybe I’ll eventually come around to it but my first impression is that everyone in The Ivalice Chronicles sounds like they’re on downers. Many lines were delivered without urgency and occasionally almost at a whisper. It gave many of the characters, especially the leads, Ramza (Joe Pitts) and Delita (Gregg Lowe), an aloofness not conveyed in the original text.

There are some bright spots, though. Bad-ass retainer Agrias Oaks (Hannah Melbourn) is as fierce and commanding as I could have hoped, and Dycedarg Beoulve (Ben Starr) does not disappoint either. The star of my demo, however, was Goffard Gaffgarion (Paul Panting). Panting plays the part perfectly with a mix of gruff churlishness and salt-of-the-earth pragmatism. It brings new vim and vigor to his exchanges with Agrias like when he retorts, “The only difference is that those of royal blood are protected by lackwits like you.” As someone who knows the original game in-and-out, these are the sorts of things that make me excited to come back.

I’m also curious to see how the involvement of original director, Yasumi Matsuno, who returned to re-edit the script, changes some of Final Fantasy Tactics‘ biggest moments. His red ink can be felt as early as the Orbonne Monastery battle. Delita famously tells a kidnapped princess to “blame herself or god.” Damn! That was downgraded in the War of the Lions update to “Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I.” And how about The Ivalice Chronicle? “Blame yourself or the Father.” Not quite the same ring to it, but I’ll take it.

With no sense of any deeper changes or additions to the underlying game, these are the types of scraps fans like me will have to feast on. It’s far from ideal, especially when there is additional content from the War of the Lions version being left on the table. It’s also surprising to me that Square Enix would go through all the trouble of reassembling lost source code for the game only to stop short of adding new dungeons or secrets for players to find. I’m still holding out hope that something is lying in wait for us to discover deep down in the heart of The Ivalice Chronicles. But for one of the best games ever made, simply bringing it back unharmed and with a fresh coat of paint is enough.

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