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Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles logo next to Ramza and Delita
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Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles review: a revamped classic that’s a must-play for any tactical RPG fan

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When Final Fantasy Tactics was released in 1997, it was lauded as a masterful tactical role-playing game (RPG), mixing impressive visual effects with depth-filled combat and a stellar narrative. But now, this beloved title has been reborn, affording longtime fans as well as new players the chance to experience it all. Enter Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles – Square Enix’s remaster of a true classic.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5, Nintendo Switch (physical and digital); Nintendo Switch 2, PS4, Xbox Series X and Series S, PC (digital only)
Release date: September 30, 2025

This expanded remaster brings plenty of shiny new stuff to the table. It’s fully voice-acted, has considerably upgraded visuals, and a fair few quality-of-life updates. All of these are available in the ‘Enhanced’ edition of the game, but you can also play through the original if you’d prefer, which uses the translation from War of the Lions – an updated version of the game which launched on the PlayStation Portable (PSP) back in 2007.

Anyway, I’ve played through the entirety of the Enhanced version of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, and I’ve got plenty of thoughts – most of which are positive, fans will be delighted to hear! Let’s take a closer look at this remaster, then, and find out if it can do justice to a real fan favorite.

An adventure like no other

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

If you’re new to Final Fantasy Tactics, I’ll give you a quick rundown of the game’s premise. Ramza Beoulve is a highborn young man, who is thrust into a deeply political, brutal conflict – one that centers around two nobles vying for the throne of Ivalice.

Ramza – alongside his allies – will play a gigantic part in the war’s trajectory…though his actions will later be obscured in the history books. It is up to you, the player, to uncover the truth behind this conflict – and the importance of Ramza’s role within it.

You’ll control young Ramza and his allies across various battlefields, which use a tile configuration – something that fans of the Fire Emblem series, for example, will be well familiar with. You’ll have to level up your characters, recruit increasingly powerful units, and make use of the renowned job system – one of the best parts of the game, hands down.

You can switch between a number of jobs – spell casters like Black and White Mages, sword users like Squires and Knights, and a whole lot more. A key difference in the Enhanced version is that there’s a fully-fledged Job Tree, which makes it easy to understand how to unlock each class, and lets you track your progress in doing so.

Best bit

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

I had a huge amount of fun creating an army-crushing squad in The Ivalice Chronicles. Creating a monk, who could heal and hit-hard, while also using the Ninja’s dual wield skill for 2x the power, made for a truly devastating combination.

As had previously been the case, you earn job points in battle to increase a unit’s proficiency in a particular class, through which you can earn new abilities and passive skills. Mixing and matching skills from different jobs is great fun – and optimizing your skillset will be crucial if you want to make it through the main story, which is by no means a breeze…more on that later.

Some jobs do take ages to unlock – but it doesn’t always feel worth your time, given that some of the classes further along the tree have skills that seem a little situational. Still, you don’t have to make use of these jobs. One of my main units, for reference, was a monk – a melee fighter class you unlock pretty early. I just ensured that he had secondary skills from the Ninja class to keep him primed for late-game combat.

If your beloved monk unit dies in battle, for example, it may well be gone forever…devastating, I know. When a character faints, a display with three hearts will appear above it, and one heart will deplete for each turn a character remains unconscious. If you don’t revive it or complete the battle objective within this time, it will be gone forever.

New auto-save slots have made it easier to go back to before your unit dies – which is a very welcome inclusion. I used this a fair amount in my playthrough. After all, do you really want to spend hours on end re-training a new unit? Personally, I don’t have time for all that!

There’s one more thing I’d like to note about perma-death. In Fire Emblem titles, your units typically have a unique appearance and personality – something that can leave you feeling attached to them, and this causes deaths to feel that little bit more gutting.

In Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, though, a lot of characters have identical appearances and no personality beyond their brief vocal soundbites. This meant I wasn’t particularly attached or interested in my standard units – I often replaced them with special ones that play a more direct role in the plot, have unique costumes, and join your party as you progress through the story. By the way, Cloud from Final Fantasy VII (one of my favorite games, and one of the best RPGs of all time) is one of these…how cool is that?!

Not for the faint of heart

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

Speaking of special units, some of these are going to be extremely helpful – and sometimes almost feel necessary – to get through story battles. There’s one in particular who will join you late on, who is seriously powerful. I won’t spoil who it is for newcomers, but without them, I’d have been toast on a number of occasions.

Yes, I’ll be honest, I found The Ivalice Chronicles to be hard. At times, very hard. I’m an RPGs guy, and have finished some pretty punishing titles – yes, even Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. But the thing that caught me off guard in this game was its severe difficulty spikes.

Some of these, especially early on, forced me to better my understanding of the title’s impressively deep battle mechanics – stuff like zodiac compatibility, faith, and bravery elements require close attention.

Difficulty spikes later on, though, could feel pretty frustrating. I went from reconsidering my team’s build and strategy early on to reconsidering whether my sanity was still intact by the end. These spikes can make progression feel a little uneven, it has to be said, although there are ways to push through the most challenging encounters.

For instance, you can hop into random battles on the world map to grind up your levels and earn job points to get better healing skills, spells, and combat abilities. And these are entirely at your own pace – don’t fancy a random encounter? Just press flee and you can skip it. Need some EXP? Run around for a bit and prepare for battle. I love that you’re not forced into fights – something that can make some RPGs feel repetitive and relentless.

In addition, you can complete errands, which give you gil (the game’s currency) to spend on better armor, weapons, headgear, and accessories. They can also give you experience points and job points. These are entirely optional and are a useful way to earn experience for any backup units you want to use in the event of a character dying, for example.

Anyway, after you’ve been struggling in a fight and you’ve taken some time to train up, you’ll likely find a route to victory. And when you do, you’re going to feel very satisfied – I know I did. The endgame especially was pretty rough for me, but I got there in the end. It’s worth noting that I played the whole game on Knight difficulty – the sort of ‘normal’ level. However, the Enhanced version adds an easy mode, Squire, and a hard mode, Tactician – that one’s for the show-offs.

A message more potent than ever, for a new generation

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles has a stellar narrative – one that plays to themes that are arguably even more timely now than they were almost 30 years ago.

The conflict I mentioned earlier takes place after a separate 50-year-long war, which has left much of the kingdom in economic turmoil. Distrust in the ruling class is at an all-time high, with the masses left to struggle in a ruined kingdom while nobles indulge in luxury. The world was, and remains, incredibly designed, with a new ‘state of the realm’ page that clarifies story details and can refresh your memory of character names, among other things.

State of the realm is one of many additions – most of which make for a much more refined experience. Personally, I love the revamped graphics – the game remains true to its roots, visually speaking. Battle animations are incredibly fluid, backdrops are beautifully composed, and colors really pop, injecting a ton of character into this complex world. The incredible score also adds so much texture to the world, and even random encounter tracks, like Apoplexy and Desert Land, had my head bopping mid-battle.

Functionally speaking, one of the best new features is fast-forward, which makes the pace of battle so much more palatable. A lot of movement and combat does feel pretty sluggish, so being able to speed through your enemy’s actions is most welcome. This also helps if you’re sitting through dialogue you’re already familiar with, and I made extensive use of it.

I already mentioned stuff like difficulty options, the job tree, and auto-save – and these all feel like considered, user-friendly inclusions – but despite that, there was some stuff I wasn’t loving about the Enhanced version.

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

This might be controversial, but I think the voice acting is, at best, just OK. Some characters are well represented. Ben Starr – who was phenomenal as Verso in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – does a good job with the cunning and crafty Dycedarg. The personalities of other characters, including Agrias, Cidolfus, and Ramza himself, are also communicated well – but the same can’t be said for others.

Some performances feel a little restrained, non-special characters occasionally have inconsistent accents or tones of voice, and some non-player characters (NPCs) have voices that don’t match their sprites whatsoever. I mean, am I really meant to believe this teenage-looking soldier sounds like a 50-year-old geezer from the east end of London?

Furthermore, I was frustrated by the game’s camera on numerous occasions. Sometimes, it would pan to a bizarre angle that prevented me from seeing the on-screen action. A new overhead tactical view did remedy this at times, but I would’ve liked some further improvements here. Otherwise, performance is fantastic on the PS5 version, no notes.

There’s one more thing that didn’t bother me too much, but will be a concern for others. Content from War of the Lions is largely missing in this remaster. That means that its side content and drawn cutscenes have been mostly left out – something that will upset fans of the well-regarded PSP version, I’m sure.

Still, though, I have to say that I had a great time with Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. Yes, I have some minor gripes – severe difficulty spikes, a sometimes flawed camera, and imperfect voice acting, above all. But those things are certainly not enough to get in the way of an unforgettable adventure, packed with satisfyingly deep combat, a timely, well-written story, and a great score. The quality of life upgrades and enhanced visuals make this the ultimate way for new players to explore Ivalice, and if you’re a fan of tactical RPGs, this remains easy to recommend.

Should you play Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles?

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

There are a few useful accessibility settings in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. For instance, there’s a sound visualization option, which displays in-game sounds on the edges of the screen, as well as the choice to show speaker names during spoken exchanges.

There are also sound effect subtitles, volume sliders, multiple text languages (Japanese, English, German, and French), and both English and Japanese voice language options. Unfortunately, there is no colorblind mode or similar.

How I reviewed Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles:

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

OK, so I spent more than 50 hours playing Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, battling through the entire main story, a healthy portion of side content, errands, and random encounters. I played the Enhanced version of the game in order to assess the remaster’s quality of life upgrades, graphical improvements, and voice acting.

I played the PS5 edition of the game, with my console connected up to the Sky Glass Gen 2 television and the Samsung HW-Q800D soundbar. When I was out and about, I’d also occasionally dip into the game via remote play on my Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, but this was pretty rare.

Personally, I’ve reviewed a variety of games here at TechRadar, including recent releases like Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army and Drag x Drive. I’ve also played a number of tactical RPGs, such as Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, and a range of Final Fantasy titles.

First reviewed September 2025



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Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Review -- A Polished, Historical Gem
Game Reviews

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Review — A Polished, Historical Gem

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I’m old enough to remember how it felt to first play Final Fantasy Tactics in 1997–to remember its stirring score, deep tactical combat, and most of all, the complex story of broken relationships and valor set against a bitter, conspiracy-laden battle for royal succession. It all came together to create an unforgettable experience. More than nearly any game of its time, I was so rapt in it that I would find my mind frequently wandering back to it, planning new strategies, wondering what would happen next.

Tactics is a game that has lived on as a cult classic with sporadic attempts at giving it its due, as with 2007’s War of the Lions. The Ivalice Chronicles is the latest and best version so far, modernizing just enough to keep its spirit intact and enhance its memorable story without sacrificing its classic charms.

The story primarily follows the life of Ramza Beoulve, the youngest and most obscure member of a storied house of nobles, and his fractious friendship with Delita Heiral, a commoner who was treated like family by the Beoulve clan. As narration informs us before the game begins, history remembers Delita as the conquering hero of the War of the Lions–but it was the relatively unknown Ramza who should actually be celebrated.

That framing device, of a scholar uncovering history’s hidden secrets and revealing lost truths, immediately sets our expectations and raises intriguing questions. How did Delita rise to become a celebrated historical figure? And why was Ramza overlooked? It’s a small, brilliant way to shade everything we see unfolding afterward.

When we join the characters in their own time, it’s shortly after the resolution of another period of bloodshed, the 50 Years War. The conflict was grueling and strained relations to a breaking point between nobles and commoners. Against this backdrop, the death of a regent leads to a bitter battle over succession, ultimately igniting all-out hostilities known as the War of the Lions. Again, Final Fantasy Tactics establishing a historical record first gives us grounding for interpreting the events.

The tale of palace intrigue, betrayal, and conspiracy was always one of Final Fantasy Tactics’ best features, but its original translation was hit-or-miss, with some sloppy and even confusing moments. The 2007 PlayStation Portable game Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions retranslated the game and in the process made the translation much more Victorian English, with Shakespearean flourishes. The Ivalice Chronicles uses the War of the Lions translation as a base, but reworks it to accommodate its full voice acting. I don’t have the War of the Lions translation memorized, so I can’t attest to the exact differences, but from the standpoint of a fan, it at least seems to be very similar in style and tone.

The major difference, though, is the voice acting itself. In the same way that your high school English teacher may have told you that Shakespeare is meant to be heard, not read, this translation just feels noticeably more alive than the PSP game’s when you can hear the characters lending their voices to the lines. The performances add texture and emotions to the text, and the actors were clearly given room to make each role their own by adding groans and affectations.

Judging by the performances, the actors even seem to have been familiar enough with the full story arc that they were given space to imbue lines with suspicion or foreshadowing that isn’t necessarily present in the text itself. In a story full of twists and turns that centers highly on betrayal and conspiracy, the performances add intrigue and suspense, as you wonder how much meaning you should read into a character’s tone.

But that also means that The Ivalice Chronicles can be extremely talky. While the in-game cutscenes themselves are full of stage direction, with characters moving about the space and impressive sprite work illustrating their gestures, most of the story battles have at least a few interstitial dialogue moments. The flowery language used for the script means these can last a while, so sometimes you’ll be thinking of your next tactical move and then have your train of thought interrupted by a surprisingly long conversation. The voice acting was so great that I didn’t want to skip it, but at the same time, sometimes I really just wanted to get on with the battle.

When I played the original Final Fantasy Tactics as a teenager, it was my first real experience with this style of Elizabethan tragedy, at least outside of an English literature classroom. FFT carries all the same hallmarks in a fantasy setting, with royal intrigue, doomed lovers, and power struggles.

The State of the Realm timeline in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

It is a lot to keep track of, but Ivalice Chronicles has a few new tools for those who really want to dig into the details of the story and its sometimes tangled royal machinations. For starters, an evolving encyclopedia is included as a quick reference of people and locations. A menu for “Auracite,” magical stones that become a key plot element, shows not only the known stones but who is in possession of them at any point in the story. And my personal favorite, a State of the Realm chronicle, shows a timeline of major events laid against a map of Ivalice, which you can browse through to see where and why major characters and their armies have moved throughout the story.

The movements of armies are approximated by your tactical battles, which are smaller in scope than the grand story would suggest. Usually you’re limited to four or five party members, often with one or two guest characters in tow performing their own automated actions, against an opposing force that is around eight to 10 units. Battles take place on small 3D planes where elevation can provide advantages and elements like deep water can limit your movement. With such small-scale battles, positioning each unit and specifying which direction they face at the end of the turn becomes vitally important. It also features a slightly generous form of permadeath, as downed units can be revived within three turns before they’re gone forever. You can always recruit new units in cities, but given the grinding needed to upgrade your characters and outfit them with a number of different skills, it hurts to lose a soldier permanently, and even worse if it’s one of your powerful named characters. Thankfully, Ivalice Chronicles has frequent auto-saves, so it’s easy enough to find a recent spot before a doomed mission.

Final Fantasy Tactics was and remains a grind-heavy game, even with the rebalancing of Ivalice Chronicles making it slightly less so. That’s partly because of the Job Class system–Tactics is the earliest example of the system in the Final Fantasy series for many fans, unless they happened to import the then-Japan-only Final Fantasy 5. There are 20 standard Jobs for your units, alongside special Jobs held by named characters such as Ramza. Each Job has its own set of skills that can be purchased with Job Points (JP) earned during battles, but it wouldn’t be quite accurate to call them skill trees, since the skills can be purchased in any order. If you just want to save up all your JP for the priciest skill, you can do that.

Many of the later jobs have prerequisites from earlier ones–you need to reach a certain proficiency with a Black Mage before you can become a Time Mage, for example. When you multiply all those jobs by several characters, even if you stick with a core group of eight or so, it can get demanding. There are power-leveling strategies from the original version that still work, but having a high-level party can still be a commitment. There’s a fast-forward feature to speed up battles, but there are no experience points or JP multipliers like we saw added to the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

Gallery

As you begin to unlock more classes and start to combine their skills, you can create some wonderfully broken combinations that make all of your work feel much more satisfying. The best part of any class-based combat system is experimenting with different combinations, and few do it nearly as well as Final Fantasy Tactics. The flexibility of setting a main class alongside secondary abilities, passive abilities, and movement abilities–with hardly any restrictions–makes it feel very rewarding to tinker with different builds and find combinations that almost feel like cheating.

The difficulty of raising up an army in the early game accentuates somewhat odd balance later on, though. You spend the first three chapters dutifully grinding to build a force with hardly any special units and then, in the last chapter, you suddenly get access to lots of strong, named characters with great special abilities and stats that outdo your basic units. It’s one rare aspect that feels mildly wonky by today’s standards for tactical RPGs, which reinforces this game’s place as a museum piece for an earlier age in the genre.

On that point, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles largely excels. This is hands-down the best way to play this classic of the genre, thanks to a wide array of improvements. I’ve already praised the retouched translation and excellent voice acting, along with new tools to track the story and some rebalancing. The new difficulty levels are a nice new feature as well, letting you dial back the challenge if you want an easier time through the story or would prefer to ramp up the difficulty to really test your tactical prowess. The music remains as good as ever, and since starting the remake I’ve been idly humming battle tunes to myself.

The Ivalice Chronicles version also includes subtle visual updates, making the beautiful sprite artwork of the originals stand out. There’s something homey and comforting about this visual style, with its squat figurine-like characters, and those get a chance to shine in the visual update. The world map looks clearer and more detailed than you remember, and even the relatively simple polygonal battlefields have a nice dash of retro personality.

The one drawback are the character portraits, which are blown up in the same style as the sprites, but don’t look nearly as good for it due to some odd artifacting and jagged edges. Those portraits were captured from original hand-drawn artwork, so it may have been a nicer archival approach to rescan the artwork at a higher resolution, if Square Enix still has it in its archives.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

And on that note of preserving history, this excellent version of FFT is just shy of being a definitive edition. While it’s nice that the game offers both the “enhanced” Ivalice Chronicles version alongside a “classic” option, both versions still use the War of the Lions translation from the PSP version, so there is no option to see the original translation if you wish. And both Ivalice Chronicles options lack two special job classes added to the War of the Lions version, Onion Knight and Dark Knight. The community is sharply divided on whether these two classes are any good, naturally, but it still would have been nice to include them and make this a truly definitive package.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a formative game in the tactical RPG genre, and still one of the greatest. Its unforgettable story has never been better told thanks to a retouched translation, stellar voice acting, and smart new tools to help track all of the palace intrigue. Combat remains incredibly rewarding and flexible, which is an especially impressive achievement given its smaller scale compared to many modern action RPGs. The Ivalice Chronicles lacks a few nice-to-have features, but it’s easily the best way to play this all-time classic.



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28 years after the original game, Final Fantasy Tactics could get "sequels and new titles" if The Ivalice Chronicles sells well enough, teases director
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28 years after the original game, Final Fantasy Tactics could get “sequels and new titles” if The Ivalice Chronicles sells well enough, teases director

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A sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics could be on the cards if the forthcoming remake sells well, its director has teased.


The PS1 tactical RPG was first released in 1997, and while it established the world of Ivalice that reappeared in subsequent games, it never received a direct sequel. Square Enix also released the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance games on GBA and DS, though the second of these was back in 2007.


“If The Ivalice Chronicles can do well, that’s good for the fans, they can enjoy it. But, at the same time, it shows the business viability of the strategy RPG genre,” Kazutoyo Maehiro, director of the remake told Inverse. “So that could potentially open the door for doing something with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance or A2, or maybe even sequels and new titles as well. I think I speak for everyone who’s worked on the original Final Fantasy Tactics, and is working on The Ivalice Chronicles as well – we’d really like to see that happen.”

FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles | Enhanced Opening MovieWatch on YouTube


Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the most beloved entries in the series, praised for its mature, political storytelling. Fans have long-wanted a new Tactics game, with this remake being rumoured for years.


Maehiro also commented on the popularity of the genre overall, alluding to other recent turn-based games.


“Of course, with the different hardware advances that have come, we see a lot more action games,” he said. “But I think, at the same time, that doesn’t really mean turn-based or strategy games went away. They’ve advanced with the hardware advances. I know we have titles that might start with P or have 33 in them, and fans really enjoy these games.


“But strategy RPGs are opportunities where people need to be able to think and strategise to excel at these games. And people do enjoy them overall – so these games have a place.”


Eurogamer’s Alex Donaldson recently went hands-on with Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, and discussed with the developers the need for a remake.


“Obviously, this game came out 28 years ago,” said co-director Ayako Yokoyama. “But the story is amazing, and I think that’s something we want people to experience. At the same time it is a strategy RPG, and maybe for more casual players that’s a little bit of a hurdle. It can even be hard for people who aren’t used to that type of game, but do like story-based RPGs.”

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles releases on 30th September across Xbox, PlayStation, Switch consoles, and PC (Steam).

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.



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The Ivalice Chronicles team had to remake the original Final Fantasy Tactics’ source code from scratch

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The Square Enix team behind Final Fantasy Tactics — The Ivalice Chronicles didn’t just remaster the iconic strategy RPG, they had to go through the trouble of remaking the source code from scratch, according to Bloomberg. In an interview with Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier, the game’s director Kazutoyo Maehiro explained the arduous process of designing The Ivalice Chronicles, which is set to release at the end of the month.

When getting to work on the remake, Maehiro and his team discovered they had to rebuild the source code from the ground up since it was lost thanks to the industry’s unstandardized practices in the ’90s, according to Bloomberg. When translating Final Fantasy Tactics from Japanese to English for the global release, the company would overwrite the original Japanese version’s code. For Maehiro, that meant the team had to undertake a ground-up overhaul and recreate the source code by playing the original game that released in 1997, consulting the game’s master disc and looking at the 2011 version called Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, according to Bloomberg. Maehiro also said during a PAX West 2025 panel that the team gleaned a lot of lost info from fan-made databases.

Revealing more of the behind-the-scenes decisions for The Ivalice Chronicles, Maehiro told Bloomberg about the debate surrounding Count Cidolfus Orlandeau. Better known as Cid, and appropriately nicknamed Thunder God Cid, this overtuned character joins you later in the game, but many fans complained about him being overpowered. Instead of nerfing Cid, Maehiro told Bloomberg that keeping this character’s power level the same would better represent the storyline since “his role in the story is being that very powerful character who joins your party.” To quell any concerns of Cid being too broken, Maehiro told Bloomberg that the team decided to buff the other characters to even things out. Looking ahead, Maehiro also hinted at exploring sequels for the Final Fantasy Tactics franchise or even brand new games in the strategy RPG genre, given that The Ivalice Chronicles does well, according to Bloomberg.



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Final Fantasy Tactics remaster devs built a replacement for its lost source code from fansite downloads, director says: ‘I do want to thank all of the fans for all of their help in keeping that information archived’

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Back in June, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles director Kazutoyo Maehiro offered something of an explanation for why it’s been more than a decade since FF Tactics has been playable on current platforms: Square Enix had lost the game’s original source code.

At a recent PAX West 2025 panel on August 30, Maehiro offered additional details on how the devs of the Ivalice Chronicles remaster stitched together a replacement for the original FF tactics source code, and how we should all thank fan archivists for their contributions to that effort.

“It’s true that we didn’t have the source code,” Maehiro said via translator. “The reason we didn’t have that has to do with how we managed things at the time.”


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Today, Maehiro said, Square Enix has “some really nice resource management tools” that archive a new version of a game’s code with every minute, daily update. But during the original development of Final Fantasy Tactics, the protocols were… a bit more lax, particularly while localizing the game in different languages.

“We would take the data from the Japanese version and overwrite the English data on it. And then if we wanted to do another language, we would just keep stacking data on top and overwriting and overwriting,” Maehiro said. “Basically, because we kept doing all that overwriting, the true original ceased to exist.”

That sound you hear is the collective shuddering of all the world’s programmers.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

While Square Enix didn’t have to start from scratch for The Ivalice Chronicles, Maehiro said it was “difficult” to reassemble “the true original” of Final Fantasy Tactics from its PS1 release and its ports on PSP and mobile. Eventually, the Square Enix devs turned to the ultimate archival authority: the devoted sickos on Final Fantasy fan sites.

“We were using whatever resources we had available to us. We analyzed all those different versions to try and find what we felt was the original,” Maehiro said. “On top of that, we actually went to different websites made by fans and looked for data there, because we know you guys do such a good job of keeping that all up to date.”

After acknowledging the efforts of the “really good” engineering team that analyzed the various versions to reconstruct the ur-Final Fantasy Tactics, Maehiro offered his gratitude for fan archivists and game preservationists.

“I do want to thank all of the fans for all of their help in keeping that information archived like you do,” Maehiro said. “I think with all of that put together, we were able to make a very good version of the game that is true to the original.”



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Open hardware dream collapses as Prusa slams China’s subsidies, patents, and aggressive tactics that reshaped 3D printing from an open playground into a corporate battlefield

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  • State-backed rivals have made open source 3D printing nearly impossible
  • Chinese subsidies shift global competition in desktop 3D printer production
  • Cheap Chinese patents create obstacles far beyond Europe’s market borders

The open source movement in 3D printing once thrived on shared designs, community projects, and collaboration across borders.

However, Josef Prusa, head of Prusa Research, has announced, “open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead.”

The remark stands out because his company long championed open designs, sharing files and innovations with the wider community.


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Economic support and patent challenges

Prusa built his early business in a small basement in Prague, packing frames into pizza boxes while relying on contributions from others who shared his philosophy.

What has changed, he now argues, is not consumer demand but the imbalance created when the Chinese government labeled 3D printing a “strategic industry” in 2020.

In his blog post, Prusa cites a study from the Rhodium Group which describes how China backs its firms with grants, subsidies, and easier credit.

This makes it much cheaper to manufacture machines there than in Europe or North America.

The issue grows more complicated when looking at patents. In China, registering a claim costs as little as $125, while challenging one ranges from $12,000 to $75,000.

This gap has encouraged a surge of local filings, often on designs that trace back to open source projects.

Prusa’s earlier machines, such as the Original i3, proudly displayed components from partners like E3D and Noctua, embodying a spirit of community, but were also easy to copy, with entire guides appearing online just months after release.

The newest Prusa printers, including the MK4 and Core ONE, now restrict access to key electronic designs, even while offering STL files for printed parts.

The Nextruder system is fully proprietary, marking a clear retreat from total openness.

Prusa argues Chinese firms are effectively locking down technology the community meant to share – as while a patent in China does not block his company from selling in Europe, it prevents access to the Chinese market.

A bigger risk emerges when agencies like the US Patent Office treat such patents as “prior art,” creating hurdles that are expensive and time-consuming to clear.

Prusa cited the case of the Chinese company, Anycubic, securing a US patent on a multicolor hub that appears similar to the MMU system his company first released in 2016.

Years earlier, Bambu Lab introduced its A1 series, also drawing inspiration from the same concept.

Anycubic now sells the Kobra 3 Combo with this feature, raising questions about how agencies award patents and who holds legitimate claims.

Meanwhile, Bambu Lab faces separate legal battles with Stratasys, the American pioneer whose patents once kept 3D printing confined to costly industrial use.

Declaring the end of open hardware may be dramatic, but the pressures are real.

Between state subsidies, permissive patent rules, and rising disputes, the foundation of open collaboration is eroding.

Via Toms Hardware

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