Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Review – A Timeless Classic, Perfected

As a lifelong fan of tactics game who has played pretty much every other noteworthy (and non-noteworthy) tactics RPGs, and as a lifelong Final Fantasy fan, Final Fantasy Tactics has always been a blind spot for me – a game that I was aware of the immense reputation of, but had never actually gotten around to playing for myself. As such, the announcement of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles was exciting for me – a faithful modernization of the revered classic that would finally let me go hands on with the game so many people appreciate till this day.

As with a lot of older games played after the fact, my assumption had been that I would greatly enjoy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, but have complaints about its gameplay or narrative which have been addressed by the decades of titles ago follow in the genre since. Imagine my shock, then, when Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, made a case, in 2025, for being arguably the best game in the genre available on the market.

“The true feather in this game’s cap, however, was the writing and storytelling, especially back when it came out.”

This isn’t hyperbole in the slightest – especially with the coat of varnish and polish that this classic has received via the Ivalice Chronicles update, which adds a bunch of QoL changes without messing with the core game design, Final Fantasy Tactics’ core design’s timelessness is immediately evident.

Between the exceptionally strong map design (with unique traversal and elevation mechanics), great balanced characters and classes (including a full fledged and entirely flexible job system), and unique mechanics that this game itself pioneered for the genre, Tactics plays as a more compelling game than most other titles of the genre do even today. Incredibly strong map design, which allows for players to improvise on the fly, along with incredible balance for the core gameplay loop, keep Tactics one of the most challenging and compelling tactics games around.

The true feather in this game’s cap, however, was the writing and storytelling, especially back when it came out. And it is here that The Ivalice Chronicles boggles the mind – while it obviously has updated the script both qualitatively and quantitively, the strength of that core original script still shines through, and is what allows the additions and supplements to further strengthen and reinforce the quality of the writing on offer.

It is no exaggeration to call Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, as it exists today, one of the best written games of all time. The new localization definitely helps here – the writing, as I have already gushed about relentlessly, is immaculate, allowing the flavour of the world to truly shine through, while appropriately handling the stakes of where the narrative and plot are going throughout. Ivalice Chronicles expands upon the original game’s script by 60% – though, incredibly enough, none of that comes from new scenes or content or chapters at all, and is entirely down to expanded dialog.

“Exacerbating the problem there is that the voice acting – which is new in the Ivalice Chronicles – most notably is not as great as the actual writing and dialog is.”

This is a very verbose and talky game – if you don’t like cutscenes that can go on for many, many long minutes, with characters trading barbs and philosophical conundrums back and forth, it will certainly test your patience. Exacerbating the problem there is that the voice acting – which is new in the Ivalice Chronicles – most notably is not as great as the actual writing and dialog is.

A lot of characters seem bored, lacking the inflection you would expect from them given the scenes on screen, or sounding simply like they are reading lines off a page, with no reactions to anything or anyone else, and no emotion to it at all. Curiously enough, this doesn’t seem to be a case of the developer having cheaped out with the budget– the heroes casting is top notch, and all are capable of best-in-class performances. The issue may be more down to direction than anything.

You can skip through the dialog, if you don’t want to put up with the voices (though, again, I encourage sticking with the story for how great it is); additionally, Ivalice Chronicles has also added a bunch of other improvements, including speed up options for battles, UI and QoL updates, and an update to the visuals and presentation.

“It is definitely good that the option to play the classic game in the form that most fans fell in love with it is made so available and accessible in this package.”

Unfortunately, these updates are only present in the Ivalice Chronicles mode – if, for example, you want to play the game with the acclaimed War of the Lions script or translation, you have to play the “Classic” version, which reverts to the older version of the game, getting rid of not just the new localization and voice acting, but also all the other updates too.

It is definitely good that the option to play the classic game in the form that most fans fell in love with it is made so available and accessible in this package – in fact, it is the exact kind of thing that I wish more remasters and re-releases of classic titles would consider – but I do wish there was a way to mix and match these updates and improvements, for example, letting me play the War of the Lions translation with the mechanical updates.

As it is, those aren’t options available in the final product, although of course, it is entirely conceivable that getting those things working would have required an incredible amount of development effort that would go far beyond the scope of a re-release.

There are some other deficiencies too – while I stand by Ivalice Chronicles arguably being the best tactics game available on the market today, there are definitely features and updates that I think it could have stood to take from other games in the genre; notably, having an undo feature (so you can redo a single turn without having to play through the whole battle again), or a simple dialog log (so you can refer to any dialog you may have accidentally missed) would have been great.

“With the core gameplay also being as robust and full featured today as it is, this becomes one of the easiest, most obvious recommendations I can think of.”

These little nitpicks are precisely that – nitpicks. Yes, the voice acting can feel subpar, and yes the game can occasionally get incredibly verbose, but more than anything else, it is a startlingly well written story that is without question the best one that the Final Fantasy franchise has ever put forth, backed up by arguably the best playing and most compelling tactics game that the genre has ever seen.

I would have argued that the story and writing alone necessitate a playthrouygh of this game by anyone who claims to be interested in videogamesv as a storytelling art form – because there are few games that have done as great a job of that as Tactics does. But with the core gameplay also being as robust and full featured today as it is, this becomes one of the easiest, most obvious recommendations I can think of.

If you are a fan of great stories in video games? You have to check this game out. If you love strategy, tactics, or turn based games? You have to check this game out. If you’re simply a fan of Final Fantasy? Yup, you have to check this game out. Final Fantasy Tactics tries many, many things – and, even nearly three decades after it first came out, it remains the best, or very nearly so, at pretty much every single one of these things that it sets out to do.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.