Finally! Do you have any idea how low I’ve waited to play this game on hardware I owned? I always felt left out, because the PlayStation original never released in the west, I didn’t own a PlayStation Portable and every version of Final Fantasy Tactics always seemed to release on a console I didn’t own. Until now!
I do have very fond memories of playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift on my Nintendo handhelds… but people I knew who played the original FFT claimed it had the best story ever and was a must-play. So getting to play this on Xbox is a bucket list item come true.
But does it live up to all the hype, or did nostalgia cloud the judgment of others? That’s what we’ll discover together in this review!
ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by PR/publisher. This review is the personal opinion of the writer.
| Developer | Square Enix |
| Publisher | Square Enix |
Things I liked!
- Writing holds up | The story is not something you’ll write home about. It’s the JRPG standard of starting with warring nations and evolving into a confrontation with literal gods. I feel like Japan has a score to settle with the Christian church, because so many of their games revolve around this topic. But while the story doesn’t entertain, the writing certainly does! Dialogs are not to be skipped and I love how it’s full of medieval insults.
- Voice acting | The remake received the full voice acting treatment, and it’s handled superbly. Again, the writing is full of “thou” and expressions not used in common English these days, but it fits the setting well,l and the voice actors did an amazing job bringing these tiny, almost chibi characters to life and infusing them with raw emotions. This alone makes it the definitive version to play
- Music | It’s Final Fantasy. Of course, the music is going to be wonderful. But I don’t hold all the Ivalice music in the highest regard (Final Fantasy XII included). Somehow, they feel less dynamic and just a bit too medieval. The soundtrack is great and fits the game well, but I don’t see myself adding them to my playlist outside of the game, which IS the case for many other Final Fantasy games.
- Visuals | I’m careful about putting this in a positive section, because we are dealing with minor adjustments here, and I feel like this type of chibi style works better on a small screen. I mostly played the game on my Xbox Series S + a giant projector screen, and while it looks good enough, it’s not exactly sharp or something to write home about. I preferred the pixelated style of the Tactics Advance games, but again: those were played on a small screen in my hands.
- Multiple save files & autosaves | I haven’t had any complaints about being able to save where I wanted, and I had Xbox Quick Resume on top of the built-in systems, but the reason I mention this is because I heard tales of friends soft-locking themselves from beating the game because they had an underleveled main character and were forced to fight an impossible battle. I didn’t have that much issues in said battle myself, but Ivalice Chronicles gives players ample opportunities to backtrack and level up if they ever get stuck.
- Quality of life improvements | You can re-read all chatter in the game, rewatch all cinematics and navigate your party a lot easier than was the case in the original. I love it when a remake does everything so well, it becomes the definitive version of the game, and that is surely the case here.
- The job system | While overwhelming at first, I did end up loving how you can mix & match jobs and abilities to create your own unique powerhouses. Your characters level up, but they also have jobs that can go up to lvl 8, and you gain Job Points whenever you use any skill, which can be used to unlock more attacks, abilities and passive skills. My biggest complaint is how grindy this gets when you want to have optimal builds, the ninja or thief (I forgot) has a +3 movement ability and the time mage can learn teleport, which are super powerful and let you get up close quick or run away when needed to, but if you want this on every characters, you’ll have to grind out random battles and spam some support abilities. It’s mind-numbingly boring, but needed to defeat to end-game bosses and the optional content at the end of the game.
Mixed & disliked!
- Combat is perhaps too boring | I say this with pain in the heart, but I’ve often found myself bored by Final Tactics Advance, and I kept the RB button held almost throughout every combat encounter just to speed things up. There isn’t a lot of debt to the actual combat outside of positioning your characters outside of enemies’ range or counterattacks, and making sure you can team up on a single foe to take it out. Most of the strategy happens in menus before the actual combat. I guess I’m missing the satisfaction of hitting an enemy’s weakness like the rock-paper-scissors in Fire Emblem, or using the terrain to my advantage. I also miss the flashiness of the attacks. Most often, simply using the default attack of my Monks was more effective than using a special, and the animations look pretty bare-bones.
- Levelled terrain | In the story encounters, the terrain almost always favours the opponents. They start elevated, have more characters and can shoot some ranged shots before you get close. It was also my main source of frustration because an elevated spire could be hiding an enemy or make it very difficult to select the tile next to it to attack. The game has an isometric perspective and you can kind of move the camera freely, but it’s still a giant pain to target where you want. Versus the fixed camera angle of the FFT Advance titles, which were a lot easier to manage.
- Balancing | The start of the game is slow. Boring and slog to get through as you rely only on some basic abilities and attacks while you slowly level your characters. That’s when you start to discover the Monk is basically overpowered and if you combine it with the Ninja dual-wielding, you can take out any non-boss enemy in a 1-2 punch. Or how a black mages’ spells are free and can nuke the entire map if you combine them with the arithmetician class. Effective, but again boring as that one targets multiples of a number, for elevation, experience or other stats. It’s a very tiring “trial and error” ability, but by the end of the game, I was one-shotting the entire map with him in turn one.
- Achievements | The achievement list is kind of grind-heavy and takes a lot of time to get through. I gave up with 3 achievements left to unlock, as I estimate it would take me 10 hours of non-stop fast-forward battles and hoping for some luck with the “poach 10 rare items” one.
How long did I play the review before publishing? 44 hours
How long to beat the story? 25-30 hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 47/50 or 825/1000G
How long to achieve 1000G | 50-60 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Tactics Ogre Reborn, Fire Emblem games.
CONCLUSION
Score: 82/100
A tactical remake that drops in a year full of excellent remakes and can count itself among the top efforts. It’s well worth a playthrough, and by far the best version of the game for both newcomers and returning fans, but you’ll get a lot of action out of that RB Fast-Forward feature while you grind jobs & levels.
Robby lives and breathes video games. When he’s not playing them, he’s talking about them on social media or convincing other people to pick up a controller themselves. He’s online so often, he could practically list the internet as his legal domicile. Belgian games-industry know-it-all.
