FINAL FANTASY TACTICS - The Ivalice Chronicles

I got clickbait by Deluxe Edition thing, I thought this is the Final Fantasy tactics in PSP, but they just decide release the worst version, without content in War of the Lions, why bother buy and play this version which is not cheap, when you can play the better version in PSP? and they thought this is a good idea, why???

Final Fantasy Tactics is a classic and you probably already know that. Not much to add there. What I will say is the voice acting in this version did more for me than I expected. Gives the whole thing a bit more weight. If you're new to it, the gameplay is deep, the job system is a proper rabbit hole, difficulty scales well and the story goes to some genuinely dark political places that feel nothing like what you'd expect from Final Fantasy. It's grim, it's layered, it's great. Big recommend, though maybe wait for a sale on this one.

This is a top 3 game of all time for me. I've put countless hours into it on the PS1 version, on emulators, and now finally on a proper PC port. And what a port this is. It's rare to get an enhanced port of a game that makes tons of actual improvements without making any mistakes or errors, but by the gods does this nail it. I can't say enough good things about this.

No pensaba poner reseña, pero me parece vergonzoso que saquen lenguaje chino y no español pos tocara hacer como los chinos y hacer review bombing

not having the WOTL content makes this game forever lack luster... hopefully that add dark knight and possibly holy knight or other fun jobs, game is too flat for the ridiculous price tag for a game from 1997. Greedy, inconsiderate, and dumb dev+team.

I'd like to lay my bias bare before we get started here; I love Final Fantasy Tactics. If pressed for my favourite game of all time I'd more than likely tell you it's this one; I've played the Playstation version, the PSP version, and now this latest remake being around probably my fourteenth or so playthrough of the game, and I still love it. From the strategy RPG gameplay I find so addicting to the job system's constant progression, the stellar character writing, prose, and overall timeless narrative I consider one of the best in gaming, this game is still my favourite. However, this game isn't just Final Fantasy Tactics, is it? Ivalice Chronicles is a solid enough remake that leaves the meat and potatoes of one of the best strategy RPGs ever made in tact and more accessible than ever, yet really skimps out on the carrots. Starting off, where this remake makes great improvements over previous releases; quality of life. New difficulty options are available as this game is quite difficult for beginners. The new tactical top down view is a complete game changer and I'm not sure I can play this game without this feature anymore. The infamous slowdown from the War of the Lions version of the game has been fixed, you can fast forward now which is really great when there's a lot of enemies to wait for, and when you find yourself at a dead end in a hard battle you can quickly and easily retry that fight without needing to go back and reload a save to try again. The UI has been greatly improved, with a super great turn order list so you can always keep track of who moves when easily, and damage predictions are much more clear and reliable than they've ever been. The new high quality rendering for character sprites looks excellent, and the freshly made 3D terrain is all improved;, but for me the absolute biggest revolution here is the addition of full voice acting. There's no skimping out here, every line of dialogue, every cough, and even every thought from the narrator is fully voiced with a new voice cast and it is magical. The voices fit the characters perfectly, the accents work great for the setting, and line delivery is excellent; this alone breathes massive new life into the story and characters. Of course, we already had voice acting in the cutscenes in the War of the Lions version, but.. wait, cutscenes? Bafflingly this remake chose to stay "pure" to the original release of the game, the 1997 version for the Playstation. Of course this means using stuff like the far superior War of the Lions translation where they saw fit, and cutting content otherwise for very flimsy reasons that ultimately just feel like anything that wasn't in the original didn't "belong" in the game to them. The cutscenes from War of the Lions are in the game, remastered and redubbed, but aren't actually played in the story at all, instead can be found buried in a side option in what is essentially the glossary. You aren't given any options to have these scenes play at their correct points in the story, nor are you given the choice to play with any of the other bonus content that's been removed. Jobs, characters, side stories, and the multiplayer mode have all been removed and instead replaced with... nothing. For no real reason content is yet again taken away from a "definitive" game release, and while the quality of life is great, having less content than the version of the game that's been on the market since 2007 is genuinely baffling. The addition of the original 1997 game in its full is cute, but doesn't really make up for what was removed, especially since the War of the Lions version with all that additional content in tact was not included. Now, onto the game itself. It's very good. It's not without flaws, though. The job system gives constant progression, you're always levelling your current job and buying new skills, and while leveling your next job to unlock even more jobs, you can use those skills you've learned previously so it never feels like you've wasted time leveling and upgrading things you won't use. Your movement, range, and base skills are also determined by your current job, giving surprising depth to the character building. Where the problems with this system start to arise is in how you level these jobs, or more like in how few ways you can. This game is hard. I haven't played the new easier difficulty, nor am I really interested, but even on standard and as an experienced player, this game is tough at times. And that's okay, the game absolutely wants you to feel like the underdog in the main story battles, but sometimes you'll hit a new main battle where you're very obviously outclassed in terms of job progression and while you probably could slam your head into the wall until it worked, more than likely you'll want to go and build up your characters and jobs a bit, only to realize there's barely any way to do that. There's errands, which are like dispatch based side quests you can send your allies off to, which gives decent amounts of job points, but they're in limited supply and only generic units can undertake them; so Ramza and your other special units will be left behind. So what options does that leave you? Side quest battles? Bounties? Nope, just random encounter battles, which even for someone who loves the gameplay gets pretty old pretty fast, leading people to use a method where you farm experience by hitting your own units which just feels like cheesing the game due to oversight. There can also be frustrating amounts of RNG in some encounters, and losing multiple times due to bad dice rolls never feels great in any game. Narrative is where this game gets it's legendary status. The gameplay is great and fun, but the writing and overall story is on another level entirely; a deep, winding, complex story about politics, class, religion, and morality. The star of this story, Ramza, is a young nobleman who loses more and more the more right he does; after witnessing atrocities committed in front of him, he abandons his nobility and finds himself entangled deep in conspiracies of the church, and the noble families doing anything they can to clutch power and secure the crown during the ongoing turmoil. I don't want to put any spoilers of the story in this review, because I think the story is best experienced first-hand, but I want to make it clear that this is in fact as good and special as you've likely heard before; the translation on display here is also stellar. Making great use of old English terminology and prose, it's the most realistic sounding old English dialogue you'll hear. Final Fantasy Tactics is probably still my favourite video game, nearly everything about it clicks for me. If you've heard the praises about how good the writing is in this game, they were right, and you owe it to yourself to play this game if you care at all for well written and unique stories. Oh, and the soundtrack is absolute heat too. There's some frustrations here but I can't think of many games from 1997 or earlier that don't have a thing or two that's questionable; and while this is far from my ideal remake and I think removing content from previous versions for silly reasons is completely dumb and stupid, Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles is an acceptable overall release, especially with it regularly going on sale nowadays. While I will mourn what was lost from the previous releases, I can for the first time since the release of FFTA2 in 2007, feel hopeful to receive more from this sub-franchise in the future. Square please put FFTA and FFTA2 on Steam, I'll take straight ports even man just get it done.

Great game. I'm very fond of the general vibe, and I love the English writing of Ivalice games (that sort of half-Shakespearian tone, and an understated undercurrent of theatricality). The story is genuinely compelling, though a bit complex at first. Though it could be because I have a terrible memory for names, and the Ivalice games are very fond of referring to their characters and factions with various synonyms and titles that are actually all referring to the same thing. Which is why it's amazing that they included a sort of in-game encyclopedia that dynamically updates after every single scene, that has a scrollable timeline that makes pivotal moments of the narrative far easier to parse, and a list of every single scene with a "replay" button. I was afraid that they were going to retranslate the game and move away from the "War of the Lions" version script, but as it turns out, interviews were misleading; there are only some very, very minor changes to existing text, and there are tons of completely new dialogue that can trigger if specific named party members are present in most fights of the 2nd half of the story. And it all follows the WoTL style of writing. It's all an improvement as far as I'm concerned. The voice acting is VERY good. However the direction does not always match the situation: sometimes, it really feels like characters ought to be raising their voice more, if not outright yell at each other. But the dialogue is acted as if they were talking quietly right next to each other. It's a bit jarring. The combat is serviceable, but hasn't aged too well. They really smoothed over a lot of the worst jank, though. The new interface is a great improvement, and simply being able to move to a tile, realize you needed to be on the next tile over, undo your move and do that instead — that's a massive quality-of-life upgrade. Unfortunately, I'd say the general pace of combat remains quite sluggish and it doesn't feel like the game is about skill expression, but more about knowing all the various ways you can get screwed over by spells heretofore unseen. Sometimes it can feel a bit like a FF trivia quiz. Here's an encounter with undead, you better know about using Phoenix Down on them! And unless you want to spend a lot of tedious time grinding, you will probably end up doing Arithmetician cheese in order to close out the last third of the game. It does feel like that game that kind of expects you to break it rather than master it on its own terms, if that makes sense. The visual upgrade is also wonderful, it's subtle but makes a huge difference. Exactly the kind of "it's as you remember it" kind of step forward, which is the right territory for a "remake" to land it. The added shadows and lighting almost feel vaguely impressionist from time to time, which is very fitting. THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE: • The PSP version's animated cutscenes are included and redubbed, BUT... the audio mixing on the redub is strange (almost as if they turned off literally all processing on the mics), the videos are cropped from their original ultrawide format, and... they simply are not shown to you by default... and there isn't even anything that tells you "hey, this scene you just watched has an animated version, go look for it here" • The camera is "too low". Your focal point is always the very center of the screen, but this doesn't account for the new interface which takes up most of the bottom of the play area. You know how some FPS games don't have the crosshair in the center of the screen, but lower, so that you're more incentivised to look up? What I'm getting at is that the whole game should have been offset a bit higher in order to account for the fact that the new interface hides a lot of the play area. • The voice direction in a few moments, as mentioned previously. • The "fast forward" button is not very responsive: it takes a full second for fast forward to kick in, and a second for it to go away, so sometimes, if you're trying to simply fast forward through a fight, it might accidentally make you skip a line of all that new dialogue they added mid-fight. • While a lot of things are now explained very clearly, others remain bafflingly cryptic. For example, I don't think it's explained anywhere that there's actually 3 types of shops, all with different inventory. I also don't believe the accuracy penalty/bonuses for flanking, height, etc. are explained clearly anywhere? • Inventory and skills management kind of sucks. Switching back and forth between unlocking skills and equipping them is painful, especially when you're trying to make a hard decision about which new thing to commit JP to. • I checked out the French version, and it does not feature the same kind of style & vibe to the writing. Unfortunate. • The new visuals are great, but sometimes they commit sprite crimes (keeping them bilinearly filtered wherever they show up) OVERALL: 100% recommend playing it if you like Final Fantasy games, especially if you loved the other Ivalice games.