loading . . . Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Review Spoken Once More
Recent years have seen Square Enix digging up much of its classic catalog of games for rereleases, either for full-on remakes, remasters, or as touched-up ports. The next title to receive this treatment is Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. This is not the first remaster for Final Fantasy Tactics. A decade after its 1997 release, a PlayStation Portable version came out in 2007, released as Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, which featured an updated script along with some extra content. While War of the Lions saw mobile releases in 2011 for iOS and 2015 for Android, availability on modern consoles has remained limited, with the PlayStation version never making the PS Classics lineup on the PlayStation 3.Ā While not perfect, The Ivalice Chronicles is a great version of this classic, adding some substantial extra depth while also remaining largely faithful to its best core tenets.
Taking place in the kingdom of Ivalice, The Ivalice Chronicles opens its story through the lens of a scholar named Arazlam, who is focused on studying medieval Ivalician history. Having discovered an obscure historical record known as the Durai Papers, Arazlam informs the player that their contents reveal a hidden, buried truth about the role of Ramza Beoulve in a 400-year-old conflict known as the War of the Lions, a war that Arazlam claims Ramza is the true hero of. Jumping back four centuries, the game puts players in the shoes of Ramza, a highborn noble, as he casts aside his given name and navigates this conflict. While the war initially appears to be a simple succession crisis for Ivaliceās throne, Ramza discovers deeper, more complicated motives among the conflictsā various factions, including the region-wide religious order, the Church of Glabados.
As a loose union of seven former kingdoms, Ivaliceās citizens find themselves caught between the crossfire of two opposing contenders who vie for the throne. Duke Larg, under the banner of the White Lion, and Duke Goltanna, represented by the Black Lion, are fighting a brutal war rife with violence, suffering, scheming, and political intrigue. Resultantly, Ivalice suffers from stark economic and political decline, with starvation, hopelessness, corruption, and rebellion rampant across the declining kingdom. The plot is stunningly multifaceted and complex, containing deeply serious and masterfully executed themes of class struggle, institutional decay, cyclical violence, truth, and power that were eerily prescient upon the gameās original 1997 release and resonate even more powerfully today.
[caption id="attachment_175488" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Tense standoffs are frequently marked by intense factional malice.[/caption]
Using the PlayStation version of the game as a base, The Ivalice Chronicles does not include extra content present in the PSPĀ port, though it does utilize the War of the Lions translation as a base for its script, with some scattered extra dialogue and phrasing changes to improve the fluidity of spoken lines. The āClassicā version of the game uses this translation as well, otherwise remaining unchanged from the PlayStation original aside from the inclusion of an autosave function. The Ivalice Chroniclesā inclusion of full voice acting further elevates the drama, significantly amplifying the emotional impact of many scenes throughout and breathing new life into the gameās characters, all of whom have believable, compelling dilemmas and motivations.
What adds further to immersion is how convincingly rich Ivalice is as a setting. Throughout the adventure, Ramza can stop in various towns on the world map, hear rumors in taverns, and dispatch party members on errands, which provide interesting tidbits of information that flesh out the world and add context to the strife so prevalent throughout the kingdom. For some errands, The Ivalice Chronicles rewards players with some interesting text-adventure style tomes that can be read and interacted with in the menu. While present in the original Japanese PlayStation release, these were dummied out of all English releases until now. On the whole, Ivalice feels like an organically engrossing setting, although the game is quite light on combat-oriented sidequests stemming from errands until its final chapter, which is just a bit disappointing.
Set during the War of the Lions, the game unsurprisingly contains quite a lot of combat and sees Ramza and his allies fighting turn-based battles in isometric 3D levels, which are divided into square tiles. The game contains an impressive variety of battlefields, each with different factors to consider, such as height differences, weather, and terrain, all of which require and reward different strategic approaches. For example, during a lightning storm, thunder magic does significantly more damage, and water becomes more difficult to traverse. In battle, the tactical approach is largely determined by the job composition of the player's units, each of which has different movement and combat abilities. In battle, players must consider each unitās Charge Time (CT), which affects how quickly their next turn arrives. Every successfully executed action rewards experience and Job Points (JP), allowing players to learn new abilities for their classes. Physical jobs start from the Squire class and magical ones from the Chemist, with players eventually able to unlock and develop their units into twenty different jobs as they gain more JP and level up. Players can combine the combat skills of any class with various movement, reaction, and support abilities, as well as a second set of combat skills, which allows for an impressively high level of customization and cross-job synthesis.
[caption id="attachment_176788" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The Ivalice Chronicles makes managing one's army of units much faster and easier.[/caption]
Overall, The Ivalice Chronicles maintains a highly engaging combat for the overwhelming majority of the game, rewarding thoughtful placement and smart use of abilities. Should a unit fall in battle and not be revived within three of their turns, it disappears forever, turning into a crystal that another unit can pick up to retrieve some of their abilities or a treasure chest to claim a piece of their equipment. This potentiality keeps the stakes high and battles thrilling, leaving players constantly on their toes. That said, The Ivalice Chronicles does make quite a few noticeable changes to the original PlayStation version. The most notable of these is the ability to run from random battles encountered on the map. This reduces the stakes and danger of Ivalice, especially when considering that random encounters scale to the level of the playerās highest leveled unit, presenting a constant danger and encouraging even leveling among your army units.
The Ivalice Chronicles includes three difficulty levels, with the easy mode trivializing much of the gameās combat. The gameās normal mode is largely identical to the original, with some balance tweaks noticeable in the gameās early battles, while the hard mode offers scaled-up damage for a truly relentless, almost excessively brutal experience. The game also makes balancing changes to the JP requirements for several job abilities, most noticeably the Time Mageās Teleport, being raised from 600 to a whopping 3,000. These balance changes, combined with the difficulty options, underscore one omnipresent issue the game suffers from: consistency in balancing, both on the player and enemy side. Certain job abilities are distinctly overpowered, and there are several outrageous difficulty spikes in story fights, one of which runs the risk of softlocking the game in the Classic version if players keep a single save file and arrive unprepared. The balancing tweaks and changes certainly help provide a smoother progression, but they also run the risk of compromising other aspects of the combat. All in all, itās a bandage for a lingering wound that warrants a more foundational solution. That said, The Ivalice Chronicles remains incredibly engaging and holds up outstandingly well even today.
[caption id="attachment_176787" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The updated UI doesn't always mesh well with the graphics.[/caption]
Other noticeable changes are to the gameās visual presentation, which utilizes a new, modern UI while keeping most of the other character and battlefield graphics the same. The Ivalice Chronicles doesnāt look bad by any stretch, but it isnāt impressive either, as it utilizes a superimposed filter over much of the game, appearing to emulate the effect of a CRT television, but it doesnāt quite hit the mark. It has a distinct texture, almost like patchwork or denim, and while it looks fine on battlefields and great in the opening cutscene, it works less well in areas like taverns or shops. The new UI also doesnāt quite mesh visually with the rest of the game, though what it lacks in form, it makes up for in functionality, and quite a few menus are faster and easier to navigate.
Musically, The Ivalice Chronicles preserves the soundtrack in its original format, remaining wholly unchanged. There is a good variety of well-composed tracks, with a plethora of intense battle tracks that keep the adrenaline and tension high in the gameās riveting skirmishes. Every scene in the game is punctuated remarkably well by its music, and the audio does a fantastic job of elucidating the gameās themes. The most notable addition to this version, however, is the voice acting, which is stellar across the board, both among the main cast and side characters. One early standout is Milleuda Folles, a swordsmaiden of the rebellious anti-nobility Corpse Brigade, whose rage and venom towards the aristocracy is significantly amplified by her voice actress. It is obvious that Square Enix put great effort into this addition, and this is easily the biggest draw of The Ivalice Chronicles.
Ultimately, The Ivalice Chronicles brings a classic masterpiece to modern systems in a manner that is both highly reverent to the original, while also adding some modern gameplay concessions and other additions. The Classic version of the game offered is also sure to please traditionalists or RPGamers looking for a more nostalgic experience. The gameplay is a bit rough around the edges, particularly in difficulty and class balancing, but everything holds up remarkably well. More importantly, the story and themes of Final Fantasy Tactics have aged like fine wine, and the voice acting does wonders at fully fleshing out and finally bringing this classic tale to modern audiences.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
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