We Played Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles – Hands-On Preview

I can’t stress enough how much I enjoy Final Fantasy Tactics, and I can’t begin to count how many times I have actually played the game. It’s one of those games that sticks with you and is enjoyable multiple times in many different ways. I still consider it the best Final Fantasy game, and I am very excited for Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. Thanks to the lovely people at Square Enix, I had the opportunity not only to play a small portion of the game but also interview director Kazutoyo Maehiro and ask him some questions about the project. While I recommend you read the full interview, much of what learned is also sprinkled throughout this preview, so feel free to check out both to get as much info as possible before the game releases.

We got to play two sections of the game, first I got to experience the always enjoyable Zeirchele Falls fight as well as playing a small portion of Chapter 1. I even got the opportunity to play Chapter 1 on the Tactician difficulty (the hard difficulty), as I wanted to see what this setting was all about. In the small time allotted, I managed to make it all the way to the Sand Rat’s Sietch, a.k.a the Sand Rat’s Cellar. This preview covers both sections in turn, allowing me to describe my experience with both.

Zeirchele Falls

Given a save right before this iconic fight, the first thing I did was take off Gaffgarion’s equipment. Yes, this trick still works, and you can not only strip him of useful gear to turn to your own use, but Gaffgarion still does the fight with zero equipment and low HP. It basically takes away his powerful Dark Sword abilities and makes him useless in the fight. The thing you can’t do in this case is change Gaffgarion’s job because all guests are locked into their current job. No more changing him to Chemist or a low HP job to make him even weaker. This also means you can no longer change Delita and Argath’s classes to something like Archer in Chapter 1, either.

The first big change from original Final Fantasy Tactics is the ability to choose and finally see where on the map units will get placed. The deployment scene is now a grayscale version of the battle map where you select everyone’s placement. You still can’t see the enemies you will be fighting, but understanding which tiles represent what parts of the map is 1000% better than the original deployment screen. The fight plays out pretty much the same as it always has, with Ovelia and Delita doing their own thing while you deal with the knights on your side of the bridge. I noted the Holy Sword abilities use their War of the Lions’ names, despite the game not using the War of the Lions script. This is also true for a few abilities, and there are a few with new names as well, such as Defend being named Evasive Stance (which better reflects what this ability does). As for balance changes, I can go more into that later, though I can say that a few things have changed in this part of the game.  

1. Redone charge mechanics. I asked about this during my interview with Maehiro, and he confirmed that abilities that use long charge times, such as Archer or some of the higher-level spells, charge and activate differently. I noticed that any character who does not use their turn to move and instead activates a charge ability has a much faster charge time than I remember. I have played the game extensively and have a good sense of how long something will take, even without seeing the turn order. I can confirm that Aim and Spells fire off much faster, especially summons.
2. The AI is much better at using abilities and responding to what is going on. This is another item I discussed with Maehiro during our interview, which he confirmed. This AI behavior was most apparent during my Chapter 1 playthrough, but I did notice Delita, Agrias, and Ovelia positioning themselves better to use their abilities, and even hitting allies in order to kill the enemy.
3. Abilities may not have been changed much, but JP costs most certainly have. Teleport, one of the best movement abilities in the game, is now 3000 JP to balance it out. I can only imagine this will affect some of the heavy-hitter abilities like Blade Grasp and Two Swords, and possibly abilities like Cid’s sword abilities later. More on this in the interview and why they went down this path.

The battle also feels way more cinematic with the added voice lines. I particularly loved hearing the Holy Sword users saying their spell indications out loud when they popped up. It’s great to finally hear this amazing game fully voice-acted. Another The Ivalice Chronicles addition came up at the end of the fight, and that is the game awarding a Greatest Contributor award to one of the characters. It doesn’t seem to grant any benefits, but it’s a nice new little touch to see who did the best. Expect Cid to occupy this spot a lot later in the game. There is also a brief recruitment scene whenever someone joins, like the princess, which is a nice touch. I wasn’t allowed to play past this point, but I was allowed to play Chapter 1 as far as I could in the time I had left.

Chapter 1

First off, the cinematics in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles look so much better, and the voice acting in the cutscenes definitely adds significantly to the game. Stand-out actors include Gaffgarion and Agrias’ actors, as well as Ben Starr as Dycedarg. Here, I also noticed that the new style of graphics is much better in person than what we have seen in video. It likely has to do with how videos compress the look, but the dithering in the sky (especially in the sunset scenes) is still very much apparent, and you can see the pixelation in the character sprites, but it doesn’t look smoothed out as videos have shown. I managed to get up to and past the Sand Rat Sietch on the Tactician difficulty, so now I can recount my mini adventure.

The fight on Magick City of Gariland plays out pretty much as expected. It’s nice that the new deployment screen is available, as it quickly reminded me of my first time ever playing this game and not understanding how to deploy other units or even what I was supposed to do. This version is much friendlier for Tactics newcomers to grasp what they need to do. 

I checked out the shop, bar, and recruitment center after the battle. You now receive a nice notification when new equipment or new rumors/jobs become available, so you don’t need to constantly check. It’s much more straightforward and cleaned up, which I appreciated. The recruitment center is perhaps the most improved, offering a range of options off the bat, so you can select which one is the best without having to go through each option in turn. You can also rename anyone in the party here, including the first recruits you got at Magick City. Nice little additions.

At Mandalia Plains, you still have the option of saving the jerk Argath or choosing to destroy the enemy, which does affect the battle conditions. The Brave changes are also still here, depending on what you choose, as well. The AI changes were at their most noticeable during this fight. The AI was most certainly going after lower health units despite having open lines to attack someone else that turn, and characters were definitely doing more damage than I was used to at this battle. Argath was also fundamentally useless not only in this fight, but in the next few as well. He was definitely avoiding fighting anything, which better suits his crappy personality. 

I made my way to the Dorter Slums pretty quickly through the woods because I had two more things I wanted to check. Luckily, I could fight or flee from random battles along the way. I needed to know how far this game went on this difficulty and how faithful to the original it was. First off, Dorter is still where the game kinda takes off its gloves with the very annoying Archer up top and the Black Mages that can do a fair bit of damage. Delita still pursues the Archer, while Argath now tends to hide in the corner. I had to check if the other Archer on the other side still spawns without a weapon, and he still does. It definitely shows me that they considered even small details when remastering this game. I lost a unit at the end due to having to rush and because I wasn’t used to the new star indicator instead of the old number counter. But them’s the breaks.

At Sand Rat Sietch, the first map where you can split the party, I confirmed you still need to split as directed, and Ramza still cannot be put in the second group, which makes sense from a balance perspective later. I had to check, though. This fight has some teeth to it now, but wasn’t extremely different in terms of difficulty. It helps that Argath’s dead body (that may or may not have been my doing) blocked the northern doorway for most of the fight. The enemy monks were noticeably doing a lot of damage for this part of the game, which led to me having to rely on a few potions and phoenix downs to recover. 

Concluding Thoughts

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is shaping up to be the most definitive addition to this game ever made. It retains the great aspects of the original, while still adding much to the game and being newcomer friendly. If you want more info, I highly suggest you check out the interview from this preview as well, as Kazutoyo Maehiro was kind enough to answer many fun and hard-hitting questions about the game from a veteran. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles releases on September 30th for the PS4 & PS5, Nintendo Switch 1 & 2, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.