Crazy how this game got remade in 2025 of all years
Tactics had been high on my priority of FF games that I haven't played for a while. It's widely beloved; I almost felt like my claim to fame of "every mainline" was fake without it (I haven't gotten to X-2 yet so I'm still a fake fan until I clear that). Yet it was stuck in such a weird place with playability. Now, here we are. A wonderfully enhanced remake that came at the perfect time.
I was struggling to pick between if I wanted to play the enhanced version, with the voice acting, or I wanted to play the original version, to compare to Advance as classically as possible. Ultimately, I decided I wanted the voice acting, but honestly for other reasons I'm very glad I picked the enhanced version.
Last year I completed Tactics Advance. So a lot of me going in was to compare and contrast the two. Tactics is GENERALLY the same, with differences in the jobs/job system, gameflow, and some other underlying systems (plus I'm sure other things I'm forgetting right now but I do write these stream of consciousness style (you can't make me rough draft and proofread))
Jobs. I love jobs. I really liked the job selection this time around; they had some really strange and out there choices. Arithmetician, Orator, Mystic, there's really nothing like any of these in the rest of the series. When it comes to how they function, I felt like this was a mix of III and V. It has V's customization and sharing, essentially being what I imagine became XI's subjobs, but like III your jobs affect your permanent stats (not my favorite). Advance was pretty much like this, but where they differ, is Advance had a system like IX, where you learn skills from weapons. Tactics has a system where you spend job points on abilities to permanently learn them; similar to V, but less linear. I think I prefer Advance's system. The weapons work as a sort of trial, where you can basically test out the ability before you spend the time with that weapon and job to permanently have it on your guy, and if you need to switch to something else, you can, and still have your progress saved. Tactics feels kinda shitty when you're locked in a job that might feel useless cause you don't have other abilities to use with it, but what if you just need the one thing from it? I'm not gonna waste my points on all this geomancy if I just want the attack boost. It also sucks to be wasting time in an unrelated job you know doesn't have great stat growths, but that's not unique to this game, I just don't like it. Regardless though, even with its flaws, sometimes the core of a system is just a success, and that remains the case here. I love making combos of jobs (which I'll get into later).
Kind of connected to the topic of jobs; game difficulty. Tactics is a hard game. Even in chapter 1, I felt like I was struggling to keep up with the story missions in level. Then later on, even when I was leveled higher than the enemies, I didn't feel as strong as them with my units I've invested so much time into. The difficulty curve just felt off, but it's very possible I just wasn't playing the game correctly. However, the difficulty of the game completely changes flavor in the back end of the game. There's a notorious battle against the character Wiegraf, where if you don't have the right job ability setup, you're not winning. Back in the day, this meant if you didn't save right, you were shit out of luck oh well restart whole game idiot (luckily the remaster didn't have this issue, but again into that later). Where my problem lies, is if your game is fairly job agnostic for most of it, anything can work as long as you're strong enough, it shouldn't suddenly matter with the chance to completely fuck yourself out of playing because you didn't prepare for the unknown correctly. Wiegraf isn't the last fight guilty of this either, the one directly after felt like it had similar issues, as well as fights in the final gauntlet. I never really felt like I was ahead of the curve at any point, despite all the grinding I felt like I was doing. I just couldn't get a hold of where the game wanted me to be.
Where the last two topics combine is in the unique characters. You have your generic units that are pretty flavorless, which is great cause you can customize them however you want, but then you have your named story characters. For most of the game, you have Ramza, Agrias, and Mustadio. They each have a unique skillset alongside the other jobs in the game that gives them a nice little niche. I liked having them alongside my other generic friends, trying to give them a different flavor. But then you hit Chapter 4, and the number of unique characters skyrockets. You go from 3 to like, 7-8. That's so many new friends! To be clear, I do like all the new friends I think they're really cool. But, I ran into a dilemma. Do I use all these new friends that feel important to the story, and have a stake in these battles, or do I use my highly customized generics that I've put a lot of time and effort into? It kinda sucked to have to choose, especially with the limited roster size per battle. What ultimately affected my decision, is that some of the later friends you get are just. Busted. Cidolfus and Meliadoul felt SO strong compared to everyone (and believe me I loved being the Thunder God holy shit), that it was like, why WOULDN'T I use them? Especially when the game got so hard, my old guys just couldn't keep up, it felt like the game became balanced around Cid. But again, I recognize this could have just been me not doing enough grinding, not having optimal builds, or any other kind of user error (this is why I don't objectively rank games I just rank my experience).
When i played Advance, I very much felt like it was the perfect pocket experience. Battles were small in size, only getting a few friends, and there were clear little missions to get sent to. I thought this was the case because it was a smaller system, so I expected a larger roster size per battle in Tactics. Unfortunately, not quite the case. You are still stuck with only 5 friends, which just feels that much worse when you also have the dilemma of story vs generics. Going from mission to mission was another thing. I'm not sure if this is how it worked in the original PS1 version, but in Advance, I could see where enemy grindspots were, and I couldn't here. it made navigating the map not as engaging, and if it wasn't for the enhanced ability to run from a battle; frustrating. If I ran into those 13 monks without being able to back out? It would have been like getting preemptive attacked by 5 coeurls with instant death touch in II. You lose, rocks fall, you die. The last part I'll talk about in regards to this general section is Errands. Advance also had this system, where you send out units for a bit to come back with a reward. I did not care for it. I still didn't care for it here, I don't think it adds anything to the game, and the rewards just didn't seem enough to make me excited for them. I will give them credit for adding extra world building and fun references to previous FF games though, that was the primary reason for clearing them (other than completionism) and I really liked seeing what would pop up.
Unit death is a big thing to talk about as well. When a character dies, you have 3 turns to revive them before they’re lost forever. When they die, they leave a crystal, that someone can learn some of their abilities from/heal, or a chest to get some of their items from. I do think this is a cool system. But I just don’t feel like permadeath has a place in FFT. You spend so much time putting in investment in your characters, that it just. SUCKS to lose them. At any point. You can recruit new guys, but they’re just so far behind that I don’t wanna do all of that again. It’s possible I just don’t like permadeath; I am a Fire Emblem casual baby, after all.
I know I’ve been pretty critical in this part, but really most of that comes with comparisons to Advance. I do still love the core gameplay of Tactics, and I love a job system. I just think I prefer its successor’s iteration more. Last little bits that bothered me; I often found myself frustrated with the perspective, like there were times where I just couldn’t see what I wanted no matter the angle (the top down tactical view really helped with this so it wasn’t all bad), and I do feel like I have to mention the zodiac system; very cool conceptually, did not feel like it added anything to my gameplay. But it’s very likely that my game would have been enhanced if I bothered to learn it, who knows?
I always struggle where to put this section. Before story? After story? In story? Hard to say. But I think in between gameplay and story is a good place. I can talk about their writing and their gameplay. Tactics has a HUGE roster. Being a very political game, there's a lot of pieces in play, on your side and not. Prepare for a long section.
I know these guys didn't have story importance (Ladd, Alicia, and Lavian kinda did!), but I really wanted to talk about my personal job experiences like I did in my Advance post. Now that gameplay talk is over, we're going full into story. There's so many characters, I don't think I'll talk about everyone, just the highlights
Though my gameplay preference goes to Advance, there's literally no question that Tactics has the better storyline. It's such a far difference it's not a competition. Tactics has a better storyline than some MAINLINE games.
From the start, Chapter 1, it covers this base message and theming of lowborn vs highborn. The common man vs the people in power. It talks about people in power, born into in this case cause it's medieval and feudalism exists, and their responsibility to help, are they better than those not (no). It shows the struggle of those used by war, sent to the front lines and not supported, ignored; and through Ramza, it shows that there are people in traditionally oppressive groups that are genuinely good people who can fight against their own system. It shows through Wiegraf and Milleuda, who had a genuinely good goal, that their own inability to trust (which understandably was ruined by people "like" Ramza) was their downfall. But even then, the system was so corrupt that even if they did trust Ramza, who knows if the people beyond him wouldn't have stabbed them in the back (they would have). It's such a real world, real, genuine, and understandable reactions. It shows a real evil that we fight even now.
Then, as it is a fantasy game, the fantastical comes into place. I'm not any stranger to Final Fantasy pulling this, but Tactics really is a masterclass in it. The fact that literal demons, literal demonic corruption, is being used alongside actual political corruption, and people that could be described as "demons" for the evil that they intend to do, is amazing. It hits really hard now of all times but honestly I think it's a perfect way to make an analogy literal.
It's the most political storyline out of any FF game, easily no question. But the specific topics it decided to speak on, of political corruption and the abuse of power by those who hold it, of harming others to obtain that power, of doing horrible acts to further their goals, whether that be something as simple and real as an assassination, or as fantastical as making a demonic pact, elevate it from a good or a great story to an amazing one.
So many times from reading the dialogue I was like "haha yeah imagine wow yeah" because it was mirroring the bullshit that is going on in the USA (and other places I'll admit I'm not the most informed but come on it's a struggle), I FELT the story. It hit really really hard, and it was almost cathartic to be able to literally fight against it with swords and magic. To defeat the evil demon, to save the day.
But even with that fantastical element, that classic narrative of killing the big evil bad guy to spread good, the ending remains realistic. Delita did not have a good ending. Ovelia did not have a good ending. Orran did not have a good ending. Deserved or not, they each suffered and died despite Ultima and the Lucavi being defeated and the literal evil erased. Tactics manages to perfectly mix grounded and fantasy.
While it may not have had the individual character focus I usually prefer in my media, I get why. It focuses on the large scale, it focuses on groups and organizations. Characters like Folmarv represent more than just themselves. The Lucavi are less individual evil demons with motivations, and more to physically represent corruption. It may not be my specific preferred taste, but it's still really well done and serves its purpose.
When I played Advance, I was really surprised just how much of XII originated from it. Now that I've played the original game, it's amazing how much this not even numbered game has influenced the whole series, but more specifically XII, XIV, and XVI.
Obviously, the setting of Ivalice originated here. Tactics created the Lucavi, which were later used as XII's espers. It has the Bunansa bloodline, where we get to see its ancestors in Cidolfus and Balthier in its distant past.
But then we have its grounded storytelling. We have its use of nations against each other, the political focus, and you can see how that influenced the stories of XIV and XVI. Even if they don't always manage to reach the perfect fusion and mastery of writing that Tactics does, the influence, the blood is there. I haven't felt that with any other spinoff title in the series I've played. It's honestly crazy how much of a Tactics stan Yoshi-P is, so much of his games are just Matsuno fanboyism (this is not a complaint in the slightest).
Even the writing in the games are clearly influenced by Tactics' Shakespearean play-like vibes. I think it's mainly the language used, which I do recognize is a War of the Lions thing and not the original, but even the remake of the game had a lasting impact.
With how much Tactics brought to the future, it's nice to see its future brought back in this remaster, with XVI's state of the realm brought backwards, and even little things like the font and gil logo coming from XIV.
I honestly believe that there is a universe where Final Fantasy Tactics is known as Final Fantasy VIII, and it is a deserved position.
Quickly before I wrap up, just the usual obvious sentence that Final Fantasy music is the greatest of all time and it never misses ever. I love the soundtrack of this game, it's literally so good that they didn't even remaster it FOR this remaster. Apoplexy and Ultima's Perfection are my 2 stand out favorites, but the entire OST is amazing. Such a unique soundfont with its tinny violins that can stand the test of time.
The artstyle is also outstanding. I know this is a remaster, but it's a very (I believe) accurate one, so i think what I say here is still accurate to the original. I love the spritework, there's so many detailed bits that I cannot believe they animated; it really makes you feel like you're watching a real scene and not just sprites bumping into each other. I love how the spell effects still have that echoey, washed out and blurred look like they would on a PS1, and the whole thing is really just a joy to look at.
Then we have the greatest reason to ever buy and play The Ivalice Chronicles over anything else. The voice acting, is EXCEPTIONAL. There is a not a single bad performance in the entire game, and I genuinely feel like its quality raises the story even further than what it was. You can feel the emotion in every single person. Especially with Ramza, they just knocked it out of the park with him.
I didn't really talk about this much, but man, the zodiac is always such a cool thing to use in fantasy. I'm always a fan of seeing it.
Anyways. Tactics is amazing. Even though gameplay wise I do prefer its sequel (and I'm not sure how much of that is nostalgia but I don't think it's too much), it still has so many great strengths that I HAVE to say if you're on a Final Fantasy quest, you cannot skip it (on that note also don't skip XI and XIV or I kill you). Not only is it one of the best written stories in the entire series, not only does it commentate on literal real life current events despite being a game from 1997, but its influence can still be felt in the main series today. You have to do yourself a favor if you're gonna be like, a FF scholar (is that what I am? I kinda hope so).
8.5/10. While the gameplay frustrated me at times and I prefer its sequel, the writing is peak and it's such a core part of the Final Fantasy series.