Time has been kind to Final Fantasy Tactics. First released in North America for the PlayStation in 1998, the strategy spinoff was overshadowed by its handsome, brooding older brother, the once-in-a-generation Final Fantasy 7. Tactics held fast to pixel art at a time when 3D graphics and cutscenes were all the rage — and stretching games across three or four CD-roms. It was also notoriously difficult, with a challenging gauntlet of early battles scaring off more than a few chancers. But that formidable difficulty, combined with an intricate job system that allowed for unprecedented customization of party members, allowed it to evolve into a cult classic.

Somewhere between a remaster and a remake, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles features fully voiced dialogue, adjustable difficulty levels, a more forgiving battlefield camera, and enhanced graphics that remain true to the spirit of the original. As someone who tried — and failed! — to get into the PS1 version way back when, I finally understand what all the hype is about.

A disenchanted kingdom

Image: Square Enix

Tactics plonks you into the boots of the young nobleman Ramza Beoulve, who finds himself thrust into the conflict between two rival lords to take control of the Kingdom of Ivalice after the musty old king dies, as musty old kings tend to do at the beginning of video games. What ensues from there is all rather complicated, but The Ivalice Chronicles adds a nifty State of the Realm feature that depicts the timeline of the conflict overlaid on a map, directly cribbed from Final Fantasy 16. It makes keeping up with Ivalice’s shifting web of alliances quite a bit easier than in the original game.

Speaking of FF16, that game’s debt to Game of Thrones has been well documented, but Tactics was truly the series’s first foray into the realm of dark fantasy. I won’t spoil them here, but several shocking twists and betrayals surprised me, all these years later — involving family, friends, and “trusted” members of the clergy (it’s still a ‘90s role-playing-game, after all).

The concept of plot armor doesn’t really exist in Ivalice, as becomes clear during a pivotal early showdown where Ramza accompanies his childhood bestie Delita on a rescue mission. This world is a harsh one, and Ramza soon learns that it’s especially unkind to those outside the nobility. (And to women. And to people outside the church. It’s unkind to pretty much everyone, really.)

As much as I enjoyed the story, it needs to be said that there’s a whole lotta yapping going on in Tactics, and much of the dialogue leans too heavily on Shakespearean verbiage like “fain” and “mayhap.” Even with an excellent voice cast, it can all feel a little long-winded at times. Sure, you can fast-forward dialogue, but when you’re reattempting a fight for the fourth or fifth time, you’re gonna wish you had the option to skip scenes entirely.

While you were partying

Image: Square Enix

There’s a timeworn cliché of RPGs that you’re probably familiar with: The real adventure is the friends we made along the way. That’s true in most Final Fantasy games, where your emotional tether comes through a likeable cast of supporting characters, like FF7’s Tifa or FF9’s Vivi. But Tactics is a solitary affair, and there’s very little goofing around to be had on Ramza’s journey. Most of the main characters are not even members of your party. They are your family members, priests of varying levels of corruption, and a gaggle of pompous lords and generals. Your plot-relevant teammates get some dialogue in a battle or two — oftentimes, you’ll have to save them from an attack once you arrive in a new town. After that, they largely recede into the background. This probably sounds like a criticism, but I promise it isn’t.

By de-emphasizing the party’s role in the story, Tactics invites you to dive deep into its phenomenal jobs system, which offers roughly two dozen unique character types for you to swap between and combine, however you choose. Each character starts as either a Squire or a Chemist, suited to melee and magic attacks respectively, but you’re encouraged to move between the branches. Every job has its own set of attacks, reaction abilities (like counter attacks or auto-heal), passive abilities, and movement-enhancing skills. At any given point, you can use the offensive skills of two jobs, while equipping the secondary abilities of any job you’ve learned. Many jobs are familiar role-playing fare, like the Knight, White Mage, and Thief. Others are more specialized, like the Geomancer, who can unleash unique attacks depending on the type of terrain, or the Arithmetician, whose instantaneous magic spells can target units at a specific experience level or elevation on the map.

Once you’ve sunk a few hours into Tactics, you start to appreciate all the possibilities. Would you like to be a Dragoon who can leap all over the map, while also using summoning spells for major magic damage? Or maybe a sword-wielding healer? No combinations are off-limits, as long as you’ve ranked up the necessary job experience. You probably won’t be able to remember their names or pick them out of a lineup, but those generic fighters you pick up at a random tavern will probably become your favorite members of the squad, because you can quite literally make them into any kind of fighter you like. And while you’ll need to pay your dues in the beginner jobs in order to unlock flashier ones, many of those early-game abilities remain every bit as useful through the end of the game.

The job system has been a huge part of the enduring appeal of Tactics after nearly 30 years, and now I understand why. The balance between each job type is immaculate — I have my favorites, but they’re genuinely all useful with a bit of leveling up. I honestly can’t think of a strategy game that does it better than this one.

A satisfying grind

Image: Square Enix

Speaking of leveling up, this is something you’ll be doing quite a lot of while playing Final Fantasy Tactics, substantially more than in recent tactical RPGs like Fire Emblem: Engage or Three Houses. Navigating Ivalice takes place in a top-down map, with destinations that will advance the story highlighted by yellow dots. Between story battles, you’ll face optional random encounters with various monsters, goons, and even feral chocobos. This is where you’ll want to experiment with jobs, figuring out what team compositions work for you. I say “want to,” but it will become clear very early on that you really cannot hand-wave all the optional stuff and just focus on the story battles. You are very much expected to grind, even on normal difficulty.

Thankfully, battles are generally short and sweet, with two small groups clashing in confined spaces. Most of the time, you’ll only have four or five units at your command, and you won’t have a lot of time to dither around and move everyone into place. You’ll be in the thick of the action quickly, and though the maps are small, there are plenty of ways to manipulate the terrain in your favor. On rainy or watery maps, you can use electricity spells for added damage. If you’re fighting the undead, you can use restorative items to harm them. The small scale of fights means grinding for job experience rarely feels tedious or burdensome, but it also means you will have your ass handed to you promptly by story battles you haven’t thoughtfully prepared for. More often than not, challenging battles can be solved with a simple do-over, or by rejiggering the jobs and abilities of your team. I dropped to the easiest difficulty for one or two brawls where I was completely out of my depth, but even then it was no cakewalk.

This is a phenomenally absorbing strategy game, and still an unforgiving one at times. Even for a series that loves breaking its own rules and flouting expectations with each mainline installment, Tactics is also a deeply unconventional Final Fantasy game. It’s also one that any fan of the series ought to experience, and The Ivalice Chronicles is the best possible way to do so.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles will be released Sept. 30 on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PS5 using a prerelease download code provided by Square Enix. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.