168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy Tactics has never been one of the best-selling Final Fantasy games, but you could certainly make an argument for it being the most beloved. First launching on the original PlayStation 🌊back in 1997 (and remastered for the PSP as War of the Lions roughly ten years later), this tactical adventure through Ivalice remain🌜s a high watermark for Square.
My first time with this subseries was through Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, in which you play a young child who finds themselves transported to a magical world whose entire fate hangs in the balance. Perhaps even more so than mainline entriꦆes, Tactics is never afraid to tap into the political machinations of towering kingdoms and how the actions of a select few can bear consequences for millions. They’re both great, and now a remaster of the original has been announced, I can’t wait to see how it translates to modern consoles.
But I ﷽hope the immaculate sprite work of the original is translated in the right ways.
Final Fantasy Tactics Is One Remaster That Square Enix Needs To Get Right
Before the days of high definition displays and three-dimensional graphics becoming the mainstream way to enjoy games, there were a number of titles that used pixel art; not as some form of retro aesthetic, but out of necessity. Final Fantasy began life like this, and through its early entries developed more 𓆉and more nuanced approaches to depicting its environments and characters through pixel art alone. CRT displays were able to en꧅sure these visuals popped even on the smallest of screens, with ensemble casts and huge, uncompromising settings having more than enough personality to make players care.
Making original pixel art assets work across a range of modern displays and hardware is a tall order, so I don’t 🐽envy the task Square Enix has in front oꦡf it with FF Tactics.
Final Fantasy Tactics was one of the last holdouts, releasing on the original PlayStation the same year Final Fantasy 7 would send the series screeching into the third-dimension. But it still earned a passionate audience who loved not only its visuals, but its deep gameplay and characters. Unfortunately, it didn’t sell nearly as well as its mainline sibling 7, and is as niche as the series gets, aside from truly oddball entries like Type-0 or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lightning Returns. So, when Ivalice Chronicles was fina🔜lly revealed earlier this week, my heart san🃏k when I saw the new, smoother graphics.
At first, I feared it was using an AI upscaling solution similar to what we saw in Chrono168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Cross: The Radical Dreamers back in 2022, a remaster of an early PlayStation title where pre-rendered backgrounds and low-detail characters were turned into mush becauseꦇ of the way it was handled. You could switch to retro visuals if you so desired, but even then it still looked and felt worse than the original game. When a remaster is so mediocre, the superio🉐r option is to simply emulate the experience it’s trying to revive. You know something’s gone wrong.
Final Fantasy Tactics has been similarly smoothed over, with backgrounds losing detail and characters lacking their classic pixelated look in order to present better on new displays. I’ve also got a good feeling that dithering has been applied to make the upscaling appear much more subtle. But, even without nostalgia for the original, it’s hard to view this enhanced version as a superior option. I want things to look old, weathered, and ooze classic charm, but something about the visuals here feels needlessly sanitis𒁏ed.
Meeting Player Expectations Is Going To Be A Very Tall Order
Thankfully, the upgraded user interface looks incredible. Character portraits are now more detailed, while there is far more intricate information on screen to make taking part in fights and moving across the battlefield easier than ever. From the reveal trailer alone, 🦄it’s clearly ripe wi🌠th quality-of-life improvements, not to mention confirmation of fully-voiced characters and the addition of new narrative scenes.
It appears all the new content I mentioned earlier will be limited to the new graphics, which is a shame if you aren’t a fan of the remastered visuals yet still want to experience all the new additions. Here’s hoping I’m wrong o🍌n this one...
I could be worried about the enhanced visuals for no good reason, and the finished product will shine in all the right ways and be a fundamental improvement over Square Enix’s past remaster efforts. But it has tenure in getting things wrong, and if it does the same with a gem like Final Fantasy Tactics, it won’t get away with it ൩lightly. Plea⛄se let Ivalice Chronicles hit the right notes.
Final Fantasy Tacti෴cs: The Ivalice Chronicles
- Released
- September 30, 2025
- ESRB
- ꧙ Teen / Fantasy Violence, ♛Blood, Mild Suggestive Themes, Mild Language, Drug Reference
- Developer(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Square Enix
- Publisher(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Square Enix
- Franchise
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy
- Number of Players
- Single-player
- PC Release Date
- September 30, 2025
