The Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster Had To Be Brute-Forced Into Existence And Makes Some Controversial Cuts

Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles will make the PS1 classic playable on modern hardware in September for the first time since the PlayStation 3 generation over a decade ago. Why did it take so long for Square Enix to bring back the beloved strategy spin-off? It might have had something to do with missing source code.
'There were a number of major challenges, but all of them stemmed from the fact that the master data and source code from the original game no longer existed,' the remaster's director, Kazutoyo Maehiro, said in a newly published interview. The writer behind Final Fantasy XVI decided to push forward with bringing back Final Fantasy Tactics after replaying it 2018 on a livestream for the first time since it released in 1997.
A lack of rigorous documentation procedures at the time made it hard, however. Back in the PS1 days, games were made quickly and once they shipped the company moved on. The Japanese version might be completely overwritten in English for the international release. As a result, the current Square Enix team had to cobble together the new enhanced The Ivalice Chronicles version through 'sheer force.'
'We analyzed a number of existing versions of the game and reconstructed the programming of the original, but there were also times where we played the original game and worked it out by feel alone,' Maehiro said. The entire process was the result of cumulative hard work—on the one hand working to implement new features, while behind the scenes our work was similar to porting an old arcade game to the NES.'
The Ivalice Chronicles includes updated graphics (read: HD smoothing), voice acting, a re-edited script, and quality-of-life features like fast-forward and save anywhere. The original version of the game is also playable. But this isn't the first time Square Enix has ported Final Fantasy Tactics. The War of the Lions version was released for PlayStation Portable in 2007, alongside a Shakespeare-ified script, some additional cutscenes, new job classes, and a wireless multiplayer mode. Surprisingly, none of that new content will be in The Ivalice Chronicles.
'We did of course consider the addition of new jobs, abilities, and characters—including the jobs featured in War of the Lions,' Maehiro said. 'However, the original version of Final Fantasy Tactics is a very complete game both from a game design and story perspective. If we were to make major changes, it would only be a loss for not only fans of the original game, but also those new to the title.'
The director notes that the War of the Lions port was handled by a different team than the original game, and he suggests that having gotten some of the original game's veterans back together—including original writer and director Yasumi Matsuno—the team wanted to stay as close to the original as possible. In an interview with Famitsu, there's also a mention of how poorly optimized the PSP version was, with audio bugs and frame rate crashes. While I can respect that, it also feels like a huge missed opportunity to expand on one of the best tactical RPG sandboxes in the genre.
That could have meant adding new jobs for players to explore or new modes. Online multiplayer, a roguelite mode, or some other end-game content feels like an obvious addition to one of the best games ever made. Fortunately, it does sound like three new difficulty options in The Ivalice Chronicles will rebalance some of the gameplay. Once you've mastered Final Fantasy Tactics' job system, it can make even its toughest battles feel trivially easy. A new tactical mode will add a new level of challenge, while some abilities that were useless in the original, like archer charging attacks, have been fixed in the standard difficulty. Another neat addition? Players will encounter the Final Fantasy VII sidequest to recruit Cloud much earlier this time around.
.
For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Yahoo

a day ago

• Yahoo

Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster (Switch 2) Review

Thirteen years ago, Square Enix released one of the best Final Fantasy spin-offs they'd made to-date but called it by a different name: Bravely Default. Standing on its own merits, it proved to be a cult classic for the 3DS by the time it arrived in the west in 2014, and still stands as one of the Nintendo 3DS' must-play RPGs (alongside its direct sequel, Bravely Second: End Layer). And yet, it still seems to lack the recognition it deserves as an upstanding modern take on classic JRPGs. Now, with as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch 2, this can finally be set right. Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster is a definitive take on the original game, which amalgamates its myriad re-releases and refreshes it for Nintendo's brand new console. Despite taking on the subtitle of the very first edition, Flying Fairy, it's based on the updated For The Sequel edition, which was the version we initially received in English—because what's a Square Enix JRPG franchise without some convoluted names? Naturally the game has been converted to suit the Switch 2's single screen, after originally utilizing the dual screen of the 3DS. This transition has been handled remarkably well, and will hopefully inspire more developers to bring their 3DS gems to Switch 2. Akitoshi Yoshida's character models and the game's beautiful storybook-like environments also translated nicely to both modern TVs and the Switch 2's screen. Though it was, admittedly, a little jarring to see the mouths moving on certain kookier character models, but that's testament to how much clearer the experience is now. While the 3DS' display was fine at the time, the HD, 16:9 presentation is vastly superior, breathing new life into Bravely Default's folksy world of Luxendarc. Most environments are enhanced by the clearer resolution, which shows off the paint-like texture of the landscapes. Even without the touch screen, this almost feels like the way it was meant to be seen. (Missing entirely is the original game's use of the 3DS' gyroscopic camera. This enabled a handful of AR cutscenes which sounded cool in theory, yet were gimmicky in practice, like the intro CG cutscene.) Beneath Bravely Default's fairy tale appearance (no pun intended) lies a well-crafted tale that combines the motifs of classic Final Fantasy, like crystals and warriors of light, with some plot elements from more modern FF, like the corrupt governments and natural resource wars of Final Fantasy VII. The party consists of Tiz, a young man who's the sole survivor of his simple village; Agnès, sheltered cleric of the Wind Crystal; Edea, a defector from Eternia, the enemy state that seeks to destroy the crystals' hold over society; and Ringabel, an amnesiac who hasn't forgotten his womanizing ways and carries a prophetic journal. Guided by the fairy Airy, they seek to restore the four crystals and thus, the balance of nature while thwarting the forces of Eternia along the way. Bravely Default's writing is still incredibly good by modern standards, even if the voice acting (and a late-game slog) will probably remain as divisive to audiences in 2025 as it did in the twenty-teens. The main characters are charming, as are the minor antagonists in their own way, and the world is easy to invest in. Allusions and homages to Final Fantasy are littered throughout, from the recurring names of spells (Fire-Fira-Firaga), to classes (White Mage, Black Mage), and items, to deeper thematic cuts (like the actions of the Water Crystal's Vestal). Squint just right and it could practically be a sequel to Final Fantasy III, but with profoundly more character and plot. Nowhere is that connection to classic 2D Final Fantasy more apparent than in battle. Players unlock up to 24 jobs (called Asterisks here) throughout Bravely Default, by defeating practitioners of that class. In this department, it harkens more to fellow underrated game Final Fantasy V: each job has distinct active and passive abilities, and as a character increases that job's level they unlock more permanent upgrades which can be equipped even after swapping to another class. Tiz might learn Black Magic, for example, then switch to the Time Mage class and keep the Black Magic command and the Pierce ability. This take on job classes is a tried and true system, and I'm glad to see Bravely Default still putting it to good use even if Final Fantasy isn't. It's kept fresh with some original inventions and unique interpretations of classic jobs, each well-earned in battle with the sort of villains you love to hate. If jobs were 'something old' or 'something borrowed,' Bravely Default's 'something new' was the battle system its name stems from. Actions in a fight cost 1 BP, and characters earn 1 BP per turn normally. Outside of the usual conventions of turn-based RPG combat, each participant can 'default' on their turn to guard and store up their BP, or 'brave' to take 2-4 actions at once. This deceptively simple paradigm can have big strategic ramifications. In weaker random battles, characters can go all out with braves and quickly dispatch their foes in one turn—instead of stooping to a 4-turn slugfest. In harder fights, will your opponent default and tank through your biggest assault? Or can you successfully brave when their guard is down and tear them to shreds instead? It's a simple tweak on the usual turn-based format which lends the game a very unique feel. All of the gameplay holds up just as well today as it did at Bravely Default's western debut. Thankfully, the 3DS original's connectivity features remain intact as well. Friends with the game can be added into your file, allowing you to 'link' your character with theirs—so if your friend has a maxed out Monk Edea, you can use the Abililink system to give your Edea some of those advanced, level 9 abilities. As well, the ability to call upon other players has been salvaged from the 3DS. In a similar fashion, players can 'record' their best moves in battle and save them to their profile, so that other players can summon them. (The game also provides fake, computerized 'ally' profiles periodically to avoid leaving behind those with smaller friend lists.) Even the town restoration minigame, where players idly repair Tiz's hometown over time, has made the jump. Once delegated to the bottom screen, the Norende Village Restoration is easily summoned with a press of the Switch 2 D-pad, as is the in-game reference book and the encounter rate setting, among other bells and whistles. New to Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster are two minigames using the Joy-Con 2's mouse features. Much like the system's mouse function itself, I found these distractions to be better than expected, though still a little too cumbersome to be a main event. The first, Luxencheer Rhythm Catch, also invokes another Final Fantasy spin-off, Theatrhythm. Bravely Default's take injects a sliver of Beat Saber, turning the Joy-Con 2s into a pair of light-stick cursors on the screen. As notes pass by, players must position those cursors so that the notes are caught between them, or move the correct cursor over the notes and press a button in time. It's more elegant in practice than it sounds on paper, and was actually a pretty fun use of the mouse, though I'm in no rush for Theatrhythm to adopt this approach instead. The other, Ringabel's Panic Cruise, is an airship pilot simulator. Meant to show all the work Ringabel does when flying the party's airship, this minigame tasks players with not only steering the craft horizontally and vertically, but also manipulating various controls to fulfill other character's requests or defending the craft from attackers. Though a tonal shift from the rest of the game—the first level has you fending off ghost pirates, because Reasons—it's another fun little distraction. Neither minigame is worth the price of the remaster's admission alone, though there are a plethora of rewards to be earned from playing them periodically, like more background on the characters and unique costume or special move parts. Each minigame has three difficulty levels and more stages to unlock through main plot progression; higher difficulty means more medals, and faster rewards. Like the original game using the 3DS' camera for AR cutscenes, the new minigames in Bravely Default's remaster make a case for the potential of the Switch 2's mouse controls. Fortunately this makes a better case than the first, and I'm pleasantly surprised with the mouse's application, but I still need a little more in-depth proof of its worth. (Bring on Metroid Prime 4.) My only real nitpick with the experience here is the unreliability of the network connection. Bravely Default isn't exhaustive in its network features, only requiring a passive connection to send or receive friend data. In theory, it's 'set it and forget it.' Yet if the connection is disrupted—say, by taking the Switch 2 off the dock—it can be tedious to reconnect. A small quibble in the grand scheme of things, perhaps addressable through updates, though still a minor nuisance. All in all, I couldn't be happier to see Bravely Default get a second chance in the spotlight with a bigger audience. Over a decade ago it proved that classic JRPGs weren't dead or a taboo—a lesson that studios still need to be reminded of, evidently. The Switch 2 has revitalized that core experience, in some ways revealing a superior form, and any fan of original Nintendo-era Final Fantasy, or even classic PS1 RPGs, should give it a shot. With backward compatibility, fans of the genre can already feast well on Switch 2, and having a strong, classic launch title like Bravely Default helps show how Nintendo's partners like Square Enix can keep that feast going. (For a perfect dessert course, the sequel would be a great fit as well, just saying…)

Gizmodo

3 days ago

• Gizmodo

The ‘Magic: The Gathering' Team Had to Fight to Keep One of the ‘Final Fantasy' Set's Best References

Suplex's place in 'Final Fantasy' meme history lives on, even if Square Enix would prefer you call it Meteor Strike these days. Magic: The Gathering's new Final Fantasy set is an absolute love letter to the beloved RPG series, with hundreds of cards making a flavorful nod to their source material in one way or another. But one of the most fun references in a set filled with them almost didn't make it in—thanks to a quibble between Wizards of the Coast and Square Enix's translation teams. In a fascinating new article about translating the Final Fantasy set for its English and Japanese-language versions shared on the official Magic website today, Joseph Leis, the program manager for the Final Fantasy set, explained some of the challenges facing translating several cards in the set to ensure the standards of Magic's usual international translation process, while also working with Square Enix and its own translations for Final Fantasy as a franchise. But one of the most intriguing examples concerns one of the most fun nods to Final Fantasy fandom's western history that almost didn't make it in: the Final Fantasy VI card, Suplex. Or, at least in the form that Final Fantasy VI fans would've wanted it to. A red mana sorcery card, Suplex in the set can either be used to deal three damage to a target creature (with the added bonus of exiling them if it destroys it), or exiling a target artifact card from play. This second rule is a specific synergy so that Suplex can target another card in the game, the black mana artifact Phantom Train. It's a reference to the memetic legacy of FFVI players realizing that Sabin the monk, one of the game's expansive party members, can use one of his special abilities, Suplex, to physically hoist up the giant demon locomotive and slam it back down in an absurd image, dealing a ton of damage. In the years since its release, and especially in the advent of the online age, Sabin suplexing a literal train has become a part of Final Fantasy meme culture. But the thing is, Suplex wasn't called Suplex in the original Japanese game. It was called Meteor Strike (or specifically 'メテオストライク' in katakana) back when Final Fantasy VI was first brought over to North America as Final Fantasy III (several games in the series initially missed being translated), a name that Square Enix has kept ever since. While the original translation remained for many FFVI ports, it took until 2022 when the game was re-released as part of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection for the official translation to be updated to Meteor Strike. So Wizards and Square Enix found themselves at a bit of an impasse. Where possible, Wizards prefers that translation and localizations of card names diverge as little as possible from the English-language originals: Magic sets are typically designed in English first, and then translated into various languages, but the Final Fantasy set was the first in the game's history to be developed in English and Japanese simultaneously. Square Enix wanted to keep the Meteor Strike name as the official translation of Sabin's move as that's what was it always was in Japanese, but Wizards argued that English-language fans who played VI as kids would be disappointed if the card wasn't called Suplex as tribute to the nostalgic place the fight has taken in western fandom culture. 'This was something that principle narrative designer Dillon Deveney went back and forth through multiple rounds of negotiations with Square Enix,' Leis said, 'explaining how important that scene and the name 'Suplex' would be to English-speaking Final Fantasy VI fans, how kids growing up would yell 'suplex!' at the top of their lungs while playing at the playground, and how the nostalgia of the term was something that he wanted to keep as an Easter egg for English-speaking Final Fantasy VI fans.' Thankfully, Square Enix eventually relented, and a rare divergence between the English and Japanese sets allowed Suplex and Meteor Strike to co-exist. Now you can exile that one particular artifact to your heart's content, in the exact way you'd want to.

The Verge

4 days ago

• The Verge

PlayStation's concert series is coming to the US

Sony is bringing its PlayStation concerts to the US this fall, where you can hear live performances of tracks from franchises like God of War, The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, and Horizon. Ticket pre-sales for PlayStation: The Concert begin on Wednesday, and you can see the full list of current tour dates on the PlayStation website. In addition to music from those big tentpole games (and the setlist better include Ghost of Tsushima's incredible title drop), the concerts will showcase 'fan-favorite themes from Bloodborne, Astrobot, Journey, Uncharted, and Helldivers 2, offering a rich and diverse journey through the PlayStation universe. A live band will play the music while 'the latest LED technology and state-of-the-art multi-layered projections' will turn the stage into 'a mesmerizing visual masterpiece.' These sorts of video game concert series are becoming increasingly common. Square Enix put on a FFVII Rebirth -focused tour, for example – I went to it last year, it was fun! Kojima Productions is putting on a Death Stranding 2 concert series that will begin a world tour later this year. And after the brief orchestral performance of Balatro's soundtrack at The Game Awards last year, I'm hoping that Jimbo hits the road with his band someday, too.