By Zhaan 
To start off, I haven’t completed this game yet. These are just my early impressions so far. I’m really slow to finish stuff these days so it will likely take a few more months before I’m done. But hey, I felt like posting something today so here we are.
So, what are my thoughts on this updated version of Final Fantasy Tactics? Well, I’m about halfway through the story at this point, and I already think it’s one of Square’s best releases in years. For the most part, they gave it the respect it deserves. Remasters in general can be tricky to get right. If you change too much, people will hate it, and if you don’t change enough, it might feel stale and dated. I think Ivalice Chronicles strikes a good balance.
First of all, the voice acting is sublime and it has made the game far more compelling to me. Square Enix hired a cast of British voice actors for this remaster, and it’s basically a perfect fit. Every time a new character speaks, I think to myself: “yep, that’s exactly what they should sound like”. There’s a variety of accents too. It reminds me of the superb localization of Final Fantasy XII, another game set in the same Ivalice universe. I’m not sure if Alexander O. Smith was at all involved with this project, but it’s on that level of quality and that is high praise indeed.
Story-wise, it lives up to its reputation. Sometimes the dialogue can feel a bit dramatic and flowery, perhaps inspired by stage plays or older literature. There are a lot of fancy names for characters and locations to keep track of though, and this has occasionally made it a bit hard to follow. Some would claim the writing has a Shakespearan tinge to it, but that’s a bit of an exaggaration. The characters have great depth to them, and Ivalice remains one of the best worlds in gaming. I really hope they do a remaster of Vagrant Story next.
As for the gameplay? Compared to the older versions of the game, the combat flows faster and feels more snappy. On Switch 2 the load times are short and there are no animation slowdowns when you use spells. That last part was especially an issue in the PSP version, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions.
On top of that, they’ve added a fast-forward button which speeds up battles even more. It simply feels better to play this version of the game. One minor gripe I have is that the fast-forward button has to be held down to speed up the battles. I think a button toggle would be better.
Another noteworthy upgrade is the interface design. It looks clean and the aestehthics are appropriate for this type of game. It doesn’t look like a cheap phone game UI, nor a a half-assed effort like the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters (strictly talking UI here). The fonts are good. More importantly, it is easy to navigate. I do wish Job/JP was displayed by default in the main menu, though.
There’s not much else to say since I haven’t finished the game yet, but it’s been an excellent experience so far. I’ve had so much fun grinding random encounters that I ended up at level 30+ in chapter one, with Dragoon unlocked for Ramza before weapons even become available for the class. It’s also a very comfy game to play in bed so I’m glad I got the Switch 2 version
My GOTY is probably still Death Stranding 2, but The Ivalice Chronicles is certainly a strong contender. My favourite SRPG (do we still use that term?) has always been Final Fantasy Tactics Advance A2, so we’ll see if this surpasses it.