Last week was the first time I picked up Final Fantasy Tactics since finishing it back in 1998. One infamous boss battle scarred me so badly that I never went back -- and given its reputation among fans, I know I'm not alone. So when I had the chance to talk with Kazutoyo Maehiro, part of the original dev team and now director of the upcoming remaster, Final Fantasy Tactics: Ivalice Chronicles, I jumped at it. I needed to know why they made that one fight so brutal.
My question for Maehiro: "Back then -- 28 years ago -- what was the original team even thinking with this fight?"
He laughed, as did the Square Enix PR team and interpreter in the room, clearly familiar with this question. Though it isn't his favorite or the hardest fight -- that honor goes to the Zeirchele Falls battle, a plot turning point that frustrated countless players with its early difficulty spike -- the infamous fight I asked about looms far larger in players' memories.
Arriving late in Chapter 3, the battle unfolds as two back-to-back encounters that form a brutal marathon. First up is a one-on-one duel between Ramza, the player's protagonist, and Wiegraf, a recurring antagonist. Without careful preparation, this fight alone can feel impossible. After defeating him, players immediately battle Belias, the demon possessing Wiegraf, alongside his summoned monsters. For many, this moment is where their Tactics playthrough ended.
"At the time, having a battle that's difficult for the sake of being difficult wasn't necessarily seen as the correct thing to do," Maehiro said through his interpreter. "In a way, it wasn't necessary that we were trying to intentionally make it that difficult. It's more so that it ended up being that way. And in retrospect, when I look back, I do think that the decision to make that battle as difficult as it was was the correct one."
The new Final Fantasy Tactics: Ivalice Chronicles is a remaster of the original PlayStation game, which launched in 1998 in the US (1997 in Japan) following the blockbuster Final Fantasy VII. Unlike the main series, Tactics embraced the tactical RPG format popularized by Sega's Shining Force and Nintendo's Fire Emblem, requiring players to think carefully about unit positioning, abilities and turn order. Mistakes could wipe out your party quickly, a design choice that cemented the game as both beloved and intimidating.
The remaster lightly updates the game's visuals, including its iconic character sprites and polygonal environments, while focusing on enriching other elements, such as adding fully voiced dialogue. Even minor enemies get voice lines, adding cinematic flair. The accents feel a bit theatrical, as if they're voicing scenes from Game of Thrones, but they suit the game's dark narrative of betrayal and political intrigue. Ramza's journey through a war-torn kingdom was mature storytelling that I didn't fully appreciate at 19 years old, but it resonates much more strongly now.
The most striking upgrades are "quality of life" improvements. Battles and dialogue can now be sped up with a fast-forward button -- a godsend for a game known for its slow pace. My time with the preview was short, as it only included the first few battles of the game. It ended at the Dorter Trade City fight, the game's first truly challenging battle, introducing new enemy types and set on a map filled with structures of varying heights.
Dorter Trade City is a pivotal introduction to a key element of the game's combat. The vertical position of a character can be both beneficial and harmful: They can easily attack enemies farther away from a higher vantage point, but at that height, an enemy attack pushing them over the edge could mean instant death. A key disadvantage for players in the original and the remaster is that the computer-controlled opponents know all the pros and cons of certain heights, while the player has to learn on the fly. What I played in my preview felt true to the original game, especially that familiar crushing feeling of losing a battle due to misplayed moves.
Maehiro emphasized that players struggling with battles like these in the new Ivalice Chronicles now have options. Difficulty can be lowered and fights can be restarted instantly or abandoned entirely, making the game more accessible without losing its core challenge.
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