Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles returns this fall, not just as a facelift—but as a carefully considered re‑vision of a cult classic.

Director Kazutoyo Maehiro and the team at Square Enix laid out the most meaningful enhancements in a recent interview on Square Enix's official website. Maehiro remarked:

Our main focus was to keep everything that was great about the original game intact, but also working to further improve the game to adapt the game to the current era - for example, revamping the controls and UI as well as adding full voice acting to enhance player immersion.

This remaster was the ultimate labor of love, with Maehiro confirming that at least some of the original PS1's source code was lost. The development team reconstructed the missing pieces by examining the prior releases, including the PSP's War of the Lions, to redevelop the missing pieces.

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. This isn't to say that they were mishandled or poorly managed or anything like that - keeping that kind of data wasn’t a normal thing to do at the time.

In those days, we didn't have the sort of robust resource-management tools that exist today, and on top of that, the production workflow for the game was such that the Japanese version was produced first, and then we would create localized versions by overwriting the data with that of other languages, including English.

What results is a modern re-release, complex with refreshed graphics, quality of life improvements, and gentle rebalancing of gameplay for the ultimate Tactics experience, including:

• Dual Modes: Choose between “Classic”—faithful to the 1997 PS1 version—and “Enhanced,” with full voice acting, UI redesign, added text, and QoL improvements.
• Voice Acting & Dialogue: Fully voiced in both Japanese and English. Script rewritten by original creator Yasumi Matsuno for natural flow, with added side conversations.
• New Difficulty Tiers: Offers Casual, Standard, and Tactical modes, all changeable on the fly .
• Quality‑of‑Life: Includes fast‑forward in battles, battlefield autosave, larger unit limits (up to 50 in Standard), and modernized UI .
• Cloud’s Entry Rebalanced: The cameo appearance of Cloud Strife (FFVII) now comes in earlier in Standard mode—giving fans more time to build him up.

While some aspects of the acclaimed PSP remaster, War of the Lions, are making the jump--the Ivalice Chronicles continues Square Enix's confounding strategy of re-releasing games but skipping additions and enhancements from earlier ports or repackages. Content exclusive to the PSP version (War of the Lions)—including new jobs (Onion Knight, Dark Knight), characters like Balthier/Luso, extra cutscenes, and multiplayer, has been intentionally excluded from the Ivalice Chronicles.

As Maehiro sums it up:

The original … is a very complete game