Now that the release of Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles is just around the corner, those who missed out on the classic PlayStation TRPG will soon be able to experience the adventures of Ramza Beoulve and company with an expanded story, full English and Japanese voice acting, modern gameplay adjustments (including an easier difficulty setting), and enchanced graphics. While Square Enix is responsible for the game’s development, Final Fantasy Tactics fans contributed a lot by providing parts of the original source code.
At a PAX West 2025 panel, game director Kazutoyo Maehiro explained how the original source code of Final Fantasy Tactics ended up getting overwritten during its porting to global audiences (source: Popverse).
“We would basically take the data from the Japanese version and write the English data on top of it. If we wanted to do another language, we would just stack it on top of the previous version and keep on overwriting it.”
With the source code no longer what it once was, the developers had to dissect what they felt were the original parts. In addition to searching versions of the source code in their possession, the developers also visited several fan websites.
“We kind of went on a journey to find the original version. We used whatever resources we had to analyze all those different versions and try to find what we felt was the original. On top of that, we actually had to go to different websites made by fans and look for data there, because we know you guys do such a good job of keeping all of that up to date.”
While the devs could have used the code featured in the PSP title Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, their lack of involvement with the port, coupled with its extra content not meeting player expectations, led to them deciding that porting the PlayStation original was the way to go. The code used to develop Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles contains a mix of what the developers judged was the original (sourced by previous versions and fan websites) and code they worked out by playing the game.
The main draw of Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles is its Enhanced version, which includes all the aforementioned features, such as improved graphics and voice acting. It also comes with a Classic version, which features the graphics and gameplay of the original, along with helpful QoL improvements such as an autosave function and several bug fixes. The latter also uses the translations found in The War of the Lions PSP port.
Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles releases on September 30 for PC (Steam), PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X❘S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.
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This is why you shouldn’t rely on the big corps to preserve everything; sometimes you have to take matters into your hands.
Props to FF Tactics fans for helping preserve their favorite game, and even more to the Ivalice Chronicles devs for accepting that help — as much as I like to insult Studio 3, this was a good move.