Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles devs "haven't made any changes to characters that were powerful," because they "didn't really want to disappoint" OG fans with nerfs

Longtime fans of the original strategy RPG don't need to worry about Square Enix making changes to beloved characters in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, as the old "system works so well" already.

Director Kazutoyo Maehiro and co-director Ayako Yokoyama confirm as much in a recent interview with GamesRadar+ at Gamescom 2025. "We haven't made any changes to characters that were powerful," explains Maehiro. "And similarly, not just for the unique characters, but for jobs such as the arithmetician, we haven't made any major changes." The developers didn't feel the need to, as they didn't want to "break" things.

"This game has a lot of different jobs and a lot of different abilities, but I think one of the reasons why this system works so well is because players have the option to be able to play around with the different jobs and abilities and come up with their own combinations, and we didn't really want to break that overall plate," concludes the director. That doesn't mean that no changes were made at all, however, as Yokoyama points out.

"There are certain instances where we did make some adjustments," says the co-director. "I think in the original game, there were certain abilities that might have been difficult to actually make good use of, and so we've made some adjustments in that respect."

Ultimately, though, Square Enix "didn't really want to disappoint anybody who played the original" with any of the changes made in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles.

Just imagine "your favorite job got nerfed" in the strategy RPG, states Yokoyama, and "it's not the way you remember it" – that's the sort of scenario devs wanted to steer clear of. "I think we wanted to avoid that."

Their thoughts on the matter certainly make sense… After all, fans of older titles aren't exactly forgiving when it comes to massive changes in remakes, and the Final Fantasy community is most definitely not an exception.

Thankfully, there's not long left to wait until players get to explore the little tweaks devs did include. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles releases on September 30, leaving less than a month before the remaster is finally available to explore.

Looking forward to one of the most exciting new games yet? Read through our thoughts on the JRPG in our short Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles preview for more.