A classic trope within the gaming space is having a popular franchise and then spinning it off into something else to see if people/fans will react to it positively. We’ve seen this with all sorts of franchises over the years, with mixed results. Square Enix is arguably one of the companies that never hesitate to do things like spinoffs, remakes, and remasters because they have a long list of titles they can do those things with and likely make a profit off of. That brings us to Final Fantasy Tactics. Here is a title that made a huge impact on the RPG community upon its release, and now, it could be close to a re-release.
The tease comes from a prominent leaker who claims that Final Fantasy Tactics is getting an official remaster and that Square Enix is working on it right now. If so, that’d be huge news for fans of the original game and the titles that followed its style later on:
For those who are unaware of what made this game so special, that would be that the title did a much different kind of RPG battle system. It went away from the still standard turn-based RPG gameplay where characters would just go one after another in back-and-forth gameplay and instead put literal tactical gameplay into the mix.
You could move your characters around the battlefield to set up a better attack or defense. You could go behind a character to hit a weak point and do more damage. You could even affect the environment to try and stack things in your favor. The variety of things you could do in the title was impressive, and it set a tone for the tactical RPG subgenre that followed. While Square Enix hasn’t confirmed that this is happening, it would be something that feels like it is within its wheelhouse.
First off, Square Enix needs to bank on what it KNOWS can make it money, and this game would likely do that if remastered properly. Second, it’s a title that could easily be put on multiple platforms, which would increase its reach and potentially get more sales. Plus, unlike a certain remake saga they’re attempting to finish up, it likely wouldn’t take that long to remaster and make meaningful improvements to.
Thus, depending on when development started, we could get it this year or next. It is a rumor, so you should take it with a grain of salt…but it’s an interesting rumor!
