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.

As mentioned earlier, Maehiro was on the original FF Tactics team as an evnt planner, responsible for directing scripted events such as character movement and animations during story sequences. At the time, he was a new developer, and now, years later, he can look back at his younger self — full of hunger and determination.

ç»I would feel very disappointed if I were to let down my past original team members,» he said. «In that sense, I really couldn’t let this project fail, and I felt some pressure from that as well. Looking through the archival material that exists in the past as well, it helped me reflect on my time over the past 28 years as a game designer. Having been able to come back to Final Fantasy Tactics after all that does make my chest swell with pride.»

Since the original Final Fantasy Tactics, Maehiro has worked on major Square Enix projects, including Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII and the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, eventually becoming creative director for 2023’s Final Fantasy XVI. But his connection to Tactics remains personal, especially when it comes to character jobs, a system that defined its depth and replayability, enabling players to customize their units with a dizzying array of options.

With over 20 jobs players assign to their characters, ranging from staples like Knight and Archer to unconventional picks like Calculator and Time Mage, Maehiro has his favorites. For efficiency, he prefers the Ninja, who can dual-wield weapons and throw items for big damage. For pure fun, though, he loves the Orator (originally called Mediator), a talking-based magic class capable of recruiting enemies, boosting allies or intimidating foes. It’s a fitting choice for a designer whose career has been built on strategy and storytelling.

Will I play Ivalice Chronicles and return to the game that left a mark on me almost three decades ago? Yes, but I’m going to make use of every QoL feature available to avoid spending days trying to defeat Wiegraf. I’m no longer a college kid wasting time to avoid studying; I’m an adult now, wasting time between writing assignments.

Final Fantasy Tactics: Ivalice Chronicles comes out on Sept. 30 for $50 on the Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PC, PS4, PS5 and Xbox Series X and S.