is a 1997 tactical role-playing game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation. It was released in Japan in June 1997 and in North America in January 1998 by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the first game of the Tactics sub-series within the Final Fantasy franchise, and the first entry set in the fictional world later known as Ivalice. The story follows Ramza Beoulve, a highborn cadet placed in the middle of a military conflict known as The Lion War, where two opposing noble factions are coveting the throne of the kingdom.
Production was begun in 1995 by Yasumi Matsuno, a newcomer who had created the Ogre Battle series at Quest Corporation. Matsuno's wish was for an accessible tactical game with a storyline focusing on class-based conflict and the rewriting of history. Matsuno acted as director and writer, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi was producer, and the battles were designed by Hiroyuki Ito. Multiple other staff members were veterans of the Ogre Battle series, including artists Hiroshi Minagawa and Akihiko Yoshida, and composers Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata. The game received critical acclaim and has become a cult classic since its release. The PlayStation version sold over one million units in Japan during 1997, and over 2.4 million worldwide by August 2011. It has been cited as one of the greatest video games of all time.
The world of Ivalice became the setting for multiple other titles, including other Tactics games, and the 2006 mainline entry Final Fantasy XII. An enhanced port of the game, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, was released in 2007 as part of the Ivalice Alliance project. An expanded remaster for eighth and ninth generation consoles and Windows, subtitled The Ivalice Chronicles, was released on September 30, 2025.
Gameplay
Final Fantasy Tactics is a tactical role-playing game in which players follow the story of protagonist Ramza Beoulve. The game features two modes of play: battles and the world map. Battles take place on three-dimensional, isometric fields. Characters move on a battlefield composed of square tiles; movement and action ranges are determined by the character's statistics and job class. The battlefield also factors in elements such as terrain and weather to determine strategic advantages and disadvantages during clashes. Battles are turn-based; a unit may act when its Charge Time (CT) reaches 100 and increased once every CT unit (a measure of time in battles) by an amount equal to the unit's speed statistic. During battle, whenever a unit performs an action successfully, it gains experience points (EXP) and job points (JP). Actions can include magical attacks, physical attacks, or using an item. Hit points (HP) of enemy units are also visible to the player (except in the case of certain bosses), allowing the player to know how much damage they still have to inflict on a particular unit.
In the world map, the player moves on predefined paths connecting the towns and battle points. When the character icon is over a town, a menu can be opened with several options: "Bar" for taking sidequest job offers, "Shop" for buying supplies and equipment, and "Soldier Office" for recruiting new characters. Later in the game, some towns contain "Fur Shops" for obtaining items by way of poaching monsters. Random battles happen in pre-set locations on the map, marked in green. Passing over one of these spots may result in a random encounter.
Tactics features a character class system, which allows players to customize characters into various roles. The game makes extensive use of most of the original character classes seen in earlier Final Fantasy games, including Summoners, Wizards (Black Mages), Priests (White Mages), Monks, Lancers (Dragoons), and Thieves. New recruits start out as either a Squire or a Chemist, the base classes for warrior and magician jobs, respectively. The game features twenty jobs accessible by normal characters.
The JP rewarded in battle are used to learn new abilities within each job class. Accumulating enough JP results in a job level up; new jobs are unlocked by attaining a certain level in the current job class (for instance, to become a Priest or Wizard, the unit must first attain Job Level2 as a Chemist), which also allows the character to gain more JP in that class in battles. Once all the abilities of a job class have been learned, the class is "Mastered". A soldier in a specific Job always has its innate skill equipped (Wizards always have "Black Magic", Knights always have "Battle Skill") but a second job-skill slot and several other ability slots (Reaction, Support, and Movement) can be filled with any skill the particular soldier has learned.
Plot Setting
The story takes place in the kingdom of Ivalice, inspired by the Middle Ages. The kingdom is located in a peninsula surrounded by sea on the north, west and south, with a headland south of the landmass. It is heavily populated by human beings, although intelligent monsters can be found living in less populated areas. Magic is predominant in the land, although ruins and artifacts indicated that the past populace had relied on machinery, such as airships and robots. Ivalice's neighbors are the kingdom of Ordalia in the east and Romanda, a military nation to the north. While the three nations share common royal bloodlines, major wars have taken place between them. An influential religious institution known as the Glabados Church heads the dominant faith, centering around a religious figure known as Saint Ajora.
The story takes place after Ivalice ended its war with the two nations in what is known as the Fifty Years War, and is facing economic problems and political strife. The king of Ivalice has recently died and his heir is an infant, so a regent is needed to rule in place of the prince. The kingdom is split between two candidates named Duke Goltana, represented by the Black Lion, and Duke Larg, symbolized by the White Lion. The conflict leads to what is known in the game as the Lion War. Behind this backdrop is a revelation by the game's historian Alazlam J. Durai, who seeks to reveal the story of an unknown character whose role in the Lion War was major but was covered up by the kingdom's church.
Characters Most of the game's plot is portrayed from Ramza's perspective, who is the player character of the story. He is joined by a cadre of characters which include Delita Hyral, his closest friend, and Agrias Oaks, the knight in charge of protecting Princess Ovelia. He is introduced to various factions of the Lion War; the most prominent are those of Duke Goltana and Duke Larg, who both want to become the guardian of Ivalice's monarch and are engaged in a war with each other. The story progresses to include characters from the Glabados Church, which has been controlling Ivalice silently and engineering the war in question.
As the game progresses, players are able to recruit generic player characters and customize them using the Job system of the Final Fantasy series. Several battles also feature characters controlled via the game's A.I., which may be recruited later in the game according to the story proper. The characters were designed by Akihiko Yoshida, who was also in charge of the illustration and character designs for Tactics Ogre, and then went on to do the same for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasy XII, and Vagrant Story.
Story The story is presented as a historical account by Alazlam J. Durai based on recently discovered documents dubbed the "Durai Report", written by his ancestor Olan Durai. Ivalice is recovering from the Fifty Year War against Ordalia. After the death of its ruler, Princess Ovelia and Prince Orinas are both candidates for the throne. The former is supported by Duke Goltana of the Black Lion, and the latter by Queen Ruvelia and her brother, Duke Larg of the White Lion. The two groups engage in battles in the Lion War. Nobles and commoners regard each other negatively and many commoners joined the Corpse Brigade to fight against the nobles' soldiers.
Ramza, part of the noble Beoulve family of knights, and Delita, his childhood friend who was an ordinary commoner, witness the murder of Delita's sister during an uprising. This causes Delita and Ramza to abandon their ties to the nobility. Ramza joins a mercenary group, led by Gafgarion, who protects Princess Ovelia from being hunted by both sides of the Lion War. Delita joins Goltana's forces. They are reunited when Gafgarion attempts to take Ovelia to Duke Larg. Agrias suggests visiting Cardinal Delacroix of the Glabados Church to protect Ovelia. Along the way, Ramza meets Mustadio, a machinist in possession of a holy relic called the Zodiac Stone. Hunted by a trading company for the power it contains, Mustadio also seeks Delacroix's intervention.
Ramza discovers that High Confessor Marcel Funebris and the church used the legend of the holy Zodiac Braves to gather the Zodiac Stones and instigated the Lion War. To prevent Ramza's interference, Delacroix uses the stone to transform into a Lucavi demon and Ramza defeats him. Ramza is regarded as a heretic by the church and he is chased by the Knights Templar, the soldiers of the church who are hunting the Zodiac Stones. He acquires proof of the Church's lies about Saint Ajora, a central figure in the religion, and attempts to use it along with the Zodiac Stone to reveal the organization's plot.
The two sides in the Lion War face off in a major battle that results in the deaths of Larg and Goltana. Ramza stops the battle and rescues the general, Count Cidolfus Orlandeau, though the Church eliminates the two leaders to secure its control over Ivalice. Ramza discovers that the Knights Templar are possessed by the Lucavi, who are seeking to resurrect their leader Ultima, and they needed bloodshed and a suitable body to complete the resurrection. Alma, Ramza's sister, is to serve as the host for Ultima's incarnation. Ultima is resurrected and Ramza and his allies succeed in destroying her and escape Ivalice.
In the epilogue, Delita marries Ovelia and becomes the King of Ivalice, while Ramza and Alma fake their deaths and go into hiding. Ovelia distrusts Delita, leading to a confrontation where they stab each other; their fates are left ambiguous in the game. Closing text from Alazlam reveals Olan Durai, who encountered Ramza several times, compiled the Durai Report and sought to reveal the Church's complicity, but he was burned as a heretic and his papers confiscated. His descendent Alazlam hopes now that Ramza's role in the Lion Wars will be remembered in full.
Development
Tactics was conceived in 1993 by Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, who is a fan of the tactical role-playing genre. Due to his heavy involvement with the mainline series, he was unable to realize it at the time. Production finally began at the end of 1995 under Yasumi Matsuno, who until that year had worked at Quest Corporation on the Ogre Battle series, resigning once work was completed on Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together and bringing several of its staff over to Square. During this period, Square had broken its long-standing development partnership with Nintendo and moved their game projects over to Sony's PlayStation.