Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles has some laborious achievements. I know because I’ve been chasing them for weeks and still haven’t satisfied all of the necessary criteria to 100-percent the game in that regard. How tempting then to discover there’s a bug where you can pop every achievement in the remake and claim a complete Xbox gamerscore in just a couple of minutes. How fitting for an RPG about making deals with the devil!
The trick was discovered by achievement hunter VidGamiac and shared on the True Achievements forum earlier this week. It’s a weird one and I still have no idea why it works the way it does. It revolves around starting a fresh save file, choosing English, selecting the Enhanced version, and then later changing to Japanese after you finish the tutorial battle. You can skip the initial cutscenes and fast-forward through all of the dialogue and most of the combat, letting you complete the glitch in just a few minutes. The precise steps are laid out in the video below:
“Confirmed,” wrote fellow hunter Vudix. “Works. Hat tip to you, Gamiac.” Not everyone is so impressed. “Kinda sad and pathetic tbh,” wrote OldMateClown. “Appropriate Gamertag,” Vudix responded. All of these people have gamer scores of over 1 million.
The FFT achievement glitch does not work on PlayStation
Sorry trophy hunters, this is an Xbox exclusive and won’t work for the PlayStation 4 and PS5 versions of the game. Bad news for any Sony sickos looking for easy Platinums, but good news for anyone like me who might be easily seduced by the allure of being able to finally finish this game off. Unlocking every achievement and trophy in The Ivalice Chronicles requires doing close to everything in the game, including all of the errands you can sign up for at shops, even the ones that only appear on random days of the in-game calendar year.
But the one that’s really stopped me in my tracks is called “Master of All Trades” which requires one party member to learn every ability in the game. I’ve spent a handful of nights setting up auto-battles to grind for JP points and chip away at it with Ramza but it’s taking a while. Setting up those XP fog farm arenas is harder than it looks. I didn’t think I’d ever get sick of Final Fantasy Tactics and yet, well, we’re getting close!
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles lets you train a group of newb Squires into an ultra-efficient death squad of hybrid specialists. There are so many neat Jobs and abilities to unlock in this strategy RPG that, in no time at all, you’ll be wondering what the fastest way is to obtain all of them. While there are many time-honored traditions when it comes to min-maxing the grind in Square Enix’s classic, some are more effective than others. And frogs are one of the best (technically they’re toads, but frogs is funnier to say and write).
Every action you take in combat that accomplishes something nets your character XP (experience points) and JP (job points). The first raises your regular level and the second raises your Job level and are spent to unlock abilities. You get more XP for performing actions on characters that are a higher level, and more JP the higher your overall Job level is, with bonuses for having the Double JP abilities equipped (more on that here).
There are roughly three tiers of grinding in Final Fantasy Tactics. The first is going to a place like the Mandalia Plains, killing everything but the enemy Chocobo, and then cornering it so that it keeps healing itself as your characters keep attacking it. The second is unlocking Focus from the Squire Job on every character, keeping one enemy alive in a battle, and then just spending the rest of the time having everyone keep using this ability over and over again. It’s boring and tedious, but it gets results and is easy to implement. The third is having everyone learn a dance or Bard song have them perform it on repeat. It’s similar to the Focus version but requires fewer button presses and neutralizes enemies without killing them.
None of these, however, is as elegant and foolproof as the “Berserker Frog” method. In this version you bring someone along who can cast both the Black Mage’s Toad spell and the Mystic’s Fervor (Berserk) and Induration (Petrify) spells. You then have them turn a single remaining enemy and the rest of your party into frogs so they deal as little damage as possible. They then cast Fervor to give all of the frogs Berserk so they just keep attacking the nearest enemy. They then cast Induration on themselves to turn themselves into stone so you don’t have to keep controlling them. Your party will proceed to auto-grind for a good long while.
Why not just use the actual auto-battle AI controls in Final Fantasy Tactics? Well, they aren’t always reliable in The Ivalice Chronicles remaster. Set characters with Focus to run away from battle and they just won’t use any abilities. Set someone to just heal allies and they’ll eventually still go and start killing stuff. AI control is fine for breezing through an encounter while you go make a sandwich but it won’t be nearly as effective over the same period of time as the Frog method. If you want to go above and beyond, you can keep multiple enemies alive and bring someone with the Arts of War ability to reduce the enemy’s power and speed before turning them into a frog so there’s no chance of anyone dying.
Some fans still maintain that the Focus method is simpler and faster. You send everyone to a corner of the map, set their AI to run away, and then hope they use Focus a bunch of times before killing the one enemy that’s left. But I find with the streamlined AI in the remaster, that’s just not as reliable anymore. Frogs are the way.
Final Fantasy Tactics has long been beloved as one of the highest highs of the series, not just for its grand strategical depth but for its sharp and frank political themes, telling a sweeping tale of fantastical kingdoms, conspiracy, the nature of power, the truth in history, and class and political violence in equal measure.
But revisiting the 1997 classic this week for its new remaster, The Ivalice Chronicles, its opening hours reminded me that it’s also really about the simple joy of beaning someone you really, really hate in the face with a stone, even when they’re ostensibly on your own side, as a viable political action.
In the early hours of Final Fantasy Tactics, the Throw Stone ability is a fundamental tool in the game’s strategic combat kit. An early ability earned by one of the two default jobs, the Squire, Throw Stone is exactly what you think it is: a ranged attack where your selected character picks up a rock from the ground and promptly hurls it at whatever is in range. It doesn’t do a lot of damage, but it lets you do something on a unit’s turn, and that’s very important in Tactics.
Character progression in Tactics is built around earning both experience points and “job points,” the former increasing your character’s general level in any given job they use and boosting their stats, and the latter being a currency used to unlock abilities within jobs (the term Tactics uses for different traditional Final Fantasy classes, like Knights, Archers, White and Black Mages, and so on). You earn them every time a character performs an action in Tactics‘ turn-based combat—not when they move around the field of battle, but when they perform a major action, like attacking, casting spells, or using items.
Characters can pick and choose abilities from across jobs to essentially multiclass as they progress through the games’ systems; making sure they’re earning XP and job points efficiently is a key layer to the games’ strategy. You want all your characters in the field participating, not just letting your heavy hitters run in and get all the hits in. So push comes to shove, if they’re a melee unit who can’t get in range, or they’re a primarily buffing or healing-based character, getting the Squire’s Throw Stone is useful early on just so a character can pick up a pebble and lob it at someone. It’s a last resort to keep that efficiency ticking over.
But most importantly, in regard to Final Fantasy Tactics‘ themes of class struggle, Throw Stone can target anyone who’s in range, friend or foe. It’s not a lot of damage, barely double-digits at most. If you want the XP and job points at the most efficient rate, why not have your lowly chemist ding your nearby knight with a stone if no one else is in range. They take a teeny bit of damage, you get your points, and it’s all fine.
There are targets among your allies for this minmaxing temptation that are much better than others early on, however. Well, actually, there’s one in particular: Argath Thadalfus, a guy who sucks so much.
Players meet Argath very early on in Tactics. Main characters Ramza and Delita run into him being accosted by members of the Corpse Brigade, a revolutionary band that serves as an early antagonistic force. In Tactics‘ setting, the kingdom of Ivalice has only recently emerged from a half-century-long war with its eastern neighbor, Ordallia—a war that Ivalice broadly lost in suing for peace, having been financially ruined by decades of conflict. The Corpse Brigade is largely made up of disillusioned members of Ivalice’s peasant classes, brought in to fight the war on behalf of its noble families and then cast aside and left unpaid for their service, with no ways to support their families, already ravaged by the cost of the war.
Tactics makes it clear very early on that Ramza and Delita—the former the young scion of House Belouve, the latter his commoner friend—begin to realize that their life as training warriors-to-be is not necessarily on the right side of history as they’re drawn in to help put a final end to the Corpse Brigade. But Argath, who joins your retinue after being rescued, unabashedly and gleefully thinks otherwise: although his own noble family was disgraced in the war, Argath prides himself on his place above other people at every opportunity. He is arrogant and simpering in equal measure and deeply cruel—relishing in fighting alongside Ramza and Delita as they hunt down people he sees as little more than chattel.
Tactics knows this dude is a real piece of work every step of the way, and that’s part of what makes its opening so compelling, as you, the player, slowly come to realize alongside Ramza and Delita that you’re pawns in a much larger game, and the rot in Ivalice’s class structure runs deep. But it also means an interesting intersection of Tactics‘ mechanical and narrative design becomes clear. You have Throw Stone to maximize your leveling up. You have a guy in your party who is a snobby piece of shit that no one really likes. Throw Stone needs a target, and you’re not always going to have enemies in range to use it.
Throw rocks at Argath. Repeatedly. Every turn, if you can. You can always occasionally chuck a potion at him if you get so zealous in your class consciousness that you almost stone him to death, but that just means you can repeat the cycle. Do it because it feels good.
And really, it does feel like an act of class solidarity. Ramza may be a noble, but eventually even he realizes that Argath’s complete disdain for those less well-off than he is abominable. Delita, a commoner himself, is already at odds with Argath, and part of the reason why Argath ultimately splits from your group is when the jerk callously mocks Delita’s sister after she’s believed to be a noble and taken hostage by the Brigade. The rest of your retinue is made up of randomized characters this early on in the game, so you can tell whatever story in your head about them—and with Throw Stone being a low-level Squire ability, it’s easily acquirable by every character you recruit by default, so it really can be a point of commonality for everyone regardless of background or whatever you go on to train them as.
Everyone in Tactics‘ opening can be unified in hating Argath so much that they all want to pelt him with rocks as much as they want to get through a combat encounter alive, to put the high and mighty snob in his place stone by stone. After all, when we all throw rocks at a guy who sucks together, we all rise together.
Abilities in Final Fantasy Tactics come in four types: action, reaction, support, and movement. Below I’ve listed the best abilities to unlock in the latter three categories. These are useful no matter what Job or action abilities you’re rocking.
If you want my advice for action abilities, you should prioritize the Monk’s Chakra and Revive, White Mage’s Raise and Holy, Black Mage’s Flare, and the Summoner’s Cyclops and Lich. Also every Item, Geomancy, and Iaido action ability.
But when it comes to the movement, support, and reaction abilities, these are the best:
Teleport
Job: Time Mage
Cost: 3,000 JP
Why it’s great: You can move anywhere on the map, but with a decreasing chance of success the farther away from your current location the spot is. It breaks some maps entirely by letting you cross chasms or hop on the other side of barriers. It’s also perfect for Mages who want to cast a spell and then teleport out of range.
Ignore Elevation
Job: Dragoon
Cost: 700 JP
Why it’s great: You can move without being restricted by how high or low the square in front of you is. Need to jump up on top of a cathedral? You can do that! Plus you don’t have to worry about Teleportation failing.
Fly
Job: Bard
Cost: 900
Why it’s great: It looks goofy seeing your character flap around like a Chocobo but flight has some advantages that Ignore Elevation does not. Namely, you can escape if you get cornered by flying over enemies. The price to unlock is exorbitant but it’s never a bad option.
Movement +3
Job: Bard
Cost: 1,000 JP
Why it’s great: This one is also a Bard specialty, meaning female characters can’t learn it. But you can never go wrong with a good old solid plus-three to movement. Every time you go to move your character you’ll be like, whoa, WHOA! It doesn’t have the versatility of the other movement abilities but it’s great for heavy-hitters that need to get around the battlefield quickly.
Doublehand
Job: Samurai
Cost: 900 JP
Why it’s great: Doublehand lets you hold one weapon with two hands and doubles the attack power. It’s great for rare greatswords like Excalibur and polearms that require two hands already.
Dual Wield
Job: Ninja
Cost: 1,000 JP
Why it’s great: You can equip two weapons and attack with both. That splits the odds of missing both hits and lets you get bonus stats from the second equipped item. It’s almost always preferable to Dual Wield. Plus it works with the Monk’s Martial Arts, which Doublehand does not.
Equip Guns
Job: Orator
Cost: 800
Why it’s great: Guns have great range, basically never miss, and once you unlock the special magic versions, can be extremely powerful. The two jobs that can normally equip guns are pretty weak, so it’s great for pairing with other ones. Plus you can use it with the Knight’s Arts of War to break enemy gear from afar.
Swiftspell
Job: Time Mage
Cost: 700 JP
Why it’s great: The main drawback to the most powerful magic in the game is casting time. Spells that take forever give enemies too much time to move out of the way or to kill you before they go off. Swiftness makes Summons like Cyclops and Lich go off in record time and can make it easy to heal allies in a pinch before they are totally KO’d. On top of that, The Ivalice Chronicles remaster dialed down some of the casting times for the best spells, so Swiftness will make them land even more quickly.
Job: Chemist
Cost: 350
Why it’s great: Items is one of the most useful action abilities in the game. Adding range to them doubles that utility. There’s simply no substitute for a fully stocked inventory you can deploy across the battlefield without the need to wait for spells or getting into the perfect position.
Auto-Potion
Job: Chemist
Cost: 400
Why it’s great: You learn very early in Final Fantasy Tactics that Auto-Potion is one of the most annoying abilities to fight against. As the name implies, it has a high chance of using a potion after very hit, whether it’s physical damage or magic. It’s usefulness maxes out with X-Potions which restore 150 health, but even in the late game it’s rare that you’ll get hit for substantially more than that. One of the simplest, easiest-to-access abilities in the game will increase the survivability of everyone on your team exponentially, as long as you can afford to restock in-between battles.
First Strike
Job: Monk
Cost: 1,300 JP
Why it’s great: Tired: Counter Tackle. Wired: Counter. Inspired: First Strike. Not only do you get to attack the enemy first, but they don’t get to respond at all, so you’re essentially co-opting their entire turn. It only works for melee attacks, however, so its usefulness is limited to hand-to-hand brawls. Still, few things are more satisfying than sending a Ninja into battle and watching them double-strike every Knight in the vicinity before they even get their next turn.
Dragonheart
Job: Dragoon
Cost: 600 JP
Why it’s great: Dragonheart gives your character a chance to cast re-raise on themselves every time they take damage. It’s especially useful for characters you know will get wiped out because it guarantees them another turn when they revive, at which point hopefully the cavalry has arrived either to heal them or provide cover.
Shirahadori
Job: Samurai
Cost: 700 JP
Why it’s great: Once known as Blade Grasp, Shirahadori gives you somewhere between 60-80 percent evasion on every physical attack. It’s supposed to only apply to melee attacks but works for bows too, which is what ultimately makes it better than First Strike. When it comes to survivability, the only thing better than Auto-Potion is never getting hit at all.
Archer’s Bane
Job: Archer
Cost: 450 JP
Why it’s great: So this is basically Shirahadori but worse. It dramatically increases evasion but only for projectiles. Why include it on this list then? It’s cheap and easy to unlock very early on and Final Fantasy Tactics loves to throw enemy Archers at you up through almost the end of the game. Archer’s Bane can keep a Black Mage or Summoner from getting picked off. I prioritized it on my latest playthrough and was surprised how much work it put in.
Critical: Recover HP
Job: Monk
Cost: 500 JP
Why it’s great: Okay, one more for the road. Critical: Recover HP will fully restore your character’s health if the enemy’s attack takes them into near-death but doesn’t outright kill them. That might sound extremely limiting, but there are a surprising number of times when that is exactly what happens during a battle. It’s not as consistent as Auto-Potion and doesn’t provide as much overall value as a First Strike or Shirahadori but it’s a cheaper skill and has some very unique cases where it easily out-performs both thanks to the fact that it can automatically restore all of your character’s health. Pound-for-pound one of the best early-game reactive abilities.
The Square Enix team behind Final Fantasy Tactics — The Ivalice Chronicles didn’t just remaster the iconic strategy RPG, they had to go through the trouble of remaking the source code from scratch, according to Bloomberg. In an interview with Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier, the game’s director Kazutoyo Maehiro explained the arduous process of designing The Ivalice Chronicles, which is set to release at the end of the month.
When getting to work on the remake, Maehiro and his team discovered they had to rebuild the source code from the ground up since it was lost thanks to the industry’s unstandardized practices in the ’90s, according to Bloomberg. When translating Final Fantasy Tactics from Japanese to English for the global release, the company would overwrite the original Japanese version’s code. For Maehiro, that meant the team had to undertake a ground-up overhaul and recreate the source code by playing the original game that released in 1997, consulting the game’s master disc and looking at the 2011 version called Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, according to Bloomberg. Maehiro also said during a PAX West 2025 panel that the team gleaned a lot of lost info from fan-made databases.
Revealing more of the behind-the-scenes decisions for The Ivalice Chronicles, Maehiro told Bloomberg about the debate surrounding Count Cidolfus Orlandeau. Better known as Cid, and appropriately nicknamed Thunder God Cid, this overtuned character joins you later in the game, but many fans complained about him being overpowered. Instead of nerfing Cid, Maehiro told Bloomberg that keeping this character’s power level the same would better represent the storyline since “his role in the story is being that very powerful character who joins your party.” To quell any concerns of Cid being too broken, Maehiro told Bloomberg that the team decided to buff the other characters to even things out. Looking ahead, Maehiro also hinted at exploring sequels for the Final Fantasy Tactics franchise or even brand new games in the strategy RPG genre, given that The Ivalice Chronicles does well, according to Bloomberg.
The original Tactics Ogre proved that RPG chess was not only fun, it could also be morally ambiguous, beautifully written, and deeply compelling. Nearly 30 years later, Tactics Ogre: Reborn has managed to safely transport a masterpiece into the modern era while sprucing it up enough so that it’s still a joy to play. I was worried the remaster, with its smoothed-over pixel art and other tweaks, would tarnish what I love about the classic tactics game. Instead, I’m hooked all over again.
Tactics Ogre: Reborn, out Friday on PlayStation, PC, and Switch, is the grittier, more granular predecessor to Final Fantasy Tactics(both were directed by Yasumi Matsuno of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII acclaim). Where Final Fantasy Tactics—released in the U.S. in January 1998—focused on manipulating an over-powered job system to break the game with dual-wielding ninjas and massive summons, Tactics Ogre (which hit U.S. shores soon after despite first releasing in Japan a few years earlier) reveled in slower-moving battles of attrition where positioning and terrain matter as much as character classes. And while both offer surprisingly mature tales of class politics and the corruption of power, Tactics Ogre lets players make a handful of choices along the way and then sit with the consequences at the end of the game. It’s not as approachable as Final Fantasy Tactics, but its Realpolitik approach to war and revolution resonate as strongly as ever.
If you’re completely unfamiliar with the game and the tactical RPG subseries it hails from, Tactics Ogre spends most of its time on isometric battlefields divided into squares. Units on one side, consisting of knights, archers, wizards, dragons and other classes, fight against enemies on the other. You play as a trio of downtrodden youths trying to take back their land from neighboring occupiers, tinkering with your roster of troops and feasting on wonderfully written scenes in-between battles as dukes, kings, and other leaders decide your fate like pawns on a chessboard.
The writing in Tactics Ogre remains full of great lines and no nonsense. Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
You would have gotten most of this from the original game as well, but Reborn is a remaster of a remaster, building on the improvements that were already made in the PlayStation Portable version released in 2010. Each scene is fully voiced now, and with minimal cringe as well. While I ultimately preferred to stick with the Japanese voice acting, the English cast is surprisingly excellent and a worthwhile addition that helps add a whole new dimension and emotional subtext to the story.
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Reborn also introduces orchestral arrangements of all the original music. On paper that seemed like a neat addition, but in practice it’s transformative. As with the voice acting, it brings out a whole new level of depth in Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata’s fantastic score. Each battle feels heightened, each betrayal more sinister. The returning Wheel of Fortune system, meanwhile, let’s you revisit earlier points in the branching story.
The remaster makes a number of other changes and additions as well. Unlike in the PSP version, characters level up rather than their classes, freeing you to play around more with different party compositions and loadouts. Random encounters on the map while traveling from one story beat to another are gone. Instead, the training mode has returned where you can set your troops to spar on auto-pilot. But don’t think you can grind your way to success. A “party level” limits how far any one unit can level up until you progress further in the game.
The new Tarot cards quickly start to litter the battlefield. Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
Another big departure is the tarot card system. In addition to vanquished enemies dropping green cards that permanently boost a unit’s stats, blue and red cards also randomly spawn throughout a battle. The blue ones bestow buffs like higher critical hit rates, stronger magic, or higher defense, while the red cards remove them. The card bonuses only last as long as each battle, and can swiftly turn the tide depending on who gets them first.
It’s a way to help make Tactics Ogre’s combat hit heavier and resolve more quickly, helping you dispatch an enemy in three hits rather than six (unlike, say, Fire Emblem where it almost never takes more than two). On the whole, it can help cut down on some of the game’s more tedious moments as you try to break an enemy’s hold on the high ground or take down an especially powerful boss unit (a turn do-over system and fast-forward option also help). At the same time, as a purist with a soft spot for Tactics Ogre’s slower pace and longer battles, I wish there was a way to turn it off, as you have the choice of doing with the voiceovers.
My lowkey favorite improvement in Reborn is the addition of sight lines for long range attacks. No more shooting magic into bushes!Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
Most of the changes are clear improvements though. You can now scout battles ahead of time to see what units and terrain you’ll be facing and how best to counter them. You can also customize up to five battle rosters, letting you easily swap from one team to another depending on the situation. Character customization has also been streamlined, with each unit allowed to equip four items, four skills, and four magic abilities depending on their class and repertoire (character stats have also been rebalanced to scale more rewardingly). The equipped items even automatically restock from your reserves after each battle. It sounds small, but it’s a huge time saver that lets you spend more time focusing on the cool stuff rather than constantly fiddling with healing herbs and resurrection stones.
The only part of Reborn that doesn’t feel like a coup is the pixel art, which was notoriously lampooned when it first leaked online. This is the first version of the game in HD, and the sprites and environments have been blown-up to compensate. The result is a “smoothed over” look that can make things look slightly muddy or washed out. The effect is especially noticeable at close range. Zoom in and things will occasionally look, at the very least, not great. I don’t know how feasible it would have been to try and give Reborn the Octopath Traveler or Triangle StrategyHD-2D pixel art look, but I wish the game felt as beautiful to look at as it is to play and listen to (or at least included the option to revert to the old look).
Fortunately, I spent most of my five hours with the Switch version so far easily overlooking it. In motion, it’s hardly noticeable, especially when you’re busy calculating hit percentages and damage tradeoffs. As with everything else on the OLED screen, the colors really pop, and the package as a whole feels meaningfully improved from the PSP version in every other way. Some old games take you back to the past, but Reborn feels like it’s transporting Tactics Ogre into the present, where it belongs.
