What Did War of the Lions Change in Final Fantasy Tactics?

Almost every word, plus new jobs, new battles, and a new problem.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (PSP, 2007) is not the 1997 game with a fresh coat of paint. Square Enix replaced the English script entirely, renamed a generation of characters, added content the original never had, and, in the PSP hardware, introduced slowdown the original never suffered. Ten years of argument about which version is definitive starts with this list.

THE VERDICT

The short answer

The War of the Lions keeps the 1997 game's battles, maps, and story beats, and changes the layer players actually read: a complete retranslation in an elevated, archaic register, matching the style Square Enix had established for Ivalice in Final Fantasy XII. Around the new script it adds two jobs (Onion Knight and Dark Knight), two cameo characters (Balthier from Final Fantasy XII and Luso from Final Fantasy Tactics A2), new animated cutscenes with voice acting, new battles and quests, and ad hoc multiplayer. It also runs slower than the original when abilities fire, the documented trade the PSP version made.

THE NEW SCRIPT

Name by name

Algus becomes Argath

The most hated cadet in Ivalice gets a new name, Argath Thadalfus. Delita Hyral becomes Delita Heiral. The renames run through the whole cast and gazetteer.

Nanten and Hokuten, translated

The 1998 script left the two armies as romanized Japanese. The 2007 script translates them: the Order of the Northern Sky and the Order of the Southern Sky.

Fire 2 becomes Fira

Numbered spells give way to the series' later suffix system, Fire, Fira, Firaga, and magic is spelled magick. Lancer becomes Dragoon, matching series tradition.

The old script's errors, gone

The 1998 translation was made fast and shows it, typos, garbled lines, and at least one instruction that names the wrong brother entirely. The retranslation's first job was simply to be correct, and reviewers agreed it is.

THE ARGUMENT ABOUT IT

Both reviews, kept

Praise first: RPGFan's reviewer called the new translation the version's first improvement, the old one's awkward moments "all fixed here," with the renames helping Tactics fit its series. Players writing at Siliconera in 2007 agreed the eloquent text fit a story whose stern undercurrent the hasty original had undercut.

The dissent is about register, not accuracy. RPG Land's reviewer found the script more formal than Final Fantasy XII's and "a little more old English," arguing that language written to be spoken sounds awkward read silently, and joked the game could be called Final Fantasy Tactics: The King James Version. Both positions have held for nearly twenty years, usually attached to which version the player met first.

THE COSTS

Documented, not rumored

The PSP version's additions came with two technical regressions that reviews and player records document: slowdown during ability animations, "rampant" in RPG Land's word, appearing for almost all special actions, and reduced sound effect quality. The mobile ports that followed addressed the slowdown. Players also note, and the record supports, that the original's spoken skill call outs before attacks did not carry over. None of this prevented the version from becoming the standard reissue for a decade; all of it is why the 1997 disc still has defenders.

THE GAME ON THE SHELF

Final Fantasy Tactics, the original

Final Fantasy Tactics American PlayStation box art, a party crossing a bridge under a stone arch

Final Fantasy Tactics · America · PlayStation

The American PlayStation cover for the original game. War of the Lions is its PSP remake, the version whose changes this page lists.