Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles won’t have War of the Lions content, Square Enix explains why

When Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles arrives later this year, content from the War of the Lions version won’t be included. Square Enix has now explained why.

The War of the Lions came to the PSP back in 2007. It features quite a bit of additional content, including new characters and jobs, new pre-rendered cutscenes, and multiplayer features. Unfortunately, these aspects will be missing in The Ivalice Chronicles.

Director Kazutoyo Maehiro has not explained why Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is excluding the War of the Lions content. In an official interview, he noted:

“I and other members of this development team were not directly involved in the War of the Lions, but I do believe that the content in that game did fully meet expectations for players at that time.

However, as we looked back on everything nearly 30 years later, during the creation of this game, we asked ourselves what our team – those who created the original Final Fantasy Tactics – could do to bring this game to a new generation of players.

It was through considering this question that we came to the conclusion that the most appropriate path for us was to pay respect to the original game’s experience and recreate that in the best form possible.”

Maehiro went on to say that the team did “consider the addition of new jobs, abilities, and characters – including the jobs featured in War of the Lions.” In the end though, Square Enix felt that Final Fantasy Tactics “is a very complete game both from a game design and story perspective” and changes “would only be a loss for not only fans of the original game, but also those new to the title.”

While this may come as a disappointment to some fans, there are still many reasons to check out Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. It’ll have updated visuals, a UI redesign, additional conversations, full voice acting, and more.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles hits Nintendo Switch 2 and Switch on September 30, 2025. We have the very first trailer and more details here.