Last year when my family sold my grandparent’s house, I went through the basement and stumbled on a box of old, forgotten action figures. I used to put the figures in my grandma’s flower bed, turn on the hose, and pretend it was a flood. Seeing those figures again took me back to a very specific moment in my life, flooding me with memories of family, school, and my love of things like Final Fantasy.
Jumping into The Ivalice Chronicles is the closest I’ve ever been to that moment again — a sudden electric shock in my brain taking me back to playing the game with my brother on our old CRT television. I was enthralled by Final Fantasy Tactics, I ate it up like a five-star buffet. It was the game that quite literally launched a lifelong obsession with strategy games — and a timeless tale that I can remember almost perfectly today.
