Fans who have been waiting with baited breath for a "Final Fantasy Tactics" remaster (or an official announcement that a remaster will happen) now have a new reason to be cautiously optimistic. In an interview with fan site Finaland (opens in new tab), "Theatrhythm Final Verline" producer Ichiro Hazama divulged, "The tactics team (at Square Enix) is incredibly busy right now."

Final Fantasy Tactics is 25 years old now, and other than a few handheld versions, including a remastered version on the PSP in 2007, it has not received much attention in the last decade. It has also never been ported to the PC, making it a white whale in Square Enix's library among PC-playing FF fans. Hey, Square Enix: It's time to bring Final Fantasy Tactics to PC," PC Gamer features editor Wes Fenlon wrote in 2017 (opens in new tab)."

Fans have also seen the huge (and surprisingly accurate - six of the nine Square Enix games that appeared in the leak have since been confirmed) Nvidia leak from 2021 (opens in new tab), which included a listing for Final Fantasy Tactics Remastered, The Diofield Chronicle (open in new tab), Triangle Strategy (open in new tab), and through recent releases of similar tactical RPGs, including Tactics Ogre: Reborn (open in new tab), which has kept hope alive. If anything, Square Enix has embraced the genre most forcefully in recent years.

The latest highly anticipated title was announced very indirectly in a chat about the rhythm-action RPG "Theatrhythm Final Verline," which will be released next week on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. When asked if fans can expect characters from Final Fantasy Tactics to be added to the game, Hazama first said, "We need to get permission from the (development) team that owns Tactics," which is apparently currently an issue.

"The Tactics team is incredibly busy right now and has other things to do. They are deeply involved in another project right now and I don't have time to talk to them." Perhaps that's why Tactics characters don't appear in Theatrhythm. I think that's the situation, at least with Tactics characters. Mr. Fujiwara wants Tactics. [If Square Enix has a team dedicated to Final Fantasy Tactics and they are too busy right now to answer the phone, they must be doing something else. Because they are literally the Final Fantasy Tactics team.

Again, this is not an official announcement from Square Enix. But someday, or very soon, they will expand the mountain of evidence that Final Fantasy Tactics Remastered will finally be a real game.