Say what you will about Square Enix's ill-fated ventures into NFTs and mildly embarrassing follies with live service games recently. Their commitment to remaking, remastering and generally sprucing up their ageing back catalogue from decades past is an admirable one in my eyes, even if they are making you pay through the nose for them almost every single time. As we all know, though, some have made more successful transitions than others. The dream, of course, at least for me, is the Final Fantasy VII Remake approach for literally everything, no matter how unfeasible, impractical or physically impossible that would be for Squeenix's enormous game library. Alas, the reality is often a lot more modest. Best case scenario: you're a 90s SNES game getting a lovely HD-2D makeover like Live A Live. Next on the rung: some added 3D zhuzh a la Final Fantasy VIII Remastered (although even that was by no means perfect).
Mostly, though, it's your Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster treatment. A welcome update that maintains the look of the originals (albeit with some questionable font choices), but that's more or less your lot. Tactics Ogre: Reborn, a remaster of the 2010 PSP remake of the 1995 SNES original, falls squarely into the latter camp, but you know what? That's fine. It's still a rollicking turn-based tactics game all these years later, and one that definitely deserves to be freed from the shackles of Sony's long-dead handheld, where it's lain dormant for the better part of a decade. Besides, I'll take a fully re-orchestrated soundtrack over slightly fancier pixels any day of the week. You know me.