There real changes come in the form of improved graphics and fully-voiced, hand-drawn animated cutscenes. These cutscenes bring the story to life and give voice to characters that previously only conveyed the emotion and the drama of the story through text dialogue. That dialogue has also been transformed and refined through an all new translation of the original game to English. The dialogue is much more polished, but it retains the narrative of the original that fans remember fondly.

The other change is the inclusion of two new multiplayer modes -- that admittedly -- were impossible for me to test (because no one else has the game). These two modes, which you can access by entering a town and then the tavern, include Melee and Rendezvous. Melee is a player vs. player battle that pits squad against squad for a valuable prize. Rendezvous is a cooperative battle that lets you team up with a friend to take on the AI for a prize.

In theory, Melee and Rendezvous are a safe bet because of the way both modes are set up. For example, if your characters die within these modes, they are simply KO'D and return to your group after the battle is completed. Poached monster will be removed from the battlefield, but will return to the party after the battle as well. There are a number of other rules that make tackling multiplayer a safe bet like not losing any weapons, items or armor consumed or stolen during battle. Multiplayer is one of those elements of the game that is going to be hard to gauge until the game makes it to retail, but the idea is a no-brainer for the PSP.

Before I move on, some more details on both these multiplayer modes. Melee, as I have already mentioned, is a two player PvP mode played for a valuable prize awarded to the winner (the person who still has conscious units on the board at the end of the battle), but there are a number of elements that can be selected at the start that can affect how the battle flows. At the beginning of the match, a time limit can beset, as well as the ability to place a limit on the number of unit actions taken during the entire battle, the ability to set random traps (which units have a chance of disarming), map selection, the ability to turn off special controls (these are slight mini-games that do things like allow players to disarm traps, knock back, and the "locking weapons" back and forth battles) and the ability to enable or disable the use of the Arithmetician job class. When the battle is over and the winner has been named, that player gets to select a certain number of treasure chests that contain loot, along with experience and job points.

Rendezvous is essentially the same idea, except for the fact that the missions have objectives (protecting a Chocobo from harm, for example). Once those objectives are met, both players are rewarded with goodies for the fruits of their joint labor.

If there is one thing to complain about in this preview build it is the load times associated with animation. These animations mostly relate to special skills like magic or summoning. When you initiate this kind of action the game tends to stall for a few seconds while the animation loads and is played. While this is a minor nuisance it does slow the overall pacing of the game down a bit. Another complaint that should be addressed is not being unable to undo a move. Once you have finalized moving, you can not go back to your original position, even if you haven't used an action like magic, a skill, or an attack. This is somewhat odd for a tactical game, but not a deal breaker by any means. Still it's something that can cause players angst if they don't have the camera in the right position because you may move to a spot that isn't where you intended to go (this is usually caused by mistaking the height of an area for a square that is on ground level because of the way the camera is turned).

I have enjoyed the time I have spent in this remake of the Playstation classic, and while I love what I've experienced so far, there's a little bit of room for some slight improvements. Final Fantasy Tactics is a prefect fit for the PSP, and with all the new bells and whistles it seems like as good a reason as any to take on the adventure once more. Hopefully the minor problems I've mentioned with the animation load times and movement are resolved before the final version ships in early October.