It's honestly staggering that Final Fantasy XII is as good as it is when you consider its famously troubled development. This is a game with one of the most brilliant RPG gameplay systems in all creation, a semi-automated battle system where the bulk of the consideration happens before the battle. The perfect midpoint of tactics and action RPGs, with one of the most addictive progression loops I've ever come across. All of this collides together and sings in beautiful concert when you consider the vast open fields and intricate dungeons that this team has designed for you. Forget Final Fantasies X, XIII and XV, THIS is what we call fucking vast. Gliding across frontiers, trudging in catacombs, I'm not sure I've ever felt more genuinely immersed in an RPG. Nocturne comes to mind but slips in dungeon design ever so slightly.

All of this! And then you consider Ivalice. How exactly did we forget to design towns and cities in this genre? It was clearly once there, this game is proof that a world can feel lived in and populated, but as budgets balloon and resolutions multiply, we continue to lose the soul of a Place in these games. Kamurocho in the Yakuza/Like A Dragon games, that's the last great JRPG town. This game has like at least 5 cities that feel huge and memorable. A modern marvel. I've spoken about Hiroyuki Ito but I haven't mentioned that this game was once helmed by Yasumi Matsuno. He created Ivalice after all, and I think even at the beginning of the game you can feel that exact same voice ring out in the story. After some internal reshuffling, Matsuno cited health problems and promptly left the Final Fantasy XII team. This is something I knew going in, I was bracing myself for the story dropoff, though hopefully not quite as cavernous as Vagrant Story's more vacant chapters.

Color me surprised then, when I found out that the story still comes away rock solid. It's maybe not quite as brilliant as Final Fantasy Tactics or as thought-provoking as Vagrant Story, but Final Fantasy XII does manage to retain that soul. People point to the characters being relative strangers as a weakness, I found it beautiful. That we could have 6 people bound by hasty circumstance, come together for the good of their homeland. People complain that there isn't a strong main character, I find that an utterly fascinating aspect of the story. It's clearly not what was intended, in early drafts it was clear that Basch was meant to be the protagonist of the game. But god, just how cool is it that we have three duos of characters to latch onto. Vaan and Penelo, the little fish in a big ocean. Gateways. Balthier and Fran, the cool, aloof, free sky pirates. Aspirations. Ashe and Basch, tragic victims learning to forgive. Heroes. This is well rounded! The game makes you care! It just doesn't throw 15 hours of cutscenes and constant dialogue at you to make it work. Final Fantasy XII trusts you to invest with your gameplay. Play the Roles. People, either jokingly or dismissively, say the game cribs everything from Star Wars. Sure yeah, Gabranth is Darth Vader. However, in every way that it is Star Wars it is also Lord of the Rings, Godzilla, AKIRA, and allegory to the occupation of Japan in the 1940s and 50s.

Final Fantasy XII. I love it. Completely and utterly. I'll be back.

mainline final fantasy game that is less about the characters and their interaction with the world and more about the world and its interaction with the characters. shows that a game doesn't need immense dialogue to be well-written because few-but-well-put-words and good cutscene direction (jun akiyama is amazing) can do a very good job - i also love the voice acting, gideon emery's balthier is really good.

the gameplay is perfect. i've spent more than 100 hours doing most of the content and exploring the gambit and the job system. of course you have Certain Characters with faster speed animations with especific weapons (basch is better with spears than penelo, for example), but you can try any job combo that'll work as long as you can understand and dominate the gambit system.

it's a phenomenal videogame. my favorite final fantasy so far (and probably gonna be for a long time).

Final Fantasy games are not strangers to the trick of having the player-character a step removed from the main story. Where heroic fantasy relies on the idea that the main character is fated to deliver peace and harmony to the world (and that the world then opens and closes for them), Final Fantasy's best titles subvert this through the perspective of the nobody. Here events are always already in motion, the absence of fate leaves conclusions open, and the world seems to endure before and after the protagonist ever entered the stage. The series has had hollow shells tricked by false memories of heroes, clones, puppets, and even ghosts; it is an always posthuman approach to fantasy that involves killing God and his mission of Peace through the restoration of fate and the divine right of kings. In God's place are nobodies. Final Fantasy XII is curious because it is very much mapped out as a heroic fantasy, but its traditionalist elements play out at a distance. Amidst stories of exiled royalty, imperialism, the ambivalence of soft power, and revenant princesses, Vaan just wants to be a pirate.

With its deserts and grimy machinery and big blue skies eclipsed by floating islands Final Fantasy XII clearly draws on the space opera of Star Wars. Vaan, like Anakin, wants to leave his poverty to find out what's up there instead. Unlike Anakin though Vaan never rises to become the centre of anything; fate never plucked him out, the heavens never conspired his overthrow, he only stumbled into something bigger than and other to himself. Vaan's perspective grounds the human impact of empire, and his distant observation of world events strips them of their drama, highlighting the bland subterfuge and broader geopolitical negotiations of royalty and commerce that determine who lives and dies. The series' enduring panpsychism is set aside for something drier too. There are minerals of supernatural origin, the use of which draws mysticism, politics, and business to the same stage in conflict, but in other Final Fantasy titles the minerals are always more than their use value. The panpsychist world exceeds the human, the earth gets revenge on humankind, or it otherwise recedes again. In Final Fantasy XII however there is no mystery, because the minerals are totally reified within the game-world's network of extractive capitalism. Of course there's the Mist, and there's always magick, but this is all secondary to what the mineral represents on the geopolitical stage as a commodity.

Maybe its fantasy is compelling because kept at a distance it's allowed to be more intricate. The characters in XII are less instantly memorable than other titles, thanks in part to their subdued mannerisms (more high fantasy than anime), and otherwise their connection to a story that we, as Vaan, are never intimately attached to. In fact many feel like discarded drafts from other titles or assemblages from a Final Fantasy database. But get lost in it from Vaan's very grounded perspective and their relative anonymity has them believably sutured into a world that is always bigger and more unknowable than what we're given. Because it always feels about ten times bigger than it is, and that's thanks to the way it always withdraws from full focus. Even returning to that small fishing village every week or so and finding it unchanged, there are clearly mysteries and forces and something being always withheld from us. It's something about the intricate patterning of the woven textiles, the grimy surfaces of the stones and sandblasted fabric of the tents, the cautious villagers that continue with their day but look across quickly just to see if we're still there. It's the most imaginatively and least narratively efficient way of presenting a world teeming with life, because it exists in its resistance to narrative purpose but never truly opens up and becomes home. It is magical because it is aloof; the feeling of 'I wish I could be here more and really get to know this place' never goes away because it is always extending beyond what we can access.

My only complaint about this remaster is that it sands off the distortion that made the PS2 version so unique, revealing too much of the 3D shapes that were always hidden behind layers of grain. The visual noise added to each location's sense of mystery, suggesting cracks and moving parts and just obscured details the remaster kills dead. It's a shame of course because mystery is such a big part of what makes Final Fantasy XII's one of the most alive gameworlds of any generation. The battle system is still ingenious, partly because it allows both exploring and fighting to take place in the same gorgeous panoramas, and partly because it leans on the small satisfactions of ultrabasic programming: if>then commands, or a play of algorithms that as the game goes on comes to absorb the player into the machinic team they've created within the machine. Final Fantasy XIII would automate things too much, XV would loosen things to the point of chaos, and Final Fantasy VII Remake would ultimately unify the live and algorithmic battle styles through a satisfying rhythmic punch. I still think this one is genius, and perfectly suited to a game that needs to make exploration in and of itself gratifying.

I earlier compared it to Star Wars because of its sand and laser gun retrofuturism, but its approach is very Lucas. Try as the story might to contain and make sense of the world for us, it also expects us to get distracted with Vaan, and to imagine our way off into the distance, to what's down there or around the corner, to what that unnamed character is doing or thinking, to whether the people here are happy. Much has been written about how the fragmentedness of Star Wars is its best asset, because its inconsistencies actively encourage investigation from audiences to fill in the blanks and tell stories about what's happening in the margins. No world exists beyond the images we access through the work, and yet we imagine one that grows and changes every time we revisit it. We're drawn to these broken worlds because the films we watch and games we play and stories we read feel like relics of something now lost; some unattainable feeling of home. Videogames require the wilful illusion that 'there's something over the horizon' more than any other medium, but Final Fantasy XII is the one that most consciously engages with the participatory nature of cult cinema.

There's a pathos to it, because not only is it the most fragmented of the Final Fantasy games, it's also the least remembered then and now, coming right at the end of its generation. A very quiet swan song, but one that swarms with more life than you can fathom every time you let it run.

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is a wonderful game… until the ‘story’ gets bogged down in the ‘plot’ and you’ve automated the combat so well that it doesn’t even need you there.

To put it simply, the game’s pacing is weak and the characters are underdeveloped.

I initially connected with the party just fine, but their stories sorta fizzled out for me. The whole game gets lost in the sauce of kingdoms and senates, rebellions and empires. Maybe it could have used a romantic element, I don’t know. Fortunately there is one standout personality in Balthier, even if he is “in more of a supporting role.” Everyone is in a supporting role. He’s cool.

Every Final Fantasy has its strengths, and this game’s is undoubtedly the setting of Ivalice. The Zodiac Age presents a world full of life and color- it’s expansive yet fleshed-out, and although the story meanders, the thoughtful trappings keep it from going off the deep end or feeling unbelievable.

A word of advice for those who plan on playing this (and I suggest you give it a try): don’t do all the side content if you hope to ever see the credits roll. The side-quests exacerbate the pacing issues, and if you let it, this game can beat you down with so much tedium that you’ll yearn to file taxes.

Jokes aside, I don’t want to sound too harsh on the game, as I did like it. I just wish I loved it as much as others do. The gambit system is actually cool and alleviated most of my problems with mmo combat, despite the fact that after a certain point the game kinda plays itself.

"I am simply myself. No more and no less. And I want only to be free."

É impressionante como Final Fantasy consegue se reinventar a cada título, todos com mecânicas e execuções completamente diferentes. O desse caso, um RPG imperial com exploração em um semi mundo aberto em 2006, é audacioso, e único.
Com sua temática politica onde o império controla as cidades, no totalitarismo, seguido de uma guerra fria e direta entre seus países, exerce um lado muito diferente a série, muito disso advindo de Star Wars, é impressionante o quanto esse jogo se inspira nos filmes, não só na presença do império, como visualmente nas naves e seus embates, como até em seus personagens, Balthier carrega uma função muito similar ao Han Solo. Me impressiona sua execução de diálogos ter muito dessa vibe Shakespeariana, muito se parece uma peça teatral, e sua narrativa, que apesar de passar por suas quedas de ritmo, segue uma execução diferente, de mais foco na realização pessoal textual de cada personagem do que uma temática geral. Mas sim, há presença de temas, o principal sendo a aceitação do luto, e claro, a liberdade das amarras do império. Eu sempre fico fascinado com o World Building da série, todos os jogos me prendem no mundo de forma a ficar curioso com o que irá acontecer com seus personagens.

Seus personagens contribuem positivamente para tal, a Ashe tem conflitos muito bons de como tratar de sua inimizade aos reinos, se devera ter ódio e vingança ou não, o Balthier carrega sendo o mais carismático (e um dos melhores da série), Basch com seu tema de lealdade, e a Fran com um dos subtextos da obra, que é esse valor do natural em comparação ao manufaturado, além de eu amar a parceria dela com o Balthier. E sobre o Vaan? É um caso peculiar, eu gosto desse crescimento dele de perceber que mentia em seus propósitos para se enturmar a situação, e como cada vez mais ele se parece com um pirata, mas sim, ele apenas serve como uma visão de fora do conflito para identificação do jogador, e a Penelo é basicamente o mesmo, só que mais falha. E junto de tudo isso, a interação de todos como um grupo é ótima, tanto no humor quanto no plot, gosto como se trabalha vários núcleos menores e também um maior de todos juntos.

Uma crítica muito específica quanto ao jogo é a utilização das cutscenes em CG, no FF10 há utilizações tão boas, e nesse jogo me incomoda como elas só são usadas para expressar a grandiosidade dos lugares, naves e outros, e pouco usada em momentos chaves da história, muitos momentos teriam mais impacto se usado corretamente.

Sua história unicamente não é o suficiente para carregar toda a experiencia, e por isso temos um dos maiores brilhos do jogo, sua jogabilidade. Seu maior destaque, o sistema de gambits, é prazeroso planejar suas situações com "if's" nas batalhas, quase como uma programação de computador, e aos que dizem que automatiza o combate de maneira tediosa, eu discordo, o jogo balanceia o suficiente para sua estratégia não ser inteiramente nos gambits mas sim intervir sempre em momentos chave, principalmente em boss battles. Você montar sua estratégia contra o inimigo, e ver ela funcionando ao seu controle é muito bom, e sempre que necessário, ligar e desligar gambits e agir por você mesmo. Minha única crítica vai ao sistema de Esper, fica mais como uma opção "for fun", porque não há situação que seja mais útil do que jogar normalmente, o mesmo quase pode ser dito dos Awakenings, mas eles tem seus momentos de utilidade, além de terem lindas animações. É irônico o quando poder acelerar nesse port do PC coincide para uma melhor experiência, por conta dos mundos enormes e a automação do combate.

This game took me way too god damn long to finish but it's pretty good.

This game has a pretty unique battle system, and while I can see why it might not be for everyone I found it to be very fun. Getting to the point where your party members will easily wipe out groups of enemies is extremely satisfying, but it does take a bit of work to get there. Obviously there are basic RPG things to consider like team building and gear and all that, but you have to set up your gambits just right so that your party will do what you want them to in the correct order, so you don't have to worry about giving them commands manually.

I can understand why people wouldn't like the automation, but I find it really interesting. It's like programming your party members, in a sense. It puts a greater emphasis on coming up with strategies before you go into a fight, and then executing on them, rather than making decisions in the middle of battle. The main story content isn't very hard for the most part, but for a lot of the late-game hunts and espers, you'll definitely need to pay more attention to how your gambits are set up.

The story was a little hard for me to follow, which is mostly my fault because I had this game on hold for like six months, but the main cast are all very likeable and all have their own goals and motivations for going on this journey. Vaan feels the most like he's just along for the ride, but he has some good moments and development by the end.

In conclusion, I am THE Basch fon Ronsenberg of Dalmasca! BASCH LIVES!!

Embora a narrativa seja pouco cativante, com uma progressão que te deixa apatíco e se questionando se o jogo esta mesmo avançando em algo por falta de um melhor direcionamento narrativo e o jogo careça de um(a) protagonista mais presente e que englobe os temas e coloque seu arco na frente da narrativa de forma mais tematica e acessivel, mas ainda assim as coisas ainda são estranhamente bem escritas e bem dirigidas com picos onde voce ve bastante alma naquela historia, e principalmente nesse mundo que exala personalidade, me fazendo ficar até emotivo no final, apesar de eu não chorar como eu esperaria de um Final Fantasy. entretanto, tudo em relação a sistemas do jogo é divino, tornando o combate em basicamente um jogo de estrategia em tempo real com uma profundidade de possibilidade que eu nem me atrevo a tentar destrinchar, em questões sistemicas de um RPG ele deve ser o mais profundo que eu joguei, e sem falar de outras partes do jogo que fazem voce se questionar se isso era realmente possivel no ps2, e em um final fantasy singleplayer ele tem de longe as melhores dungeons em um nivel que eu nunca esperei que a franquia tivesse, ele ao seu proprio modo é um dos jogos mais unicos e especiais que eu já joguei, apesar de sim faltar a alma que eu esperaria de um dos melhores Final Fantasy, mas é sem duvidas o melhor Star Wars.

Depois de me martelarem muito que esse jogo era extremamente focado em política e que isso destacava (e deixava ele melhor) ele dos outros, qual a minha surpresa ao ver que Final Fantasy XII é exatamente Final Fantasy como sempre gostei e diria até em uma de suas melhores formas.

Acho que o descontentamento e a consequente constatação de mentiras sobre o quão cedo ou tarde o Vaan foi considerado a ser o protagonista do jogo vem justamente do fato de ser difícil de digerir que nem sempre somos o protagonista de toda história. Certamente somos o protagonista da NOSSA, mas nem sempre do que acontece a nossa volta.

Para o Vaan, salvar seu país e assegurar seu futuro é uma jornada de conhecimento ao lado de pessoas mais fortes, mais experientes e maduras que ele. Não tem o mesmo peso que tem para Ashe, e tá tudo bem. Balthier tenta nos lembrar toda vez que nós sempre somos protagonistas, mesmo que os outros não vejam assim.

Não me importaria se esse jogo focasse muito mais na parte politica que ele apresenta, mas eu gosto de como ele é familiar e confortável pra quem já está inserido no paradigma da série.

No mais, achei que esse ia ser o único Final Fantasy que não ia chorar no final e desabei igual então eu acho que sou uma tonta completa.

The gambit system is cool on paper and I really like being able to customize the AI of my companions, but I could basically get through the whole game by just setting everyone up to auto attack and use potions when under 50% HP. Maybe if I did some more of the hunts and the optional stuff I would have had to get more creative, but most of the main game never really made me change my strategy. Outside of the gameplay, though, it's pretty good. Ivalice is a great setting, the focus on human politics and conflict over a classic good vs. evil story for most of the game is refreshing, and the actual dungeons are these sprawling labyrinths that are a lot of fun to navigate. It also probably has my favorite soundtrack in a mainline FF title, so there's that going for it too. The zodiac job system was kind of cool and making custom classes by mixing two jobs together was neat, but that's another thing I never really needed to think about outside of "hey maybe this character could use some magic" or stuff like that.

Primeiro jogo da série Final Fantasy que consegui jogar até o final, e com certeza é o primeiro de muitos, gostei bastante do jogo, foi um ótimo começo pra mim na franquia. O combate do jogo é sensacional, acho que é um dos meus favoritos de jogos em geral, e o sistema de gambits é extremamente divertido, as dungeons em grande parte são boas, com exceção das três últimas dungeons que são bem ruins, a trilha sonora é também é boa e muito atmosférica, tem muita música marcante em áreas que você sequer passa muito tempo explorando e isso deixa o mundo jogo extremamente charmoso e gostoso de explorar.

Agora em relação a história, eu achei mediana, tem seus momentos, mas num geral ela é bem ok, esperava mais pra ser sincero, e o cast de personagens também não é nada muito espetacular, tem bons personagens como o Balthier e Basch, mas no geral é bem qualquer coisa, inclusive acho que o Vaan é um personagem overhated, sinto de verdade que as pessoas não entenderam o personagem e a função dele na história. No fim das contas achei o jogo divertido, apesar dos pesares, então recomendo principalmente pela gameplay, que tem um dos sistemas de combate mais interessantes que já vi, só não vá jogar esperando uma história e personagens muito bons, nisso o jogo não se sai muito bem.

Often summed up as "Anime Star Wars", FF12 is a bit of a controversial entry - the Gambit system, effectively giving you 100% control over your party, was maligned as complex, and the story is a lot more political and slightly more abstract than other games in the series.

I played FF12 because i really enjoyed Matsuno's work on the Bozja storyline of FF14, and although i took a break between beginning it and actually finishing it, it didn't disappoint. FF12's main story is effectively a subversion of Chosen One plotlines, although anything more would definitely need a spoiler warning. To a degree, the story somewhat subverts the idea of a Evil Empire and Good Kingdom - but again, you'd have to play for it not to be more of a spoiler.

FF12 suffers slightly from the lack of real character development - only Balthier, Ashe and Basch get any real development, and Vaan gets less - with the other 2 basically along for the ride. I don't particularly think this is too much of a sore spot, but also it'd have ended up more interesting to me if, say, there was more chances for the party to feel like a party.

The soundtrack is phenomenal and atmospheric, and most of the graphics still hold up despite the age of many of them - oh, and you're definitely going to want to toggle on English VA - it's completely exceptional and very widely liked.

While mechanically and linguistically they're far apart, FF9 and FF12 have a shared lineage in starting off being overlooked releases on their respective systems. It's an exaggeration to say both sold poorly cause they still sold well within the millions, but compare that to the releases made prior to them, and it's not hard to see the disparity of sales figures. Not helping is that unlike 9, 12 had a rocky cycle just getting made; it's rather well-known amongst the fanbase, but originally this was lead by well-known, politic-driven auteur Yasumi Matsuno and series veteran Hiroyuki Ito, but when Matsuno faced health issues, his role was transferred over to his partner, Hiroshi Minagawa, with SaGa creator Akitoshi Kawazu taking up the producer role. This even led to Hironobu Sakaguchi outright say that he didn't even play past the beginning due to Matsuno's departure, which given that the two worked extensively and closely on Vagrant Story, along becoming increasingly bitter towards Square Enix soon after leaving the studio, it makes sense. I'm not sure if it's an exaggeration to say this given there's now far worse instances, but it was one of the rougher cycles in an FF title, which is rather mindblowing considering how intrinsically and tightly this is to becoming one of the series' all time best.

It's been playfully and cheekily said that there's strong allusions to Star Wars, and while the lineage of Square employees have long since made it obvious these two franchises are intertwined with one another, alongside two specific details within the narrative being lifted straight from the global space opera phenomenon - no major spoilers here, but players or people who wikidive should know what I'm referring to - I imagine that tonally and structurally it's instead much similar to the film that inspired that one: Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. I say imagine because at the time of writing this, I have yet to see it for myself, but given how politically charged this is comparatively, as well as Vaan and Penelo not becoming Big Superstar Heroes whisked off from their penurious origins, and instead humbled off into becoming their (well, really Vaan's) dreams of being sky-flying pirates, and containing a far cry of Leia and Han's predicaments by doubling down and centering much more on the interpersonal and dramatic detailing of high class echelons royalty Princess Ashe and Stoic Knight Basch, I'm inclined to believe this. Rounding out the party are well-off pirate duo Balthier and Fran, both harboring a deep scar within their past that they're not keen on opening up until well into the story which is a bit distant from the relationship Han and Chewbacca have with one another. Though there were changes made in giving a "proper" MC role during development, as well as Ashe being given the brunt of the grandoise power plays typically obligated to such an archetype, the overall scattershot approach of focus and centering on this sextuple, ironically, gives the game its biggest strength, which is on how playing them like chess pieces in order pushes forward the revelations of the thematic ties of redemption and sorrowful reconciliation. Sure, this approach might not work for everyone, but it worked for me. While I'd struggle to detail what makes Penelo and Fran stand out, I'm enamored with how the tribulations of Ashe and Basch are covered, Balthier's one of my favorite hotshot rogues in any RPG, and, hot take, Vaan's one of the finest examples of what an audience surrogate leader should be. Even disregarding all that, the crew's budding kinship of closed off personal to a tight-knitted team ready to fend off the worst of the Archadian Empire is very well-done, orchestrating segmented growth and charm of the group, even in hilarious ways.

Least to say of the majestic world that is this entry's iteration of Ivalice. It's steeped strongly in culture outside of Japan, from as obvious as Ancient Rome and the Mediterranean, to more moderate patterns such as Arabic, Turkish, Indian, and American. It's been about two years since I last had a session, but memories of Rabanastre, Jahara, Mt. Bur-Omisace, and the Imperial City resonate deep within my gray matter. It also helps there's such a wide array of activities to do here thanks to the Hunts, various side quests, filling out the Sky Pirate Den which is essentially the in-game achievement tracker, slews of side areas, and others to boot. In fact, the only reason I didn't go out of my way to obtain a 100% Completion on Steam is cause a couple of them, such as the Bestiary and Trial Mode, were well after I reached my burnout state, and I'm annoyed by how Concurrence is calculated (more on that in a bit), which also meant I couldn't get this game's designated achievement on... getting all the achievements. As linked before, I also hold this game's OST dearly, like we're talkin S-Tier category here and irregardless of Zodiac Age's exquisite and dearly appreciated decision to incorporate three options of either the CD, OG PS2, or - my personal choice and the one I've been leaning on for this review - Reorchestrated sound. Best Prologue iteration, top three Battle On The Big Bridge arrangement, Respite's elegant beauty surrounding you, the Esper battle's daunting force, just a whole lot of hits packed onto a monstrous array of songs, fitting Hitoshi Sakimoto's familiar repertoire to a T. On that note, this game's Espers are hands down the coolest set of summons in the franchise with how they're played into the mythos of this game, as well as just being great bouts of strength in general. Particular favorites are Mateus, Zodiark, Cúchulainn, and Zeromus.

As mentioned in my (albeit spoiler-adjacent) review of FF9, one of the immense appeals and another pillar of strength in FF12 is its battle system. One say this "plays itself", I say this is the closest I'll ever get to both fully understanding how min-max strats work, as well as truly getting the appeal of the NFL tactics and play, an aspect Ito has openly shared on interviews. Though I don't have any experience with the initial PS2 version, I'm nonetheless eager to say the fine-tuning and careful concoctions that can spark from the dual-role job picks a la License Board can concoct wild ideas and inspirations. Want to make a tank-support? Available thanks to Shikari-White Mage or Knight-Time Mage. Wanna double-down on ranged opportunities in both the physical and spiritual fields? Use the Archer or Machinist job with any of the Mages and you're set. What about pure magic? Red Mage-Black Mage has you covered. Yearn for the days when FF games dabbled with DPS-style niches? Foebreaker-Shikari's right there waiting for you to fuck enemies up. So many builds to pick from, not to mention the ability to double dip into one or more, gives you free reign to go buck wild, and along with the ability to respec any of them for free, and it becomes the most diverse and experimental set of mechanics in the series, opening the flood gates for as broad as challenge runs or as simple as "this job matches this character's personality". Pro tip, though: designate which trio is gonna be the Main Group for generally the crux of the campaign, and which will be the Side/Backup one to generally play catch/clean up duty with the side activities, it's the best way to balance XP gain thanks to the License Points always being distributed amongst everyone as long as they live. This is also where Gambits shine, as being able to set which conditional tactic are carried out once met can make-or-break certain encounters, or just coast you through the fields. Being able to pick up a variety of different subjects, objects, and utility cases and organize them within these set is therapeutic, as is when they're set off just right and pull yourself out of a rut with ease, or help to circumvent an action first before relaying back to finishing the battle at hand. I'd also say that dungeons are typically on the right side of the scale, there's enough distinction and unique mechanics at play to stand them apart from each one, and also do a fantastic job on delving deeper into this already expansive world.

If there's anything I'd say that holds back FF12 from being a bonafide classic, it's that the aforementioned development woes crop up big time here. Not nearly as much as footage of FF15 can show, but you can feel its fluctuating pulse as you hit certain beats. Whether it's the abruptness of the Resistance's final assault near the end, the lethargic beginning of limited potential even by the series' standard, a couple of dungeons overstaying their welcome such as Great Crystal, and specific plot details coming in and out of the picture such as those pertaining to Vayne Solidor, it's hard to not at least feel like something was missing from the board. The mechanics of battles are also uneasy, due to Gambits not having quite the specificity as you'd think, which not only ties back to the problem that the early beginning up to I wanna say the arrival to Bhujerba being quite slow, it also means that your actions and strategy plans are only in close approximation as to what you're setting out to achieve, which is annoying. My biggest gripe with combat is easily with the aforementioned Concurrence system, which is activated by utilizing this game's equivalent to Limit Breaks, Quickening, to their fullest. You are able to unlock up to three bars of charge as you progress in the story, and activating one, two, or all of them will allow you to do the respective stage of an LB attack, with the ability to gain back a charge to follow up on more. Do this enough times, and you'll be treated to a powerful, non-elemental attack capable of damaging everything, including bosses and the higher-tiered Hunts. Of course, with a grand ability such as that, it has to be balanced, and the way they utilized this is by... making it completely luck based. It's not like you're reliant on these working in order to take care of something, but it's the nature of being subjugated to dice rolls as to whether you can get a charge or even do a gauge-specific attack, along with there being multiple variants available that you have to do to get that achievement that frustrates me to no end, and combine that with the fact these are unskippable animations that play on loop frequently, and I only used them when it was needed. Other FF games, including ones I've yet to touch, had elements of RNG to these sorts of systems sure, but I'd yet to experience one that was as reliant on the draw of cards as this one has. There's also Espers, again even by the series' standards, not having any real use in combat due to the other mechanics far outstripping and outranking them for maintenance, but even then that's more of a nitpick than a legitimate issue.

All said and done, however, FF12 has been one of the most unforgettable games in the franchise - nay, one of the most unforgettable games in the genre - I've gone through in recent years. Its appeal might be more limited, especially in a series where individualistic aspects of these entries are always apparent and displayed, but that's also what gives it a gargantuan pulse and treasure to uncover. Definitely give this a shot, even if you're on the fence about it, I'm positive at least something about it will stick with you in one way or another.

Final Fantasy XII is a game I slept on for far too long and am so glad I finally got around to knocking it out. It really shook up the formula once again and almost every thing was a hit with only a few misses.

The main strength of this game is the world of Ivalice. The world is beautifully crafted with different races, beautiful cities, rich history, power hungry empires, many wars, and political intrigue. Like every other Final Fantasy game for me, the story had me excited and engaged from beginning to end. While still fantasy and over the top, this one felt more grounded than most of the series due to much of the plot being about war and politics. I loved the cast of characters in this game with Ashe and Balthier being the obvious stand outs. I also loved Larsa. Larsa is far and away my favorite Final Fantasy character of all time that wasn’t either a main villian or main party character.

I’ve said this in pretty much ever Final Fantasy review and this game is no different, the music is sublime and the art was outstanding for the time of release.

I wanted to rate this game as a five star and wouldn’t question anyone who does but there were two obvious flaws for me. First is this game is painfully easy. Once you get enough levels and gambits the game can quite literally play itself even being able to defeat almost every boss by itself. I only had a game over once and it’s because I fought the T Rex in the first level thinking I could kill it being as it was in the first level. Other than that I breezed through everything. My only other problem and admittedly this isn’t a huge deal to me but the job classes felt to similar and I was hoping for more of a variety than there actually was.

Another absolute home run in the series that I would recommend to any RPG fan.

Objectively, the status of perfection is hard to determine - but to me, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is a perfect game. So the following will be more of a love letter than an objective review.

First, the story: What makes it different from other games in the series/other JRPGs is, that there is no central protagonist, and there is no 'chosen one' story - at least not front and center and without subversions. Sure, Vaan serves as an introduction into the world and plot and is kind of a 'default', especially during the side quests, but the whole party is more or less equal in terms of importance - the princess Ashe on a quest to restore her kingdom is as central to the narrative and its themes as the orphan Penelo, whose friendship to an Archadian closes the gap between the Kingdom and the Empire. The way the main characters are introduced, enter and temporarily leave the party until they are set on their path together feels very in line of their motivations and backgrounds. Though they lead very different lives, they have one thing in common: The war took something or someone important from them, and in one way or another they tried to run away or cope, but as of now have not succeeded in finding closure. But their tragedy is not without hope, their doubt not without resolve. With the broader political meta-plot of FFXII this makes for a mature story that does not fall into usual JRPG tropes.

The presentation is another highlight: Every cutscene is rich in direction and meaning. The overall pacing of the story and unraveling of intrigue on the Empire’s side is in favour of the scope and themes it presents. Some of it gets even better on a second watch, where more details and foreshadowing are recognized. The localization is one of the best there is: Not only is the dialogue masterfully translated (which isn’t always the case going from Japanese to English), but every voice actor does a wonderful job, and there are some outstanding and memorable lines. The game is also generous with its amount of CGI cutscenes, which look phenomenal even today.

The world: The story does a great job at presenting the political nuances of Ivalice, but the world itself - its deserts, jungles, grasslands and mountains - are not easily outshined. Though it is no open world, the areas are huge and fun to explore. This is one of those games, where you really feel you’re on a journey, as opposed to just traversing the world. The cities are also big and immersive, with tons of NPCs you can talk to and whose dialogue changes throughout the story. Their dialogue relates to story events, their everyday life or other kinds of information that makes the world of Ivalice feel so alive. The soundtrack enhances this feeling too, because every area has its own theme and the usage of leitmotifs for the story and the quality of the composition overall makes the OST inseparable from the gameplay and narrative experience.

The gameplay: FFXII is a game that can be as fast or as slow as you want it to be. The gambit system, through which you can 'program' the AI of every party member, is easy to understand, satisfying to use and fun to optimize. And even if you use a gambit for everyone, you can always pause the gameplay and input controls manually. The job system also gives the player freedom to develop the characters and every bit of progress is felt. This level of freedom in the customization of your party is what makes the gameplay so compelling. Speaking of freedom, there are no random battles either. If you see an enemy, you can fight it or just run away. The amount of side content is huge: There is a long hunt club quest, where you hunt increasingly difficult monsters, you can fight optional bosses and explore optional dungeons and areas, and engaging with certain NPCs in the world will also lead to side quests.

In summary, this is what makes it perfect to me: A fighting and progression system that gives me full control to be as creative as I want. A world that goes out of its way to make me feel immersed. A story so full of themes, nuances and presentation that is a joy to experience.
I feel like I have so much on my mind when talking about FFXII and what makes it so special, and I’m not sure if what I’ve written really does it justice. But if you’re still here: Thanks for reading!

A fantastic game just got better.

Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age is an HD remastered version of the original PlayStation 2 game released in 2006. More specifically it's based on the International Zodiac Job System edition previously only released in Japan which balanced out some of the gameplay mechanics among other things to improve the original. This PS4 release with higher quality visuals, remastered orchestra soundtrack and ability to play at X2 and X4 speed is sort of the ultimate release of the game and it is, in my opinion, fantastic.

The story of Final Fantasy XII is a very political one. Set in the world of Ivalice, more precisely the Kingdom of Dalmasca after a war where the Empire of Archadia has invaded and taken over. The characters are an assorted bunch from a pair of orphaned street thieves, a dishonored Knight, a Princess and a couple of sky pirates. They all get brought together for different reasons, some for their honor and duty and others just because they got swept up into events much bigger than themselves in an attempt to free Dalmasca from Archadia's grip. The story isn't a huge world saving quest like many previous Final Fantasy games or other Japanese role playing games in general and I kind of like it for being more grounded in many ways. That's not to say the story doesn't take the player to fantastical places like floating islands or towns full of strange races while fighting fantastical monsters or anything, only that the characters problems and motivations just seem much more realistic than previous games have gone for.

The gameplay on this quest is of course the most important aspect and I thought it was way ahead of it's time when it was released and didn't actually think I would like it, when I finally played it though I loved it. During the parties travels both between cities in the wilds as well as numerous dungeons they will cross paths with many enemies such as wild monsters or Archadian empire troops. During fights or traveling the player can use up to three characters on the field at any one time and as long as they aren't being targeted can be swapped with back up members at anytime. These three members in the field can be swapped between at any point and given orders to attack, use a variety of offensive/defensive and heal items/abilities etc. or they can be set up to automatically perform actions under certain conditions.

This is called the gambit system. Each character has a set amount of slots for these gambits which can be set up to target specific enemies, characters or themselves under a variety of conditions to perform an action. For example "Ally health <60% - use potion" so any ally who drops below 60% health that character will automatically heal them with a potion. It's a simple but effective system where you can assign priorities to which gambit they will use over others in different situations gaining both more slots for these gambits as well as conditions to use them and abilities as the game goes on both from leveling up and shops. It is a system people either love or hate but you can turn them off at any tame should you wish and control characters manually. I liked to set up my gambits and have my party take a boss out running on automatic without me even touching the controller if I've done it right but there is some flexibility if you want.

The big change to the game over the original is each character now take on up to two specific jobs that can't be changed, locking in what skills, weapons and armor they can use for the entire game rather than everyone being a jack of all trades super soldier as in the original. This makes for a much more interesting and strategic game where you have to choose characters jobs very carefully as you can't go back once they take on that job. I also found myself swapping between characters a hell of a lot more to use different skills such as various magic or long ranged attacks etc. How everyone plays will be entirely up to your job choices and it makes the party feel a lot more diverse.

Visually this game is just wonderful. It's obviously still a PlayStation 2 game and that must be taken into account but in many places it looks better than some PS4 games. It was cutting edge at the time of release and with higher detailed models, crisp outlines and better colors it looks much better. There are some blurry undetailed textures here and there for backgrounds compared with the detailed character models but all in all FFXII still looks fantastic thanks to it's great usage of color and design. I seriously love the overall art and atmosphere of FFXII from the normal citizens, the races, buildings, armor etc. It all looks great.

The audio and music are also fantastic. The whole soundtrack was re-recorded, you can switch between it and the original in the menu to see the difference and use whichever you prefer. I personally loved the higher quality new soundtrack, the music is exactly the same otherwise which is no bad thing because the soundtrack is great. A nice mixture of more upbeat tunes such as exploring the city of Rabanastre up to the more epic orchestral boss fights. As for the voice acting, I always loved it in Final Fantasy XII and the voice acting is exactly the same, no re-recordings of that. The cast does a great job of all standing out, from the British skypirate (Balthier is the leading man after all) to the enigmatic Vierra and grizzled sounding Knight, each part is really perfect for each character. The only problem is some of the voice acting sounds like it was recorded through a tin can or a tiny room and comes across as a little echoey, it didn't bother me much, just something I noticed people should be aware of.

Lastly on my standard review list is value. I got the platinum trophy in around 110 hours beating all super bosses, doing all optional hunts and side quests. I was however doing this having played it all before and a lot at x4 speed. For someone new to the game that's not hunting out every little secret or trying to take on the 100 levels of trial mode it's still a solid 40 hours experience which at £30 was good value to me.

In conclusion Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age is a great game. It improves on the original balancing out characters and combat with better visuals, improved music, an ability to speed run through the large open areas. It has a ton of content and is just an all round great game. I can see how some people may be turned off by both the gambit system and the story but it's worth a try as you may end up surprised and loving it like I did eleven years ago.

Recommended.

+ Gambit system is excellent.
+ New job selections make for a more diverse party.
+ Great visuals, color and music.
+ Balthier.

- Voice acting is superb but sounds like it was recorded in a small room. May annoy some people though I was fine with it.

I wish someone told me Final Fantasy XII was actually a Xenoblade in disguise, because I would have played this shit years ago. Adding to that are some of the clear inspirations taken from Star Wars (despite some apparent insistence to the contrary) and you have an RPG experience that's hitting all the right buttons for me. I genuinely thought people were memeing about the Star Wars thing but some of the scenes and characterizations are so on the nose you can't help but laugh. Yes, I know a sizeable part of that likely comes instead from The Hidden Fortress (itself one of the biggest inspirations for George Lucas's epic) but when your story culminates with you attacking a Death Star, you lose a bit of plausible deniability.

In terms of the actual game, while Final Fantasy XII obviously existed before Xenoblade, my previous experience with that series more than prepared me to enjoy the more automated style of combat employed here. I can understand how this might have put people off back in 2006 but I can't help but think of Marty McFly going "Guess you guys aren't ready for that yet, but your kids are going to love it." It's aged remarkably well, with a fast, free-flowing combat system and a ton of flexibility and customization available to build your party to your liking. And while the gambit system has largely been superseded in later years by developers simply becoming more proficient at designing better AI companions, I can appreciate how wild it is that a game from this era gave you so much specific control over how your party operates. Seriously, this came out the same year as Persona 3, a game with notoriously awful automated party members. Ahead of its time.

If I could point to any major criticisms of this game, it would be:

1) The license system goes a bit overboard in terms of things you need to unlock; would have preferred they scaled back some of the armor and accessory slots because you don't need 30 of those.

2) Later story beats felt a bit too spaced out or lacking the impact I think they were intended to have, as the game gets a little too bogged down with chasing one MacGuffin after another.

3) I hate to echo complaints people have been making for almost two decades now but Vaan was a pretty weak main protagonist and it didn't surprise me at all to learn he wasn't originally intended to be one. I loved the party overall and thought they had great chemistry together but it is held back when certain characters feel more like they're along for the ride than possessing agency in the story's events.

Beyond that, I truly enjoyed my time with Final Fantasy XII. There likely would have been more quibbles with a few gameplay design choices but this remaster does a fantastic job at mitigating many of those, making for an overall smooth experience. Great game and I wish more people would have sung its praises because it probably deserves a bigger seat at the Final Fantasy table than it's been given over the years.

Before playing FFXII I didn't quite understand why it was so overlooked and underdiscussed in Final Fantasy circles, especially considering the fact that it released to widespread critical acclaim and success upon release. Now that I've gone through it I get it: it's something of an odd man out and an outlier within the Final Fantasy franchise, as its more down-to-earth tonal qualities and emphasis on lore, politics and worldbuilding over character-focused writing make it the polar opposite of what many people think of when they think Final Fantasy.

My favorite being FFVIII (which has a similar "outlier" status and parked in the exact same extreme as XII, if not in the complete opposite direction) I completely understand its "cult classic" status, and there's certainly a lot to appreciate here if you want a JRPG with storytelling that more directly reflects real-life historical conflicts and politics. It personally didn't hit the mark for me, although there's a lot about it that I appreciate – particularly how much I realize that FFXIV took from XII, and in turn re-introduced a bit of Final Fantasy's trademark flair, charm and whimsy to make it a little more palatable and recognizable as a Final Fantasy game.

The plotline being frequently compared to Star Wars is not without basis, nor is the critique of Vaan as a protagonist that doesn't really "fit" – to me Balthier's constant referring to himself as a protagonist felt like a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the fact that Vaan and Penelo were arbitrary additions to the story to appeal to the series' traditional core demographic. Really, Fran and Balthier were the only characters I managed to truly get invested in and regard with the same living, breathing quality one expects out of a Final Fantasy game, as most of the rest of the main cast felt more like tools by which the game explores its lore and plot.

Some of the best gameplay in the series, though – again, like FFVIII it prioritizes player freedom and customization above all else (between the Gambits, Job System, License Board and equipment optimization you could likely spend hours optimizing a single character) which fits in neatly with the game's open-world nature and heavy emphasis on sidequests.

FFXII is a weird one - It's still one of the most fully realized FF worlds, with its brilliant artstyle, character designs, music, history, dialogue and wonderfully grounded tone. Yet for all these apparent strengths, it was also the point where a younger me had to begrudgingly accept that FF wasn't my go-to for great character stories anymore - because there simply isn't one. Nada. Nothing!

Where it really shines, especially in the Zodiac Age, is its mechanics - the heart of the game lies in the planning phase, the refining of a strategy until it's damn near perfect. It scratched a programming itch I didn't even know I had; hitting fast forward like a proud parent knowing that my team wouldn't need my help - their battles having already taken place in my mind's eye, the path to victory laid out before them by my own design.

"It plays itself" you might say - but hey, maybe once you've developed a good enough strategy to defeat a Sewer Rat you don't actually need to fight every single one manually to feel like you've achieved something, yeah? That puzzle is solved, you move onto a bigger one.

So yes, within this majestic and beautifully fleshed out world is a very dry, technical game that forgets to tell its own story - which makes it difficult to recommend to most people - but it's still one of my favourites. I can only dream of another attempt at the gambit system, fully unchained from the limitations of being a PS2 game... maybe an Ivalice game with some actual characters and a fully developed plot, while I'm still dreaming.

“Yiazmat – Final Fantasy XII: Oh boy another Zodiac Game”

Final Fantasy XII is a game I felt like writing a lot about for the fact that, I mean, when you start the game you GET that giant history lesson on the world and are invited to be enveloped in it more than anything really. Unlike my previous reviews, I will pretty much be focusing less on just on a deliberate vibe I had while playing it and I will be digging into what specifically made this game interesting/disappointing/okay to me. This might be the only time I do this for this website because like I said it just works with Final Fantasy XII more than anything.
I wrote “A sunday morning before school back when going to school was that thing you had to do in your life: the video game” for the original Final Fantasy XII specifically because that was exactly the kind of environment I had when I played that version, but I will at least show how this version divulges from the original.
Gameplay:
Final Fantasy XII’s combat system is something that I’ve always wanted from the series, and it is the best part about this game as it was a revolutionary attempt to make the ATB system modern and fun, yet like other “black sheep” Final Fantasy entries it alienated those with preconceived notions of how a Final Fantasy or JRPG should work. Using the Active Dimension Battle (ADB) system, the valley between combat encounters and dungeons was thrown out the window completely, in fact there are no random encounters at all. The ADB system essentially is how combat worked in Final Fantasy IV through IX with timing on every command acting as a sort of “race” to execute said commands (I believe there’s even a direct quote about ATB being inspired by racing in general really). Now while ADB eliminates random battles, this doesn’t solve the issue of battles being tedious no matter how difficult they are because the player still has to manually input commands right? Well, there’s another system that absolutely deadlifts this entire game that solves this problem, the gambit system. If there is one common complaint I have seen with JRPGs (and especially every PS1 FF game with ATB) it is the lack of an auto battler and the excessive repetitive execution of commands or long waiting times in combat (I love Final Fantasy VIII but it is the best example of how bad the ATB system is), in fact a series by the name of “Megami Tensei” created by Atlus had been running circles around Final Fantasy for years in this area with even the Famicom titles having an auto battler while also having way more challenging gameplay that rewarded hardcore rpg fans. With the gambit system, what determines the difficulty for combat scenarios to where player input is required is in the hands of the player themselves. The gambit system is composed of commands that character’s cycle through with a command being played out based on a specific criterion that the player has set to initiate that action, essentially the player is programming a set of tactics but because of how simplified the conditionals are there’s still enough opening to where the player can step in if the gambits don’t fit the situation. I want to start the gameplay section with these two systems because it is absolutely the best change that could have been made at this point in the franchise, as it is a retooling of a previous idea (the ATB system) into something that creates strategy and tension. If the ATB system was like going through paperwork for every enemy you faced, the ADB and gambit system is like becoming John Madden if he knew more about Cactuars than turduckens and maybe signing a paper here or there when the situation gets tense.
No RPG can solely rely on a good combat system if the progression system is absolute garbage cobbled together by middle school math. While Final Fantasy XII doesn’t drastically change how progression works with the series, the addition of the license board creates an interesting dynamic of progression (especially compared to previous entries). While characters still level up and increase their stats through experience points, the license board acts as a way for the player to manually build their character through using points to use specific equipment, gain abilities/spells, and to gain stat perks (like gaining MP from taking/dealing damage) that are vital for specific fights. Through cashing in license points earned in combat for specific spots on the board, other paths open creating new ways to grow your character. I’m sure on paper it seems like it would just be fine if there wasn’t any license board at all and you just had to get better equipment for your characters in the next town like previous Final Fantasy games, but this design choice is absolutely one of the biggest hooks in the game for me personally (note: I do have Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 on my list of favorite games currently). It’s one thing seeing your characters growing while being able to take down tough enemies that you had to run away from, but it’s another to build up points and cash them in to see the kind of party layout you planned in your head. An even smarter design choice the developers made later down the road when it came to the license board in this Zodiac Age edition was the addition of the job system. In the original version of Final Fantasy XII, the license board was the same for every character while also hiding what each path created if you went down them so investing points was an act of blind faith (or buying a guide). Based on my experience of playing the original edition and my time with the Zodiac edition, the job system is a fantastic and smart addition which adds onto letting the player imagine how they want to build their characters while (not so) subtly showing which characters fit into certain jobs with the starting equipment/skills they have for newer players. It’s one thing to build a strategy with the gambit system and having good fights, but it’s another thing for me to build up enough points so that I can have my dream build of Ashe being a black mage knight tank who wipes out everyone while Fran supports her with archery and white magic.
Now finally the weakest link in FFXII’s game design chain: the dungeons/exploring. I don’t entirely dislike it here, but I must say having a single button toggle for fast forwarding in this Zodiac Age release was basically painting a big “we screwed up when we designed this game” sign on the title screen when it came to traversal. I don’t have an issue with speeding up a game, trust me I am in college right now I have things to do also like spending my free time like, writing this thing, but it’s one thing having it be a direct button on the controller and another having it be a button that the player isn’t really going to push unless you show them where it is. The overworld and dungeon traversal in FFXII offers unique locations visually while providing MANY secret locations, they not only took out the traditional overworld map of the old Final Fantasy games, they made it a virtual space to hang out in. The dungeons while being as simplistic as Final Fantasy dungeons can get, are actual labyrinths and because you’re not going back and forth between dungeon and battle screens like in other JRPGs, you can take in how those enemies fit into the environment. I will say, one lazy challenge the player faces when it comes to traversal in my opinion is common usage of traps, there are so many traps in this game that for the first 5 hours I got jump scared by the constant loud popping. Sometimes traps are used at times to create tense environments to prevent the (now powerful) running away mechanic that can trivialize the powerful enemies in an area (specifically at the Necrohol of Nabudis) but it also feels a bit like a deliberate time waster at times. Of course, you can use Libra to see said traps but it’s just something extra you must add as a gambit or something you can just push through and heal because your gambit machine can do that. I’d like to add here that the puzzle designs in FFXII are on the light end of Final Fantasy dungeons really with a specific dungeon towards the end being a bit annoying to traverse through and very evidently feeling like a final stretch. I can’t really say any dungeon in a Final Fantasy game has blown me away that much (besides very specific rare examples that are not in this game) so in retrospect it makes some sense that they aren’t necessarily the best part of the gameplay I guess.
In my opinion, Final Fantasy after a certain point really emphasizes hanging out in the world with bonus content be that with extra dungeons, mini games, or recruitable characters. Final Fantasy XII is absolutely a game where the side content is arguably better than the main content, specifically when it comes to the hunts. Hunts are optional bosses that can be found in specific locations based on the weather or being in one of the (shockingly many) optional areas and let me tell you every boss fight I’ve had in the main story is worse than any hunt I’ve done. One of the earliest hunts in the game, the Ring Wyrm, is the best example of this. The Ring Wyrm is a giant colossal beast hiding in a sandstorm that essentially works to dismantle your party through strong physical attacks, status effects (like making you unable to move), restoring its health, and then casting magic after a certain point. The fight took me 20 minutes and it was so rewarding to plan out how to fight this boss, I really haven’t fought anything in the main story that even compares to just this ONE optional boss (there are way more bosses that pull stuff like this). You could state the obvious fact that yes, I would be over-leveled after doing these hunts but trust me if any main story boss pulled out health restoring moves or different techniques to mess with your party composition that would at least be something that could make every boss last more than 3 minutes on the screen.
I also want to add one final thing, this game repurposes the classic Final Fantasy victory animation for when you defeat bosses in the main story (and a handful of side bosses that aren’t hunts) so imagine a video game just congratulating you 5 times back to back in an hour session, I think I got more praise from this game than any person I’ve met and it’s hard not to at least feel a bit of sarcasm just from seeing “CONGRATULATIONS” over and over.
Looking back on all I’ve laid out here with the gameplay: Final Fantasy XII has been chastised as “a single player mmo” which is something I think makes this title’s gameplay the strongest more than anything really. Because having a single player mmo means you can play whenever you want, you can quickly strategize with the whole party at your beck and call (these guys made a video game before this with “Tactics” in the title), and ultimately a Final Fantasy setting that feels lived in to where you can just hang out in it more than any other single-player entry. The gameplay in Final Fantasy XII is the best in the series, it builds on the ideas and hopes the series had with strategic combat from the ATB entries while rewarding people who want to actively seek out a challenge. If there’s any issue with the gameplay more than anything, it is the broad picture of the game design as it feels like the hunts specifically were pushed onto the side as an attempt to not steer away casual fans of the series while also having to wrestle with players being able to just run away from battles. Final Fantasy XII’s gameplay at the very least is a solid foundation that could’ve been built upon especially if it was a lot bolder with challenging the player, because evidently there was a desire to bring said challenge as I’ve heard more about this game having an hour-long hunt boss than any plot element, any song, or anything else in this game.
Story:
An old memory surfaces in my mind, a chart I saw in English class about “the hero’s journey”. I always hear people talking about how it’s something used from Greek epics to Marvel movies, wow isn’t it cool how you can just follow this template and suddenly you’re on your way towards being one of the best writers ever? It’s that easy?
If there’s anything I can say here it’s that playing FFXII made me want to just, play the other Ivalice games. Final Fantasy XII is a game where at times you’re moving from different perspectives and seeing a world grappling with war, poverty, oppression, and so much more that is tangible when you’re walking around but then you have this basic “hero’s journey” framework set on top of it. When we start Final Fantasy XII, we see a nation having to conform with an invading empire, soldiers dying or being left behind in pain, and apprehension with world leaders and people as another conflict seems to be on the horizon. It's just strange to me how we have so many political things happening and a plot happening also with our main party, but we don’t FEEL anything.
Clearly the writers were excited to be writing a story in Ivalice, there’s loving detail in how magic and technology works, the most interesting infighting on the villain side I’ve seen in a Final Fantasy game (FF7 might be the only game that even goes in this direction), and even small side quests that align with the themes of the story or create small moments, but the people feel so insignificant besides making things happen in the story, following a basic template to make PLOT happen so we get closer to the end.
Our main cast consists of a group of people from different backgrounds: street kids, royalty, former military, and even a cool knowledgeable forest rabbit girl which could create an interesting dynamic of characters coming to terms with their own past or reasons for wanting to bring back the country they are proud of, but we only arrive at the reason and (depending on the character) not that much.
At some point I liked at least something about every character. I was annoyed with Vaan because the game felt like it had to justify him being the kid on the box but there were at least some attempts to give him gameplay moments where you were him on the street talking to people, a sliver of potential to play into the setting and bring a cohesion of gameplay and story together which could have worked wonderfully if it wasn’t so obvious that these were spurs of the moment. There was potential, there was a sheet with character motives, backstory, personality, and all that but making them more than character concepts into actual people requires us to sit with them more besides when something is happening on the screen. Sometimes we got a moment to understand a character and how they were feeling at a certain point in time, but compared to previous Final Fantasy games it leaves so much that’s barren.
It’s less of an issue of the plot being weak and more like it is just going through the motions with only a sliver of potential peaking through from time to time. Final Fantasy XII isn’t Star Wars, it’s just a regular fantasy story that feels like it cares more about you knowing how the world runs than making you surprised by things that happen (as I’ve said before, yeah I want to play Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story), even in the prequels the appeal of Star Wars was from seeing characters grow, changing, reacting (for more than 2 lines of dialogue) and realizing what was happening and less about filing Wikipedia pages.
Overall:
Secretly I’ve kind of wanted a single player mmorpg kind of game really and I think Final Fantasy XII is about as close to that as I got really. What do I mean by single player mmorpg? I mean I get to play out those stories I see or hear about online about mega bosses where you have to coordinate everyone just so you don’t die in one hit, I’m talking about stupidly sprawling (yet not really in the Shin Megami Tensei way) labyrinths, and ultimately hey sometimes I can just see a plot thing happen.
With praise and disappointment, Final Fantasy XII offers something that I at least enjoyed playing even if it somehow ended up being mostly for the gameplay in a series where I’ve always felt the gameplay felt lackluster. This game has an obvious love for Final Fantasy itself with so many references and parallels to previous games that I would argue that this was more of a Final Fantasy game you play as a fan than Final Fantasy IX even.

Definitely one of the best Final Fantasy games out there, and probably has the tightest ratio in the series of "good game" vs "not acknowledged as much as the others".

The story is great. You'll find people that say the story is "just like Star Wars" or derivative. While these complaints aren't completely meritless, I can't help but admit that anyone who genuinely thinks this to be a mark against this game likely didn't play through it entirely. The moment-to-moment experience of playing through this story is consistently thrilling, and a satisfactory adventure. You're thinking about just this game while playing it, and nothing else, because it's one of the most tightly-plotted games in the series.

To the story itself, it tells the tale of Dalmasca, a desert country in continent of Ivalice, and the next target of the encroaching Archadian empire. Upon the annexation of the Dalmascan capital, Rabanastre, a small group of freedom fighters from all walks of life find themselves thrust together by fate in an adventure that will shape the very face of history. FFXII has you playing as all sorts; from larger-than-life heroes, politicians, and knights, to swarthy thieves and scoundrels, to the hoi polloi commonfolk. They all pepper the main cast, as well as the guest characters you find along the way. This game has little in the way of "hanging out with each other" among these characters, but it does have quite a bit of "hanging out in the WORLD" that makes it such an enamoring adventure. Beyond that, there are moments where your party shows unexpectedly-charming, teeth-clenched affection for one another, if the viewer is able to read between the lines of the fantastic voice acting.

And yes, the voice acting IS fantastic. I doubt it's a stretch to say Final Fantasy XII has the best English dialogue of any Final Fantasy game, and its place in the pantheon of dialogue for all games is quite high up there. You feel less like you're playing a quirky JRPG and more like you're witnessing one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. And yet, despite the characters' hifalutin, Byzantine cadences and vernacular, the viewer absolutely never feels left behind in the vocabulary. It's sharp and cutting, and it certainly does make every character feel like they're brimming with life.

The music is incredible. It's orchestral, it's heady, it's classical, it's weighty, it's just so good. The tracks range from light-hearted to heart-pounding, but not a single song in this DOESN'T inspire the listener to want to take up arms and embark upon a country-trotting adventure. I can't even begin to name all the most beautiful tracks in the game, but I'll go ahead and try: Flash of Steel, The Dalmasca Estersand, Nalbina Dungeons, The Tomb of [SPOILERS], Jahara - Land of the Garif, the Ozmone Plain, ERUYT VILLAGE (I really like the Eruyt Village theme), Discarded Power, The Stilshrine of Miriam, Respite, the Salikawood, A Moment's Rest, the Cerobi Steppe, Realm of Memory, To Walk Amongst Gods... and those are only the ones on my Spotify playlist. And I think I can safely say that the Final Boss theme of Final Fantasy XII is absolutely one of the most rousing, inspirational music tracks I have ever heard in a video game. If you can listen to it and not feel SOME sort of emotion come over you -- especially at the end of such a far-flung adventure, you would need to be either deaf, or a BORN. HATER (I'm kidding but seriously, it owns so hard).

Let's get to the gameplay. Many describe this gameplay as "MMO-like". I have dabbled in a few MMO's, but to be completely honest, I don't REALLY get the comparison, at least when compared to other Active Time Battle Final Fantasy games. Is it because the combat is seamless in the world? Probably. Moving along, the combat is quite good. The lifeblood of it is the Gambit system, a very rudimentary coding scheme that allows your dudes to automatically perform certain actions in a hierarchy upon the combat environment meeting certain conditions. For example, you could set it so Penelo will heal any ally of hers that dips below 30% health with a potion. If you place this at the top of the list, it will be her first priority, but she'll only perform it once that condition is fulfilled, so one could put BENEATH it "Attack any enemy" and she will attack. This is more or less how all your gambits will likely be organized; healing skills and curatives at the highest priority, followed by attack skills. It's both deceptively simple and... well, simple. It's not very hard. Which, in my evaluation, is good, as there's not much mental stimulation in the typical JRPG turn-based loop of "Run into monster" > "navigate menu" > "use effective skills" > "win" > "Run into monster" > "repeat". But there is still room for strategy, particularly with Final Fantasy XII's bosses and hunts, which offer the daring thrill-seeker a chance to stretch their tactical muscles.

That in mind, this game has quite the bevy of side-content. By some metrics, FFXII is even considered the mainline non-MMO Final Fantasy game that takes the most time to 100%, what with the dozens and dozens of side-quests in the form of the game's hunts. They're fun, no question, and they're quite challenging, but at the same time, I wish there were MORE sidequest mechanics. But that's a minor quibble in a game as stacked as this one; in addition to the hunts, there are multiple secret optional areas, optional summons, and hidden passageways, befitting of a fantasy world loosely based on a steampunk reimagining of the Mediterranean.

In conclusion, I have gone on record saying Final Fantasy XII is quite possibly my favorite game of all time, and it's definitely my favorite JRPG of all time. Is it a perfect game? No. Is it a really solid game for JRPG fans? Certainly. I hope this review might just convince you to play it if you're on the fence, and the Zodiac Age version is definitely the definitive way to do it.

Just to pin a sort of date to me finishing this game, this is the last of the mainline Final Fantasy games I had to finish, I've played all of them and are waiting for Final Fantasy 16.

On that note, this was THE Final Fantasy I was almost sure I was gonna hate. My first exposure to the game was watching a friend play like the first hour or so of it, in this my only thoughts were, "okay so it plays like FFXI and the setting seems very steampunk." (Mind you this was years ago when the only FF games I had under my belt were, 4, 6, 7, 11) So at the time the game didn't seem too interesting due to me playing FFXI at that time and the setting didn't look interesting to me.

Fast forward to now where I've played the whole series and this game was the last one and I gotta say it sounds weird, but I'm glad I waited until last for this one, I don't think I would have enjoyed it without the other entrees opening my mind to how different the series had become over time.

I guess let's start with the graphics...I usually don't put too much stock into how a game looks as long as it's playable and the graphics don't get in the way, but this game is beautiful! Everywhere I went, I loved how open and expansive each place seemed. Villages had many people and activities and you aren't forced to interact with them most of the time. The lands between the town are amazingly big and open, teeming with enemies that you can see and kinda act like they do things outside just being exp fodder, like some cast Protect or Shell as they walk around despite no danger.
The character's look amazing as well, it's honestly just a beautiful as a whole.

Next is the music, which honestly, it's hard to say much about, it's really good music, but feels weird it has a boss theme, but no battle theme at all. The music is very fitting while you are playing, but I can't see too many people remembering much of it outside the game. Also, odd note, but I really love the sound FX for casting magic and cure.

Now to my favorite part...the gameplay, I LOVE that the combat is seamless and out in the open, it feels like you can fight anything at any time, however you like, and by that, I mean the License System which acts pretty much as a job system of the past games, allowing you to learn magic, skills, set up different equipment and upgrades and so on. The License Board adds that extra incentive to fight battles, it's not just a grind to get levels up which is still a thing, but now you get points to spend on the License Board and build the team you want.
Along with this is a kinda odd system known as the Gambit System, if you've familiar with FFXI and have done macros for your skills then it's like that, for those not familiar with that, it's a sort of auto command that let's your party members follow a string of commands based on certain things being met, for example: "If ally's HP 30% or less then Cast Cura" so the character will cast Cura anytime an Ally has 30% or less of their health, it's a really good way of making the AI very useful and allows the player to customize how they like and reward for learning how the system works. I really feel other JRPGs needs this (especially the FF7 Remake).

And lastly is probably the somewhat weaker part of the game...story. No, the story is not bad at all, it's actually a very interesting one that I won't spoil, but I'll say the story didn't push me forward at all honestly, it was the gameplay, the story is just window dressing, though I'll say I do like all the characters in the story and it's pretty well voice acted...I think the story feels too much like a story you'd read just to read and not one you'd be emotionally invested in. I do gotta say I like Vaan though, I know he got a lot of flak as a character, but he's pretty decent.

So, I'm pretty happy my last Final Fantasy of the mainline games was good as it was, I can definitely recommend this game to anyone who just likes the idea of a classic feeling JRPG in a 3D setting with a really good world to explore.