Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is the first title I have played this year in my quest to finally finish every mainline, numbered FF game (minus the MMOs). My goal is to fully complete the games as much as I possibly can before writing my reviews, rather than writing them lacking critical information.

Final Fantasy XII (aka, FF12) came out back in 2006, and, to the dismay of my younger self, being the huge Final Fantasy fan I was, and still am, it couldn't hold my interest as it was nothing short of a sluggish grindfest. Having now revisited it via Zodiac Age, I do feel like I have a better grasp on the game, but was it enough to change my mind?

Straight away, Zodiac Age makes some huge improvements. For example, the ridiculous requirements for the Zodiac Spear are gone, i.e., never open any one of four specific, unmarked, not hinted at all chests in the game, else the spear vanishes permanently.
Zodiac Age also, in my opinion, improved the License Board system, a system which stops you using any overpowered gear and abilities until you save up enough License Points to obtain the licenses to use them. It's an interesting system, but can be a bit annoying if you don't know when and where to farm for LP.
Whilst a full license board in the original was available for everyone so you could play with any 3 OP characters you wanted, it was much grindier, and Zodiac's class focused license system is much friendlier for newcomers. It means those who do max their builds don't necessarily steamroll the endgame stuff, and it is easier throughout the game, particularly earlier on, to make focused builds instead of buying the wrong licenses and screwing yourself entirely.
On top of this, Mist (I'll discuss the Mist system later on) no longer attaches directly to your MP. Brilliant!

Despite the improvements and some of the more ridiculous issues being removed, like the Zodiac Spear dilemma, many issues still exist in this version, including the ridiculous requirements the game asks of the player to 100% the bestiary and finding certain items, such as invisible chests with a 1/10000 chance of a super strong weapon.Obviously, this can make certain tasks, especially for completionists, particularly tedious, especially if trying to do it without any outside help.

Moving onto gameplay, FF12's main combat system revolves around the concept of automated combat, using a system called 'Gambits'.
Gambits regulate and automatically execute commands based on certain criteria, like Foe: Weak to Thunder, use Thundaga, or Ally: HP is less than 50%, use Cura, that sort of thing. The issue some players may have is that Gambits, whilst a very unique and clever system, is that they can take out the need for direct interaction with the game during combat. If Gambits are set up well, then a player may never need to do any sort of manual input during combat for the whole game, which is a sign of a good player, but may make some players feel a little left out whilst the game plays itself.
On the other hand, some players may struggle with the Gambit system. If it is your first time playing, and you find yourself struggling to get to grips with the system, it may actually hinder more than it helps. Luckily, the option to manually control battles is there, but can make the game much slower if manual inputs are entered in Wait mode (time stands still whilst commands are made), and can mean slower reactions in Active mode (the game continues whilst commands are chosen), which may be the difference between life and death. When you look at it like that, it's definitely worth learning the system, because an automated battle can be safely fastforwarded with less risk to speed the game up a bit.

To put into perspective how ridiculous Gambits can be, and how little input the player actually needs to do in combat if their Gambits are full optimized, I was able to set up my team to take on the 50 million HP super boss, Yiazmat, leave the room entirely, come back with a cup of coffee and some food just over half a hour later, and they had just beaten it. Would have taken two hours, but I had Zodiac's 4x fastforward feature on.

Going back to a system I have briefly mentioned, 'Mist', once unlocked on a character, allows you to use 'Quickenings', FF12's equivalent to a limit break. You then must chain these together in specific ways to try and get a 'Concurrence', a final burst attack that does major damage and is far superior to just a single Quickening. This makes Quickenings useless before you have three characters with all of their Quickenings unlocked, and the chaining minigame you have to perform is entirely RNG. Even the best players can be screwed over if they don't get any Mist Charges during a Quickening. This introduces a risk/reward concept to the idea of limit breaks, but can be annoying if you don't get that nuke you are desperate for in a difficult battle.

Mist can also be used for summoning Espers, provided you have defeated them and obtained their license. Sadly, whilst they have their uses, they are rather underwhelming and unneeded, to the point where the only time I used one myself was for a story plot point where doing so is the solution to a puzzle.

One of my favourite things about FF12 is its plot. It isn't the best plot in the series, but it is still pretty good, and it could be described as a steampunk, medieval Star Wars. Admittedly, it does follow a lot of cliches, but it is a fantasy story, so what do you expect? It's a rather fun story of regaining a kingdom, preventing war, and bringing peace. Unlike other Final Fantasy titles, there aren't necessarily any mind blowing twists in the overall plot (they're more character backstory specific), but it plays out well, despite some small pacing issues.

One of the weaker points of FF12 is, unfortunately, its cast. The playable characters aren't necessarily unlikeable. The series has definitely had worse. However, compared to a lot of the franchise's most beloved characters, FF12's cast is kind of bland at times.
The whole playable party are pretty much one note characters, with little to no character development. Nobody ever really evolves as a person, except for Ashe and Vaan, who don't really change much, but go from wanting revenge to realising it won't solve their problems, which is about as deep as the character development gets.
The best character by far is Gabranth, an antagonist with nowhere near enough screen time, but probably one of the best story arcs in the game. Sadly, the main antagonist and actual villain of the game is probably among the worst in the series.

My absolute favourite thing about the world of FF12 is how immersive the actual environment is. The world is absolutely gorgeous, with variety in its landscapes, spanning from bustling cities to vast natural areas, such as plains, deserts and caves. Not one location in this game is ugly. Even the original PS2 version of this game looked amazing, and the fact that Ivalice reaches beyond FF12 into games like the Final Fantasy Tactics games is wonderful.

To summarise, I'd call Final Fantasy XII an acquired taste, which many will find sluggish and tedious, but those who can get to grips with its combat and progression system may find it rather enjoyable, for the most part. It's certainly worth trying at least once, but it won't be for everyone.