Reviews from

in the past


I like how this game is curated well artistically and musically. but the story, character, the game is very bland and it's been very consistent w/ this director.

It’s always saddened me that FFXII isn’t talked about very often. It’s one of my favourite FF games and maybe one of my favourite RPGs.

The zodiac job system offers a dizzying degree of customisation, greatly rewarding those willing to plunge into its depths. A lot of people seem to dislike the more passive combat, but when you finally figure out good builds and gambit loadouts to compliment those builds, watching your strategy succeed is so satisfying.

The Ivalice setting is as well realised as it always is. The writing is far more subdued than typical FFs and features another great localisation by Alexander O. Smith. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s boring; I love it, personally. I can’t deny it does get much weaker towards the end; its development troubles end up being quite apparent. And I do agree that Vaan and Penelo are bad.

Love Hitoshi Sakimoto’s cinematic soundtrack. Love the detailed towns. Love the voice acting. Love the cutscene direction (much like Vagrant Story, a game developed by a lot of the same key players as FFXII, it has better cutscene direction than most FF games). Love this game.

Eu estou mega apaixonada por esse ff <3

Love the class system. Game wore kind of thin by the end though, a lot of filler.

almost a perfect game, really, if not for the unfortunate pacing issues in the last third... going from political intrigue and breaking out of prisons and into palaces and all kinds of fun shit to dungeon and ruin diving was a mistake, but mistakes happen

gameplay ruled, characters ruled

hot take: vaan and penelo are actually good characters, they never get in the way of the story but are there to support the main characters when it matters and then back the fuck away when it matters! as usual the internet is full of shit and probably illiterate! D:

vayne going full cyborg god freak at the end was probably the biggest hiccup, it really came out of nowhere, but if i let every weird nonsensical thing ruin a work for me i'd hate most things and that's boring

gambits, bring em back! also gimme an if block!

oh and also: the best remaster they've done, unless you count the pixel remasters, which are full on remakes in unity, so i don't, and it's a real fucking shame they didn't put this much effort and polish into their other remasters... maybe one day


I was so excited to get my hands on this when it originally came out, only to be bitterly disappointed. However, this version resolves the biggest issue I had with the original: character variety. Vaan and Penelo are still of no consequence whatsoever, but the rest of the cast are great. The localisation for is also a wonder, and the voice acting unparalleled. I went from getting halfway through the original to ravenously consuming this one all the way through and nearly 100%'ing it.

A perfectly decent combat system and a pretty well-realized setting are unfortunately mired by tedious pacing and grind, not helped by its bland story and characters

Get vaan and penelo the fuck out of here

Played the playstation edition before this one, but they're basically the same

Right off the bat, I think I prefer FF9's characters more cuz I like the goofier vibe they have.
Regardless of that, this game's more serious tone really allows for some amazing interactions between the game's 3 best characters who are always in the party. The political side of this game is so interesting and I loved watching it unfold, seeing the ways in which the antagonist did their utmost to essentially save the world in their own way even if it involved so much bloodshed. Vaan is definitely not as good of a protag as Zidane and that's mostly cuz Vaan doesn't get as many moments to show off his character, but when he does it's great. Gameplay-wise, this game is an improvement over 9 in basically every way for me because I just LOVE building my own party using classes I can pick and customize, and as long as you're not stupid it's actually pretty easy to have an easy time in the game (minus those freaking Espers that're optional). Music is great, too, but it's obviously more cinematic and less about being a good standalone listening experience like FF9 was. I'd say I enjoyed this one as much as FF9, and it's a story I wanna revisit really badly cuz I wanna pay more attention to what it was showing me.
And yeah, it's a pretty great Star Wars movie

This review contains spoilers

What an fantastic game. It's hands down one of my favourite FF games. It had a lot going for it and felt quite nostalgic going back, specially with the turbo button working as if it was an emulator. All the improvements from the original are very welcome since they improved the already great gambit system. Took me 100 hours to get here, out of those it only started to drag at about the 67 hour mark. The platinum is not as fun having stupid things as completing the bestiary, although some post-game is addicting as hell. The trial 100 against the 5 Ivalice judges was an amazing and ridiculous challenge. I'd recommend to anyone

One of the best games I have ever played!
The Zodiac Age version added some stuff that made the game even better (such as faster movement).

A great story and battle system, the mechanics of this game kept me engaged. I loved the tone and focus on a geopolitcal story, even when it was mostly ripping-off Star Wars. The combat, exploration, and combat design were all top-notch, and the gambit system was a ton of fun throughout the whole game.

I'm not normally one for JRPGs - this is the first Final Fantasy game I've seriously played that didn't charge me a subscription fee - so it was surprising to see how far I took this one, stopping just short of the final two optional superbosses. One of the first things that caught my attention was the realisation that unlike a lot of video games, I wasn't playing the story of a single protagonist, but rather, a much broader story of a moment in Ivalician history, presented through the trials and agencies of the six characters that make up the party. The game opens with a lengthy montage of military invasion, multiple royal deaths, betrayal and schemes. It's a lot, and there's a certain passion one needs to have for excessive fantasy worldbuilding to immediately get much out of it (I loved it, obviously)

With all of that swirling around, we sensibly draw back to Vaan and Penelo, passionate and principled, but powerless in the face of an imperial occupation of their home. From there, we have a stable grounding from which we can expand back out, capturing pirates and princesses, floating fortresses and resistances, until we're out of the footnotes and into the annals of history. An excellent balance is struck between the immensity of Ivalice's inter-imperial politics and the individual, personal story that acts as the immediate, played narrative. It all connects and coheres, without needing to hold back on introducing characters and locations. Even if it does, at times, feel like the events that are happening on screen are filling space between things that are actually important, and two of the three women in the party have very little to do or say about anything important, it's a remarkable progression that suits the game well

That progression, as with most RPGs, is at the heart of the game, but not in the way I expected. Here, the typically time-consuming and dull number scaling of experience points happens without input - you don't need input, because all of the interesting decisions are on the license boards, where you specialise your characters and find that satisfying synergy that makes building characters so entertaining. Since you (mostly) can't miss any license board upgrades, you're always building your characters up from a sensible baseline, and simple completion of the story has plenty of room for building inefficiently. It takes off a lot of the pressure that normally comes with such decision-making, and creates a wonderful, intrinsic incentive to pursue side content and see how well you do. Not only that, but the gear that you get from pursuing that side content, delving deeper into each of the story's dungeons, is often the best and most interesting in the game.

Which is where we come to my first big issue with this game, and a broader issue I find I have with the genre. As I've discovered in wiki-diving, there's a lot of gear that you'll simply never get, because it only has a slim chance to be obtained from an enemy you only have one chance to fight, or it has a slim chance of appearing in a room you have no reason to walk into more than once. I couldn't tell you what rare items I obtained, because I couldn't tell you if they were rare or not. From my perspective, I just opened a box. Any perceived rarity has nothing to do with what I actually experienced. I earned the gear, certainly, but who's to say what I never even knew I missed out on?

The same philosophy applies to the game's approach to much of its optional content, however. I did my best to take the game as it was, but if your curiosity is peaked by the promise of a new fight or area, there's a good chance you'll have to look up what you're supposed to do to actually get it. For example; there's an optional boss fight in a locked room hidden behind a puzzle, which you can open by getting a key by trading an item (that you got from an unrelated sidequest) to an NPC you've never heard of, who you can't see, in a corner an area that is nowhere near the locked door and you have no reason to revisit, much less thoroughly examine every corner.

I think the intent is that players learn about these things through methods other than just, like, playing the game. Maybe there was a time when hearing about a legendary sword at the peak of the Great Crystal was something significant, and being fortunate enough to find it was a story worth telling. Unfortunately, whether or not it's a fair criticism to put on the game, what that looks like now is just skimming any one of a number of guides available online. There's simply no other way to engage with, frankly, sizeable chunks of the game, even if you do want to take it at its terms. It's a frequent occurrence, and unsatisfying every time.

This method of obfuscation seems to me a very deeply held part of the genre. The nature of Final Fantasy XII is that it's always throwing you at new enemies, new problems to solve with your party of heroes, all without telling you exactly what you're in for. It's something of a double-edged sword; the downside is that every new problem is met with a brief period of experimentation, where you find out what exactly it is you're not allowed to do. So much of the challenge in the game centers on this; the more you delve into the game's Espers and Hunts, the more you encounter enemies who refuse to be Slowed, or Sheared, or affected by most any of the tools at your disposals. Some bosses enter lengthy phases of invulnerability, where you're left more or less standing around and waiting for them to finish. Of course, they have no trouble including enemies who cast spells that simply kills your entire active party as soon as you start the fight. It's often exasperating, and I can't help but wonder if there isn't - in a completely different game, mind - a better approach they could have considered.

The developers do need to do something to force players to change their strategies, though, otherwise we'd just find something that works and stick to that the entire game, which would be a tremendous waste. Developing a strategy in this game is an exercise in flexibility and improvisation, aided by the wonderful specialization of license boards and the frankly brilliant Gambit system. They're so pitch-perfect for this style of gameplay that I'm surprised to not have seen them elsewhere. All of the non-decisions of picking targets to attack, juggling obvious elemental advantages and healing are taken care of, leaving you to focus on the edge cases and complexity that actually make combat interesting. Between that and the generous, welcoming progression systems, it really does feel like developing a party of competent heroes, who have a place in a story of such scale.

There's other things to talk about, like how it's easily one of the most gorgeous games of that entire console generation, or the refreshing and inspired Ivalician aesthetic, or the wonderful blocking in the cutscenes, or how they really didn't have to make all the men in the game as hot as they did, or how fucking ICONIC Fran is, etc. I really wasn't expecting to find so much to love. It's mired in an often frustrating philosophy of obscurity that permeates every minute of actually playing the game, but without the pointless busywork of random battles and grinding, the worst moments are over quickly, and the moments of triumph feel like a direct result of careful planning, quick thinking and versatility.

Esse jogo é maravilhoso, envelheceu como vinho. O sistema de combate com os gambits são o melhor da série, as músicas de cada local são memoráveis, os gráficos são belíssimos (mesmo no ps2 já era), a trama política é envolvente somado ao carisma dos personagens principais que tem motivações para estar lá, além de MUITO conteúdo.

I've never thought i would like this game as much as I did.

A truly masterpiece. 5/5

I AM CAPTAIN BASCH FON ROSENBURG OF DALMASCA!!!

One of the best in the FF series IMO. The art style still holds up to this DAY. I think is one of the weakest cast of characters, but even then they are all still likeable even if you don't know too much about them. Music of course, is 10/10.

"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.

Been sitting on this one for years, but finally played it. I'm glad I did, because while I don't have fond memories of the original, I really enjoyed my time with Zodiac Age. The secret to enjoying this game is removing Vaan from your party and pretending that nearly anyone else is the main character.

Joking aside, this game has a strong cast of characters, both heroes and villains. Sometimes the story falls a little flat and does a disservice to these characters, but overall it's a solid piece of storytelling.

The music is incredible with a good number of memorable themes. I feel the imperial theme is one of the strongest reasons people compare this game to Star Wars.

Combat is excellent and you're rewarded for how much work you put in. You can completely ignore the gambit system if you want, but I found it fun tweaking the system to get the best performance out of it. I did have a problem with the sheer amount of status effects the enemies loved to throw at the party, and the final area was more frustrating than enjoyable, but they made some great improvements over the original and this is well worth playing.

The beginning of the end for me playing Final Fantasy games until XIV/XVI. The automation of combat via basic coding in the form of Licenses was the wrong direction to go in.

What an awesome game. Years after I shelved it on PS2, I picked it up in the improved Zodiac version and loved it. The improvements to the original (especially the job system) are excellent, the music is beautiful and the locations and character moments (even if there are far too few of them) really grabbed me. The gambit system is terrific. I'm super happy to have given it another chance. And hey, it's an Ivalice game and I love it for that alone :D

great gameplay with an impersonal story. I found it hard to get attached to the characters but the gameplay was intriguing enough to power through

Quebrando vários moldes da série, Final Fantasy XII é único e um verdadeiro tesouro para amantes de JRPGs.

Dentro da franquia, Final Fantasy XII sempre foi visto como uma entrada estranha, mas ainda assim, apaixonou milhões de jogadores que apostaram no jogo, sendo recompensados com uma excelente aventura RPG, cheia de belos visuais que encantam até hoje em um mundo fascinante e uma abordagem única de exploração livre e combate.

Após Final Fantasy Tactics e Vagrant Story, a Square Enix nós leva novamente ao mundo de Ivalice, criando a série de jogos Ivalice Alliance e definindo como talvez o melhor mundo já criado em um Final Fantasy.

E vamos começar aqui por ela: Aqui nos é apresentado uma Ivalice em guerra entre os grandes impérios de Arcadia e Rozarria, e no meio destes fica as terras de Dalmasca e Nabradia, que pretendem se manter neutros nesta guerra, contudo, por seu posicionamento estratégico e por fazerem fronteira com os impérios em guerra, acabam sofrendo ataques de ambos os lados. O Rei Raminas estava pronto para assinar um tratado de paz entre Dalmasca e Nabradia a fim de unificá-los, e para isso, a sua filha Ashelia havia se casado recentemente com Lord Rasler, príncipe de Nabradia, mas em um avanço das forças armadas de Arcadia, Rasler é morto, assim como o Rei Raminas, e dias depois Ashelia é dada como morta por suicídio, assim Nabradia foi incorporada ao território de Arcadia.

Nossa aventura começa com o órfão Vaan em Dalmasca, que vê a cidade sendo obrigada a receber uma visita de Vayne Solidor, o herdeiro do trono de Arcadia, que irá apresentar um projeto de incorporação de Dalmasca ao Império Arcadiano. O garoto que sonha um dia ser um pirata dos céus pretende invadir o castelo de Dalmasca para por as mãos em qualquer coisa preciosa que puder encontrar, e então se depara com os piratas Fran e Balthier que tiveram a mesma ideia enquanto de fundo o castelo está sendo atacado, na fuga há algumas revelações, coisas acontecem e Vann descobre que acabou de entrar em uma aventura ainda maior do que um dia sonhou.

Aproveitando da premissa, é importante enfatizar que FFXII aborda temas mais adultos, como vingança, até onde o poder altera as pessoas, a conquista pela liberdade, julgamentos prematuros que afetam toda uma sociedade e uma política irresponsável, oportunista que busca favorecer poucos e fazer justiça como bem entender. Tudo isso ambientado em um mundo incrível graças a uma impressionante direção artística e sensação de locação, cheia de ambientes distintos, designs dos personagens e criaturas que parecem reais o suficiente para torná-lo vívido, único e inesquecível.

Na jogabilidade o jogo imediatamente difere dos demais, possuindo uma enorme profundidade e que é reforçada ainda mais quando temos o Active Dimension Battle refinado como sistema de combate que aproxima o jogo de um action RPG. Ao contrário do que era tradicional, os monstros agora são visíveis na tela e basta entrar no campo de visão para começar o combate. Sendo assim, você pode realizar os comandos normalmente ou utilizar do sistema de gambits, que basicamente automatiza as ações e reações dos personagens às situações, puxando bastante dos conceitos de programação, é tão lindo ver o quanto esse sistema funciona bem e como é possível virar uma batalha a seu favor graças as seus gambits bem configurados.

Nessa versão do jogo, além das muitas melhorias gráficas e diversos ajustes resultando em uma excelente otimização, nos somos apresentados ao sistema de profissões baseados nos 12 signos zodiacais, introduzidos para balancear a dificuldade e ampliar as possibilidades. O jogador pode escolher duas profissões para cada personagem e resetar a qualquer momento. Cada job possui seu próprio tabuleiro de licenças que funciona como uma árvore de habilidades ou progressão. Ao desbloquear as casas do tabuleiro através de pontos, você abre casas adjacentes e assim progride para conseguir níveis diferentes de armas, acessórios, magias e melhorias, como aumentar seu HP ou seu dano físico. Ter duas profissões aumentam as possibilidades de criar um estilo próprio pra cada personagem.

E com um mundo bem construído, não se pode faltar coisas pra se fazer. Final Fantasy XII tem um dos melhores fatores replays da franquia e fico impressionado como que tanto conteúdo cabia em apenas um CD de PS2 e ainda possuindo gráficos excelentes da época. O tempo de duração da campanha principal é de 30 a 50 horas, podendo esse número aumentar para mais de 100 horas se for buscar tudo que o jogo esconde e oferece: caçadas, quests secundárias, bosses opcionais, summons, dungeons, itens, trial mode... enfim, essa sensação de descobrimento e evolução constante mesmo após a finalização do game me deixa maravilhado e é o tipo de coisa que torna uma platina gostosa de obter.

Meus únicos problemas com o jogo são os extremos: o protagonista e o vilão. Vaan é criado para ser o personagem principal porém possui uma história tímida que é rapidamente abafada logo nas primeiras horas de jogo. E o vilão que por possuir pouco tempo de tela não dá tempo do jogador construir uma relação com ele, sendo outros vilões da trama muito mais emblemáticos e que roubam mais as cenas. Entretanto, todos os demais personagens aqui são bem desenvolvidos como padrão na série e aqui bato palmas.

Devido à forma como quebra com o que era considerado convencional e perfeito na aclamada série, Final Fantasy XII nos mostra que é possível ser diferente e mesmo assim elevar o patamar da franquia a outro nível, sendo uma referência pra muitos jogos posteriores. É uma experiência fantástica e que mesmo apesar do preço, vale muito a pena, é um port remasterizado mas que possui relevância triple-A até hoje. É um jogo incrível e atual não por motivos de ter envelhecido bem, na verdade é incrível e atual pois Final Fantasy XII está muito a frente a sua época de lançamento.

Normally, I wasn't planning on playing Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, but it went up for sale and I couldn't pass on it. In the end, I'm glad I decided to play this game because otherwise I'd miss out on a very interesting experience.
Final Fantasy XII's story, while not as exciting as in most of the other Final Fantasy games, is still well-written for the most part.
The gameplay on the other hand, is amazing; it's innovative because it makes you feel like playing an offline MMO game instead of a typical turn based JRPG. The gambit system is basically programming an AI, it's genius and I love it. The license boards add extra layers of character customization, giving you the opportunity to build each character differently. Overall, the combat system is extremely fun, the customization is fantastic and the mechanics work perfectly.
The characters are good too; some of them are a bit underwhelming but most of them are fine and few of them are truly great.
The visuals hold up well and the CGI cutscenes are stunning, and the music is very good as well.
Also, the world in Final Fantasy XII is probably one of the best in the series.
Now, although Final Fantasy XII does many things well, it also has some noticeable flaws; the story for example, is not engaging at times, it feels a bit disjointed.
Lastly, many dungeons get tiring after a while because of their lenght.

Pros:
+ Decent story
+ Addictive gameplay
+ Unique mechanics
+ Nice characters

Cons:
- Inconsistent narrative
- Overwhelming dungeon design

Narrative: 6/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Content: 9/10
Characters: 7/10
Music: 8/10
Graphics/Audio: ?/10

Final Rating: 8/10
- Great -
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is a unique, rewarding and enjoyable RPG.
If you're a fan of J/RPGs but you haven't played the original version of Final Fantasy XII before, you should give Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age a try.

Do I recommend it?:
Yes, even to those who don't play JRPGs at all.

I liked Final Fantasy 12 quite a lot early on. The combat and character development systems were just different enough from what I was used to to pique my interest. The story had a fairly strong start, and I liked all of the characters (even Vaan and Penelo). The presentation of Ivalice was excellent, and I actually liked trudging around the deserts.

However, as the game progressed, I found myself losing interest and becoming more frustrated. Once I had decent gambits set up, combat largely became a matter of just letting the game play itself. I don't think this is actually a bad thing in and of itself. Being able to operate at such a strategic level has its charms. Unfortunately, the combat animations were just flat out boring. This was further worsened by the lack of interesting abilities. Technicks just weren't cool or useful, and the magic system was quite standard. The martial classes felt far too similar to one another to feel like there was much more diversity in the party than "casts spells" or "doesn't cast spells".

Unfortunately, my growing dissatisfaction wasn't limited to the combat and character building. The main party interactions felt very limited -- I really wanted to see the characters play off each other more. I may have had this feeling in part due to the extraordinarily large amount of dungeon crawling that separated each tidbit of story. Even on x2 or x4 speed, it ended up feeling like an eternity between story elements. Now, this is partially my fault. I don't think I should have hit as many of the hunts early on as I did. I think the story also hit a pretty hard lull about halfway in, which didn't really resolve itself until the very final portion of the game. On top of that, there were several story elements that just felt like they came out of left field or were cool but didn't end up playing into the storyline nearly enough for my liking.

In the end, I don't think it's a bad game, and I think the people who love it are justified. It just didn't really click with me the way I would have wanted. I lost my motivation to keep slogging through the dungeons in the penultimate dungeon. It was just too damn long for me. I ended up reading a synopsis of that dungeon's story elements and then watching a lets play of the final boss and ending FMV. I have no regrets about making that decision-- I actually ended up enjoying the ending of the game, but don't think I would have if I'd spent another 5 hours slogging through dungeons to get there.


Hell yeah. The story may hasn't clicked much, but the characters (Balthier <3) and gameplay definitely did A LOT.

I wanted to love it a lot more. It's visually stunning with a score and world to match. Yet the story provides very few emotional payoffs. As much as I love the cast, little is done to back up Vaan's claim of friendship at the end of the game. The party doesn't interact enough and performances aren't very emotive. A shame because there is so much content to do character work in. Preparation is fun but I find the battles less so. As neat as it is to automate, boss battles and dungeon crawling are dull due to how little input is required after set up. I'd like to see them give Gambits another go.

Gambit. System. Is. Amazing. Being able to program your party AI with preset if statements and watching it play out on auto was so much fun, and made tweaking the system really rewarding. The single player MMO style gameplay reminds me a lot of Xenoblade (which I suspect was inspired by this), and it's really fun, I really love the amount of freedom you're given to go off the beaten path and explore areas well out of your league. Challenge-wise this game surprised me, ending up being one of the most difficult Final Fantasy games, and you really have to plan your strategies for certain bosses carefully or your party will get absolutely sweeped. Hunts provide even greater challenges, and to my surprise I ended up doing almost all of them aside from a few endgame superbosses (Yiazmat someday).

Area and dungeon design facilitates the gameplay well, and there's some pretty cryptic puzzles in dungeons that require you to put a lot of thought into (though some go a little too far). I did think some dungeons went on a bit long for what they were, and the great crystal dungeon was designed by a maniac attempting to out-FF3 at its own game of sadistic dungeon design, but overall I liked them a lot and some grew on me more than I expected (such as the tower).

I'd be lying if I said this was my introduction to Ivalice—I've played a bit of Tactics and found its world excellent, despite the gameplay putting me off—but I still wasn't prepared for how interesting the world building would be here. It feels inspired by traditional high fantasy, where there is so much more going on in this massive world with its rich cultures and history, that the journey your characters face feels more like a tour that barely scrapes the surface of it all, rather than the central driving force. This is enhanced by the amount of NPCs with interesting, refreshing dialogue, many of which are deigned worthy of names (a rarity for this series). I only wish this had an in-game glossary like FF13/16 so I could dig even deeper into discovering the histories of the areas and their cultures.

The music had me a little unsure going in, as out of context I'd always found FF12's soundtrack to be more forgettable than other FF games. However in context I was a lot more impressed, and they did a really great job at setting the atmosphere for the game. Visuals were a similar case—it looked bland to me in screenshots/videos, but playing the game for myself left a much stronger impression.

STORY SPOILERS START HERE

I don't usually leave this part for last, and that's because unfortunately... the story and cast here feel like an afterthought, which is really odd for this series. Things start off strong when you're getting introduced to each character one by one and plunged into a tale of political intrigue, and Vaan gets a fairly nice arc that solidifies him as the protagonist (for now...). Balthier, Fran, Basch and Asch all have interesting premises, and I was really looking forward to seeing their individual journeys. Penelo wasn't immediately interesting, but hey, surely she'll get more later?

So everything goes nicely enough, right up until the Leviathan gets destroyed and the party makes their escape. After that, there's no immediate change in the storytelling quality. Instead, it just... kinda stops. Cutscenes rapidly become more and more sparse, characters feel less like people and more tools for gameplay, and the political story is mostly shoved in the background while we focus on gathering the macguffins of the ancient king or whatever. It says a lot that I can't even remember the reason why we were doing that. I think the last scene of note I can remember for a large swath of the game is the Fran age joke—which is absolute comedy gold—and I guess the destruction of that pilgrim city we barely got to see. Then... nothing really happens until we get to Archadia, in which we finally confront Cid... or so you'd hope! No, instead we're led on a wild goose chase by him, go here and there, and I guess eventually confront him in that tower dungeon for a pretty lame conclusion. His motives are undercooked as hell and they don't do much of anything for his relationship with Balthier. Vayne and Gabranth aren't much better—they both feel like characters that should have had more of a presence throughout the story, but instead are relegated to minimal screen time until we need to kill them off. I feel like Vayne probably could have been an interesting villain, a dictator who believes he's correct and wishes to free humanity from the thumb of divinity in an ends justify the means manner, so it's a shame he's hardly memorable as the story is now.

Oh and after a point, they pretty much give up on pretending Vaan is the protagonist. Asch drives the plot 100% from the moment she joins the party, and any attempt to put Vaan at the forefront of certain scenes to remind us he's supposed to be the protagonist is laughable, especially when Asch is the only one getting any character development by the end of the game. Basch, Balthier and Fran are still neat but... they're kind of just tagging along, and don't have much to say. Don't get me started on how quickly they give up on poor Penelo.

What really made me sad was Larsa, who starts off as a super cool side character with an interesting role in the plot, but then vanishes for an absolutely massive section of the game after his kidnapping, only making a reappearance in the finale. The conflict in his family, along with his role as the only idealist who truly desires peace with no ulterior motives, really felt like it should've played a greater role in the majority of the story.

STORY SPOILERS END HERE

All in all, while I really got addicted to the battle system and enjoyed the general vibes of the game, it's a shame the story and characters feel like such an afterthought to the overall experience. I do feel bad for Matsuno, as it's pretty clear he was nowhere close to realising his vision with the game, and I can't imagine making Vaan the protagonist was his decision. FF12 is a good game that feels like it should've been so much more, and even with the significant QoL improvements of the Zodiac Age version, the overall potential is still so far away from what we have.