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.

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.

A game so good I bought it 4 fucking times. One of the only times this mid franchise has a story with good characters, a decent plot, and doesn't have forced emo shit in it. A fantastic dub as well, and an incredible soundtrack to boot. By far, this is one of the best single player games I have played. What makes this one a 9/10 and what makes the original release such a mid as fuck game, is the level system. This game forces you to pick classes, making you not some bland overpowered "I can do everything" monster that ruined the original game's feel for me. The gambit system effectively letting you code your own AI partners so they won't do stupid shit unless you make them is so kino. Just a nice, turn my brain off, comfortable, but kino and real as FUCK game. Good. Shit.

Probablemente sea uno de los Final Fantasy que más aprecio, y aunque no es perfecto y tiene problemas que hacen que no sea tan recordado, para mi es una de las obras que más me influyo en el género de los jrpg. Gracias a él, y algunos más de la familia FF, he podido disfrutar de aventuras apasionantes y de conocer personas con las que compartir esta pasión.

Es un FF complicado, un juego que no esta "terminado", pero pese a ello nos brinda uno de los mejores sistemas jugables de la franquicia, y que a día de hoy sigue funcionando de manera increíble. Su ambientación y apartado visual han envejecido bastante bien, teniendo en cuenta que este juego solo salió en Ps2 en su momento, siendo de aquellos juegos que tocaron el techo gráfico y visual de la consola.

Sinceramente, no creo que esto que escriba se pueda considerar un análisis, ya que lo que he dicho no es nada del otro mundo. Personalmente creo que es un jrpg muy recomendable pese a sus errores, y que nos da una aventura muy disfrutable. Aunque probablemente acabes odiando a su protagonista.

Have finished on both Nintendo Switch and PS4 but reviewing as Switch because it's an outstanding port.

Anyway, the game: hot take this is my second favourite final fantasy game. Love everything that it's putting down and The Zodiac Age fixes my only two qualms with the original release: 1. that the game can go soooo sloooooow at times (thank you speed up function) and 2. that the license board meant every character ended up the same. The zodiac job system is 🤌🤌🤌 absolute stroke of genius and why it wasn't standard in the original release baffles me.

Play this game, get obsessed with the bounties, become an Esper hunting machine (even though I never really engaged with actually using them in battle - small secret third but unsubstantial qualm).

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

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.

One of the best Final Fantasy, and definitely my favourite. The Zodiac Age makes a great game only better and, no matter how many years pass between playthroughs, the world and characters are still lovely. It still has its issues, like, why is every single person in this desert country white, but nothing we haven't seen in a JRPG before, to be honest. The gambit system is very useful, and the fact that you can change the difficulty makes it easier for begginers and/or people who want to play the game without suffering (like myself), which is ALWAYS a plus, and incredibly welcome.

P.D: Balthier, Fran, I love you, you were my bisexual awakening.

FF12 grows on me the longer I reflect on it. The game's story felt like it came to an abrupt end, which at the time had me coming away from the game disappointed. However up to that point it was a really enjoyable experience.

The story isn't particularly deep, and if you're familiar with standard JRPG tropes, it won't do anything that surprises you. Regardless, it executes these tropes well.

The gameplay is incredibly unique. It's a blend of real-time and turn-based. You can issue direct commands to your allies, but the real strength of the game comes from Gambits- a mechanic that allows you to use simple conditional statements to automate the characters reactions to situations. All together you are left with a highly compelling combat system that's easy to learn but difficult to master.

The game has a great job system that allows you to mix and match classes and access unique traits on one job's board through the advancement of another's.

Despite the story not being anything special, the gameplay is very unique and (to my knowledge), hasn't been replicated in a way that compares. I find myself thinking about this game every few weeks with an urge to return and try new job combinations.

With how interesting some of the mechanics are in this game, Gambits, License Board, it's a shame that the minute to minute gameplay lacks a lot of interaction. When you're playing this game optimally, you aren't pressing buttons. And personally, I just don't vibe with that.

I really liked the world and the characters. I even like Vaan! I just wish maybe there was more interaction between me and my character, maybe if gambits only were for AI characters - maybe if you had to press Square to do attacks. The gameplay itself is similar enough to something like FF7R.

I would recommend this game, but if after the opening hours you don't see yourself enjoying it, drop it.

Frustratingly good. For every great idea this game has, it has another terrible one to bring it back down. A troubled development process and shipping unfinished seem to be the story all the games in this series share, but you can truly feel the passion the developers had for this game and Ivalice in general.

As a disclaimer, I played this game with the "Final Fantasy XII TZA: Classic Mode" mod, which restores practically everything from the original PS2 release while keeping all of the quality of life from The Zodiac Age, which I highly recommend playing personally.

Before commenting anything about the game itself, Square Enix did an excellent job remastering this game; it's one of the best-looking PS2-era games already, and it looks even better in The Zodiac Age. The fast forward functions are a godsend, as are the improved loading times. These combined can save about 20 hours that you spend walking or loading on the PS2 version. Combined with the existence of the Classic Mode mod, this is the definitive way to play the game on PC, regardless of whether you prefer the original balancing or job system.

This game has some of the best English localization of any game I've played and is combined with fantastic voice acting. Unfortunately, the audio is quite low quality, and it isn't improved in the remaster, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the great dialogue. Gone are the typical tropey anime writing you tend to see in a lot of other JRPGs to be replaced by classical Victorian-era vernacular, and it's spectacular.

However, even with the great writing, the plot points were stretched too thin in the middle of the game to make the game feel grander than it is. To pinpoint an exact part of the game where the story falls apart, it would be after the final Mt. Bur-Omisace visit halfway through the game, where you're asked to walk across the map with very little plot or cutscenes outside of some minor character exposition. The game never comes back from the lowered focus on the story until the very end, after the point of no return, where I felt the game forgot its own tone it set. The characters ended up being too one-note and underdeveloped, with most of them existing for the sake of driving someone else's character arc, though I still enjoyed their dialogue between each other, and liked Ashe, Balthier, and Basch, who feel like the closest to main protagonists.

Nevertheless, I found the intro and credits sequence to be excellent, while the middle of the game had a lot of low points. The music being great is just a Final Fantasy standard, and the ambient tracks were the star of the show for this game. However, I felt like the lack of combat music for normal fights took a lot of intensity out of the game, though I did get why they did it to make the game feel more seamless.

The worst part of the game is how slow it is to play. This game has an excessive amount of walking in it, to the point of having a step counter in the menu. While it isn't a true open world, it's made up of many interconnected zones that have a loading screen in between, which is perfectly fine except for the fact that you walk incredibly slowly and there's no run button outside of Chocobo's in a select few locations. It would also be more bearable if most of the environments weren't just long hallways, deserts, or flatlands. The remedy for this run button is the 2x/4x speed, but I find that more of a band-aid fix than a substitute because it just feels like your time is being wasted exploring the same environments at a snail's pace. The combat also feels incredibly slow. In the beginning, when you do not have many skills, there isn't much you can do other than watch the combat animations and fill the ATB bar, which takes forever even with max battle speed in the settings. 2x with max battle speed on Active Mode is what I recommend for most of the battles in the game outside of boss fights since you do not need to perform many actions if you have your gambits set up properly.

As for the combat itself, it's very unique, but I can see why no game really replicates it. The most apt description I can give of it is that it is very similar to a tab-target game with a long global cooldown like FFXI or FFXIV. Where it differs is in your control of your party members and how you can automate nearly everything in the game with the gambit system, which makes the game feel more akin to a tower defense game where you set your parameters beforehand and then watch your strategy play out. I found the combat most enjoyable when fighting the bosses because you had to adjust your gambits for all of them because usually a simple attack and heal when low setup wouldn't suffice, so you have to find their weaknesses and vulnerabilities to status effects. Though, by the end of the game, I did feel like it did get too easy with you being able to easily stack every status buff before battles with the amount of gambit slots you get, and there was little need to adjust my setup, which is the whole gameplay loop. I also found fighting the normal enemies very boring, as they usually don't pose any challenges, so it's mostly just watching the battle animations play out, so I would recommend fast-forwarding on those parts.

This is a game that lives or dies based on its balancing. The Zodiac Age ends up being too easy, especially when you get two jobs, and that leads the game to play itself with no effort or grinding, while I found the original PS2 version to be much better balanced and offer proper challenges to bosses. It's even arguable that this is the most challenging Final Fantasy game if you don't grind, though that's not much of a high bar, and the game's balancing is easily broken by the end of the game once you get a proper gambit setup going and have access to a majority of the skills.

The other main difference between the PS2 release and The Zodiac Age is the addition of jobs. In the PS2 version, every character shares the same license board (this game's version of a skill tree), but they all start with slightly different skills matching their default armor and weapons. By the end of the game, all the characters have access to nearly all the same weapons, skills, and armor, which some may dislike, but I ended up preferring it since you can completely change your characters on the fly without them having any set roles or having them specialize in different areas. For example, I had Penelo be a mage with high evasion and mystic armor that focused on using white magic with her gambits, while I had Basch be a tank with an axe that focused on buffing himself and drawing aggro away from the rest of the team. Nothing stops you from switching them around if needed, which means you are very adaptable and aren't reliant on any character specifically. On the contrary, The Zodiac Age went with a more conventional job system where you pick two of the twelve classes for your character to specialize in; these jobs would have smaller, more focused license boards that only allow you to use certain weapons and magick compared to the adaptability of the original. The job system seems like it was in the original vision of the game, but due to time constraints they couldn't implement it properly it. Even so, I'm not a fan of the way it's implemented, as it seems the game is balanced completely around everyone having access to anything. The Classic Mode mod also restores the summoning animations for Espers, which adds some flavor to them if they are a bit too long and the summons themselves are not really worth using. The Quickenings also have some of the best animations in the series but also have the same issues as the summon system.

In retrospect, it honestly is impressive how expansive this game is, however oversized it may be. There are so many locations, and the dungeons are so diverse. If you enjoyed the gameplay loop, this game has the highest quantity of side content, with the main focus being hunts. These operate similarly to the Monster Hunter games, where you have to find some kind of enemy to slay in the overworld with information given to you by a bill. These hunts have some of the most challenging boss fights in the game and can give you some of the best items in the game, though by the end I did start feeling like they got way too tedious with the amount of backtracking you have to do for some of them as well as having to go back and forth to people to turn the hunt in. You can definitely see the MMO elements that remained in the game from when it was planned to be one. This is even confirmed by the producer in an old IGN interview where they said: "Back in 2000, when Final Fantasy X, XI, and XII were originally announced as being in the planning stages, X was announced as an offline game while XI onwards would be online games. Obviously, in the process of developing Final Fantasy XII, that changed—it is, of course, an offline game that we have now."

This game is a strange game to recommend because there are a lot of parts that have merit, but at the same time, I can fully understand how people may say the game is boring or a waste of your time. I would say it's only worth playing if you want a slower, more grounded Final Fantasy with a world you can fully engross yourself in, full of things to explore. A game about where the characters aren't the main focus, even lacking a true main protagonist entirely. Instead, it's a return to form for the older games that had a focus on mechanics and role-playing over a finely woven narrative. Final Fantasy XII dares to be different, and that is something I can respect.

After nearly twenty years of playing this game, I finished the post-game of Final Fantasy XII! Both the vanilla superbosses and the Trial Mode The Zodiac Age added in. I left a review on the PS2 game’s page but figured I’ll add my thoughts on The Zodiac Age version.

The big sell here is the job system and it’s pretty cool! I like the dual-classing upgraded they added in this edition of FF12, but character being so focused creates a lot of small inconveniences. Only the Time Mage has Float, a very important spell if you are going through a place with traps. I had to keep my Fran out through most dungeons because I didn’t have a lot of Float Motes and mines were abound. You can unlock some extra abilities on everyone’s License Grids with Quickenings and Espers but there should have been more options available for late game conveniences. I was missing the absolute freedom of everyone sharing vanilla FF12’s maximalist License Grid.

While The Zodiac Age took away a lot of original’s need-guide BS like the whole thing with the Zodiac Spear, a lot of spells are stuck in normal-looking treasures that you can easily miss then go through the whole game never having that spell. It’s two steps-forward, one step back with this game.

The 2x and 4x speed settings were a great edition. Got a lot of use of them beating Hell Wyrm and Yiazmat. On the other hand, TZA could have improved the gambit system more. While the multiple gambit sets are a nice addition, I wished for more gambit types and additional complexity.

Overall, the speedup option and cool job system make this the definitive version of a game that I, despite my criticism, think it is pretty good and still love a lot. Maybe I don’t think it’s as good as I used to, but still something that is worth playing. A lot of my problems are things that became more obvious in the sidequest/post-game parts of Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age so someone playing a casual playthrough probably wouldn’t butt heads with those annoyances.