Reviews from

in the past


queen ashelia b'nargin dalmasca

So much more than a new coat of paint... A game that has aged remarkably well, and this remaster improves it further in meaningful ways.

one of the best and most nuanced political narratives in gaming with an extremely compelling main character (ashe) and one of the best translations of any game. the fact that it's also a very well-designed game with loads of depth is honestly just icing on the cake.

long live the viera! long live the garif! long live the nu mou! pray for the humes. down w/ the empire! free basch fon rosenburg!
long live ivalice.


I may come back to update this later, but I really do not like how this game plays. The Gambit system is an incredible system, so incredible in fact that I don't actually have to play the game myself.

Gameplay is pretty bad and the story is bland but it's carried by everything else.

It's interesting to me how FFXII feels different from the previous entries in the series, both in gameplay and story. As other FF titles, XII sounds like something really ambitious for its time. Even with some problems I really liked the experience overall. Spent much time going after those hunts!

A wonderful remaster, Ivalice looks fantastic

I tried once the PS2 version and I gave up for being so boring the story and the battle system is boring.
This year gave another try with the remastered version and I enjoyed more, the skill system got so much better.
The battle system is still poor to me, once you get the good combinations of settings, you barely need to interfere.
The story for me is still boring, I don't really care about the characters, with the most horrible main character of the entire series. It gets even worse towards the end. Nothing more boring than the narrator telling us the story, what's happening. One of the weakest titles of the series.

story absolutely falls apart but i do like the characters and this is one of my favorites to play. Plus it's just got really good vibes, ivalice is a great setting and the art direction is top tier here it's just a cool world to hang out in

The peak of the series. Acknowledges the weight of its history, subverts it in many regards and looks to the future altogether without being tied down by any of these three ambitions. Hopefully XVI can deliver those same ambitions.

As qualidades dele que mais interessam os outros é as que menos me interessam. Não gostei de como o jogo tenta simular um MMO através apenas de suas mecânicas, que são facilmente o maior problema de um MMO. A história/diálogo não me soaram nada especiais, e os personagens menos ainda: em 10h de jogo, vi personagens mudando totalmente de paradigma e relação uns entre os outros, mas em momento algum cena alguma indicou como isso acontece; alguns deles ficando cada vez mais próximos e camaradas sem ter trocado uma palavra. Sinto que FFXIV, que é um MMO (e isso vem com todas as dificuldades narrativas do gênero), tem tanto uma história quanto personagens que fluem muito melhor e com melhores diálogos, por mais que sofra de dissonância óbvia ao tentar contar uma história nada feita pro seu gênero.

O sistema de gambits é uma ideia bem legal, mas não vou jogar mais 60h por isso.


One of the absolute best worlds to explore in a Final Fantasy game and JRPGs in general. The Gambit system is still very unique and allows you to think about your battles in a much different way than normal. I like all of the members of the cast, but Fran and Balthier are definitely one of my favorite video game duos.

el MORPG: Massive Offline Role Playing Game

I gotta say, while I appreciate what this is going for, this one didn’t really do it for me. The world is massive and really unique, but the story is pretty bland and after thirty hours of a really archaic and outdated combat system, I just stopped caring.

It's a shame this game is stuck having its combat system because I really do not enjoy it. There is a lot I enjoy about this game but I just don't like to play it.

Unironically top 5 in the final fantasy series. Personally top 2. Gameplay in the main story is comfortable and easy going if you utilize the system properly, but you can also just level up like crazy and get super strong early because the game is open enough to let you go places and explore early on. The optional content is some of the best in any game, side dungeons and bosses are challenging and requires constant attention to lifebars and status effects. Story is equally as captivating with its political intrigue and focus on side characters. Lovely game

The job system is cool but the Zodiac Edition specific changes do maybe make you a bit too powerful

This game has everything, from good characters to amazing world-building to a really interesting combat and class system

I originally played this on the PS2 and loved it. I didn't remember very much of it outside of how much I loved the license board, so I jumped at grabbing it again on the Switch. I'll return to it at some point and properly finish it off, but it's a very fun game. This is easily my favorite main line Final Fantasy game.

the primary gameplay loop involves watching netflix while occasionally fiddling with some menu options, which is awesome. more games should reward high level play with allowing the game to play itself

Melhor Final Fantasy da história!
Sem sombra de dúvidas, tudo o que envolve o transforma em uma obra de arte. Desde a trilha sonora desde a história magnífica e cheia de desafios.
Por ser um jogo que ainda puxa a essência de um RPG de Final Fantasy, possui uma jogabilidade única e fluida. Criando os melhores gambits e aliando as melhores licences boards, você apenas se movimenta e upa de lvl.

Clássico que ganhou uma repaginada merecida.
Um dos melhores da história!


I have very conflicting opinions about this game.
I poured 80 hours into the game before I finished, yet I think it's one of the worst in the series. So obviously I still enjoyed it somehow? Well I will say that the two things that carry this entire game is the battle system and the job system. It's just so satisfying and fun to set up gambits and build your characters.

I will also say that I like the characters. Since the story sections are so small, every time these characters spoke, I just wanted to hear more. They're so charming, even Vaan.

====RANT SECTION INCOMING====
But you know what isn't fun? Being absolutely slammed by every single boss in the game because they slap every single status effect under the sun on you. This is the prime example for why I hate status effects in JRPGs. It's artificial difficulty. If my characters are strong enough, I want to win the fight. I don't want to get one shot because I got hit with some obscure status effect I don't have a way to get rid of yet (by the way, this is the final fantasy game with so many status effects that they start to OVERLAP). Status effects begin to lose all meaning when you subject me to all of them at once. And although Final Fantasy V also loved status effects, the difference was, I was able to use the same status effects on the enemy as well. Every single boss in this game is immune to pretty much everything except slow, silence, and sometimes blind. It makes the time mage absolutely useless!
Also, shout out to the worst status effect in the game, one that doesn't even have a name and can't be blocked, and just drains all 300 of your character's MP in the blink of an eye, making my mage absolutely useless. And there is now way to reverse it. You just have to use ten ethers, or use up one of your precious Hi-ethers. Every time this happened to me I wanted to throw my joycons at the television.

The game is just way too hard. You never feel powerful at any point in this game. I can be going through a low level area with level 40 characters and still get team wiped out of absolutely bloody nowhere (The three bosses before the final boss are baby-level easy, but then the final boss can pull out an attack where it team wipes your three active characters and then one-shots individual characters. The enemies have so much BS and the player's tools all suck. Every boss is immune to libra, and half of them can become immune to magic and/or physical damage for however long they wish. IF THE BOSS CAN BECOME IMMUNE TO PHYSICAL DAMAGE, LET ME SWITCH OUT VAAN FOR BASCH, WHY DO THEY HAVE TO NOT BE 'TARGETED' TO BE ABLE TO SWAP OUT? THIS JUST FORCES MY CHARACTERS TO NOT PLAY THE GAME FOR TWO MINTUES!
This game just pulls BS out of its ass to stop the player having fun. "What's that? You barely survived this hour long fight after tactically setting up the right gambits? Let me just start one-shotting your characters faster than you can raise them.
(The only bosses I found fun in this entire game were Belias, Mateus, Deathgaze and Gilgamesh, the last of which still kind of annoyed me)

And the tools that the player has suck so much. Quickenings are not explained in game ever, forcing you to watch a YouTube tutorial to understand them. But even still, they do a pathetic amount of damage. These big cinematic moves where the characters are breaking the fabric of reality should not be totally nullified by armour, or do barely more than a tickle to the enemy. There is one particular hunt in the game (Ixion) who survived a 12-hit quickening combo (and therefore the most powerful combo finisher) TWICE, and still didn't die. Are you aware how tricky it is to get a black hole quickening chain TWICE in a ROW! If I get that, I don't care what enemy I'm facing, it should immediately die. FFX allowed Yojimbo's insta-death to be used against every single boss in the game, so why can't the same happen here? This requires a lot more effort and skill than just paying Yojimbo all your gil.
And your other mist option is summoning espers. This is the worst implementation of summoning espers in the series, namely because your character stays and chills with the esper while its fighting. I do see why they did this, to allow you to heal the esper and stuff, but if you don't have decoy, then the boss just targets you instead of the esper, and kills you in two hits, which dismisses the esper. What's the point in giving an esper 9999 HP if the boss can just one-shot the summoner instead and COMPLETELY NEGATE THE SECOND MOST POWERFUL ESPER IN THE GAME. And the Esper's finishers have the same problem as quickenings, where they do jack shit to the enemy health bar. Would it hurt to give these flashy cinematic attacks some extra oomph? If not, then what was the point giving them a cutscene?
The only esper that is helpful at all is Zeromus, as he can be used to cheese high level bosses (which of course I used to beat the final boss)

Thirdly, this game is way too dark. Not in tone, but as in terms of I can't see anything on screen. The Golmore jungle might as well be a black void for all I know. I had to rely heavily on the mini map in this game to see where I'm going (except for the one annoying dungeon where the mini map is purposely vague and unhelpful, even though there are numerous timed lock and key puzzles in the same dungeon). Just let me turn the brightness up in the settings, please! This makes it even worse because clearly a lot of work was put into the locations, and I can't properly admire them because it's too dark.

Progression is a chore in this game. I am super glad I played this on switch and not PC, because I needed all 8- hours, and I still didn't get a single ribbon. Or all the spells. Or decent armour. Becuase every slightly helpful thing in this game can't be brought from shops like other FF games, but instead uses the FFX method of hiding it in obscure fetch quests that take thirty more hours, or as 0.0001% drops in high level areas that you need said armour to even get into! Just give me a ribbon! Every other FF game practically gives me one ribbon for free, and with the hundred and one status effects I'm subjected to in this game, it's the most necessary here than in any other game. But no, again, the game hates you having fun. The game encourages you to manipulate the RNG to get particular weapons, which is the worst game design I have ever seen. If the plan was to only allow 0.0001% of players to get their hands on the Zodiac spear, don't make the zodiac spear necessary to get through particular levels.

The story is confusing. I have no idea what's going on, and the story only starts to have coherent themes at Giruveygun, 50ish hours into the story. It's a huge shame, because the cutscene on top of Pharos was one of the best cutscenes in Final Fantasy, but is literally one of the only times that Vaan is important in the story, or even one of the only times that members of the party talk to each other about the themes! It's a really good theme of revenge being unfulfilling, and if the game had leant more into that theme rather than political intruige that flew over everyone's head, that would have helped everyone actually enjoy the story and appreciate the characters more.

Lastly, the level design could be a lot cooler. The game falls back on the aforementioned dimly lit caves and forests that are hard to see. But I would have loved the game if there had been more Feywoods, sky fortresses and Necrohol of Nabudiss. But instead all the boring locations make the adventure feel like some light stroll around a backyard rather than an epic adventure filled with magic and monsters. That's a problem with the tone as well. The game tries to be more realistic than others in the series, which just makes every enemy have the same ambiguous monster appearance, and drain all the life out of every other setting with dull grey and brown colour pallates. Which also means that when we finally get a typical Final Fantasy final boss transformation, it is laughably out of place.

All in all, Final Fantasy XII is a very frustrating game that had massive wasted potential and only served to irritate me more and more the longer I played it.

Some neat ideas and pretty environments but it feels like every single element of this game is designed to be either the most annoying or lamest version of itself.

I didn't think I would enjoy this game that much but it has become my favourite Final Fantasy overall. It definitely has some story issues due to its problematic development, but the world of Ivalice in this game is so interesting, its themes are well developed and the gameplay although it can be a bit confusing at first it's not that difficult, specially this version which can be super easy.
Overall I think it's a really great entry in this series