Final Fantasy XII is one of my favourite games. Top 50 material, likely. But this latest exhaustive playthrough of The Zodiac Age has allowed me to deeply contemplate the problem with FF12’s systems– stuff that’s present in the original and TZA.
For example (and this is an obvious problem) the game’s dripfeed of reward for sidequests and hunts is really discouraging. Most of the benefit that comes from doing them is the EXP, LP and gil you obtain by travelling across the world and beating enemies along the way. The main path’s enemy strength grows pretty quickly so doing the bonus stuff is pretty mandatory but completing a single sidequest should have a bigger jump in strength. It’s just annoying how much stuff you get that’s trash. Even in the post-game I was opening treasure chests and getting Dark Motes or receiving Hi-Potions from the fishing minigame. Most of the gil payouts are pretty stingy, too.
The gambit system, although relatively functional and innovative for 2006, has a lot of holes in its command set, stuff like how you can’t program a character to steal only from enemies that haven’t been stolen from yet. It got pretty annoying to go back into the gambit menu again and again, too. There should have been more ways to copy and reuse gambits too. There’s a lot of things you do in menus and that’s especially exhaustive when the menus themselves have this sluggishness to them, adding a couple frames to every button click. Even if the original was held back by the hardware, that doesn’t make it less annoying nowadays.
It’s also a big problem how some items cannot be purchased (or in the case of the Serum consumable, purchasable only in one obscure place). I had millions of gil at the end of the game and although I wanted to spend on Elixirs and Megalixirs, you cannot.
Getting into presentation stuff, the story is a very streamlined political drama with some nuance especially around the character of Vayne. Special shoutout to Ivalice. Oh, Ivalice. What a beautiful world! It’s so rich and realized that I’ll read NPC dialogue just to get another detail of this world. Easily my favourite fictional setting. It’s helped by Sakimoto’s score which is perfect for this world.
The game is vast. There are so many details in the locations and enemies, giving these places more description than your usual RPG fare. Even if they don’t give the best rewards, I’ve always loved how many small sidequests that you can just miss. This playthrough was the first time I did anything with that fishing sidequest. I kinda love it. This was before JRPGs imported Elder Scrolls-style quest logs so the fact that those mini-quests don’t call out to you makes them feel less gamey and helps the world feel alive.
I guess that’s a good note to go out on. Even if this game has problems, the world of Ivalice, or specifically this incarnation of it, is astonishing and so easy to get lost in.
For example (and this is an obvious problem) the game’s dripfeed of reward for sidequests and hunts is really discouraging. Most of the benefit that comes from doing them is the EXP, LP and gil you obtain by travelling across the world and beating enemies along the way. The main path’s enemy strength grows pretty quickly so doing the bonus stuff is pretty mandatory but completing a single sidequest should have a bigger jump in strength. It’s just annoying how much stuff you get that’s trash. Even in the post-game I was opening treasure chests and getting Dark Motes or receiving Hi-Potions from the fishing minigame. Most of the gil payouts are pretty stingy, too.
The gambit system, although relatively functional and innovative for 2006, has a lot of holes in its command set, stuff like how you can’t program a character to steal only from enemies that haven’t been stolen from yet. It got pretty annoying to go back into the gambit menu again and again, too. There should have been more ways to copy and reuse gambits too. There’s a lot of things you do in menus and that’s especially exhaustive when the menus themselves have this sluggishness to them, adding a couple frames to every button click. Even if the original was held back by the hardware, that doesn’t make it less annoying nowadays.
It’s also a big problem how some items cannot be purchased (or in the case of the Serum consumable, purchasable only in one obscure place). I had millions of gil at the end of the game and although I wanted to spend on Elixirs and Megalixirs, you cannot.
Getting into presentation stuff, the story is a very streamlined political drama with some nuance especially around the character of Vayne. Special shoutout to Ivalice. Oh, Ivalice. What a beautiful world! It’s so rich and realized that I’ll read NPC dialogue just to get another detail of this world. Easily my favourite fictional setting. It’s helped by Sakimoto’s score which is perfect for this world.
The game is vast. There are so many details in the locations and enemies, giving these places more description than your usual RPG fare. Even if they don’t give the best rewards, I’ve always loved how many small sidequests that you can just miss. This playthrough was the first time I did anything with that fishing sidequest. I kinda love it. This was before JRPGs imported Elder Scrolls-style quest logs so the fact that those mini-quests don’t call out to you makes them feel less gamey and helps the world feel alive.
I guess that’s a good note to go out on. Even if this game has problems, the world of Ivalice, or specifically this incarnation of it, is astonishing and so easy to get lost in.