Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (2017)

More impressions:

-I don't hate any of the party members so far but I'd easily trade any of them for a moogle party member. Always kills me when the world is full of intermingling fantasy races but your party has to be almost completely humans or humes in this case. I know every game can't be Breath of Fire but c'mon. Also why does Ashe's hair and clothes remind me so much of Lighting from FF13?

-The game still doesn't explain a lot of stuff well if at all. It's wild to try unlocking things on your license board and having no idea what they are or how to find out, and it's weird how long it feels like it takes to simply gain class/license specific skills or techs.

-I also don't haate the combat system and the idea of Gambits, but from a JRPG game design philosophy it seems like the wrong direction to go in. By making this system to program your characters actions, it feels like the vast majority of battles are so simple they don't require input from the player. I'm generally much more of a believer in the opposite approach of quality over quantity when it comes to battles in JRPGs. I'd much rather sweat it out over every encounter with the options available to me and have much less of them, than have so many that the game is designed with auto battling at the forefront of the battle system.

-Behind just setting Gambits, having to purchase what you can target via a Gambit, and needing to get permission via Licenses to use equipment is still annoying and from a worldbuilding stand point still doesn't make any sense to me.

Getting into this over my winter holiday break. Some initial thoughts and impressions:

-The introduction is a bit drawn out on giving the player a lot of information about the war, political figures, and dynamics of the conflict. Giving you control of Vaan's brother for the tutorial was fine and didn't drag at least, leaving the player with some intrigue before the segment ends. Not as engaging of an introduction as FF6, 7, and 9, but I think it's still better than 8's or 10's at least.

-I like the character designs though the color scheme is a bit on the darker/drab side. I wish I could have a Moogle or Bangaa party member, love their designs here.

-The camera angle, job mechanics, and battle system do give me a very MMORPG outline, which tracks since this is right after Final Fantasy 11, but I'm not vibing with that choice so far. Job systems are great, but it hurts to have to dump points into being allowed to use equipment. Want to wear this hat? Kill 20 monsters first.

-There's also some clunky ways in which mechanics are rolled out. Penelo briefly joins me and explicitly states that Gambits are available and that I should use them, yet they don't appear in any menu for me to adjust them. I had to look it up and apparently Gambits don't actually become available to setup until later which is confusing.

-Vaan seems like an idiot, and I think this has to be intentional. He's a rash and reckless youth who will be reigned in by cooler heads who join the party later I'm guessing. I don't mind the main player character being in this archetype especially if it's more of an ensemble cast and I'm not expected to solely identify with Vaan for the duration of the game.

-The early areas being an expansive confusingly laid out town, an open plains and desert areas, and an awkward sewer dungeon aren't the hypest or most interesting places to start an adventure, but it's not a deal breaker by any means.

If I could only say one thing about this game, it'd be that Ivalice here is the most alive of any RPG world I've experienced. Settlements and cities are teeming with NPCs, and while many are just living scenery with no dialogue option, plenty can be spoken to - and incredibly, almost all of them change their dialogue almost every time you progress the story, showing that the people of the world are in both large and small ways feeling the effects of what you're doing. The sheer amount of dialogue in this game is astounding.

If I could say another thing, it'd be that the orchestra-performed soundtrack is world-class. The themes for cities and settlements are especially great. The dungeon themes were more hit or miss - while all the compositions are good, the loop length is fairly short for the amount of time you spend mired in dungeons, and some have a lot of contrast between the loud/rising intensity phrases and the more ambient background phrases. After a while, the repetitiveness of the big loud build-ups happening so often started to grate.

The game has earned 4 stars based on the world-building and soundtrack alone. The rest is a bit of a mixed bag that overall doesn't budge the score in either direction:

• I liked the characters, and I really enjoyed the combat system, which uses something called "gambits" which are essentially instructions you program your party members' AI to follow. A refreshing and interesting change from RPGs with entirely manual control and those where party member AI is entirely programmed by the game developers.

• The story was interesting and fresh, but very convoluted, and the lengthy stretches of gameplay between each cutscene made it hard for me to follow such a story. Almost every time I hit a cutscene, I would become confused and have to pause the game to look up online who these other characters were or what had happened in the previous one, because I couldn't quite remember in enough detail or with enough clarity. This plot, full as it is of shifting alliances, diplomacy, subterfuge, and twist reveals, suffers if you don't have clarity on the details.

• The late game starts to get very grindy, and most endgame armors, weapons, and accessories in TZA version of this game are locked behind punishingly low RNGs (as little as a 0.25% chance of getting certain items in chests!). I reached a point where I could go to the final boss, but I didn't want to go without better equipment, but I also didn't want to spend hours and hours on repetitive mindless grinding. After a session I spent doing nothing but tediously zoning in and out of Cerobi Steppe trying to get treasure chests to spawn for a good 2-3 hours, the phrase "doesn't respect my time" began to fill my mind, and I have yet to turn the game back on again since then, since I don't want to do either of the two things left that I could do (fight the boss or fight the RNG).

Addendum: Sometime last month I got a burst of motivation to finish this game, and mustered the mental fortitude to let go of the compulsion to get every single esper and kit out my entire party with the best endgame gear before finishing. Went to the Bahamut Flying Fortress and made quick work of the last few fights without even breaking a sweat.

Felt good to put this game properly to rest on my Played shelf instead of leaving it in limbo between "Playing (but not really)" and "Backlog (but not really that either)." My 4-star rating is unchanged.

As an RPG fan, it's tough to step into an entry in a big franchise like Final Fantasy without some level of knowledge about what to expect or at minimum a cursory idea of the systems and mechanics I'll be engaging with as I explore the world contained within. Hell, at least I typically have some concept of the general public opinion of the game I'm about to play. Not so with Final Fantasy XII. The extent of my knowledge going in was that the "mascot" of this game was some shirtless blond kid. That's it.

So color me surprised, because I think this game is easily among my favorites in the franchise so far. I'm shocked I've never seen really any discussion about this game because not only does it feel like quite a departure from the previous few (non-MMO) Final Fantasy games, but pretty much everything it offered drew me in and left me hungry for more despite how much there was I had already enjoyed.

What's immediately apparent is Final Fantasy XII aims for a much more stylized aesthetic than its franchise peers. Though it is a 3D game, characters and environments are reminiscent of drawings, with heavy use of shadow and dark lines to make features pop. I was often reminded of Twilight Princess because of this, and I'm sure much in the same way as it was with that game, this one's visuals are a love it or hate it sorta deal. I think they're fantastic. They've aged beautifully and I couldn't help but marvel at both the beauty of the art style itself and the creativity of this game's takes on some of the recurring creatures in the franchise. I have almost nothing but praise for the visuals, the only misstep in my opinion being that the Moogles don't quite feel like a fresh take so much as a totally different creature under the same moniker.

The world of Ivalice feels much more alive than I expected. Cities bustle with activity as a mix of NPCs that you can and can't talk to go about their routines. In typical RPG fashion many of them give little hints towards side quests or activities you can participate in, but the real highlight is just how dense the world feels, especially in the early city of Rabanastre. The amount of detail is impressive and stays fairly consistent throughout the game, in both populated areas and in the wilds, which are dotted with hostile fiends and treasure to be collected.

Many chests in the fields and dungeons have their positions and contents randomized. They refresh if you go a few screens away, meaning there's always something to find even on return trips and sometimes you'll get valuable loot where you might not have expected it. One of the later areas in the game is built around this concept and contains some of the best gear and spells you can get, which is a great way to reward those willing to go digging for the good stuff. None of it is essential, per say, but there's some really good stuff tucked in there.

In terms of its plot, XII feels like the antithesis to Final Fantasy X. Where the latter told an intimate, character-driven story where the focus was clearly on the growth of the party members and how they interact with each other, the former is far more grounded and plot-driven, with the focus directed at a story of rebellion and political intrigue. The characters in this game feel more static, with the events happening around them guiding their path rather than it being one they choose themselves. That's not to say the cast is weak or underdeveloped-- hell, I really enjoyed the time I spent with them-- but if I had one major criticism of the game, it's that it didn't give me enough moments of them interacting and just existing outside of where it was relevant to the events happening directly in front of them. It feels weird to say for a game that took me nearly 55 hours to beat, but there was room here for more.

Also, I feel it's worth mentioning that while I'm in love with the visuals of the game and really appreciate the main party members, Fran's design-- and by extent the designs of many of the Viera race-- is hard to stomach. I think she's a very cool character in the context of the story here, but every time her bare ass and high heels popped into frame in an otherwise serious scene it drained a lot of the atmosphere right out of the experience. It feels like an odd blight where otherwise the game feels like it does a great job of incorporating personality into its character designs. Seems like it's there to fill the "sexy party member quota" with no real reason to back it up, and that's all.

The biggest departure from previous entries is in the combat. Where before you would choose each party member's action whenever it was their turn, here they sort of act on their own. At first it feels a bit like an auto-fight system but the key is that you have the ability both to program specifically how each character will act using conditionals called gambits as well as to give them direct orders whenever you wish. It's easy to dismiss the combat system by saying "it plays itself" but there's more depth than you'd expect. In reality I found that gambits allowed me to streamline a lot of the more boring aspects of ATB combat such as choosing to attack over and over or cure status conditions with the correct item, while giving me control over the more significant strategic decision-making. I would have liked to see more complex gambits (like multi-conditionals) become available later in the game, but I was still very satisfied with what was there.

The license board, which is what this game calls its job system skill tree, actually plays out fairly similarly to Final Fantasy X's sphere grid, except in the Zodiac Age version of the game you get to choose two jobs to assign to each character. These dictate what skills they can learn. You can theoretically change them later on but the game encourages investing deeply into your chosen jobs and so I stuck with the same two on each character throughout, making sure not to overlap jobs across any of my characters. It's a lot of fun to plan out which skills you want your characters to learn as you make your way towards the more powerful ones on the license board. I found myself grinding a bit near the end of the game out of sheer enjoyment of the gameplay loop of using the gained license points to work towards the stuff I wanted.

Finally, I wanna talk dungeons. Sorry I keep going back to compare this to Final Fantasy X but I'm gonna do it one more time. One of my biggest criticisms of that game was the total lack of dungeon crawling. I sorely missed it, and thankfully it made a triumphant return in Final Fantasy XII (not to neglect XI's dungeons, which are a beast of their own). This game has some truly massive, maze-like dungeons, and I couldn't be happier about it. There's nothing like delving into a dark temple for a few hours and then stumbling back out, stronger for it and ready to sell all the loot you gathered while inside.

While for the most part the game is pretty forgiving with its dungeon design (maybe a tad too much?), there are two spots where dungeons presented unprecedented difficulty spikes that irked me a bit. These would be Stilshrine of Miriam and Giruvegan / Great Crystal. There was some enjoyment to be found in the challenge these offered to my party, but the spikes came so abruptly that I felt more annoyed than anything, and was glad to leave both of these areas behind. The Great Crystal in particular was problematic because of how similar every room looks to every other room. Love the concept, not a fan of the execution. Thankfully the game saved the best for last. The final true dungeon, Pharos, is a massive, multilevel behemoth with a number of different puzzle mechanics and a variety of enemies barring your way as you climb to the top. It is an excellent capstone on the game, even if there is technically a little more story following in its wake before you hit the credits.

In a lot of ways, Final Fantasy XII doesn't quite "feel" like it belongs in the franchise. It sticks out among the other entries because of how it handles its main characters and because of the odd combat system. It also apparently is part of a larger universe of games, the Ivalice games, that exist beyond the Final Fantasy name, which is odd. I kind of wonder if the combination of these factors is why I never see anyone discuss this game. It seems to have sold relatively well I think, but somehow I'd never heard anything about it. It's certainly in my top 5 games of the series, maybe even top 3, though I'd need to think about it some. If you're down for a slow-burn story of a conflict between nations with some deep dungeon crawling, give it a look for sure!

I have mixed feelings about this one, but at the end of the day I think this is one of my favourite Final Fantasy games.

Pros:

• Battle system, job system, Gambit system. All great. Traversing the world never felt like a chore because combat was quick and entertaining.
• Beautiful world. Graphics looked great, and it never felt like a hallway simulator.
• Pretty streamlined menu. You always spend a decent amount of time in the menu in a Final Fantasy, but I felt like it all went faster than in other games.
• Lots of content. Side quests were engaging, and there was lots of equipment to find.

Cons:

• Storytelling is definitely the weakpoint. The story itself is fine, but the way it's presented is confusing. Too much information separated between hours of gameplay so that you forget the overarching story.
• Characters aren't that great. I loved Fran, thought Ashe was cool. Balthier was a good character but I didn't like his design. Nobody else is cracking any top ten lists.

There are certainly some weaknesses, primarily being the story, which is unfortunate. But the gameplay was super fun, and I rank it up there with 6, 8, and 3 as one of my favourite Final Fantasies.

5/5

Played on Switch.

This will probably always be my favourite Final Fantasy - due to a lot of reasons including nostalgia and the time when I first played it. Playing it on the switch this time round was brilliant. I enjoyed all the changes that were made in the Zodiac Age - especially the job related changes. With a little firefly use for level restricting early on the game was a good challenge, especially the endgame hunts. I didn't complete a few optional fights, namely Zodiark, Ixion and Seer hunts, Hell Wyrm, Yiazmat and Omega XII - but I had a great time with the optional fights I did do. The gameplay is as good as ever - the gambit system is just too good.

Big fan of the world-building here as well, it really feels like a living world with heritage, history and conflict. The writing is fantastic, love that old school flair, and it requires you to engage with it in order to understand whats going on. Characters are probably a weaker point in the game - but I don't hate any of them. The story starts great and continues to get better, but the ending was very obviously rushed and it loses some steam at the end. The Pharos at Ridorana is also a terrible dungeon design and completely fizzles out any momentum going into the climax of the game.

Well I done did it. Returned to this on a whim a few years later to finish everything my favourite Final Fantasy has to fffer. Beat all the Espers, all the hunts, Yiazmat and Omega Mark XII. There are a couple of things I could still do like trial mode, fishing and the ultimate weapons but they are too cumbersome for my liking. That's a very fair criticism of this game - the requirements for many of the ultimate weapons are onerous and not fun (RNG city over here). Having said that it was unbelievably fun to tick off all this extra content. Such a great game.

Holy crap, the Yensan Sandsea maps are huge! Just the first half (Ogir-Yensa Sandsea) took me over an hour in-game!! Although to be fair I took the loooong way around to grind the characters. I didn't even need to move out and back into an area as I'd planned to, and I effortlessly got all of my characters to Level 16-18, so.. good? I got the occasional harsh reminders that I'm not OP during unexpected encounters with Elementals and the Wyvern that killed most of my party when I didn't notice that it had flown in to join my battle against the cute little Alraunes.

This game is a nice reminder of how challenging game mechanics used to be; grinding is so necessary here... and it's grind extra because non-party characters don't gain EXP. It's been so long, I can't even name the last game I played that was similar in those aspects.

It's rare that a remaster adds elements that change a game as much as TZA did, and doesn't wind up damaging the gameplay, but TZA does. While the changes originally come from the Japanese exclusive Zodiac Job System, which released in Japan back in 2007, the revamp never made it's way overseas, meaning the system is brand new to fans of the original in the west.

While the game allows players to relive the same story as the original, the new elements add for a degree of specialization, and character diversity that was sorely lacking in the original release. Now there is a need to think about how you want your characters to grow, experiment with different equipment and "jobs" (think "class"), and approach party building in a way that plays into individual strengths, rather than just building a team of OP everymen, dumping all your top level gear on them and calling it a day. Graphically its a massive upgrade from the PS2, little surprise, but it allows the world (which had been impressive by PS2 standards) to really pop.

I remember playing this game way back on the PS2 and getting a couple of hours on it. But then somehow I lost interest and just moved on with other games. I can't even remember what I really thought about the game back then. In my circle of fellow friends people have extremely mixed emotions toward this game.

First of all, the Zodiac Age release is an excellent port! You get some really valuable perks. The double and quadruple speed is a great welcome for long grinding sessions and traversing the occasionally large maps. You also get some really crisp updated graphics and a remastered soundtrack.

However the best part about the port is the job system, which is truly a super fun customizable mechanic giving the player the freedom to customize the party and the character roles to their liking. And maybe we should start with that, the combat, which I believe is the strongest part of this game.

The combat is certainly one of my favorite systems in any of the final fantasy games. Having played a lot of final fantasy XIV beforehand made it feel familiar. I do think this combat is more enjoyable and engaging compared to the later FFXIV. Much of this is because of the Gambit system. This is a mechanic that allows the player to program inputs to characters, similar to simplified drag-and-drop coding. This is what really made the gameplay so extremely enjoyable, programming the characters and trying out different tactics. Basically letting the characters fight by themselves but within my controlled Gambit inputs. I do believe this is the part that a lot of people miss out on, and then come to the conclusion that the gameplay is rather dull.

And I totally get it.

Without the Gambit system, the combat becomes frustratingly repetitive and dull. And this game has an extremely difficult combat level curve and power leveling becomes a must in several parts of the game. This is where the speed multiplier comes in handy. If I hadn't been able to use the gambits to program the characters to be autonomous I don't know if I would actually have made it through this game. That being said it took me some 2 years to complete this game as I often took breaks from it. The breaks felt needed because it does feel like an overall uneven experience, at times I feel exhilarated to progress through the dungeons and the environment, and at other times I just wanted it to be over and move on to something more interesting.

Something that makes this game at times fall completely flat is the story and the characters. From the start of this game towards the very end, I must admit that I have absolutely no clue what we were doing or why we were doing it. Blame it on the long breaks between playing or my attention span but nevertheless, it does say something on the exposition of the story. I think that the major issue was the focus on the war-aspect of the story, which is certainly the main focus. There are so many factions, stories, and weird stones that are constantly being introduced out of nowhere that the progression of the story and what is going on is beyond difficult to follow. Now, this could of course have been saved by having interesting characters and arcs, which is something that is unfortunately completely non-existent. The characters are so flat that sometimes I was just laughing-out-loud mid-dialog. There are also absolutely no character-archs in development whatsoever, they just remain flat throughout the entire game and no relationships or bonds are really going anywhere between any of the characters. This is in my opinion the breaking point of the game for me, and I think the main reason for the rocky experience of interest.

Before concluding let's talk about graphics and music. Now this game looks absolutely fantastic. They made a great job of updating the textures of the characters. I will add a note on the character designs, however. This is also an extremely uneven visual experience, going from outfits that shift from absolutely brilliant to unacceptably garish. Why is this woman wearing underwear on top of her underwear? Why is this guy naked under his way too thin skirt? The designs just feel all over the place and quite incoherent to anything in the world.

The soundtrack feels very much not like final fantasy, most likely due to Uematsu not having much to do with it. It mostly just felt like a remake of the Star Wars soundtrack. It did have a few good tracks with a strong leitmotif that felt satisfying, but most of it felt like overzealous "epic" movie music very unfitting to the series. I was, to be frank, disappointed.

With the Gambit system, really well-updated graphics and an at times fine soundtrack, it all comes down to a rocky experience with the contrasting elements of uninteresting story and flat characters. I had at times a really good time with the game, which was then followed by a vague feeling of disinterest. If you're trying to clear off all the Final Fantasy games it's worth playing it to get the full series experience. If one would just want to play any game in the series, there are so much more story-rich experiences to play first.

Cheers.

Even just within the main single-player Final Fantasy games, the series has regularly shown willingness to try completely different things over the last few decades at the risk of losing fans of the previous entries. Each entry has a distinct flavor, but rarely have they made such a left turn as in Final Fantasy XII.

The combat and character-building is my favorite thing about this game. I prefer the job / License Board system over most other FF systems. It's such a smooth, easily understandable, customizable progression that balances well with the loot and shops placed throughout the game with very little need for grinding. If there's one criticism, it's that there are almost too many systems going on like Technicks, Quickenings, 4 different types of magic, summons... It could be streamlined to trim the fat.

Combat-wise, the Gambit system is so interesting for all the possibilities it creates for automating your team's tactics and tweaking to take down each enemy. I found this kind of outside observer / tactician approach to combat really satisfying in a way above normal turn-based combat, without getting as overwhelming as a real tactics game. It's even fun when it all goes terribly wrong.

There is not much interpersonal bonding between protagonists, certainly no focus on romance or anything like that whatsoever, a big contrast to other entries from the prior decade. Instead, we get scenes showing corrupt Imperial politics and building out the world of Ivalice. It's mostly pretty interesting, but it misses that emotional connection you get in a FFVI or FFVIII, or the strong bond the game builds between the player and their party in recent entries like FFXV and FFVIIR. I like it, but it's no surprise to me that some people find this a forgettable entry for this reason.

This game generally looks great in its remastered form, with some impressive-looking environments, bosses, and pre-rendered cutscenes. The 2x and 4x speed settings in this remaster were a godsend for speeding up the game. It must have cut 10 hours or more off my playthrough, and I feel like nothing was lost.

Two long, exhausting dungeons at the end of the game threatened to spoil the fun with really annoying enemies and puzzles, but by and large this was a fun, almost relaxing game to play.

Super satisfied with this game, which I couldn't stop playing in all my free time for over a week until I finished. I never know going into an FF game if I'll love it or get bored of it, and this is definitely one that I loved. Would really like to see more games like this.

Man this is so good. I think that I am somewhere over 2/3 through the game, since I'm at like level 37 mainlining the story, and I saw a spoiler-free guide suggest to be level 47 for the final area. Already, it's easily in the top half of the nine FF games that I've sunk significant time into, and though it probably won't get in, it's knocking on the door of the top 3.

It's like someone sat down and cut open turn-based JRPG combat, and intentionally took only the interesting parts into this game. The in-battle strategy, deep systems of stats and equipment, preparedness, flexibility of a large set of playable characters, these are what's cool to me. Not just manually telling each character to Attack or Heal at the right time, over and over.

It's not as enjoyable as FFVIIR's action-strategy hybrid, but it's a really neat approach to the JRPG to allow the player to automate those tasks and define strategy ahead of time.

The system is so open-ended that I wish they took another shot at expanding on it. If you were allowed to do more branching conditions and set up a deeper strategy of dozens of rules to basically program your own party AI in game, I would find that so amazing.

...because I don't see myself ever coming back to this. I think I put more than enough time into it, though.

I'm mostly transferring what I posted as a status when I stopped playing back in like July.

I didn't get all that far in the PS2 version of 12 way back, so I ended up getting the Collectors Edition for PS4 on sale in 2018. Still didn't get to it, then it came to Switch and I picked that up instead because of the updated features. (Gave the PS4 disc to a friend, at least!)

I just....I don't understand the love for this game.

I got 46 hours in and put it down. I have friends who love this game. I WANTED to. But there's still no story almost 50 hours in?? It took over 30 to finally leave the goddamn desert, but I managed to overlook that (and all of the backtracking) and keep going. But EVERY SINGLE time you finish a dungeon/area, it's just Ashe saying the same thing over and over about taking her country back, and the rest of the party is almost completely blurred out in the background of the cutscene while she gains maybe one more little tidbit of information. How is that a story..? It's not! The only time anything actually contributes to the story is when you occasionally see what the judges are up to, but that's not remotely enough to carry it. (And neither is Balthier, sorry.)

I kept pushing ahead thinking it would get better but after almost two full days of my life down the drain hours-wise, I gave up and started up some other games.

A battle system that I don't like will kill a game for me (hello, 3 hours of Last Remnant being enough to make me never want to go near it again). I honestly don't love XII's, but it wasn't even a factor in how much I have no interest in ever picking this game back up.

People talk about XIII being too linear (among a vast array of other complaints), but at least that had a story and some characters I gave a shit about. It's nowhere near being a beloved game of mine, and I don't love the combat, but I'd take it over this hot pile of desert garbage any day.

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 have feels invested here. I played this partway through on the PS2 then quit maybe due to WoW or another MMO, maybe due to left my ex husband, the system, and the memory card. Probably a bit of all of the above. This saga started about 11 years ago, for me. I played through Revenant Wings on the DS, which used the same characters and world but felt prettiy discrete, overall. It may have helped that I had already been introduced to the characters in the original game, though.

Let's get the point, shall we? I enjoyed this game enough to dump a stupid amount of time (111 hours?!) into it. There's probably at least 5-10 of idle time when I wasn't actively playing, and honestly who knows HOW MANY hours in the License screen. Sometimes I wonder if I want to start to stream my (Completely Ameteur) gameplay but I opted out hard on this one. There's nothing fun about watching someone flip through the License screen over and over and over again. Then add the Zodiac Age effect and suddenly you've doubled it.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Ivalice, ever since playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced, which I loved with all of my being. It was a day like any other.... It's fun to see the Bangaa, Viera, Moogles.. though the Nu Mou were missing and suddenly we have Seeq.. but whatever. Lizards, bunnies, and cottonballs. It was nice to see them again.

The game features a classic Final Fantasy epic plotline. You go places, you do things, you ride chocobos, and you meet Cid. You probably also ride on an airship at least 2 times. Empires vie for dominance and the little guy fights to avoid being crushed.

As far as characters go, I kind of really don't like Vaan. I hardly think I'm alone in that, though. Balthier and Fran are the gems of this game. If every other character was just secondary and the game focused on Balthier and Fran I'd be just as happy. Basch is ok, though. Ashe is meh. Penelo is mehX2.

My two complaints:

1. the classic problem of the end of the game takes infinity hours without allowing you to save"
2. I could not and, in fact, did not want to spend the time figuring out the sudden puzzles that were thrown in during the second to last act. I hate when I feel I have to follow a walkthrough or guide to get through a game but there was purely no way I was smashing my head against the riddles to find sense.

Overall, if you're a Final Fantasy franchise fan, you obviouisly should play this game. I'm not sure I'd pick it as the first game for a person new to the series, though. Even Balthier and Fran couldn't make this entirely without drag.

A tip, though: set up steal and poach gambits or you're going to spend forever grinding gil to buy gear.

I played this on PC through Steam using a PS4 controller, I do not recommend keyboard control (there is not strafing and I just couldn't get comfortable without it).

Being the first Final Fantasy game I have played fully (and just happened to pick this up on whim), I absolutely adored this game. It has a bit of a Star Wars-esque type fantasy to the story, especially with many of the non-human characters and discussion about the Empire, but don't be swayed if you do not know/do not like Star Wars - it's nothing like it! As a note, I have not play the original Final Fantasy XII, so I am unable to make comparison for this remastered version.

Story: To be honest, I forgot about the main story once I got fully invested into the game because I was so focused on exploring and the gameplay. The overall tale is a pretty simple: a war destroys a kingdom and it is up to the princess to regain her status back against the evil warlord with the help of her friends. I can't say too much else without risking spoilers, but I would honestly say you do not have to pay too close attention to the story.

Characters: I did not have a strong attachment to any particular character, but it did make for easier grinding as I wanted all of my party members to have consistent levels. You will be assigning two jobs to each character, so you have the ability to adjust their strengths and weaknesses accordingly. The one character who stood out the most for me was Balthier, but he was certainly portrayed as the "leading man" type anyways - it is natural for people to like him.

Gameplay: This is incredible. I cannot believe how invested I became purely for its amazing gameplay. As mentioned, each character will get up to two jobs assigned, which will dictate their weapons, armor, magic, technicks, and so on. You will utilize a license board with license points earned in battle in order to get better skills, weapons, and so forth to continue strengthening each character. Additionally, you can add up to 12 gambits - which are automatic action sequences assigned for each character to perform during battle. For simple examples, "Foe: any - Action: attack" or "Ally status= KO - Action: Arise." These can be adjusted at any point, including in the middle of the battle, and you can adjust guest members as well (a feature that was not part of the original FFXII game).

Length: It is a long game, even if you do not put in effort to do side quests and missions. Honestly, it is a waste if you skip all those parts because it is the best method to grinding without it feeling mindless. By the end of the game, my characters were mid-50 in levels, and this was including performing side quests, hunting marks, and collecting Espers. Unlike older jrpgs, I did not have to go to a dungeon and run around aimlessly just to grind. You should want to settle into this game and do as much as you can - it is just a lot of fun.

Extra Stuff: One of the big actions you will perform during the story is collecting an Esper - some of them occur during the story and others are optional. And when I say optional, some required some pretty ridiculous amount of steps in order to obtain. At the end of the game, I obtained 10 of the 13 total - the final 3 optional ones were simply too powerful and I lost interest in grinding at that point. You assign Espers via the license board, but you want to be careful about assigning - specific jobs will receive beneficial skills while others gain nothing (look up a guide for more information).

Hunting marks is an excellent way to grind as well as to obtain some gil and loot. I found it best to hunt marks when there is a guest in the party system in between story missions, but this won't always be the case. You can receive marks from the notice board in the bars as well as from Montblanc at the Clan center (which I did not realize until super late in the game). Marks will be divided up in level type (I-VII), but will also range in strength within their level as well.

Mist abilities are skills you will gain through the license board. Each character will get up to 3 abilities, which are used during battle. I didn't find these abilities particularly helpful and used them rarely, but it is another skill set to have on hand.

tl;dr: It is great game. If you like jrpgs and spending long hours playing, play this.