An argument for Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age's place in your backlog.

The shortest possible personal history of Final Fantasy I could give is to simply state that I’ve been abused mercilessly by anime tropes as I’ve tried to ‘grow’ along with the series since it's inception. I don’t want to be that anti-anime guy, I’m honestly not a for-reals hater outside of some hyperbolic shaming I do for the sake of posterity. The trouble I have with Final Fantasy 7, 10, 10-2, 13, 13-2 and to some extent 15 are the gasping, belabored anime drama tropes, essentially Barbie’s Sci-Fi Adventure 2 Self-Esteem: Japan Edition, that have focused too much on the dwindling Japanese RPG market while not even attempting to write for the “western” audience. Who do I blame? Kingdom Hearts fans and people who support the absolute trash factory that is Tetsuya Nomura's creative team at Square Enix. I have never liked his character designs, his meager design contributions to Final Fantasy VI are negligible, and it has been a wicked sore point for me since Final Fantasy X blew up in popularity. I hate his designs. Anytime he has headed a game in the last ten years it has gone off the rails into development hell and you can’t blame Square Enix for everything. The point?

Final Fantasy XII was different than any other main entry in the series before it: It was a forward-thinking reduction of JRPG tropes that simultaneously retained the core essence of the series SNES popularity while making bold, modern choices with the battle system.

The trouble I have with Final Fantasy XII’s place in history is that it was so maligned for it’s resemblance of a MMORPG that it sits at the bottom of many FF fan’s favorites lists. I sit scoffing on the side of justice and truth, and posit that those who disliked the game were scared, conservative JRPG fans whose thought crimes were perpetuated by casually RPG fans who feared that RPGs would trend into messy, pointless MMORPG experiences sans personality or story. (Or hey, lots of folks don’t like it just because it wasn’t more Final Fantasy X, a putrid brain-dead abomination of a game.) History is on FFXII’s side! Why? Because it wasn't actually an MMORPG at all, it just looked like one. Fact is that FFXII’s battle system does not resemble an MMORPG outside of how it looks when you initiate battles. Having the decision to choose how automated the repetitive tasks of moment-to-moment FF battles are is not a bad thing. In 2017's live-action cyberpunk dystopia JRPGs have stagnated into cheaply made anime showcases full of juvenile coming-of-age stories for giggling hentai-obsessed Vita owners. Final Fantasy XII was the right way to start modernizing the series and Nomura’s Final Fantasy XV totally felt like his team came to the realization that FFXII had already done things right. Having played both games again within a month of each other gives me confidence that the core experience of Final Fantasy XV is a polished up, shiny version of XII (not including the cringefest boy band ensemble). Anyway, the twelfth main entry in the Final Fantasy series was a revelation back in 2006 and I’m still salty that the rest of my JRPG fandom didn’t join me for the ride and instead chose the incredibly shallow and embarrassing world of Kingdom Hearts. Into the storm-like cyber future the JRPG continues to dissolve into the creepiest of niche fan service, here I am barely still a fan and damn happy to be playing this game again.

Why is Final Fantasy XII so different from every other Final Fantasy game? Simple: The core creative artists and design team were almost entirely ex-Quest (Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre) folks who cut their teeth with Square making Vagrant Story and the Final Fantasy Tactics series. The world of Ivalice is some of the most detailed and mature world-building of any Final Fantasy related projects. Their stories are mature, political, and have easily understood overarching themes that never dwell in the teenage, unformed frontal lobe, conflict-with-gawd, emotional catastrophes that are Nomura’s character examinations. Whoa! I love Final Fantasy Tactics. I have the original PSX game, and the ‘War of the Lions’ version on Vita and on my iPhone, too. I love it, but I can’t beat the game. For whatever reason I’m too impatient and have trouble sticking with it. Chalk it up to just being too stupid for chess or whatever. Regardless of my skills, I ended up buying their next game Vagrant Story, which served as sort of template for a lot of things the team would do in FFXII: The use of precise texture drawing/painting on relatively blocky polygons to great effect, the restrained and intentioned palette, and everything from character design to a story chock full of political intrigue and examinations of social structures. That game was amazing. So, back in 2003 I bought Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for GBA and loved it simply because it was the baby version of Final Fantasy Tactics made for a younger, dumber audience. I was obsessed with the game, going out on missions and skirting time limits and modifying jobs. I was addictive as all hell, I played it about three times in a row the month that I bought it. That game is one of the many reasons I still love my GBA more than any other Nintendo handheld. For my taste, the general creative team behind these games were on a roll. I’d spent years playing each of their games. But the reality was that ‘who’ had been making these games was a complex shuffling of artists and producers with each project and as these projects grew bigger, so did their budget and staff. Yatsumi Matsuno was apparently kind of awful to work with, he didn’t like co-chairing the production with Hiroyuki Ito and his illness had troubled him for years. For a fan like me, Ito’s involvement in XII was cause for excitement when it was announced because he was a big part of Final Fantasy IX, which had the best world of the FF games on PSX (the ending was completely befuddling, though). Ito would eventually fully take the helm for XII after Matsuno had left, along with a lot of the original FFXII team (who went to work with Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Mistwalker instead.) So, I waited about four years for the game to come out. It was the catalyst for me digging into more and more stuff outside of the RPG genre, with only The Last Story on my radar. Oh man, The Last Story is another game I could write thousands of words on. If you are reading this because you just kinda love Final Fantasy XII and you haven’t played Mistwalker's The Last Story, that game is entirely a reaction to FFXII and featured a ton of folks who left FFXII mid-production before the final push to finish. There are many artistic similarities between the games, with the Last Story perhaps being sorely disaffected by the Wii controls.

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Final Fantasy XII’s story is mature and focused. It never depends on belabored suffering or childish frustration for impact, and the presentation of the story emphasizes a desire for resolve above dwelling on problems. In this way FFXII is inspiring and feels more “adult” compared to the more teenaged focus of the PSX era of Final Fantasy. It also never veers off into obscure garbage-assed metaphysical chatter. Fans who express frustration with Vaan and Penelo are likely to have never finished the game, as they are not a huge part of the game's plot after the first 5-6 hours. They are lighthearted curs who are just along for the journey and offer a unique point of view for a JRPG of its time. The two function just like Locke in Final Fantasy VI, where they provide a neutral point-of-view to observe the main protagonists (Baltheir, Ashe and Basch.) Their story is remarkably succinct, builds an intriguing open world and places you into it with frequent updates to the changing climate of the war sweeping over southern Ivalice. The political intrigue never teeters too far into complex or overtly personal storytelling like FF Tactics. The esoteric Japanese ’emotional journey’ of the main hero is so tastefully downplayed in FFXII that it makes Ashe likable, strong, and simple as a story focus, with the competing analog of Vaan serving as emotional solidarity rather than cheesy corny anime trope focus. The people of Ivalice are cunning, witty, and speak in arcane English a half step removed from Shakespeare. Baltheir was perhaps the best character to come from a Final Fantasy game since FFVI and it’d be a shame if you missed any of his contributions to the story both as a confident sky pirate or disenfranchised heir. The story is one of revolution, resistance against oppression and defiance of those who lust for the power of crystals formed by puppet-master false Gods. By eliminating the coveted crystals, a destructive power divined by false Gods that allowed man to rule over others, the conclusion of Final Fantasy XII offers a moment of freedom against tyrannical leaders. I appreciated the implications of the fable.

Coming back to this game and experiencing the story, cut-scenes, and exposition only reminded me how jarringly bad FFXIII was at the time with it’s childish, teenage anime heroes, glossy world, and pretentious, long-winded meaningless story. How fucking abstract did sci-fi Final Fantasy need to be? On the flipside Ashe’s story of overcoming the need to use the crystal's dark power to avenge her dead husband is humbly performed, but remains a powerful parable. Her story is one of the most concrete and mature central plots to a Final Fantasy game, ever. The game itself is remarkably “grounded” in terms of the oldest SNES games as well: FFXII doesn’t go to space, doesn’t fight surprise incomprehensible Dark Lord figures you've never heard of, it stays in the world of Ivalice. Granted it is a big ass magical world. Ivalice’s mixture of high fantasy with hints of steam-punk is exactly in line with games like FF 4, 5, 6, and 9 but contains the series greatest diversity in terms of races (uh, ok but I will concede that all humans in Ivalice are white.) It is worth noting that Matsuda’s original vision for the story is remarkably in tune with the first Star Wars movie and some of the battle scenes among ships feel like they were ripped out of Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I’m not a big Star Wars guy but the influence on the first half of the plot and presentation is undeniable and hey, pretty good too. The absolute best thing about experiencing Final Fantasy XII again in 4K is seeing the story play out and remembering how beautiful and huge the game was. It should be pretty concrete by now that the game was ahead of it’s time in an era where JRPGs, and their fans, were becoming regressive and preservationist.

There are many flaws that couldn't be ironed out of FFXII with a graphics filter and up-res: The camera sucks, the voice acting is wildly inconsistent, and once you've used fast-forward it's hard to stop and smell the roses. Voice acting is plentiful throughout the game but is generally a mixed bag. Most of the main cast is amazing but a few are decidedly awful: The Marquis’ accent is basically a Apu from the Simpsons, the romantic Rosarrian guy and his silly Zorro accent needed an Ennio Morricone guitar number for how cheesy it was. Judges, law-bringers and protectors of royalty, speak within their helmets like Stormtroopers (or conversely Bane) making for an oddly canned vocal effect. Flowery olde-English speech is sometimes silly when paired with the decidedly UK-based cast, but it works well enough the same way it did in Dragon Quest VIII and Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. It’s a shame they couldn’t clean up the actual quality of the voice cast’s tracks for the remaster as some of it sounds compressed and cheaply done. Think of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night‘s voiceover as a reference. The music is another story, this is probably my favorite score for a Final Fantasy game as it is very fitting for the locales and the fantasy setting. Hitoshi Sakimoto is responsible for some really incredible soundtrack work: Radiant Silvergun, FF Tactics/Ogre Battle, and most all of the Vanillaware games (Dragons Crown, Odin Sphere etc.) and his collaboration on the soundtrack is exceptional. The re-orchestrated soundtrack is very similar to the original but features some extended pieces and different placement of tracks in some locations. While I enjoyed the re-orchestrated version, most of my playthrough stuck with the original score as I felt it was already very effective.

The controls are just fine but my major gripe with FFXII is the awful camera positioning and field of view, the vision cone is (like most PS2 games) set so intensely close to the party leader that you miss the vistas in the game and you can’t literally see the screen filling mega-bosses simply because you’re stuck behind your leader’s shoulders. It made sense in 4:3 but not in widescreen 4K on my giant TV. Enemy designs are pretty awesome in this game, so it blows that you often can't get a good look at them. So, the camera sucks. Well, how does it play? Oh, you didn’t know? Final Fantasy XII can eventually be set up so that you can set AI parameters for each member of your party and battles will play out automatically. Does this work very well during boss fights? Well, I wouldn’t recommend relying on the Gambit system entirely. Not only is that kind of boring, but you’ll need to exploit weaknesses and be able to adapt during fights. Most of the late game bosses, Esper fights, optional hunts and final bosses require you to strategically prepare and adjust tactics on the fly. Bosses have phases of attacks, and often use palings (buffs that can't be debuffed.) The great secret of FFXII's gameplay? It can be played like an Action RTS game that has more in common with Dragon Age: Origins than any other Final Fantasy game. The second best secret of FFXII? You don’t have to automate anything. You can finish the whole game making every single decision in the battle menus as you would in any previous entry in the series. On paper it really is just the ATB system from the SNES games from the perspective of a third person action game. Having the choice to automate things such as automatically using a Phoenix Down when KO'd, or using Fire spells on an enemy weak to Fire spells, is incredibly useful.

Much like Final Fantasy XV, you'll likely have the most fun doing Hunts for Marks, side-questing, and the rare game hunts. But hey unlike FFXV if you decide to forego the greatest challenges and side-quests of the game, you'll still get a great story. I had my fun replaying FFXII in HD, and the amount of changes they've made in the remastered version are substantial. I feel validated in keeping it up there as one of the very best Final Fantasy games in the series. It absolutely has flaws and battle system quirks that only reveal themselves when fighting the game’s hardest bosses, but as a full JRPG experience it is still peerless in world, story, and design.

Edited/shortened from original post on grizzlybutts.com

Do you really think it sits at the bottom of the list of many FF fans? I've never gotten that impression, strange. FF12 is awesome and I thought it's super highly regarded.

The Zodiac Age was really great to play through. I was able to set up my gambits and job classes so I barely had to do any direct control, even on the end bosses. I really do feel it's the most underrated of the modern final fantasy entries. I definitely think Greg Kavasin got it right in is original review for the ps2 version when he called the Star Wars entry to the final fantasy universe. The empire and their judges and army have a real sith empire vibe to them. Garabranth has a real Darth Vader vibe in particular. And you can liken Bach to luke skywalker, bathlier as han solo, fran as fem chewy, princess ache/princess laya, as well as Vaan and Penelo to R2D2/C3PO. The Vaan and Penelo connection is the strangest to me. Like R2D2 and 3PO, Vaan is basically just along for the ride and are more of a representation of the audience watching the movie/game. So its kind of strange how he is the one that gets direct control in cities which in Final Fantasy lore would dictate him as the main character.

My major gripes with the game are only that the story starts off amazingly strong and basically slowly winds down constantly until the end of the game. Also, I still may go back and do all the hunts but I wish they added an easier way to find out all the info for a particular hunt. Having to go into the the clan primer and find the correct hunt to display the largest location instead of just having all your current hunts on the main map is a bit of a hassle. Still loved this game a lot though. I specifically bought the physical steel book version just so I have it in 10 or so years when PS4 emulation is possible. It's definitely a game I will want to play through every few years or so.

I'm only about half way through (if I include optional stuff) with characters around level 40. I'm adoring it. While I wish there was a respec option available, forcing to pick 2 jobs has been a real boon to my investment in the game mechanically. Whereas before someone always ended up being superfluous on my team (usually Fran), the Zodiac Age has lead me to have two distinct parties.

Loving this game, I recommend it to the same degree as Xenoblade Chronicles (one of the best JRPG's of the past decade).

Well, yes and no. I think fans who actually played through it and finished it largely hold it in high regard. I meant to point towards people who took issue with the combat mechanics and never bothered to finish it. It did review incredibly well, but a lot of the discussion about the game on GameFAQs and places like that centered around 'mmo' style gameplay and Vaan being annoying. To be fair, I haven't kept my finger on that pulse and a lot of where I'm coming from are thoughts I haven't revisited since 2006-2007.

It's my favorite Final Fantasy, though I haven't picked up Zodiac Age yet. I also really, really like the comparison to Dragon Age: Origins... had never picked up on it before, but yes, it's like that (only earlier) and that game too is something stellar

I can't say I agree with the idea FFXII has a good story. Although it's nice to know someone liked it. Even the people I've talked to who love the game generally state that Balthier was pretty cool but it's not a game you play for the story.

I think when I first played through the game it was coming off of WoW, so the combat felt like I was playing through a series of wow dungeons with bots with me playing healer. Not too entertaining and I never really felt challenged by the game. Probably my least favorite Final Fantasy.

Yeah, I more or less agree. The stakes don't really ramp up until the final moments of the game. The amount of side-questing that opens up after the Great Crystal pulls you away from the story for too long. Comparing Vaan and Penelo to C3PO and R2D2 really made me laugh. Not because it is absurd, it isn't, but because it puts them in their place in a funny way.

The optional stuff is worth it. You might get too overpowered for the final boss, but the gear you get from Hunts is worth it. I made the mistake of trying to get the Zodiac Spear, when multiple pairs of Genji Gloves might be more useful (if you're doing the Rare Game Hunt side-quest at Phon Coast). I ended up having to keep my Red Battlemage and White Mage in the party for most of the harder boss battles, because you need fast casting white magic users against a lot of the instant KO spells.

I really want to play the Xenoblade games, it's a shame they're all Nintendo exclusives.

The game itself is remarkably “grounded” in terms of the oldest SNES games as well: FFXII doesn’t go to space, doesn’t fight surprise incomprehensible Dark Lord figures you've never heard of,

I just want to note that Final Fantasy IV has you fight a mountain sized robot and takes you to the fucking moon and the final boss is a two-part fight, first with the moon-being Zemus (a cutscene, really) and then the physical manifestation of Zemus's hatred, Zeromus. If that's not anime as fuck, I don't know what is.

But yeah, I like FFXII. Vaan can, at times, pop in and be an anime teenager, but it doesn't happen that often and characters usually give him some shit for it. Do I like it more than I liked FFVI? Maybe? I liked FFVI a whole hell of a lot, I'm not sure if I can say for sure that I think FFXII is better, but I've been playing the Zodiac Age version and I'm still enjoying it a lot. It's easily a better game than what I played of VII, IX, X, and XIII, though I did wind up enjoying what I played of those games as well.

These days, Final Fantasy XII seems to have way more respect than it did even when I first played it in 2011. Generally, people have warmed up to it, that and the loud and very vocal disdain for XIII seemed to drown out most complaints people had about XII.

Also I like Kingdom Hearts. That first game is a bad game but I still enjoyed it when I played through it again last year. I seriously doubt that series is the one to blame for JRPG's becoming less and less mainstream and being more and more "anime" - they were always very "anime", it's just that technology marched on to the point where they could look the part instead of just looking like pixels and polygons and people suddenly realized that what they had been playing was, pretty much, anime.

@grizzlybutts: Getting overpowered isn't an issue for me. I've been doing all the hunts as they unlock because when I played FFXII originally many years ago, leaving them to the end really ruined my interest in them and messed up the pacing of the finale. As a result, I've been overpowered for basically every story fight in the game, but that's fine because it means I can explore ahead of the story. I ended up running around the Nabreus Deadlands before the story was done with Mt. Bur-Omisace. I've been visiting locales and stumbling upon Espers in a way that feels like it's actually my story rather than a set order of locations. Playing it this way reminds me of what it's like to play Dark Souls with the master key: while obviously to a lesser degree, it's impressive how many short-cuts and connections the overworld has if you're willing to overcome the more powerful enemies earlier (especially after you unlock your Second Jobs).

Wasn't The Last Story also a Nintendo exclusive? How could you play one of the "Operation Rainfall" games but not Xenoblade Chronicles? Not that you have to go back and play it (there are lots of fantastic games) but they are both on the Wii. Finishing the Last Story is actually on my list of games to return to (along with Pandora's Tower) but there are so many great games I'm playing, I may never get around to it... especially since I need to finish Xenoblade Chronicles X first... Also I've secretly never gone through the point of no return in the original Xenoblade Chronicles because I didn't want it to end. I need to do that before the sequel comes out.

Yeah depending on how you read that sentence thats what I was saying. It is way more grounded compared to most FF games, I was actually referring to III, IV and V in particular. Final Fantasy XII has been through the same critical wringer that TLoZ: The Wind Waker did, where folks are put off by it at first but hey 10 years later everyone realizes it's amazing after an HD upgrade.

I know what you mean, I basically did the same thing. I'd do everything I possibly could until I was forced to continue with the story. There's something scary and awesome about going to the Necrohol of Nabudis and figuring out the hunts and Exodus quest when you're underleveled. On my playthrough of the original game I avoided it until I was well over level 60. I played the Last Story on Wii, and kept the game but didn't keep my Wii. I'm not willing to spend what people are asking for copies of Xenoblade Chronicles, but if I ever decide to get another Wii U (first one broke when moving) I might try out Xenoblade Chronicles X. Those are definitely the types of games I love to sink a couple hundred hours into.

I thought the judges looked really cool and it was a neat tonal shift for the FF series. But apart from thinking Basch and Balthier were pretty good characters, i didn't like the story at all.

Fran felt like a total nothing character. Her being described as a Chewbacca type of character is the best you can say about her. And Panelo.. Panelo might be my least favorite final fantasy character ever. That voice made me angry. Didn't care for her big sister hugs all the time neither.

Personally i don't feel that Kingdom Heart was this big juggernaut of a JRPG that was the antithesis to the storytelling as seen here. I remember Kingdom Hears 1 being a pretty big deal , and Kingdom Hearts 2 as well. But after that i remember a lot of 'oh, they make a new kingdom hearts title for which platform now? oh okay.. Oh they made another game for a different platform? oh..' It didn't feel like a franchise that was causing people in meeting rooms to be like 'Look at this thing! we need to put more anime in our RPG's! . That was something that was already happening in a lot of japanese games.

I never understood all the weird hate for Penelo. She's a pretty standard (for anime) genki girl_not-girlfriend and not even that important the plot. Only issue I could see with her is that they painted her panties on the outside of her outfit, but it's definitely not the worst_FF outfit, or even the worst in FFXII.

What really bothered you about her?

@grizzlybutts: I thought you meant that Final Fantasy XII was as grounded as those old SNES games. My bad.

Also, fun fact: Xenoblade Chronicles the first is available on the Wii U e-shop and I think it's 20 bucks, American. At least it was last time I checked. EDIT: Also apparently it lets you play the game with the Wii U gamepad so you don't even need to bust out the Wii-Mote.

@freedom4556: It's been years since i played FF12 so i might be off on this , but this is how i remember it.

She comes across as a very childish person with a high pitched voice. But she's acting as the older 'sister' of Vaan, which means that she initiates a lot of awkward hugs which Vaan seemed to not always be on board with. It also felt like she never really had anything meaningful to contribute to the story apart from getting captured by the enemy. Her weird young-kid onesy outfit paired with the pigtail haircut also didn't help to paint her as this wiser big sister figure. I think Lulu from FFX is actually much better at fulfilling that role. When i played FF13, i was afraid Vanille would be similarly used as Panelo, but she actually had a pretty cool backstory and more depth as a character.

Weirdly enough , I'm totally fine with a girl like Selphie from Final Fantasy 8 who is similar type of Pixie-girl. She even sings about trains! I wonder if they voiced her, if i would feel different about it.

Also, i'm not an anime watcher, so i don't see these character-archetypes all too often.

I thought the same back in the day, but playing through the story again changed my mind. None of the main characters are particularly offensive, in fact most of them are a little too subdued. Although, I see how you might equate Penelo with someone like Selphie or Vanille... but she's actually way less irritating. Did you play the first Grandia? She's basically Sue and you're Justin. She's annoying and chipper for like 3 cut-scenes in the first two hours of the game. Otherwise she just gives Vaan shit for a total of 30 seconds towards the end of the game. I didn't hear enough of her voice to get annoyed honestly, unlike Vanille.

Kingdom Hearts is perhaps the worst thing man has ever created.

@onemanarmyy: Penelo is officially younger than Vaan, which probably colored my view of her. I always took her as the little sister figure. Made most of her behavior seem pretty normal. I also tend to have a soft spot for this archetype.

Vanille on the other hand was way more annoying, what with her shapeshifting Australio-British accent.

I burnt out on the Remaster after spending hours grinding and doing all the hunts. I got to a super hard hunt that I didn't realize there was a trick to it that made it super easy until the 6th try, only to find out I couldn't cash in the hunt because the NPC wouldn't be around till later in the game. I was so pissed I quit the game and haven't touched it since. I will probably get back to it sometime but like FFX remaster, I hit a brick wall that ruined my fun (blitzball).

I finished the game about as well as I could (aka. all the achievements), and it was a pretty fun thing to do. 3 playthroughs over the years and I've still never learned my lesson about keeping everyone levelled though, Vann never even made it into the double digits. Side note, doing everything, I never noticed just how egregious the palette-swapping was in this game. I swear there are only like 10 actual enemies stretched across the entire map.

I also enjoyed the story a fair bit this time around, it's certainly not the most engaging or exciting story but it has its moments (most of them involving Balthier). I think it's also one of the better examples of the "seedy gods behind everything" trope, just because it's not as in-your-face about it. Considering I was consistently surprised by everything having an actual meaning in the plot, I think it just went 100% over my head back when I played it the first time in high school. Also Vaan and Penelo get a lot of shit but they're so inoffensive that I really don't know how people were so riled up about Vaan back in the day, especially when we already had Eiko, Cait Sith, and the entire cast of FFVIII, to compare them to.

Oh, and I never want to see another Yiazmat as long as I live. The sod.

I dropped off Final Fantasy after 10, but seeing the 12 remaster made me want to play it. Hopefully it comes to PC?

I can tell you what riled me up about Vaan back in the day. His shirtless pretty boy look went fully past anime and into a more stereotypically gay look. They had been slowly sliding from something that looked cool and vaguely manly, through emo, past Meg Ryan hair, and then into this. I was a teenager and in a different place back then, though. But still, you heard similar criticism leveled at Noctis and the gang in FFXV. Cultural differences, what can I say... Maybe if Vaan had his Tactics Advance A2 character design, then people wouldn't have been nearly as put off, who knows?

I'm really looking forward to playing this, but I'm hoping it hits PC at some point.

@freedom4556: The shirtless guy wearing a sequined vest is just hilariously bad in every culture.

@teddie: To be fair most of them aren't simple palette swaps, they toss in a few polygons here and there, but you're right. Like why am I fighting teleporting ghost horses in the great crystal? If you just look at the 20 variations of Wyrm in the game, they just kept piling shit on the designs. Hell wyrm has so much crap stacked on his design it's comical. FF13 enemy design used the exact same method for variety.

FF Xii had some definite problems, but boy did I love that game.

I hope if there's another single player FF game that FF goes back to high fantasy era stuff like FFVi, Xii etc instead of the futuristic stuff like Vii, Viii, Xiii etc

I really like FFXII, but I think they made this remaster WAY too easy. I basically plowed through the game at the 4x speed setting until I was too bored with it to go on.

Ha, I don't like FF XII OR Kingdom Hearts!

Well that not true, XII is okay-ish, but I can't get behind it being some misunderstood masterpiece. Even as someone who found FF X way too melodramatic (not to mention dumb) and welcomed XII's more mature tone, I still think the story is awfully dry, poorly paced, and pretty uninteresting at the end of the day. Usually the characters are what would carry that kind of story, but most of them are dull too. Balthier is decent, but I was disappointed in Ashe and Basch not really going anywhere, not to mention the painful uselessness of Vaan and Penelo (who make up a third of the main cast). And I always thought the length it goes to copy Star Wars prequel imagery is just bizarre. Who thought Phantom Menace was still cool in 2006?! Even in terms of tone and world building I'd take Tactics Ogre/FF Tactics/Vagrant Story over XII any day.

I know what I hate about her: she's just as useless to the story as Vaan, but revolves around Vaan for some inane reason. She's Vaan sqaured.

Naw, I'd still take all of them over those two. Especially Eiko, who's GREAT! Best magical little girl party member ever.

I hope this release sells well so it can lead to more games around these gameplay systems.

@xanadu: I agree. I wish the hunts were easier to access.

The game has a fantastic opening but deflates/loses energy towards the end. I'm curious if this is related to issues during the games original dev time.

I hope they can revisit the gambit system in the future.

I have it, I kind of like it. However I cannot deal with the loading screens. I doubt I'll ever install it again

It was in my top 10 last year but the dungeon I was last in was very taxing. It makes Persona dungeons look like a piece of cake.

For reference I was about to start "The Pharos of Ridorana," whatever that was. I don't know how far into the game I was.