Duders, tell me about this game! OR, Quick Look please!

I'm a pretty casual FF fan. I've played FF1, 7, 10, 13, 13-2, and am currently playing 15. But, confession time, while I've sunk many hours into all of these, I only ever finished 13. Usually either the grind will turn me off, or the story or combat system won't keep me engaged for more than 40 hours or so. (I know it is divisive, but I absolutely loved 13's combat system).

In truth, I only really started appreciating JRPGs 5 or so years ago, so whenever one of these HD re-releases or remakes comes out, making the older FF games more accessible, I like to check it out. But I'm completely blind to FF12. I don't know what a zodiac job or a license board are. How does this game compare to the other entries in the series, mechanics and story wise? What was it's reception like 10 years ago from FF fans?

I hope to see @rorie doing a Quick Look of this game next week!

I think people generally agree the 13 series have an excellent combat system. If you love it, I highly recommend Lightning Returns. It has a heavily modified version of the battle system and it is the bomb.

I can't really speak about the 12 remaster that's coming out because it's the international version that wasn't released in the US. I've heard the combat system is completely reworked so I'm sure it's quite different from what I've played but you assign your quad a chain of AI behaviors before hand and you can also pause and micromanage during battle if you need to. The game is a single player mmo with a really addictive loop and a massive world that's fun to explore. It's my 2nd favorite FF among the ones I've played but story-wise it's one of the weakest. Very flimsy like FF15 but definitely not as badly told. It has some good characters but some of the most forgettable ones too. It's not a super hard game so I don't think you'd need to grind that much but I spent over a 100 hours 'cause it was just so fun. As someone who never got into mmos, I like to think I got a taste of a good one. FF series is great 'cause every full entry is so different from each other and 12 is arguably the most different.

Final Fantasy XII is way different from most Final Fantasies. You could almost call it an open world game. Its story is basically Star Wars, even if it doesn't really appear that way at first, but it's got some interesting characters in it and I don't recall any of them being particularly annoying.

Also, people should play that game on a PS2 and just stop and think about one thing while playing it. This shit is running on a fucking Playstation 2. There was some kind of black magic being practiced at Square Enix to get a game that looks as fucking good as FFXII to run and run smoothly on a PS2.

Anyway, graphics and story aside, the combat is actually not a huge leap from the SNES/PS1 era of Final Fantasy games. You have an ATB gauge. When that gauge fills up, a character can perform an action. The difference is in presentation and I think the way the combat is presented is actually really clever. There are no random encounters or anything - you can see pretty much any encounter from pretty far away. When you get in range of the enemy or the enemy notices you, a line goes from your character to that enemy (meaning you're targeting that enemy) and the rest of your party jumps into action, with lines going from them to whatever enemy they're targeting. You can pause the action at any time, change which character you're controlling, give everybody commands, move people somewhere else, etc.

The part where most people get split on this battle system is in the "Gambit" system. You know those if-then things you could customize in Dragon Age: Origins? FFXII's battle system has a much more fleshed out version of that. You can buy gambits from shops - again, basically if-then statements - and then set up individual characters to behave pretty much like you want them to. This system means that you can effectively put the controller down in a lot of combat scenarios, if you're smart about how you set this up. To some, this is pretty satisfying - hey, I'm so smart, I can make the game play itself and never have to worry about it! To others, this is kinda boring - hey, this game is playing itself so why am I necessary again? Only, from what I remember of the game, things can occasionally go real south real quick and most of the boss fights pretty much require that you modify what you're doing a lot.

But let's be honest here - in most Final Fantasy games, most random encounters play out in the same rote, endlessly repeatable manner anyway. In FFXII, you're just automating that "attack attack attack heal after battle!" thing. You can turn gambits on or off in battle or you can just turn them completely off if you're looking for the challenge.

The License Board is what got the most change in the Zodiac version of FFXII. In vanilla FFXII, the License Board looks kinda like a chess board. You start off in the center of it and buy adjacent squares with License Points (I'm not a hundred percent sure if that's what they were called, but for the purposes of this post we'll stick with that). Each square gives you some kind of bonus. Sometimes, it's extra stats - health, strength, etc. Sometimes, a spot on a License Board will let a character use a different type of weapon or spell. The divisive thing about the License Board is that each character mostly gets the same board. There are differences between each character's board, but those differences don't really make a huge impact. By the latter quarter of the game, everybody can do everything - this combined with gambits can make things pretty trivial. Some characters are better at doing certain things than others, sure, but the difference between them isn't that big.

The License Board in the Zodiac Version - which has never been released outside of Japan until this HD rerelease - forces you to pick a job for each character. So now, each job has its own License Board and no two characters should play quite the same way.

I definitely think the game is worth playing, though there's really way too much going on in it for me to think that a Giantbomb Quick Look would adequately demonstrate the game to someone who has no idea what's going on. Maybe Rorie could do it, I think he's shown interest in this game in the past anyway.

EDIT: Also, completely off-topic - about six years ago, I asked pretty much the same question on an online forum and here I am answering that question.

XII is really interesting. It did what Dragon Origins did a long time before it (customizing AI characters with specific routines and skills for certain situations). I remember Greg Kasavin's Review got it right when he said it was the Star Wars game of Final Fantasy. I havent played the zodiac version of and I honestly never finished the original because of hearing insane things about the length of the last boss. Also, while it may be my favorite Final Fantasy to play, the characters and story is a little on the dull side. I'm definitely going to check out the remaster when it comes out but I can't entirely recommend it for light/casual JRPG fans.

Should be interesting. I'm a fan of FF12's world, music, a couple of the characters, the gameplay, and the visuals were impressive back then. I didn't care for the story but the rest of the game felt so big, so full of life and detail that I kept with it. It felt very much like a single player game in an MMO world. If I were to try and describe it, there is something akin to an "end-game" to it. You pretty much reach the standard Final Fantasy / RPG spot where you're about to go for the final showdown, you've got a save point, and you can decide to leave and prepare. At this point in FF12, there is a TON of stuff that opens up. I believe when I first played it, I spent about 120 hours or something, sampling a little of that stuff. I later picked up the save again, maybe a decade later, and continued exploring and unlocking more stuff for another 30 hours I think. Weapons, armor, summons, areas, extra bosses etc. Fine tuning your gambit setup. The monsters are also displayed as creatures walking around the world and not just random battles. If you want to avoid something, you have to find a way around it if you can.

There is also some neat call backs in the game design to FF11 if someone ever played that. Such as the Hunt system (which originated in 11 as "Notorious Monsters") which uses a lot of the same names that they had in FF11.

I always hear people complain about the gambit system which I find a little ridiculous. From my old memory, I don't think you were able to get a lot of the key/important/play-itself gambits until the last section of the game when the merchant has dozens of gambit options for sale. You can also choose not to use them AND you still have to monitor, react, and control stuff in more difficult situations. It just helps streamline the easier, dime-a-dozen mobs.

But we'll see. FF9 is my favorite. 12 is somewhere near the top, even with the dumb story. I've never played the Zodiac version. I'm not dying to play the game again or anything but I've got it on order.

On one side, FF XII had this very cool and mature political storyline with all these generals that wear awesome armor. On the other hand, the game plays like a singleplayer MMO where most NPC's are fairly one dimensional questgivers / shopholders. Your first quest is literally killing rats in a sewer.

Your main character is more an observer than a vital member of the party that pushes the story forward. Overall the partymembers are fine, but don't expect to find a Vivi or Sephiroth type of iconic character in this game. Basch & Balthier are highpoints, while Panelo is the worst pixiegirl of the entire Final Fantasy franchise imo. The combat is fun to explore and tinker around with to make the best team AI for the situation. That said, once you got the hang of it, a lot of fights can start to feel like you're not doing much at all. The combat is still somewhat of an ATB-meter, you target an opponent, a line is drawn from you to your target and once some time has passed, the action will be completed. But you can actually move around so that's neat.

Another cool thing about FF XII is that the world is quite massive and has some good scale to it, in a way that FF 13 doesn't really have. I remember this hulking armadillo walking around that can pretty much crush you under his foot while slowly walking around. All in all, it felt like a pretty mature game for the franchise that lacked personality.

I don't remember too much about it aside it was a relatively late PS2 title and that I enjoyed it a lot when I played it. And I remember being terrified of one particular kind of glowing orb enemy that would be hanging around in certain environments. And the hunts were fun.

The game basically plays itself but I don't really see this as a huge negative. You can set up gambits, which are basically AI routines, like Party Leader's Target: Attack or Any:Esuna so that party member will target the same enemy as you and heal any ailments with esuna as soon as they pop up. You can order your gambits as well so if you put Ally <70%HP: Cure above the attack gambit from earlier that character will stop attacking and cure any ally when their HP drops below 70%.

The Zodiac version basically unlocks most of the gambits at the start so you can get into making more complicated and interesting routines from the get go.

When you defeat enemies you get exp to level up but also LP, license points, to spend on the license board. This allows you to use different weapons, armour, techniques, magic, traits, etc but you still have to buy/find all of these in addition to unlocking the right to use them through the license board.

The zodiac version restricts you to classes, so you pick a class, like black mage, for a character and then they unlock that license board and the specific weapons, spells, buffs, etc for that class, unlike the original where anyone could use anything. This updated version eventually lets you pick two separate classes to use at once however. So for example you could have your second class as a time mage and cast black and time based magic. You're restricted to only 2 classes per character and can't change them once you've chosen.

Story is alright and an interesting change to normal FF stories. It's a bit more political but the majority of your characters are inconsequential and most of them add little to the story and are just there for combat purposes. It's an interesting story but falls flat and kind of wastes it's potential.

I'd recommend giving it a try though, I like it a lot.

I don't get the "plays itself" comments for this game (okay obviously I do, I just don't agree at all), it's not like you suddenly don't have to do anything when you have the AI routines set up. Stuff will go wrong, and in those cases you can pause the game and use a command window like the old games to issue orders to your party. You probably won't have enough places to set up AI routines for every aspect of the game, just the stuff that would get old 50 hours in, like hitting attack or healing people. Some of the fun is just trying to set up the "perfect" gambits as your characters get better abilities, you don't just hit up a guide and put in all the best stuff then never change any of it again. There's also some aspects of positioning/aggro depending on what type of character you're controlling at the time, although that's pretty basic.

Arguably, it's just a better version of the FFXIII combat because you're in control of the party member's AI, can switch between characters and pause whenever you want, and you don't need to mash "auto attack" for the entire duration of the game. This version even has a "speed up" button so if you get bored doing something, you can just blast through it.

Story is whatever, characters are mostly whatever, but I replayed it a few years ago and it was inoffensive at worst, charming at best (mostly everything to do with Balthier for the latter). All you really need to know is that Vaan (an maybe Penelo?) were added as central characters because the people in charge thought the game needed pretty teenz to sell copies. It's essentially a 2nd-person narrative.

The world is huge and beautiful and fun to run around in. The music is on point, but not really all that memorable (I mean, I remember lots of it but it's not stuff I'd enjoy listening to on its own, for the most part).

In short it's a really good JRPG with different but solid mechanics. It is really long though.

XII is the last good Final Fantasy game (I doubt we'll ever get another good one Squeenix has crawled so far up its own ass) and one of my favorites. The combat system is phenomenal. The world is huge and fun to roam. The characters range from tolerable to charming. The story is, uhh, a story. I spent 125 glorious hours trying to 100% it and I never did beat that final optional boss that takes something like 4 hours of constant pounding to take down. Not to mention excruciating amounts of farming to craft the weapons you need to do any damage to it (I never did get Yagyu Darkblades which apparently you need once you get him to half health or so.)

It's my third favorite Final Fantasy (after VII and VI). As other have mentioned, it has a similar AI routine programming system to Dragon Age: Origins, but you can do way, way more with the system in FFXII. I found fine tuning my party's routines and making them a rolling squad of murder endlessly satisfying. Could not be more excited for this remaster (especially since it's the international version that retools things into an interesting variant on the jobs system).

It's probably the FF with the most optional side content to do, and most of it is really good stuff. The soundtrack is fantastic. It's got a (mostly) great cast and a decent story, if you can come to grips with the fact that the "main" characters as originally presented (Vaan and Penelo) have basically nothing to do with most of it.

Keep in mind this is coming from someone who hated XIII with a passion (only FF game I never finished), but XII is the best Final Fantasy game out there, provided you can wrap your head around the combat. Yes, you can set up your party to act automatically, but, particularly early on, you won't be able to just coast through combat. You will have to pay attention to what's happening and make adjustments. That might be a good thing in your case, since it sounds like you want something more involved than standard turn-based stuff (although how you ended up loving XIII's combat of all things I can't figure out).

In terms of the story, I think it's by far the best one since VI. Yes, Vann and Penelo are there for some reason, but most of the characters actually operate as characters as opposed to broad archetypes and the world actually operates as a world, with nations and politics and motivations that actually make sense.

XII was the last final fantasy I really enjoyed. The combat is fun if you like management over action. You aren't doing a whole lot, but you are setting up AI routines and managing them around when something unexpected or unaccounted for happens. The game plays a lot like an mmo in its quest structure so that might be good or bad depending on your preference. The upside to this is that there is soooo much to do in this game. You could easily spend a 100+ hours and have a good time if you're enjoying the core of the game. The characters are alright. Balthier and Basch are great while Vaan and Penelo range from naive to annoying. If you think of Vaan as the main character you will be disappointed. He's just along for the ride and learns lessons along the way. Ashe and Basch are where the real focus is, you just don't start the game out as them. The story can also be a bit dull if politically motivated wars and intrigue don't interest you. But it's mature and interesting compared to recent and past FF games so that part is refreshing. Plus the judges are still the coolest looking characters in any FF game as far as I'm concerned.

XII is really good, XIII's combat is much better but XII is basically better at everything else other than the central plot strength (which is still fine). New stuff from international version is mostly just a whole bunch of side activities/difficult enemies to fight; but you can totally beat every enemy in the vanilla game except two with one or two sets of gambits. That said it's got the Vagrant Story art style and therefore I must sing its praises.

If you have a PS2 it's probably not worth buying it for 50 bucks when you could get it for 5 or whatever; while the game IS worth 50 bucks theoretically it's also not new content or anything so meh; I'll wait for a sale personally. Might be one of many Black Friday games for me this year.

I tried playing it several years ago and lost interest part way through. I didn't like the Gambit system, it felt like a chore to set up and it took way too long to get useful/necessary Gambits. Also Vaan kinda sucked. Even if you argue he's not the real main character, you're still stuck with him being your avatar and interjecting his dumb face into scenes. Also, as I recall, the game had inverted horizontal camera controls with no way to modify them, which is the kind of design decision only crazy people make.

That all being said, I want to give it one more shot with this version, to see if I can overcome those hurdles and appreciate the elements I did like.

The world was interesting but the combat system was not fun at all. I want to play a game not program one.

@thiago123: Final Fantasy XII squeaked in right at the end of the PS2's lifespan after having some development trouble. I remember being both excited that it did come to the older console, and disappointed that it took so long. It had been four years since Final Fantasy XI (which was an MMO, bleah), and previously the series had been almost annual since FFVIII. I hated Vaan at the time; I saw him as the most effeminate and obnoxious FF protagonist yet, and deeply unnecessary to the game's overall story.

Many aspects of XII felt like they were struggling against the PS2's outdated specs, but especially things like graphics and draw distance. I remember that it struck me at the time as an attempt at a "single player MMO" like FFXI since the combat happened in real-time on the main world screen. This was back before things like Dragon Age Inquisition and the use of "SP MMO" as an insult to story, quest, and combat design. I personally didn't mind the combat system (but I went on to become a programmer for a living, so take that for what you will), but I often took control of party members who were misbehaving. I remembered being frustrated at having to unlock critical gambits so slowly over the course of the game. Because of the license board everything had to be essentially double-unlocked, once you had a weapon or armor or skill, you had to unlock the license for it. You also needed to be adjacent to the license you wanted, so there was a Sphere Grid-esque pathfinding element as well.

In the original release of the game, there was no class system, certain characters just came with certain licenses unlocked, and that sort of established their de facto class. This remake is going to be of the International version (which was humorously only ever released in Japan), which introduced a job system (each with different license boards) and some QoL improvements.

I hope they release this on PC as 12 has always been my favourite.

Weird, I feel the opposite way than most. I generally like XIII as a whole, but find its combat to be a huge step backward from XII.

The gambit system is actually pretty good and the game leans into it. Some of the fights are long, some fights are also meant to be fought in successions against multiple enemies sometimes. A certain degree of automation is welcome if not necessary for the most mundane of tasks.

There were some odd quality of life issues, gambit slots and gambit commands should be available earlier if not up front. Perhaps it might overwhelm the player if it is all up front, but definitely should unlock earlier, hiding it behind level and resources was strange. I would even say they need more gambit slots than what's available. The MP regen by moving is odd. It lead to cases where you will be running in circles just to recover MP, standing still won't work. Re casting a buff doesn't extend its duration. Multi target buffs have a range limit along with characters occasionally lag behind. They also took some unnecessary lessons from FFXI such as grinding for drops and monster camping which isn't something a SP game needs (one could probably argue not even MMO should have them, but...)

I like the flexibility the characters and weapons selection provided in the original, each character still have their own slightly different flavor, but depending on what a fight needs (range/melee, magic/physical) it is possible to customize them and swap them in and out of battles, the player have control to almost everything that is available during most of the time (the big difference between XII and XIII). I don't know how I feel about the locked job selection of Zodiac job system. The Zodiac age is suppose to support two jobs per character, but I wonder if it lets characters switch jobs as needed.

The characters weren't bad, the story actually have a very interesting start and set up, but as it goes on it just became bland, by the end it was pretty much forgettable.

@soimadeanaccount: XIII has the best combat in any JRPG period; VP2's is a little more strategic but the general flow is worse. In terms of skill ceiling its not even close (note for the purposes of this argument Nioh and VS are excluded).

So if I didn't enjoy the combat in Dragon Age Origins, I'm getting the feeling I should stay far away from FF12? I like that setting from playing the Tactics games, so that's unfortunate.

Btw is this actually coming out on the 11th and is it a world wide release or just Japan? Seems like there's been 0 press for it.

I wouldn't say that. DA:O was a similar system, but it was a poor implementation of the idea. You didn't have nearly as much control or variety in actions you could set up, and I remember having to fight the AI about things constantly, which was something I don't recall having to do nearly as much in FFXII.

@redhotchilimist: Not really. Imagine it more like active time bar combat like the old FF games, but it's all playing out in real time on the battle field you run around in, and you have to switch your control between characters to issue commands while they move around. The game pauses when you open menus if I remember, so it's not as action-y as XIII. It leans more toward you automating commands you don't want to have to issue every time it don't have time to issue mid combat, while you change who you're controlling to micromanage in combat. It doesn't really feel like DA:O aside from having a much better companion programming system.

FFXII takes more advantage of the gambit system as well in the encounters. You feel rewarded for correctly setting up your gambits for a boss fight because every boss fight hits you with different challenges. Origins was basically just a shallow way of making sure you companions knew that it's a good idea to heal eachother.

XII isn't a mmo right i keep mixing things up ?

@soulcake: Its not, but it has similarities to one. Its still a single player game. Imagine if you were playing an mmo with a solid story and you got to micromanage everyone instead of having to group up with strangers.

@soimadeanaccount:

A certain degree of automation is welcome if not necessary for the most mundane of tasks.

I would say that FF XIII offers players more automation than FF XII. If you want to churn through enemyfodder you start with some commando / ravager paradigm . If you get low on health , you press a button to switch to a healing setup. It even has an auto-battle option so you don't even have to press attack yourself. Personally i quite liked doing it all manually though, especially because juggling was so satisfying and added a fun timing thing to the combat system.

I would rather say that FF XII lets you set up more granular options compared to FF XII, by including all kind of status effects and hp commands. If blinded > use eyedrops , if health <30% use cure , if health >50 % use fira etc.

It was neat gathering these options and setting up a system that works ( somewhat similar to a game like Transistor) but after i played both games i felt that FF XIII pretty much gave me the same options at the cost of hitting the paradigm shift button on the controller a few more times than i would have to in FF XII. But i remember spending more time in menu's in FF XII , so i feel like the busywork of both games can kind of be striped away against eachother.

@fredchuckdave: If you are talking about XIII-3 I can somewhat get behind that one, but at that point the question slightly shifted to do I prefer action or turn base. As for XIII and XIII-2 there are way too many minor flaws that I just can't champion it. XIII and XIII-2 combat system started out pretty good (2 characters 3 roles each), but as more options and specializations become available the limited number of decks just doesn't do itself justice especially compared to how much you could do on the fly in XII.

@onemanarmyy: The issue isn't the automation, that part is fine, I actually think it is pretty smart to limit itself to 6 roles that the AI can do reasonable well. The deck building is a good short cut, but it doesn't go into the details that it could have. The offensive AI isn't that good sometimes, alternating magic and physical attacks when I clearly spec a character purely for one over the other frustrates me to no end. Controlling that one character you have direct control over feels slower than it should. The system was pretty close to being phenomenal if it would let me pause and switch character roles individually in battle, priority targeting (XIII-2 added that somewhat at the cost of another paradigm variables), bonus if it allow weapon/equipment switching, extra bonus if it is smart enough to tie roles to weapon/equipment (kind of like XIII-3, but the combat system also became something different.) These are things that were present at least in parts in X and XII perhaps even unnecessarily, to have XIII backtrack from it was strange, not to mention it is probably the game that could really benefit from these functions.

Sure realistically you don't really need more than 4 different decks per fight if you know exactly what you are up against and spend a few minutes before every fight tinkering decks and weapons/equipment, but when actually putting it all together it doesn't feel like learning, understanding, and exploiting the system, but more about just cobble something general enough that it works most of the times to tip the scale just enough in your favor. The quick reset and retry function felt like a necessity in the grand scheme of things especially in XIII where if the leading character you technically have control over gets knocked out it is game over.

Yeah never could really get onto this one. I think the early game was more fun than the last half of it. Once I had access to the some of the later gambits I didnt really have to do anything. The back half of that game just mostly consisted of me moving the left analog stick and staring at health bars using items accordingly.

It also has my least favorite cast of any Final Fantasy. I just found them to be kind of boring. I think the game fucked up by not taking out Vaan and Peneolo entirely making the story about Balthier and his wookie life partner Fran. The game's antagonist are pretty weak as well. They just kind of come in and out of the story just to die and are completely non-threatening.

I do remember liking the hunting system more than the base game though. The base game can mostly just be steamrolled by the gambit system on its own. But the Hunts require a bit more input on my part which I do remember enjoying.

Looking forward to playing this again. I'm so glad they've removed Quickenings (aka limit breaks) from your MP reserves and give you a traditional limit break mechanic. Curious about the job system, I didn't really have a problem with vanilla FFXII's open licence board.

I have always wanted to like FFXII but I could never drag myself through the original. The international changes might help change my mind but I'm in no rush to try out the remake. It is solidly my second least favorite FF. FFXII is a game with a lot of good systems and good ideas but implemented them in ways that lead to bad player experience.

The gambit system was good idea. Sure make a system where players can control exactly how they want their AI companions to act. Except let's not actually do that and make them slowly unlock the commands over the course of the game. This leads to frustration when you exactly know how you want to tackle a given problem but you just don't have the right gambits available or are a couple slots short of pulling off your planned strategy. Why have the system if I have to manually do it now when I wouldn't have to in a couple more hours.

They stole the fan favorite Notorious Monster system from the mmo FFXI. Which rare monsters that would spawn under various esoteric methods that could drop cool rare loot. They didn't take any necessary steps to adapt the system so it would be enjoyable in a single player game. The spawn rates, obscurity of summoning methods, and drop rates of the items are tuned almost exactly like the mmo. This means playing through the game normally no player would see any of that stuff and the game itself doesn't really hint at that stuff all too much outside of the Hunts. Where as in a mmo you will hear tales of this stuff and you can gather the correct information from other players. Even when you go seek out a guide and actively try to do these things are are usually hyper grindy and the drop rates are usually absurdly low if looking for specific items it just is tedium. These rates makes sense in a mmo where you want to show off status items and have thousands of players grinding the stuff out and populating market boards. Not so much in a single player game.

Now on to the problems of the license board which the international changes have addressed somewhat. I could tell the original intent of the system was to force players to commit to the capabilities of each character. Grinding out the license points takes a very long time and doesn't quite scale in the way experience points does so it is always meant to be quite the hassle. Hence why they added the job system which straight just puts limits on what the characters do. This forces it to work as intended but doesn't fix the actual issues with the system.

One issue being remember that cool very rare loot that you just might get lucky enough to stumble upon? Well there is probably zero chance you have the license to actually use that item without grinding it out or waiting until you are much deeper in the game where it is not that useful.

The other issue was why players would not use the system in the intended way and that was due to equipment and magic being very expensive. Grinding money was even harder than than the already hard to grind license points. Your money pool was effectively gated by available hunts you could complete. This meant you could only have a fraction of the available options. This made the intuitive solution of getting the most bang for your buck. Spells worked a crossed all members of the party as long as they had the license. So by not building them exactly the same you were hurting yourself and you didn't have resources to actually diversify. I haven't heard anything about how the international version addresses that balancing problem.

Those are the main things at rubbed me the wrong way about the game. Other than the story and character mostly being forgettable. And the soundtrack being good just lacking staying power like all post Uematsu FF soundtracks(minus XIV where Soken is killing it).

One thing i do remember being wowed by: The menu screen. This fucking airship flying through clouds and seeing huge cities while epic music plays on the background was extremely impressive. Might be the prettiest main menu screen i've ever seen on a PS2 :P

people love this game so i'll try it again. I got it when i got my ps3.. played if for lik 5min and gave up on it. :) (that and god of war.. something.. had something special when running on the ps3.. maybe HD or something? I too game up on god of war too. I think this was the first time i was a GTE game - and i didn't like it.)

Shame it isn't out on the PC now too (i'd rather play it there), but it is coming tomorrow for the ps4.. so i'll give it another try. (i'm also BORED OUT OF MY MIND! Very empty year for games...)

I assume this has pro stuff with 4k and HDR? :D (of course it doesn't :) )

Same as you OP I've played many a FF game but only ever finished... two? I think 7 & 9. Definitely 7. Every other game I've petered out around half way through. I got pretty close to beating 6 but still didn't.

I bought FF XII when it first came out on PS2 I really liked the combat but sort of bounced off the story. When I was younger I was looking for the scrappy kids save the world type stories. It's been a while, but I remember XII being way more about the bit part the party plays in the grand scheme of things. I'm thinking if I came back to it older and (maybe?) wiser, I'd enjoy it more.

I've never understood the complaints about the game playing itself. If you don't want your characters automated then don't automate them, they never force it on you. I automated my party members and kept full control of Vaan in Active mode because that was what I found most fun. If that's too much then change the battle system to Wait mode and control everyone. If you hated the game cause it played itself it's your own damn fault for playing it that way.

Anyone know if this version has camera options?

It feels like this game should look better. It's not bad, pretty nice art direction and all, but it definitely looks like an uprezzed PS2 game. Nothing quite as impressive as FFXV; the textures from what I can tell are largely the same. But maybe my expectations are out of whack for a port. Might watch a digital foundry thing on it if one exists.

@ripelivejam: Your expectations are definitely waaaay too high if you're trying to compare it to FFXV. FFX remaster should be your point of comparison, or other similar PS2 remasters.

@zeik: @ripelivejam: From what I've seen in the official trailer, it appears Vaan's spray-on abs and such character weirdness was deliberate art design rather than some kind of model poly-count limit. It looks really silly in 1080p. They also didn't bother to re-sync the lip flaps in any of the cutscenes, very distracting.

@freedom4556: The spray-on abs are gone in the final version, or so I hear.

Wow, I know we all have our tastes and all but if this is an empty year I shudder to think how bad something like 2014 was for you. I feel like I'm up to my armpits here. To each their own, though; hope this game does it for you!

Pretty sure it has 4k, at least some screenshots I took yesterday then transferred to my PC were that size.

I was one of those people who bought a Japanese copy of FFXII International and patched it with an English version, so I had experience of the job system already, but I'm still having fun. I don't think it's the greatest Final Fantasy ever made, but it's got heart.

Yes, and by the default controls are non-inverted, unlike the original.

The game looks way better than the original, actually. It isn't anything you would necessarily think is great by modern standards, but it does look damn nice for an remaster, and I actually prefer this sort of art-style to the uncanny valley Ken Doll characters of XV. It really sounds good too, since modern systems can actually handle the orchestral soundtrack in full.

@therealturk: Obviously I'm sure the difference would be more pronounced side by side, besides resolution difference. Guess I expected more but it's still a sharp game. I also feel while the voice acting is generally well done so far IMO it does feel like it could have used some remastering, if possible. It has a muddy and clipped sound to it. Overall I'm enjoying it and want to keep going; it's intrigued me but I never got too deep into it.

All I know is that L1 makes the game speed up to 2x or 4x the speed and that is awesome for running around or farming items with steal gambits setup.

I have some interest in this as well, but I have played the original and flamed out on it. I absolutely loved the combat system but most everything with the story didn't grab me at all at the time. The main character is particularly bad (yes, I believe that factors into the story from what I know in a way but it's still not well done).

I have interest in going back to it though. At the time I really fell out with JRPGs but since then have gotten back into the genre more. The programmable AI stuff has never been done in a better way to my experience and I think that is a really cool mechanic.

Personally I really enjoy DA:O's combat but it is quite different and I would not compare it so much. It does not have the depth to the AI system that FF12 does for sure.

12 Was my first main series FF and probably not the best introduction, but I still had fun with it.

I remember really enjoying exploring the world but not really enjoying the story, as I recall its very political, which as a young teenager expecting an epic fantasy story didn't really hold me attention.

I've picked up a copy of Zodiac age and am looking forward to playing it, but I still need to finish Persona 5.

In my memory, I just about completely avoided the Gambit system. It was very daunting for me and at the end of the day to the best of my recollection I had various Cure automations set up and maybe some kind of "me and this character attack the same thing, this other character whittles away at the other thing until the one we're attacking gets to <x%HP" (maybe?) and did everything else manually. I just didn't want to deal with; having said that, I loved the combat system and the most time I'd put into a single play of any FF game in my school days, over 200 hours just grinding and hunting loot and such. I put far more time into FFVIII (about 15 completions, most of them at level 99 with 100-120 hours) It was a very relaxing game for me even with most of the combat being managed manually and maybe my first introduction to the idea of a "podcast game" capable of being something other than a Madden or NBA 2K.

If you like the detailed, crazy stories of the other FF games you've played, FFXII will be a let down, but enough people have said that already. I remember nothing about the motivations of the bad guys in the game or what they looked like, though I can vaguely picture some big cube or something we had a fight in? Maybe not. I remember this aspect of the game being a real disappointment because the world is introduced so interestingly and there are a lot of neat ideas for characters that they don't do much with, and a lot of the preview coverage for the game made it sound like it was going to be a Xenogears-esque level of complexity and politics which I was excessively thirsty for in those days.

I'd really like to play this again in a way I didn't necessarily feel for FFX because it's the only game of the 8/9/10/12 glory days that I didn't play multiple times (including X-2) but I'll probably wait for a price cut on it. $50 seems like a lot even with the work they put into it and it's so long I just don't have time for it right now.

People who say XII "plays itself" are the same people that say FF7's Materia system is broken because you can BREAK it to kill the super bosses pretty easily... ...given that you level a bunch of Materia up all the way and do other crazy stuff no normal player has time for.