Quick Look: Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

When I played this game when it originally came out I bounced off of it for three reasons

- It was a slow start that felt boring
- The job system (modified sphere grid...I found none of that fun)
- The characters and NPCs early on were no fun

Not too much seems improved, except that speed up issue. This is teh game teh soured me on even trying any more FF games. This was the last one I bought, and I'm cool with that.

@unique: People have opinions. Personally, I can get with you on V or VI, but as someone who has played a ton of both, I vastly prefer XII to X.

@thewildcard: It seems to vary from actor to actor, too, with Balthier's being particularly poor.

I hate this damn game so much. For starters the main character is terrible, they turned all the summon monsters in the game to airships that get blown up and give you crappy summon monsters who I can't even remember or care to remember, confusing as hell plot, and the worst combat system in a rpg ever. They literally thought they could take the combat from FFXI an mmo and tried to apply it to a single player game and it was just a slow clunky mess. FFXI at the time the combat was interesting and also the only way they could apply it to an mmo and make it make sense. Then some game dev and ENIX not even gonna think of this as Square at the time thought they could apply it to a single player game.

I remember when I used to play FFXI back in the day I thought, "man this combat is interesting but they better not try to use this in any other FF game because it will not work." Then what do they do? They fucking tried to make a game around it and this has made it hard to like anything Enix not square has done with this series since.

That type of complex Gambit system in Dragon Age Origins was one of the best parts of it. What other games utilize that type of thing?

@zentheninja: lol chill its better than 11, 13, and 14 at least.

Uh, Vaan isn't the main character. Ashe kinda is. Also, I'm totally fine with him, he's nowhere as bad as Tidus or Squall.

13 I'll give you, but comparing it to 11 and 14 (the latter of which has better combat and story) is a bit silly.

If Vaan seems like he sucks and is out of place, it's because he wasn't originally part of the story or game. It was only when Square's producers stepped in and said "Hey this is too good and not SquareEnix like" that he was hamfisted into the plot and game.

Only if you spell it marquess. The spelling they use in the game's subtitles is the French word.

I'm glad to see there's a lot of interesting stuff in this game. I had the PS2 version but just was amazed I could leave the main city right at the start, went to some random place in the world where there was a cactuar, then just quit as it felt like too much work at the beginning, never understood the combat in it fully. Messing around in menus a lot so you don't have to actually play the action part of the game with any great focus doesn't sound very appealing though.

Hey guys, let's do a quick look of FFXII so we can shit all over it and laugh despite not giving a shit about the series!

Thanks for trying to push back, Matt.

XII always has a soft spot in my heart. I remember getting the game in 2009 during the height of my FF craze, and playing it for six hours straight my first day with it. For whatever reason, while a lot of people bounced off the story and characters, I really enjoyed them and was drawn in. I think it was a combination of the game's Star Wars similarities, everyone's cool more antiquated way of talking, and being super FF crazy then. I eventually fell off it, though, and stopped playing after 25-35 hours.

I'm really interested in this remaster, though! I'm trying to purchase fewer games this year to get through my backlog, but once I'm buying new ones, this one's at the top of my list. I think the speedup could help me stay in the game. I'm curious, though, do your backup party members gain experience when they're not in use? Or do they only gain experience when they're active? I was bummed about that in the original game, though even if it is the same, the speedup seems like it would help with that.

@robaota:Arguably despite their quality, 11 and 14 are problematic in that they integrated the genre of the MMO into the mainline numbered series - which has done long-standing damage to the brand's generic and marketed identity.

Creating a new spin-off series would have allowed the numbered entries to retain it's own unique feel (which has arguably diminished over time) whilst still allowing for experimentation. There's a reason they have had spin-off's in different genres, and I don't think it has to be a bad thing (I had a lot of fun with Crystal Bearers, more-so as it was a spinoff, with less baggage).

Additionally this would fit release marketing / branding due to the fact that the non-MMO entries uniformally don't make it to PC until a while after release. MMO and MMORPG are very distinguishable genres (arguably. it's FOR The best).

Seriously, I'm not sure why Ben was even there if he's just going to complain about everything and not have anything to add to the conversation. I'm only 9 minutes into the video and it's pretty painful

Google define: marquis.

mar·quisˈmärkwəs,märˈkē/noun

1. (in some European countries) a nobleman ranking above a count and below a duke.
   • another term for marquess.

The game's pronunciation is not only listed but listed first.

Actually, Final Fantasy XI signalled their intentions to use this type of combat back in 2002. We had four years to get used to it being in another Final Fantasy game by the time XII came out!

And now you can! (soon)

Nailed it...just picked this up on PC, looking forward to it.

Coming back to this quick look after beating FF7Remake (adoring it), then beating original FF7 (and completely adoring it), and now figuring out what other FF games to play. I'm actually about 8 hours into FFX and not sure how much longer I have it in me to keep going. But FF12 looks really cool from what I've seen. I shall see...

Thanks to the new PS+ system, I've been able to fool around with Zodiac Age without dropping the $25 or $50 PSN is usually asking for it, and...despite my really fond memories of this game (mostly tied to listening to albums I loved while ignoring homework and grinding levels to watch the numbers go up in various desert climes) through the first two hours or so I totally understand why someone would feel this way. Removed from the excitement of just having dropped $50 on the latest Final Fantasy disc, driven it home, unpackaged it, popped the DVD out and listened to the PS2 boot noise before getting into a world full of political intrigue and vaguely Olde English script...

It does really feel like I just got dropped into the middle of a the first or second expansion of an MMORPG I haven't played in years. The opening hours are so...muddy? And yet I can tell that this game is absolutely huge and full of things to do, too, even if it's to little tangible benefit.

I'm still quite interested to see how this game unfolds - particularly the job system - but I'm already wondering if I have it in me to see the thing through. My main fondness for this game was just killing time grinding for things as if it were, well, an MMORPG (I'd gotten into the FFXI PS2 Beta Test prior to this game releasing, and I was in the mood for some more of that without the social aspect for sure) but I'm already remembering that the rest of this game was weirdly forgettable other than the art direction, settings and to some extent music (though again I listened to a lot of my own music back in my high school days).

Anyway...sure, it's weird to quote-respond to a four year old Quick Look comment, but here I've done it!