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Final Fantasy XII - The Zodiac Age


Sambob
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Noticed there wasn't a thread for this so will start a little one. 

 

I never played this when it came out on the ps2 but in a weird twist I've played all the other Ivalice games so super familiar with the characters and setting. I think as a result this is quickly becoming my favourite final fantasy, and its making me really wish I played it on ps2.

 

I love the license board system for learning skills and I love the gambit system too, the different approach to combat, its a perfect candidate for a remake because its aged incredibly well as a game, even if the textures aren't quite what you are used to for a ps4, although having said that it looks way way better than you'd expect given that its a ps2 remaster. 

 

I've only really done the first main chapter so far but its been a nice pace, a nice level of difficulty and the story has been really engaging too. 

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  • 2 years later...

Zodiac Age is cool cause it has a job system which gradually funnels your characters into certain playstyle. It's like you slowly watch your party take shape as you progress, rather than it being totally predetermined for you like bad FF games such as FFX.

 

You can choose two jobs, so for instance you could have a white Mage who moonlight as a monk. Basically a tanky white Mage with slightly less healing potency than a pure magic oriented white Mage but can actually survive and hit back. Or you can have a class like Samurai and pair it with another physical orientated class and have them double down on just pure attack and so on.

 

There's also nothing stopping you from building a team of pure bullshit, like a Black Mage ninja. Cause why not. It's as in depth and free form as any single player FF has ever been and that's before you get to the whole system where you write AI macros for your party. Its such a good game my dudes and a nice runner up to the actual best FF (XIV).

 

Also the yiazmat boss is like what if we had an MMO raid in a single player game that was also 5 hours long. The whole game sits in this weird halfway position between the MMO Final Fantasies and single player ones.

 

Which means some people will think its awful, if this isnt your flavour of game.

 

Edit, I went and found my old posts about it on gtm on some old AWS instance that never got taken down. Putting them in spoiler text cause my post will be too long otherwise but they arent spoilers

Spoiler

They do it really well. You spend a good 15 hours playing with the classes which you choose at the beginning at which point you can see quite clearly what their strengths and weaknesses are. At the point then that you pick their second class you can decide if you want to really specialise the hell out of their strengths or cover some of their weaknesses.

 

A huge complaint I had with the original game is that there were way too many weapons and it was never clear what they were good for. Now that I've had my selection of weapons and abilities limited it all becomes much more clear. The fun part then is deciding what you want to turn your base character class into.

 

Like you can have a White Mage who also has support magic via the Time BattleMage class. Kind of standard. Or you can give your White Mage a big fucking hammer with the Foebreaker class and slap on some heavy armour and tada you have a healer that'll never go down.

You can have a black mage which combines with red mage so that it just becomes this big explosive magic user. Or you can do what I did and combine the black mage with a monk and get this tanky monster of a magic caster but at the expense of a little magic power.

 

Granted these are things you could technically do in the original game but the game forces you to commit to these decisions in a way that's really fun because suddenly every character has a niche that they can satisfy that you learn about through just playing around.

It's a game all about compromises and making really messed up character builds. It's so cool. I'm not yet at the stage where it's clear if you can 'ruin' a character though.

 

I do think in some ways it could be the ultimate Final Fantasy game. But with this new zodiac job system it's definitely the least welcoming to newcomers. The stuff where they block off unique pieces on the license board behind quickenings seem really easy to muck up. Although the vanilla version of the game had that also.

 

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Wow, they broke the bank on that opening cutscene. Like a full scale animated film. But there was a hell of a lot to take in, information-wise. I might have to have a recap on YouTube to get a clear picture of all the politics. Reminds me of Dune or the star wars prequels (which I maintain are great films), in terms of throwing a big political setup at you. 

 

 

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The licence board reset is more of a quality of life feature that allows you to experiment early on before you settle on a class. Normally you're not going to change everything later in the game because unlocking all the necessary tiles will probably take hours at that point. The only thing I'd say is that at the beginning, you absolutely need a white mage and a black mage. Everything else you can kind of mix and match like you want to, but two of your first six classes should be those.

 

Also I wish you'd all discovered this game seven months or so ago when I played it for the second time. It's too early for another run now and I'm currently playing Witcher 3 anyway.

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The game autosaves when you cross a blue line into another map segment. Killer!! I bet that wasn't in the original. 

 

I don't want to speak too early, but this does seem a bit more up my street than 10.  I was tearing my hair out at times with the random battles in that game. Every couple of bleeding steps. 

 

Here, you can fight what you want, when you want, and that makes the whole thing more pleasant straight off the bat.

 

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I likewise won't be part of the playthrough, as I've got too much other stuff going on, but I will keep tabs on the thread. I always find it fun to see a game I've played before through fresh eyes. I'll be interested to see what the new players make of Vaan and Penelo, when the actual main character turns up.

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I don’t know how far ahead I am of @bellow so I’ll be vague and say I’ve just met two new characters at a castle. 
 

I like it? I think. It seems kind of slow, and you’ve all done a great job and making me fear the License Board so Vaan is now sitting on 90 points or something and I have no idea what I should do with them (Also don’t tell me).

 

I picked the rogue class because the guy had a steal ability so I thought it would suit him. But then the second character you meet also has a dagger and it’s like you mamajama. You should of been the rogue character. But I haven’t chose any job for any of the other characters yet just the one.

 

The game keeps telling me to do a new save file but it is obviously not aware of how many potions I have. I can’t be beat. 

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Its basically slow and boring in the way an MMO is, but it is also deep and engaging in the same way as MMOs are.

 

It's a really great game if you dig into systems and there's actually a chance that maf's Pokemon brain will enjoy the party building

 

Or the skittles part of his brain will send him running just as likely.

 

The only advice I might give for class building is dont do something dumb like make a black and white Mage. Unless you hate having MP.

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40 minutes ago, Maf said:

I can’t be beat. 

 

I, on the other hand, can be beat. And have been - by a couple of werewolves strolling around the desert in the midday sun, don't ya know. As a long time student of Sam and Dean Winchester, I'm calling bullshit on that.

 

I found a shop selling a nice katana, so made vaan a bushi. You can review the license board by pressing Y as you land on a job on the wheel.  I'm guessing you can eventually have 2 jobs like other jrpgs, so you can think ahead with a build. And if Octopath Traveller taught me anything it was to respect the less obvious jobs. The Merchant job in Octopath basically beat all the final bosses in that game for me.

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2 minutes ago, bellow said:

 

I, on the other hand, can be beat.


I learnt this really helpful trick you can use. If you press the X button it will open up a menu, and if you go to the item option at the bottom it will open up a new menu where you can select “potions” and if you press the X button on those they stop you from dying. The only thing is you need to do it before you are dead otherwise it doesn’t work. 

 

Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more hot tips and tricks 

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