Final Fantasy XII - The Zodiac Age (HD Remaster Take All My Money)

Thanks so much for writing up your thoughts. I’ve been conflicted about how much further to play this and it’s always helpful to read a variety of opinions instead of just the usual fawning from people who are already fans of the series.

This in particular…

…is a really helpful comment. If a game runs four times too slowly, why was it designed that way in the first place? And if it was designed to run at a certain speed, why quadruple it? It sounds like the folks behind the update, for whatever reason, didn’t have a lot of confidence in the original design.

Maybe I just didn’t play enough, but what little I did play involved using the 4X to get through what felt like obligatory and questionably paced grinding.

-Tom

Like most RPG’s - if you aren’t enjoying the combat and/or the moment to moment gameplay, it’s going to feel bad to play it. I can’t think of many examples of games that are exceptions to this rule, unless they aren’t combat focused (like Torment) and even then, most of those examples are probably games I bailed on before completing them, if I didn’t like the combat.

So I’ll say this to @tomchick’s points. The reason for a 4x speed in a JRPG, even one with a good and engaging combat system which I’d argue this has probably the series best, is that these games are designed around a certain, call it laconic, pace.

There is lots of optional content, battles, bosses, etc. many of which are designed for a post game environment. Additionally with the skill grid and how it is designed there is a fair amount of possible room for grinding. This game, like so many others of its type, expects a certain amount of gated progression reliant on you engaging lots of combat.

4x speed is designed for those power leveling sessions. Ones where you are not pushing the combat in challenging ways, but ones where you are roaming a region to fight enemies for the sake of XP. Or when you are running around looking for a rare spawn or bounty.

But it is a design culture thing, I think. The 4x speed is a feature of many emulators, and is very useful for a certain type of JRPG. It doesn’t mean the combat systems are poorly designed or boring, but an acknowledgement that the game design overall has a fair amount of optional routine combat.

Maybe I got lucky, and really optimized my party/gambit setup, but I literally ran the entire game at 4x speed letting all characters play via gambits…I mean…I could have forced myself not to do that but…why?

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game, and I think that anyone that likes the FF series will certainly enjoy it. I just found that the game was pretty easy to trivialize given how much automation you could use. There wasn’t one boss fight that posed even a moderate difficulty. /shrug.

I’m so used to FF games absolutely kicking my ass, especially in boss fights, it sort of took me by surprise. Like I said, maybe I just got really lucky on job combos. I’ve played enough FF games to know what’s going to happen, especially when it comes to debuffs and status ailments.

I certainly don’t want to try and devalue anyone else’s experience or enjoyment of the game, just relating how it struck me on my playthrough. I actually love the idea of all the quality of life stuff they had in this game, because I do tend to like to grind up parties and unlock all the skills etc, but it was sort of a letdown because I didn’t need to actually do that.

Did you go through the optional trial mode thing that was added with the new edition? That thing OP’s your party very, very quickly. Some of the items you can get even pretty early (I’m looking at you, Sword of Kings) does trivialize the main story content.

Also, they made a lot of the bosses easier for this edition for some reason, I guess a lot of casual players were getting stuck on some of them. They probably should have offered a difficulty option like “story” mode instead, but what can you do. All the real challenge comes from the post-game content. Which there is a LOT of, some amazingly fun end game dungeons and challenges to complete.

Hmmm, I like the sound of these changes. I’m one of those that didn’t enjoy the real time combat in FFXII the first time through and after seemingly endless fights with little to no story, I finally got tired and stopped playing. But if there’s something in the new edition that makes the combat trivially easy so that I can run it at 4x speed, and have an easy time getting to the next story beat, as someone who doesn’t enjoy the real time combat in this game, that sounds awesome to me.

@Rock8man I hate to sway someone from not playing FFXII but…

I really can’t (personally) recommend an RPG with 60+ hours of content to someone if they aren’t in it for the combat. If the gameplay itself doesn’t do it for you, maybe just try to find a youtube video that stiches the cut-scenes together and read a wiki to enjoy the story?

No, you’re absolutely right. I don’t know what I was thinking. I definitely should not try to play FF XII again. My time would be much better spent going into an RPG where I actually the moment to moment game, like FFX. I’ve heard FF XIII is turn-based, I should at least give that one a try some day, despite it’s bad reputation.

FF13 was kind of neat, I don’t remember it very well, but it got … ugh, long in the tooth and I lost interest (and I love FF!) like 15 hours in. Many times I’ve heard it gets way, way better after the part I stopped playing (naturally) and I keep meaning to dig back into it and then try out 13-2 as they remain some of the only FF games I haven’t played through once.

Maybe I should also look into FFXIII now that you mention it. I mean, I wouldn’t even remember the bits I did play at this point…

FF XIII did get monotonous a good few hours in, and I stopped playing a few hours from the end (I did watch the cutscenes/story I missed on Youtube). Then some time later I decided to try XIII-2, because I wanted to see what happened to the characters.

I not only played it to completion, as it’s easily become my favorite FF game of them all. I loved it. I fully intend to play it all over again someday. That’s how much I liked it.

Yeah, that might be the ticket - I should just jump into that one maybe. I’ll wait, it will come to the Switch eventually, where it would probably be a lot of fun.

XIII doesn’t take the kid gloves off the combat system until like 75% of the way through the game. It’s utterly baffling.

It’s really quite a good system, when you finally get to use it.

Which may be a considerable part of why I enjoyed XIII-2 so much. It doesn’t hold your hand as much, it’s a much less linear game, and it has this Pokémon-like system that works wonders in further giving you options.

The Final Fantasy XIII games were on sale again last week as part of the Square Enix sale on Xbox for $8/$10/$10.

So I got the first one. Don’t have time to start it these days, but hopefully soon. I’ve been jonesing for a decent turn-based rpg for a while. I haven’t played one in a long time.

No, just used the weapons I got at shops mostly, all of my loot was very stock/mundane, which was another problem in general for me. I may reload it and go check out some of the endgame stuff which I didn’t really do. I really do think it was my party config.

I’ve been tempted to pick that one up for some time, because it keeps going on sale. But I’m not really a big JRPG guy in general or Final Fantasy guy specifically, so I keep talking myself out of it. I’d be curious to hear your impressions.

Sounds like you are just super good at RPGs! :)

Hmmm, one thing I do seem to do a lot, is end up picking the best build/class on my first playthroughs, which sucks because I really enjoy trying different combos lol. When it comes to FF games, I know for sure what I’m in for. I know there are going to be status things that are debilitating etc, so it was easy to sort of plan for. Things you can be 100% sure of with any FF game. Confuse, sleep, beserk, poison, silence, doom, petrify. I think in every FF game I’ve ever played, it was always the status attacks that were the real problems. I went into 12 with a party built for multiple people being able to cure status, and set up the gambits for it.

All that being said, I think FF12 is the easiest FF I’ve ever played in terms of both the general combat, and the boss difficulty. I go into a new FF game expecting to get my butt handed to me, and was legitimately surprised when it didn’t happen.

At the end of the day, it’s still a game I would recommend to people that like FF, it’s got a lot of good things going for it.

So I just started FF12 on the Switch. After the opening intro I feel completely lost as to the story. Should I rewatch the intro on YouTube to try to figure out what’s going on or maybe read up on some kind of guide just to help me figure out who all these characters and countries are? Also, how does the combat work? Does the position of my character affect the damage he does? Should I try to move away from the enemy while waiting for my attack to count down or do things like that not really matter?

You might want to - the story is really good, but it’s dense and doesn’t assume the player needs their hand held.

To summarize - Dalmasca, the city you start in, is caught between two nations at war. Archadia and Rozarria are constantly fighting, and that’s where our story begins, iirc.

No, though your weapons have range/reach and so do spells so make sure you are close enough to be hitting your target. If you cast a spell like Fira for example, and your character starts walking - he’s moving into range to cast the spell you asked him to.

This stuff doesn’t really matter - it’s sort of like a turn-based game with real-time trappings. Actions that are initiated when you were in range will still hit you even if the game has to play out previous animations first.