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

Games
161

I was amazed at how good the Shikari (Ninja: daggers, shields, light armor) class is early on, and Baltheir (my Ninja) is just a consistently impressive damage dealer. Might be a good class for Vaan. There are some early game daggers you can get that would make it an especially attractive opening class.

I can’t speak on mid- or late-game as I only just unlocked the second job board last night and my party is around the 16-18 range. Lots of story to go - and yeah, it’s the most adult (not dirty/gory, just a smart and well written tale) story in the franchise, in my opinion. I just love how the character speak to each other, the costumes, settings, the voice work, it makes for such a fantastic time when a cut scene starts up. It helps I actually like all the characters, and am cycling through all of them in combat as they each bring a specific set of talents to the game now with the new Job system.

I sent this little example (very minor spoilers for the very early game) of some dialog to my cousin.

image.png1319×280 16.9 KB

Also, let’s talk about Trial Mode at some point. It’s really cool, and once you get to a certain point in the story (after you unlock the second job board) it’s lucrative as hell, and damned enjoyable to boot.

162

Yeah, even with goddamn Vaan as the ostensible main character it’s much less twee in tone than most. And he gets much better as the game goes on, and certainly he and Penelo keep the grimdarkness at bay.

The game is not tuned so difficult that you’re going to be screwed by which license boards you pick for which character. I mostly recommend going with what feels/sounds cool. But if you’re looking for some guidance, off the top of my head the characters’ strengths and innate skills:

Vaan     | everything+     | Steal
Penelo   | magic++         | Cure
Balthier | fight++         | Steal
Fran     | everything=     | Steal, Thunder, Fire, Cure
Ashe     | fight+, magic++ | Cure
Basch    | fight++         | nothing

General thoughts:

  • Stealing is, of course, super necessary if you want to have any money ever. I like to have a non-party-leader with steal: foe HP = 100% running basically all the time. Poaching less so, at least until later.
  • Not being able to throw basic Cure etc on every character definitely changes how I approach party composition and sustainability.
  • Ashe hits like a goddamned truck as a black mage.
  • Monk is strong as hell.
  • Quickening chains are still pretty much the cheesiest cheese that ever cheesed a boss.

I just unlocked secondary classes, and a couple things to note:

  • Shared skills - equipment, gambit slots, techs - are unlocked on both boards
  • Each esper is in a specific place on each board; I assumed that you’d be able to place them to cover gaps
  • [edit] See Scott’s post below about Quickening slots

[edit] My party:

  • Vaan - Monk (So much whuppin’)
  • Balthier - Shikari (More whuppin’!)
  • Penelo - White Mage (I’m not ecstatic about this, she can’t do any damage ever and it’s annoying. Ah well, advanced classes are here to help!)
  • Fran - Time Battlemage (Could probably leave this to an advanced class, but it’s a pretty decent support/generalist and Fran comes with basic white/black magic, so this is not bad)
  • Basch - Knight (Whuppin’!)
  • Ashe - Black Mage (So strong. Her innate Cure is quite strong, and her offensive magic is bossalicious. She even hits kind of okayish!)

Not totally sure what I’m going to do about secondary classes. Need to get Penelo some offense and Vaan/Balthier/Basch some utility - all those three do is hit shit. But they hit it pretty hard and are tough as nails, so c’est la vie.

163

I can help with that. There are 4 quickening slots on every job board, and the only job that can’t get everything behind the quickening slots is Ninja, whose Ninja Blades 1-4 are behind each of the four quickenings. General thought is skip the Quickening 1 tile (50 LP) and buy 2, 3, and 4 (75, 100, and 125 LP cost respectively) so the Ninja can get the best blades.

Otherwise, it’s fairly easy to just look at what opens up on the boards by purchasing a quickening (and again, buying say the 75 LP quickening on one board also buys it for that same character on his or her other board) so if you see a quickening with nothing past it, double check before you buy that one.

164

Ooooh, it’s not just a tacked-on postgame thing? Oooooh!

165

Nope, it’s super interesting. I assumed it was a post-game thing myself, but it’s not.

How it works is this - you make a save game (like you do) and dump out to the title screen. Then you start trial mode, and pick a save game - this is then a snapshot of the characters you are loading into trial mode. So you want to hold off until you are at all 6 characters (and, hint hint, a guest character if you can swing it).

The trial then starts, and your characters exactly as they are in your normal save start kicking ass. You do not gain EXP in trial mode, but you are gaining LP (and a lot of it) from stage to stage as you clear enemies. Also, there are chests, rare enemies, and lots of different things to steal and find in each stage - it’s very deep, not just “kill everything” but rather “kill everything but not before you run around and find that rare hunt and steel a flame shield from it if your lucky” kind of thing.

Okay, so you progress as far as you can. The game makes an auto save at the start of each round, so you can actually retry rounds again (particular useful if you want a chest to have a specific item or to steal something specific from a mob) and every 10 rounds you can make a hard save so you don’t have to start from level 1 every time, unless you want to of course.

So you get as far as you can, which is the fun bit because it means you can periodically take a break from the main game and challenge yourself to get further in trial mode than you did last time, and then eventually you’ll get to a game over screen. No worries, back at the main menu pick Load Game and load the most recent trial mode save and it will actually put you right back where you were before you started trial mode, but with all the items, LP, and etc. you earned during the trial! Or, pick Trial Mode and resume from where you left off, if you wanted to retry.

I guess some folks have been having a lot of luck looting a diamond armband found in stage 1, which sells for 6,000 gil, btw, if your looking for some cash and don’t mind sitting through some loading screens. I haven’t tried it yet myself, but I just may. The encounters are really neat, they are cribbed from the various hunts and boss fights to that point, complete with the same stages and (I’ve read) will feature the same mechanics (such as double-gravity making characters with heavy armor slowed down) as those original fights do.

Once you unlock your second job board, by defeating your first Esper, getting through the first 10 levels in trial mode is a no-brainer, as that same Esper is the 10th level of Trial mode. I noticed running from trial 1 to 10 takes about 10 minutes and yields about 180 or so LP (double that if someone has the “earn double LP” accessory, which I gave to Penelo as she’s my black and red mage). I did this twice this morning just before work, and ended up stealing a Sword of Kings from Belias. It was pretty fucking rad.

Stage 5:

image.jpg1434×768 513 KB

So like I said, a really fun way to challenge your party and in so doing come out with some goodies and lots of LP to help with the fact you have two job boards to spend points on now. I love it, it’s so much more interesting than I had assumed it would be, honestly.

166

You’re making me consider buying a PS4 (and I don’t have the money!). I need to play this game. Sigh.

167

Awesome, guys. Thanks. I was thinking of making Vaan a Shikari, but Monk also seemed cool. Perhaps I’ll Monk/Mage Ashe instead…

Thanks, too, for all the info on the trial mode. I love the high speed mode (this being such a farm-heavy game); and now trial mode seems another great way to keep things fresh and moving along. Exciting!

168

Thanks, Scott!

E: Holy cow, that is a pile of LP

169

I’m only a few hours in but I went Shikari with Vaan and Uhlan for Penelo though I feel like maybe I should have gone White Mage? She seems like a healer.

170

I deferred that choice as there wasn’t much for her to do right away (and I couldn’t decide). And then she left the party soon after joining anyway… after you do the sunstone quest.

But I’m def. swinging towards White Mage with her, and was thinking Uhlan as secondary.

171
172

Man, the localization is so special here. Not only are the “teehee, I’m just a girl” girls absent, but there’s a delicious dearth of “…” boys, too. The voice acting is fantastic and the translators really made the dialog their own. Like Pasternak and Shakespeare.

I’m still in analysis paralysis with respect to job distribution, but am inching closer to saying “f*ck it” and just going with it. My favorite character is Balthier, though, so I’ll want him to have a good setup.

173

This and Persona 5 are pretty much the only reasons I’ve wanted a P4. I know there are other worthy exclusives but these two are reasons enough for me. I am just afraid I will never get to my backlog :(

I am so glad they’ve rereleased this somewhat underrated gem; wish they would do the same for FF IX. A remake of FF Tactics and IV or VI and Square would be God in my book, again!

174

Also, if I may add to this for @rhamorim’s sake, Horizon, Uncharted series, and especially The Last of Us are also very much worth having the console for.

I’m having so much fun with Shades of Black - a technique that casts a random Black Magick spell for 0 MP - with my Samurai/Knight character. He was using it because of a lack of ways for him to hit fliers so I started spamming this and man, it’s fun. Even weaker spells like Poison or Fire do solid damage given the Samurai’s higher Magick stat (used for Katanas).

I made a little 30 second spot of Vaan kicking off a SoB and scoring what looks like a really high level thunder spell, doing more than six or seven times the damage any of my other characters can do. So much fun!

175

I broke, had to pick this up. XII was easily my favorite FF by a large margin, followed eventually by tactics. It’s downloading now, though it was going to take 4 hours till I found out you can setup a proxy per here that took me down to 20 minutes. So should be playing soon!

176

Allow me to be the contrary opinion for @rhamorim s sake. Because consoles are more relatively expensive for him than us, because Brazil. Also we know that it is highly probable that FF XII will get a PC release. Probably in a year given how Square operates. Obvious speculation, but due to PS 4 using x86 architecture, one I’d be more than willing to take.

FF XII is one of my favorites, for the reasons discussed here. I am absolutely with scott in liking the gameplay, and that’s before the new job system. But there are plenty of older FF games I know he can play, so I’d do that until the time that it comes to PC. But I’m of the opinion that the only console worth having aside from PC is the Nintendo ones, and I know Roberto has one of those ;)

177

Because I want Balthier to always be around, I’m making him a Bushi/Knight.

Balthier – Bushi/knight
Vaan – Shikari/Foebreaker
Ashe – Black Mage/Monk
Penelo – White Mage/??Machinist
Fran – Archer/Red Mage
Basch – Uhlan/Time Mage

I think…

Also, although I might grind at times, I’m not going to use any of the manifold tricks to power level or get powerful weapons early. I just want to enjoy myself on a normal difficulty curve.

178

Yes indeed. The cheapest (legal) PS4 Pro I can find in Brazil costs R$ 2200, which, at current exchange rates, amounts to around US$ 690. If you try for equivalent currency in terms of purchasing power, then it would be closer to US$ 900.

As for games, a typical US$ 60 PS4 game at release costs somewhere from R$ 150 to R$ 270 (so roughly US$ 47 to US$ 85). PC games on Steam at that price range in US are usually around R$ 105-130.

So yeah, consoles are way too expensive here. It might make sense to pay US$ 400 to play a game, but in my case (not considering purchasing power), I’d be paying around US$ 750 to play one game. I guess you’ll agree with me that’s crazy. ;)

179

Sooo… I’m just past the part where I seem to have finally got all of the characters together. :)

I built my team based on what the characters seemed to be geared towards initially. Here they are, with planned secondaries in brackets:

Vaan: Shikari (foebreaker)
Basch: Knight (bushi)
Fran: Archer (red mage)
Balthier: Machinist (uhlan)
Ashe: Time Battlemage (white mage)
Penelo: Monk (black mage)

I have Ashe and Penelo left to assign initial roles to, my question is at this stage of the game which role should go first? Monk or Black? Time or White? I get the feeling I’m starting to need some more hard-core heals and buffs/debuffs!

180

Black and white I would do first. By the time you unlock the second zodiac you will have needed both of them.