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Final Fantasy 12 is Unique Among Mainline Final Fantasy’s
Upon startingFinal Fantasy 12, players are taken tothe fictional world of Ivalice, a fantasy setting popularized byFinal Fantasy Tactics. As with its Ivalice peers,FF12focuses on bands of mercenaries and criminals while wars and political machinations rage in the background. The story is regularly compared toStar Wars, and it’s often observed that protagonists Vaan and Penelo’s character arcs end too early, but the strength of the setting and the supporting cast still shines through. Players are able to exploreFinal Fantasy’s biggest and most interconnected world, with even the initial few areas presenting a scope greater than even the open-worldFinal Fantasygames.
Final Fantasy 12keeps players busy during their travels, as there is no shortage of monsters to fight. Battles are fought with enemies wandering the overworld, and they use amodified form of the ATB system. Players only control one character directly, but they are encouraged to build up their gambits throughout the game as a form of rudimentary AI programming.
A well-constructed party can autopilot through a lot of fights without any worries. It will take a lot of time to acquire more diverse gambits and learn how to use them, but it’s a system worth experimenting with. Players had best be ready for fights, becauseFinal Fantasy 12offers an enormous number of side quests with many unique and powerful enemies. Progressing through these can be as satisfying as playing the game itself, and the experience is only improved by theZodiac Agere-release.
Improvements Offered by The Zodiac Age
The version ofFinal Fantasy 12available on modern systems is the updatedInternational Zodiac Job Systemversion exclusively released in Japan.The Zodiac Ageadds a number of gameplay improvements on top of what’s in that release. One of the most notable ones from the remaster are the enhancements to battle speed. Because battles can potentially become automated, and there are a lot of encounters inFinal Fantasy 12’s huge areas, players may want to use a speed-up function similar to whatcan be found in many emulators.The Zodiac Ageallows players to crank the game up to 4x speed, which should be more than enough to keep the action engaging.
The main draws of theInternational Zodiac Job Systemwere its playable summons and guest characters, updated magic and equipment, and the redone progression system. Playable summons are a nice feature to have after their prominence inFinal Fantasy 10, but the new license boards and jobs change the entire game. Now, instead of every character progressing through one large license board, characters can be assigned classicFinal Fantasyjobs, each with their own unique license board.
Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Agewas released in 2017 and is playable on the PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.
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