Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - An underrated gem in the Final Fantasy series.

By Sam Coles:

It’s hard to believe that Final Fantasy XII came out on the legendary PS2 all the way back in 2006. It’s odd that this game came out on the PS2 as the Xbox 360 had been out for a year and the PS3 was a fresh piece of hardware on the market. Final Fantasy XII was the last main line game to be exclusive to the PlayStation as the next iterations in the series would release on Microsoft’s console. Square Enix after a decade have decided to clear up the game and re-release it on the PS4, with some new features that were not present in the PS2 release. Does it stack up to modern role playing games? In short yes.

Final Fantasy XII takes place during a time where magic was common place and airships littered the skies, however it is a time of war between two empires that want nothing but total control of a central continent. You play as Vaan a young orphan boy who does odd jobs in the city of Dalmasca from the standard delivery jobs to the more morally questionable ones such as stealing from people’s houses. He wants to make enough money so he can flee the city and buy an airship so he can go on a swash buckling adventure as a sky pirate. What I like about this game’s story is that it goes back to a lighter tone of Final Fantasy XI on the original PlayStation which took influence from the NES games. Not to say that the story doesn’t have any dark moments because it does, with political conspiracies and shocking twists with betrayal and murder.

The gameplay is what separated it from other games in the series at the time, as it ditched the standard turn based combat and mixed it with real time movement. How this works is that you have control of your characters movement when you’re engaged in a fight, however your attacks are on a cool down evoking the turn based routes.

If you’ve played games like World of Warcraft or Dragon Age: Origins it will be very familiar, but it still retains the menu system from old Final Fantasy titles where you select different enemies, attacks and items whether they are offensive or healing abilities. It’s good because it makes you feel more involved rather than a glorified version chess which the older titles felt like, not to say that’s bad but that sort of gameplay is rather dated and this revamped system appeases to both old fans and new fans.

The new feature of this game is in the title and that is the Zodiac job system, how this works is that you can select a class for each of your party members with the standard Warrior, Mage, and Rogue etc. You’re then presented with a grid system, each time you level up you gain points and you can sink those points into specific items and abilities. These can range from crafting a new weapon, a new shield to help with defence or just increasing your damage output and quantity of health for your party member. This is great because it gives you more flexibility of how you want to customise your party and it can make the difference of life and death in certain boss battles.

The presentation has been given a significant boost since the PS2 version, textures look sharper with the environments and characters look less blurry compared to the original release, I loaded up my PS2 copy to compare and contrast and it’s a huge difference. However they did not up the frame rate which is a real shame as it still runs at 30 frames per second, don’t get me wrong it’s a consistent frame rate but the game is not that visually demanding to not warrant a frame rate of 60. Another issue with the presentation is that the animations and lip synching are not great in some areas. You can really tell this was before the time when motion capture was common place in game development, as the animations are stiff and awkward and the lip syncing does not match the dialogue in gameplay scenes.

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is a great re-release as it is an underappreciated gem in the PS2 library which you should pick up if you’re a long-time fan or some who is just getting into the series. I hope Square Enix bring more of their Final Fantasy titles in an HD format hopefully some of their PS1 iterations, but this will tie us over until the next instalment in the franchise and the Final Fantasy VII Remake.