Final Fantasy 12 was a very late PS2 game and as such I didn’t play it because all of my friends who had them had mostly stopped playing their PS2. I remember being rather surprised by the promo art though. I think a lot of people expected something more like Final Fantasy 10 but instead it went back to more steampunk fantasy. This time it focused on Ivalice, a shared world under the Final Fantasy banner. This was originally used in Final Fantasy Tactics (and Vagrant Story which I never got very far in) although it would be reprised in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy 12 is much closer to that version. But I always thought the new races they added were boring and ugly and it unfortunate they when with that.
What I don’t really have much context for is the transition from Final Fantasy XI. I didn’t and have nor plan to play Final Fantasy XI. I even checked and it’s still up but still charging $10 a month on a website that still looks like the early 2000s. No thanks. However, it is very clear that Final Fantasy 12 borrows a lot from the MMO space, namely the more open areas and the real-time battle system.
Technology-wise Final Fantasy 12 is definitely a late-gen PS2 game. It looks very good and has very modern looking animation and lighting. Even in the remastered Zodiac Age you can tell there were limitations but it was punching above it’s weight class. The compromises also gives it a very distinct look that’s kind of blurry. That and the art direction in general. It’s very distinct but also very muted, almost yellow/brown in pallet. Artistically the setting has a bit of Mediterranean flair to it, like that of a desert civilization. It’s definitely a bold choice and creates a very unique feel. Although to be honest I much prefer the brighter and more lush pallet of Final Fantasy X. Characters modeling is also very different, moving from a more typical (of the time) anime/manga look to characters that have visually distinct facial structures and proportions the are used by character art of Akihito Yoshida. Models are very good looking for a PS2 game especially in the cinematics. Locations are also full 3d with player camera control, a first for the single player series. The locations can get pretty big, it’s not quite open-world but it definitely builds toward it in spirit with large connecting areas. Areas do not stream in like, say, Grand Theft Auto and will have loading zones between them but each “segment” can be fairly large and detailed. There are technical limitations beyond segmentation though. There’s an almost distinct architectural layout that most of the segments have where it’s very clear that they were trying to prevent open views. So they break into thin hallways and crooked paths or have you circle around large piece of geometry to make sure you never get too much and the engine can hold together. Textures are also highly repetitive to keep within the limits but a lot of heavy lifting happens on the design side to make this less obvious as well. Lighting and animation are a big step up from Final Fantasy X as is the addition of a convincing depth of field effect. Animation in cutscene looks to be almost entirely mo-capped with very good facial animation capable of showing off even subtle looks. This is used to good effect to drive home characters like Balthier with his cool smugness.
The Yasumi Matsuno pedigree extends beyond Ivalice and Yoshida’s art and into the story as well. It’s a much more tonally serious game than any numbered Final Fantasy full of political intrigue and much less, we’ll reductively say, “anime” story-telling. I don’t feel this is really much better as it was hard to pay attention or care about the various alliances. There’s a fair bit of exposition for exposition’s sake. There’s not a huge amount of levity to be found either which I feel is kind of a miss. Too self-serious I don’t think is very becoming of the series. There’s also a lot more in the way of cut-scenes. Every 2 or so areas will end in a cut-scene. These are very well done cut-scenes but it’s also a lot of cut-scene to gameplay ratio. Reminds me a bit of Metal Gear Solid in that way. I also found it interesting that it’s pretty much a beat-for-beat Star Wars homage. Each character pretty clearly maps across from Vaan the young desert-born boy on a hero’s journey, to Balthier being the renegade pilot to Ashe being the deposed princess. It’s not just the plot and characters but even down into the airship battle choreography which unsurprisingly end with a mega weapon.
Sound wise the voice acting again takes a step up to be what I’d consider fully modern and high quality. They use a mostly British English voice cast I think to sell the fantasy setting but the acting and direction is very good. However, there’s a weird quality to the voices which I think has to due with the sound compression, like the bitrate was cut down a little too much. On the music side the quality is great and it’s a fully orchestral score. The downer is that it falls into the “movie music” trap of being kinda generic “epic” background music rather than a character in it’s own right. It’s not a terribly fun score to listen to on it’s own.
In terms of gameplay the big change here is the battle system which is now fully divorced from turn-based. As noted it basically follows typical MMO conventions but with single player. This means that you need to consider tank versus DPS versus support roles, aggro management and ability cooldowns. While you can control to a degree what other characters are doing it’s too hectic to do all the time so the AI takes over your allies. The game does have ways to modify the AI with the gambit system. These are essentially if statement rules like “when ally HP is less than 70% use potion” where the condition and consequent are customizable like a mini programming language. You have to buy these though and use license points to buy additional gambit slots. It’s actually a really interesting and unique system especially how you need to unlock more slots and buy new conditions. It worked better than I would have expected. The biggest downside to all of this is the combat just isn’t very fun. MMO combat is often very boring and slow and this is no exception. A lot of it is just targeting enemies and waiting for characters to slowly attack. It doesn’t have the positional, timing and sequencing elements that make games like Xenoblade more engaging and it loses a lot of the tactical elements of turn-based. In fact I almost never used magic or summons. Most battles were just attacking a healing and bosses were only slightly more engaging because you need to cast buffs and occasionally dispel.
Character building is somewhat traditional, you level up and get higher stats. The customization comes in with the license board. At least in the zodiac job system you get to choose a job for each character which mostly cover a lot of Final Fantasy staples but under different names. For each job there is a job board which has similarities to the sphere grid. You move from space to space using LP to unlock new tiles which allow you to gain those bonuses. Bonuses can be things like stats or the abilities to equip certain items. I’m not a big fan of locking equipment like this, I think it’s just a pointless layer of indirection and it makes it harder to understand when you are upgrading gear and lots of spaces become pointless because you won’t go back to get access to old gear.
Exploration also contains a lot of filler. Areas are very big and comprised of many segments but there’s really no good reason to explore any of it and always take the fast path. Your reward is simply wasted time. The areas are also made of lots of copy-pasted geometry so it’s not even interesting to look at, it’s just taking up space for the sake of it. Even towns are built with dead ends that require traversing through multiple areas to get to certain shops. This really becomes taxing while playing because traversal is not fast. In fact the Zodiac Age version has a speed up toggle that I started to leave on all the time because it’s just so boring to wander through the wilderness fighting enemies. But to add insult, there’s almost no fast travel. Save crystals are not that common, but there’s only one orange one which let you fast travel per large zone. And to do so requires expending teleport stones, which are (initially) rare items that can only be bought in a few shops. I have no idea why it was made so restrictive as it literally does not add anything to the game, it just wastes time forcing you to trek through areas multiple times.
The game also has side content which is mostly fetch quests, some of it is necessary to progress other side content. The main side content though is hunts. These are basically stronger monsters that you need to kill to get rewards. The entire process requires so much effort though. First you need to get the quest at a tavern, then find the petitioner (which is not shown on the map). Then you need to actually find the monster. Sometime they are close by but sometimes there require re-traversing whole dungeons and sometime have annoying requirements like needed rainy weather or waiting in the area for 5 minutes. Then you go back to the petitioner to get your reward. This process might take as many as 3 teleports unless you’re being thrifty and then it’s like 10 minutes of running through areas. You also need to constantly go back to the entry in the menu to see the notes. Just complete wastes of time. The hunts like most bosses aren’t even very interesting to fight. Other quests aren’t tracked at all so good luck remembering what you were doing.
To me this just didn’t feel like a Final Fantasy game from the gameplay, to the story to the setting. It feels like an Ivalice game that just happened to get a number Final Fantasy title. But as a fan of Xenoblade it’s actually very hard to play this game without making constant comparisons. In that regard Final Fantasy XII in relation to Xenoblade 1 is like going from Final Fantasy 1 to Final Fantasy 6. So much is streamlined like saving, healing and fast travel. So much is made more compelling like battles, traversal and exploration. In fact, I have no idea how this game would be bearable without the fast speed added. I even looked it up on HowLongToBeat and the original apparently take 61 hours and the Zodiac Age takes 40.5. I take this to mean you spend an entire 20 extra hours just slowly walking and fighting without it. Brutal. They could really have done a new version with all that just adds free fast travel from anywhere to any blue crystal and immensely improved the experience without any loss. In the end I wanted to like it more than I did. It’s not bad but it was wearing through it’s content really quickly and never really had anything compelling the work towards.
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