Review for Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. Game for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 11/07/2017 The version for PC came out on 01/02/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 30/04/2019 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 13/07/2017 The version for Xbox One came out on 30/04/2019
Square Enix, you know, it is not new to the publication of reissues of re-editions of flagship titles and, questionable for profit aside, fans of the various franchises have always welcomed every new version of their favorite games with open arms. The case of Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age however, it is also unassailable by the detractors of this practice: it is in fact one revised and corrected version of Final Fantasy XII: International Zodiac System, a publication that never came out of Japanese territory and which even then included many improvements within it.
Final Fantasy XII is judged by many to be the saga's true swan song, a title nice to see but without "the soul of Final Fantasy", with flat characters and an uninvolving storyline. Beyond subjective tastes, it is obvious that anyone who didn't appreciate the title's narrative ten years ago will find nothing new in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age; the new edition adds nothing to the story (unlike the International edition of Final Fantasy X-2 for example) and focuses on the technical and balancing aspects of the gameplay.
The first macroscopic improvements are those concerning graphics and audio sector: the title runs on PlayStation 4 Standard a 30 FPS stable: polygonal models, menus and videos have been adapted to modern quality standards (although obviously the graphics always remain the same as the original title) and the entire soundtrack was recorded from scratch starting from a real orchestra in concert, complete with 8 new exclusive tracks of the Zodiac Age.
The original audio compartment can also be selected from the options menu and the choice between Japanese and English speech. The localization of subtitles and menus is present and, although as usual some translations will be unhappy in the eyes of the most experienced, the final result is more than satisfactory. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age also features a support for Playstation Network trophies, many of which are related to achieving goals that are not at all simple.
As the name suggests, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age's spearhead is the Zodiac Job System: it is a total restyle of the Licensing system, now limited to a maximum of two per character. Each of the twelve available classes has a different "chessboard", with unique skills, spells and equipment. For anyone who had played the original Final Fantasy XII, the transition from a handyman party to such a limiting situation might be tight, but it's undeniable that the system works and adds a lot. depth to party management.
The choice of the right complementarity between the jobs of each character is not essential to conclude the game, designed to be more or less feasible with any combination of roles and characters in the team, but it allows (and obliges) the player to give proper weight to their decisions, to choose a tactical approach specific and why not, to play of roleplay assigning to each hero the class they deem most akin to their nature.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age also points to facilitate exploration within a title that, although it has aged well, is still its age. The large play areas will no longer be scary, thanks to the possibility of keep the map transparent on the screen, therefore without having to continuously open the relative menu, but the real and very welcome novelty is the introduction of Accelerated mode: with the press of a simple button, the player can speed up movements and battles by 200% or (feature not present in the Japanese Zodiac System) by 400%, without the sound track being altered.
A real one godsend for farming and min-maxing enthusiasts, no longer forced to waste dozens and dozens of hours in a practice that is as satisfying as it is repetitive; to this are added the Significantly reduced loads between one area and another, the presence of the autosave, in addition to the classic and always present manual backup of data.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age will not cancel the nightmare of thousands of players for the recovery of the legendary Zodiac Spear, but offers more than valid alternatives thanks toaddition of numerous equipment equally powerful and a fair number of new gambits and consumable items: the hated and coveted weapon therefore becomes more of a challenge against fate and against oneself, rather than a parametric necessity for party optimization.
The new edition of the game also contains within it small, but numerous balances concerning the effects of items, the growth of statistics and the assortment of shops; The location of some enemies and the appearance of chests have also been revised, now much more frequent and with a larger pool of objects. Last, but not least, the possibility of control the Guest characters inside the party and the Esper themselves, complete with customization of their Gambit.
They are also present well two types of New Game Plus and Challenge Mode, designed ad hoc for those who, having reached the end-game with the best weapons in the game, still want to continue to test themselves with battles in which strategy matters as much as statistics.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is much more enjoyable than the classic version of the title, offers greater depth of both parametric and roleplay and makes all those mechanics of "old school grinding" more usable that for less elderly players could be indigestible. It is a title as criticized as it is qualitatively indisputable, a turning point in the saga from the pure turn-based RPG genre to the tactical / action hybrid. The worldwide release of this definitive version could (and should) also be an opportunity to judge the narrative sector with a more mature and aware look, much discussed at the time of its release, but tragically more “compact” than many of its successors.
► Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is a JRPG-type game developed and published by Square Enix for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 11/07/2017 The version for PC came out on 01/02/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 30/04/2019 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 13/07/2017 The version for Xbox One came out on 30/04/2019
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