Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age was a remaster that I never thought I needed. As someone brought onboard to the series with Final Fantasy X, which became one of the most captivating and influential games I’ve ever played, I’d ignored the subscription-driven Final Fantasy XI and immediately jumped into playing the other games in the series, becoming a huge fan and looking forward to the 12th installment throughout its many years of development. Sadly, Final Fantasy XII would prove to be the first game I’d spent years highly anticipating, only for it to arrive and to truly let me down. In my review at the time I called it a “hollow and soulless installment,” and though many of my criticisms of the game remain, The Zodiac Age does a great job of improving upon the original in ways that, while still a deeply flawed work, makes the whole thing less of a grind and allows some of its more positive elements to shine through in a way they hadn’t previously.
Final Fantasy XII immediately makes an effort to differentiate itself from its predecessors by focusing on a small, politically-centered storyline, one in which the majority of the characters hardly seem to have any investment. With the party dynamics and the characters’ relationships to each other pushed far into the background, XII’s storyline focuses the majority of its time on a political conflict between multiple empires, with one essentially becoming a military dictatorship intent on capturing its neighbors. The story does have its moments, and there are places where it offers a surprise or two, but its more limited nature allows the game do what it truly seems to want to, which is to become a combat-driven slog across huge, (and I mean huge) landscapes and caverns, where beasts freely roam, and where your characters get endless time to make use of the game’s truly fun and often satisfying combat system.
Though the scope of the world’s incredibly impressive, especially for a game released back on the PS2, it was a world where exploring became marred in tedium; when it can take up to 5 hours for your characters to hop from one city to the other simply to progress the story, my motivation to venture off and explore was next to zero. The Zodiac Age’s best asset by far is the Speed Up feature, which allows you, with the press of a button, to put the game on fast-forward, speeding up not only your character’s movements but also the speed of battle, and since Final Fantasy XII’s combat system is mainly driven by programming your characters beforehand and watching them battle it out, the game’s a perfect fit for this feature in a way that something like Final Fantasy IX wasn’t. In speeding up the proceedings, nearly every single aspect of the game is improved. The sparse narrative feels more fulfilling, as the gap between cutscenes is greatly reduced. I generally played the game at normal speed, but the ability to fast forward it when needed, (something that became increasingly needed, as far as I’m concerned, the further I got in the game) proved to be a major game-changer. Now, when I see a place on the map that I haven’t been to, I can switch on the fast-forward feature and suddenly I don’t mind venturing off to explore it. I got to more fully explore the game’s towns, such as Rabanastre, without the frustrating aspect of how long it takes Vaan to walk from point A to point B across these unnecessarily large, corridor-like NPC areas. And the hours upon hours of battle that the characters find themselves in as they cross many of these areas and the game’s enormous dungeons is not only significantly reduced, but it allows the combat system to remain what it always was, which is fun.
The Zodiac Age makes other improvements as well; the License Board system, in which your characters learn skills and bonuses, such as increasing strength and Max HP, no longer allows all your characters to become clones of each other, as the original Final Fantasy XII all too easily wound up doing, as you now select Jobs in the beginning of the game, tailoring your characters’ leveling up to that job. You have the ability to add a second job to each character later in the game, and though it may occur at too late a point for it to leave the impact that it otherwise could have, it does come in handy in the event that you miss out on certain abilities, such as a way to remove Disease, one of the series’ most unfair status ailments and one of the hardest to cure.
These somewhat unfair gameplay elements from the original Final Fantasy XII are still present throughout The Zodiac Age, and though essential additions, including the auto-save feature, make these far less terrible than they once were, they still prove to be frustrating. Save points that aren’t really save points, but disguised enemies who come alive to kill your characters when they’re at their most vulnerable, enemies in the field that are nearly impossible to flee from, as they’ll continue to aggressively pursue your characters half way across the map before giving up, the fact that you can’t switch characters in battle if they’re selected by anyone or anything, not to mention the fact that doors are very difficult to open when surrounded by enemies…..these problems still remain. That the game now regularly auto-saves helps to shield The Zodiac Age from the ramifications of some of these design choices, but it’s needless to say still a problem, and a constant reminder of what Final Fantasy XII originally was.
The Zodiac Age, in the fact that its features encourage more exploring and therefore more level grinding, is arguably much easier than the PS2 original, though when the challenge does present itself, it seems to do so in the wrong ways. A frequent occurrence, as with the original Final Fantasy XII, is that the enemies in the dungeons are often far harder to defeat than the bosses at the ends of them, and these enemies aren’t difficult for any reason other than for how the dungeon design eagerly puts you in situations in which you’re surrounded and overpowered, with little means to escape and with ever-decreasing numbers of Phoenix Downs at your disposal. At such points, Final Fantasy XII will often advise you to create a second save file, knowing that you have no way to escape from the dungeon should you need to stock up on items/weapons to complete it.
As with the original, characters not participating in battle don’t gain any EXP points, and while they still receive License Board points, un-used characters eventually become entirely incapable of damaging enemies unless they’re brought back into the main party (a mere three party members,) to be leveled up. Given that this takes away valuable EXP from your Main Three, and given that switching characters during battle is so difficult to do, it becomes impractical to use all of your characters, and therefore almost a given that half your party becomes nearly useless in battle about a quarter of the way through the game. Other Final Fantasy games offer story scenarios that mandate the use of certain characters in order to prevent them from falling too far behind. Final Fantasy XII has nothing of the sort, and while a simple solution would have been to allow non-party members to receive even just 50% of the EXP of those participating, that isn’t the case, and as with the original Final Fantasy XII, half my party became useless shields, to be called into battle to quickly cast Limit Breaks (here called Quickenings, and fairly poorly explained) before being immediately killed off by the enemies.
Gameplay-wise, though, Zodiac Age is something that I can overall deem a success. With the speed up system and the auto-saving eliminating the sheer tedium of trudging through seemingly never-ending environments and enemies, along with the greatly reduced fear of dying and losing hours of progress, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age remains fun to play almost throughout. It’s a feat that the original Final Fantasy XII couldn’t manage, and arguably addresses one of the original’s biggest flaws, even though many of them still remain. Despite these features, the never-ending slew of final dungeons are a real test of patience, and while they erode some of the good will built up by the rest of The Zodiac Age, they don’t prove to hurt the game enough this time to stop me from having enjoyed it. And for a game that I originally hated, that’s a definite achievement.
Despite being greatly helped by the improved gameplay pacing, Final Fantasy XII’s storyline remains somewhat of a weird being and a bizarre contradiction. The Shakespearean dialogue is very well acted and written, but the scenario itself falls victim to some head-scratchingly poor writing choices and a complete lack of character development. We’re expected to believe early on in the game, for example, that not a single one of the main characters, or anyone who they interact with, would recognize Princess Ashe, who joins the party under a fake name and goes along with their adventure. That Final Fantasy XII opens with her very widely-viewed and celebrated wedding, one in front of the entire kingdom, makes it impossible to accept that nobody in the party or anywhere else would recognize her as she travels with them. This isn’t something that’s explained in any way by the narrative, it’s just something that we’re supposed to accept; nobody in this kingdom, including Basch, a royal knight, is apparently able to recognize their own princess when they see her walking down the streets of Dalmasca, after having supposedly committed suicide, to boot.
Contrived plot developments such as this one occur numerous times throughout Final Fantasy XII, and the game just doesn’t seem to be aware of how senseless they are. Other moments, such as the empire blocking off entire city streets to prevent the public’s access to a mine, only to have the mine’s gigantic entrance left completely unguarded (none of the main characters comment on this odd phenomenon), along with an entire major city that somehow functions despite demanding that people wander the streets doing good deeds for rich strangers in exchange for pieces of wood in order to be allowed to ride the subway system, all stretch the story’s credibility at every turn.
Setting things like these aside though, the plot, even with its sophisticated dialogue presentation and some genuinely strong political intrigue, fails to delve deeply enough into any of its themes. Vaan just isn’t allowed to be much of a main character, and he spends most of the game either not saying anything at all, or goofing around with his friend, Panelo; she too has no reason for being there. Princess Ashe tries to take the mantle as the “main character,” but even when she has a major, world-changing decision to make later on in the game, the other characters appear to be (at best) only mildly interested in what her choice might be, rendering the whole thing weightless. Even with it being seemingly the writers’ top priority, the political drama is sidestepped almost entirely in the game’s final third with a hunt for various Powerful Items, a development as predictable as it is disappointing. Various airships dot the skies of Ivalice, and air piracy appears to exist, with Balthier being a sky pirate, and Vaan aspiring to be one. But they play no role in the story, and there’s no glimpse whatsoever into what it would be like to be a Sky Pirate in Ivalice, why they’re necessary, or even why airships are used, with warping between save points seeming to be a much more efficient means of travel.
There are moments of greatness here, but even with the improved pacing, Final Fantasy XII’s storyline is only slightly better than I remember it being. It’s a bummer, because with a strong story, the Zodiac Age may have been something that I could conceivably see as being a much stronger entry in the numbered series. But those flaws remain, and though I enjoyed playing it, I don’t expect that I’ll ever feel the need to play it again, or that this world of Ivalice or its characters will remain in my mind for much longer now that I’ve beaten it.
The soundtrack does receive a bit of a facelift, with a re-orchestration that brings out the songs’ better moments. Many of the tracks are generally good, and they often head in surprising and unexpected directions, but others, including much of the dungeon music and even the music that plays in places like Balfonheim Port, can be downright annoying. Composer Hitoshi Sakimoto also seems to take the lazy route at times, with generic “combat music” playing while exploring places like the Phon Coast, rather than music that better fits the individual settings. It’s true that these songs as a result can be used interchangeably in numerous locations, but it does further take away from the world’s personality quite a bit. The English voice acting’s of excellent quality, arguably one of the best-acted games in the series, even if we’re still stuck with the hollow, echo-y compression effect used on the voices back in the day in order to fit the game onto a single PS2 disc. You have the option to change between Japanese and English voice acting, along with the ability to use the original or the remastered soundtrack; that this all fits onto a Switch cartridge along with the HD assets is incredibly impressive, even if the Switch version unfortunately only outputs at a native 876p compared to the full 1080p seen on the PS4/Xbox One versions. The game still looks great though; it’s a huge update over the original, and while it lacks the sharpness of the (admittedly much smaller) Final Fantasy X Remaster, it’s still impressive how well the visuals have held up today, how good the remastering looks, how large the world still feels, and how great the re-orchestrated OST sounds.
All in all, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is a game that I’m glad I played. It makes notable improvements over the original, allowing for a faster-paced, far less frustrating experience. My original complaints about Final Fantasy XII still stand, and in fact many still do permeate this updated version, preventing me from putting The Zodiac Age into the top echelon of modern Final Fantasy games. But the changes made allow the game to flow a lot better, and make for a more fulfilling, much more forgiving adventure. Despite incredibly strong dialogue and top notch acting, the storyline still majorly struggles under its iffy scenario and lack of focus, with easily the least-developed main cast of characters in the modern series, and several endless dungeons too many. Still, while I can’t wholeheartedly recommend Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, I had a blast with it despite its many flaws, and Final Fantasy fans who either haven’t played Final Fantasy XII, or who have always wanted to give it another shot, may very now have a version that I can say may be worth a look. Given how much I truly despised the original Final Fantasy XII, that’s definitely a win for Square-Enix.
3.5/5
Note: This review is based on the Nintendo Switch version
