REVIEW – After 11 years of its original release, comes the remaster of Final Fantasy XII for PS4 called The Zodiac Age, where you will be able to revisit or visit for the first time the world of Ivalice. To start, the most important thing is to clarify that it is not just a graphic remaster, but a kind of remake that improves the mechanics of the first game and takes away the frustration.

In this episode of the franchise, the work system allows you to focus on various roles, such as machinist, red wizard, archer, and so on, and you can have 2, which opens the door to many options such as having a healing archer or a magician capable of doing physical harm. That will allow you to explore all the roles of the game and you will feel that you actually completed it 100% in a single pass. Although this system is a restriction, it clarifies the vision of the game and makes you feel much better armed and with a better definition of objectives.

More refined goals

In the first title, there was a huge license board, and it was difficult to plan your moves to forge the right path. This time, you have better-defined routes and a smaller board that gives more purpose to your characters.

Among other small changes that improve the experience is the fact that the special abilities called Quickenings – which are like Limit Breaks – are no longer subject to the MP, but a bar that fills up in the style of other Final Fantasy games. You can also control team members who are just passing through, see a transparent map in the foreground that helps you not to miss out on parts where the game gets labyrinthine and tidbits, so they make the experience more enjoyable.

Wasting time is no longer the essence

Another important addition is that you can accelerate time with L1 to relieve the tedious of traversing a large map or grinding to level up, so you can speed up almost all the boring processes and go for the fun. This skill has two modes: 2x and 4x to make things even faster and make the game feel more dynamic and fun.

For the sake of maximum transparency, I will not even try to dissimulate it a little bit: in my particular case, they did not spend more than a couple of hours until they fell with the whole team. I have played almost more time to the accelerated Final Fantasy than to the normal version, I have crossed whole deserts in a percussion, and I have fought supposedly epic confrontations at absolutely suicidal speed, and I have enjoyed every second.

In its time, what distinguished in this title from the rest of the Final Fantasies was the battle system, that instead of being the classic ATB focused more on macros of actions called Gambits.

The joy of the system is to program your movements according to situations, for example, to fire weak enemies against magic or heal any ally whose energy drops below 70%, which makes it appear at one point that the game is played alone and that Provoked much criticism. For some that will be boring, but others will find it very satisfying to see that their programming works flawlessly.

Oh my, you didn’t age a bit!

The first thing you’ll notice when you put the game is how well you look. Square Enix did a great job in defining textures; The characters look sharp and well defined, and you will have trouble believing that you are watching a game that came out in 2006. Even the difference between gameplay and cinematics is less noticeable than in the original version. However, not everything is perfect, as there are textures that contrast with the definition of the characters in parts of the environment. For example, there are places where the floor looks very pixilated and fuzzy, but hey, we’re talking about a 2006 game, and besides those little details it looks great.

It’s not just music soundtrack; it’s symphony!

The sound is another of the areas in which we can thank Square because the soundtrack is completely remastered and orchestrated. You can switch to the original soundtrack at any time, and the difference is so subtle and has so much quality that you will prefer to hear the new versions. Unfortunately, the voices are listened to and switched off, as in the original.

Surely they could only rescue the archives of the original game and had to settle for that. It is not something that breaks the game, but it is notorious. Oh, and if you’re a purist, you can listen to the game in its original language by choosing that option from the menu.

A great return – but not for everyone

If you played Final Fantasy XII in your time and you liked it, this is a must buy, but if you did not like it, it’s time to give it a try. For years, this was one of my most hated Final Fantasy, and now I enjoyed it in a new light; I must say that I no longer have that last place in my heart and the experience was very pleasant and nostalgic. Final Fantasy XII is a game whose story will take about 70 hours to finish, although if you decide to fulfill all the secondary missions and their extras we would be talking about something close to 150 hours, so you will have Final Fantasy for a while.

-BadSector-

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Square Enix

Genre: Role playing game (JRPG)

Release date: Jul 11, 2017