Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (Switch)

Star Wars... but in Ivalice

Played and finished Final Fantasy XII for the first time. Never had it as a kid. It was released on the PS2 right as I was moving away for University and I never got a PS2 to play on so it never came to it. So I picked it up for the Switch instead. The only thing I knew was that it seen as a Star Wars-rip off in story... and when you begin to think that, you can't unsee it. So the game takes place in Ivalice, like the Final Fantasy Tactics game (which I only played the Advance version) where there is a wedding between the prince of Nabradia and the princess of Dalmasca, but the Archadian Empire attacks Nabradia so the prince together with the knight Basch sets out to defend his homeland since they are united now. The prince is killed in battle and the fortress they defended was destroyed by some unknown power that works like a nuclear bomb... or the Death Star if you like. Basch returns to Dalmasca, but the king have left to sign the surrender so the royal knights try to reach the king before it's to late... which it is, but it seems that Basch killed the king for surrendering Dalmasca to the Archadian empire. 

Two years later we follow Vaan, the brother of one of the soldiers who died after the attack and witnessed the kings death by Basch's hand, right before he stabbed him. Vaan works with Penelo in the former Dalmascian Capital Rabinaste that lies in the desert. He dreams of becoming a sky pirate. During the celebration of the new governor Vayne Vaan sneaks into the palace and find a magicte (a magical stone pretty much) but while escaping runs into the sky pirate Balthier and his companion Fran, a Viera (mystical rabbit pretty much) who also looked for the stone, these will be our Han Solo and Chewbacca for this game. Escaping through the sewers they meet Ashe, who is the princess of Dalmasca and leader of the resistance... Princess Leia I presume. They get captured and Vaan and the sky pirates are taken to an old Nabradia fortress where they escape before some bounty hunters find Balthier who owns them money. They also find Basch who have been trapped there for two years. Turns out that it was his twin brother Gebranth that killed the king, framed him and then got him locked up here. 

So not only is there a twin involved, but the brother works for the empire as a judge who goes around in black armour from top to toe. They meet the resistance and together with Ashe travels to Cloud City... I mean Bhurjerba, the floating mining town who supplies the empire with minerals while the lord is financing the resistance. After a lot of saving they rescue Penelo, Ashe gets taken and they rescue her and the magicite Vaan stole turns out to be one of three shards the Dynast-King used to create peace in Ivalice. The party escapes and plans to get the Dawn Shard from the Dynast-Kings Tomb which they get, but are captured again. The empire test the Dawn Shard, but its powers causes the ship they are on to explode, killing the Judge that controlled that ship and the whole 8th fleet, setting in motion a build up to war between Archadia and Rossaria, the other empire in Ivalice. Heroes escape and search for the Dynast-Kings sword which can destroy magicite which was hidden by the Daila Lama of Ivalice... or Yoda if you like that. Get the sword, sneaks into the Imperial capital where you confront Dr. Cid. The capital is also in turmoil since the Emperor have been killed by the senators, but the judges have apprehended the senators and Vayne, the oldest son of the Emperor take over as a dictator to bring stability when the Rossarion army seems to move on the Empire. 

Dr. Cid is Balthiers father and seems to be possessed by the being Venat, they meet the pirate leader Reddas who hunted Cid as well and they all escape. Cid hinted to the ancient city where the Dynast-kings power came from so they go there, but it holds a giant crystal where the Occurians live, the ancient gods of Ivalice who controls history and gave the Dynast-King the sword to cut the magicite from the Sun-cyst. They give the same powers to Ashe so that she can destroy the Empire and turn Ivalice back through the course of history that Venat, herself an Occurian, have led the humans stray from. With both swords the party heads to a giant lighthouse at the brink of the world where the Sun-cyst lies. Climbing the tower they find the Sun-cyst, but both Gebrant and Dr. Cid appears, Gebrant goating Ashe to take the Sun-cyst and demand vengeance. Ashe forsake it, but Dr. Cid and Venat overflow the Sun-cyst with power causing it to spew out powers that apparently powers the flying fortress Bahamut, aka the Death Star. They are saved by Reddas who takes the Dynast-Kings sword and destroys the Sun-cyst, killing himself in the sacrifice. But as he was responsible for the destruction of Nebradis as a judge on Cid's order he was kinda satisfied with that. 

Final stage is the heroes using their airship to board the Bahamut in the middle of the battle over Rabanestra between the Resistance and the Archadian Empire. The heroes face of Vayne and Venat and Vayne dies, but I don't think he was that sad since he and Venat achieved their goals, destroying the Sun-cyst and giving humans free will. As the fortress is self-destructing Vaan and friends escape with Gebrant and Vayne's younger brother Larsa that have aided them in trying to stop the war. Gebrant is mortally wounded and ask Bashe to protect Larsa. Balthier and Fran stays behind so the other can escape as well as flying the Bahamut away from Rabanastre before crashing into the ground. One year pass and Ashe is supposed to be crowned Queen, Bashe works as Larsa's judge, Balthier and Fran survived and took back their airship and Vaan and Penelo prepares to set out on their own adventures, the end.

It has its moments, but the story doesn't gel all the way. I can see the themes, Ashe struggles with the thought of acquiring power to restore her homeland and the fear of becoming as corrupted as the Empire. Basch struggles with his failures to protect his former homeland and his new king. Balthier is just the rouge who sees himself as the leading man, but he pushes the plot forward all the time and is the voice of reason (and voiced by the same guy who was Commander Nelson in Wonderful 101). Fran is supposed to struggle with having left her forest and therefore becoming cut off to the voice of the forest. It doesn't effect much though, and Vaan and Penelo really doesn't do much. Apparently since Vaan was the main character in the last minute since they began with Basch as the leading role, but they thought an older main character would turn people off. The power struggle of the empires are really interesting, but the Occurian plot seems disjointed from the others. I get that the lighthouse shows the true face of the Occurians how they look down on people and acts a bit like vengeful gods, but it's never explained. Skies of Arcadia shows the same thing with the Silvites, but there they directly tells the player that the rains of destruction is the Silvites reseting history. Here, I don't get why Venat turned on them, and how was the humans trapped by the Occurians history, what would have been different? 

Gameplay on the other hand... I can see the evolution to XIII. Here they introduced the Gambit system where you can pretty much set the combat AI how you want, if you are gonna attack, with what, against whom or heal and so on. A bit confusing in the beginning, but I got the hang of it really fast. Sadly I didn't get how to set up so that my black mage (Ashe) would use different spells against different enemies depending on which element they were weak to. Think I would have been better against certain bosses in the end game (or dealing with the damn elementals). You also can customise the classes for every character how ever you want from the 12 you got access to, but starting equipment and base stats push you to a certain direction, and then you have the ability to combine it with another class. I went for a spread with all 12 classes. I get that certain combinations are really good together. Kinda alright altogether. Wasn't to hard to get a hold off, but as usual it leads to a strategy where you don't have to push any button, just move until the auto-function takes you to nearest enemy. 

Music... no Uematsu, not bad music and the orchestrated version on the remaster is really good. But again, the imperial theme sound like the imperial theme from Star Wars so not even that can escape it. Graphically... I think X looks better. People's faces looks washed out in comparison. And the voice acting... it sounds bad in my ears. Maybe the more heavy dialects make it feel more unnatural to me, but I assume the heavy compression of the voices is the bigger culprit. Also, the story is a bit too human centric. The only non-human in the party is Fran, even tough there is several established races in Ivalice like the moogles, the Nu Mou and the Baangas. They introduced even more here so even worse that 5 (or 8) out of 6 (or 9) characters are humans... or humes, sorry. Still, worth a play through and for god sake, play the remaster that added speeding up and a minimap. I finished just after 53 hours and that's thankfully for speeding up game play with 4x. I can't imagine having played this the original speed. Although, gotta be fair, at times the speed up and the wriggling of the camera made me feel a bit dizzy.