Current Events > FF 12 Zodiac Age though

(+) Yeah! (+)

I like that the game and characters are at least self-aware of how vaan and penelo add nothing to the team lol, or as balthier puts it comic relief entertainment.

Basch, Balthier and Fran have the best voice acting out of the 6, and also character wise are great. I weirdly find myself not crazy about Ashe yet. Maybe that will change. Can't even remember if I liked her in the original version. Vaan and Penelo are fine, but I feel like there was an intention to do more with them, like maybe show what the war has done to the commoners or that while these royalty and emperors are scrambling for kingdoms, the normal citizens suffer?
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Certainly the best version of the game.
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Boring ass game

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zodiac job system was trash before they patched in respeccing, now it's an okay-but-still-inferior version of the original

don't understand how i ever stomached that game without the fast forward tho

Kaiganeer posted...

zodiac job system was trash before they patched in respeccing,

lol no.
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Kaiganeer posted...

zodiac job system was trash before they patched in respeccing, now it's an okay-but-still-inferior version of the original

don't understand how i ever stomached that game without the fast forward tho

what was the difference between International Zodiac Job System and Zodiac Age?

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Ricemills posted...

what was the difference between International Zodiac Job System and Zodiac Age?

The big difference that I can remember is in IZJS, you only choose one class. In ZA, you can pick two classes, and in the updated versions, you can now Respec.

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The downfall of FF, depending on how you feel about 10.

6 and 7 were the peak of the series with 8 being good and 9 being the last great entry.

10 is the most divisive in the series, its a good game but not a good FF game, I still enjoy it however.

The online ones are what they are but 12, 13 and 15 are so forgettable. No memorable characters or villains.

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StucklnMyPants posted...

The big difference that I can remember is in IZJS, you only choose one class. In ZA, you can pick two classes, and in the updated versions, you can now Respec.

lol wow, 12 jobs and you can only use 6 of them on a single playtrough in IZJS?
that sounds horrible.

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XII was amazing, so underrated.

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StucklnMyPants posted...

The big difference that I can remember is in IZJS, you only choose one class. In ZA, you can pick two classes, and in the updated versions, you can now Respec.

Oh wow, and here I thought 2 jobs was ridiculous. I'll admit I'm a teensy bit disappointed with what "zodiac job system" turned out to be. I was expecting something like FF 5 where you can go through all the jobs and use the abilities from those jobs paired up with other jobs and just have so many abilities and attacks under your disposal.

Instead it turned out to be the limiting kind of job system, like FF 3, where you choose a job and are stuck with it until you change to another, with no job ability crossover. I loved vanilla FF 12 because it doesn't do the lame jrpg thing of pigeon-holing your characters into the default "knight" or "thief" or "mage" like so many other games. If I wanted all 3 characters to be 99 strength zodiac spear wielders with 9,999 HP, it was my prerogative to do so and I could make my characters any which way I want.

I don't confuse gameplay restrictions like that with actual character development, a game's characters are unique because of how they're portrayed in the game's world and story, not because they can only wield a broadsword and wear heavy armor.
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That being said, I could learn to love it and maybe do the whole "each character is a different job" so I can use all 12. Plus it really helps that the seitengrat exploit exists, it's so easy to do and this weapon is so damn broken I just love it. Even the enemies that you're not supposed to fight in the beginning of the game can be taken down and I just laugh so gleefully at the amount of damage it can do.
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12 is amazing gameplay and world building wise...and they failed to fully realized the game's potential by not really giving much of a story to the characters and the story is also very paper thin despite how cool it seems on the surface.

I think one chapter of FF7 REMAKE has more voice acting than half of FFXII, but then again REMAKE had a bit too many cutscenes.

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Is it on sale?

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Godnorgosh posted...

FFXII puts me to sleep

Like, if I ever had kids I'd give them a choice: do you want mommy to sing you a lullaby or do you want to play FFXII?

I liked 12 a lot but I still laughed at this.

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I wanted to have unprotected consensual intercourse with Fran

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LOL wow, the original version of the Zodiac Job stuff only allowed for one, without re-speccing?
That's hilariously bad. It's fine as it is now, but FFV is literally right there Squeenix, it has the best job system, copy it(or hell, copy FFT)!

FF12 vanilla had an awful gambit system and was pretty bad to play without IZJS.

IZJS was fine with 1 job I found, the speedup function made the game fantastic

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StucklnMyPants posted...

The big difference that I can remember is in IZJS, you only choose one class. In ZA, you can pick two classes, and in the updated versions, you can now Respec.

Besides being able to select two jobs instead of one and respec jobs and espers TZA also has hd resolution visuals, remastered soundtrack, three sets of gambits for each character to customize instead of one and new game+ where everything carries over(This last one seems exclusive to the Switch version though.)

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Everything about FF12 was amazing except for the story/characters simply because there was almost NONE of it. I recall like a 10 hour section without a single cutscene or conversation, and once you finish Baschs storyline in the beginning he pretty much never speaks ever again.
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Was kind of annoying that some guest characters had better arcs than the main cast, but i loved FXII

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One of my favourite FF games. Actually just finished a playthrough the other day (Platinum trophy included) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Enjoy the characters , dialect , environments/settings and the music.

Only main issue for me is the difficulty, it is seriously easy there are not enough fights/areas that provide much of a challenge (but that are still doable). Very quickly you can just breeze through areas with little to no difficulty but venture into an area your not supposed too and you get wiped in a flash. So its either way too easy or too hard, there's very little ground in between

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I'll always say this whenever the main character debate is brought up about FF12. Ashe is Gatsby. Vaan is Nick Carraway.

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DeadBankerDream posted...

lol no.

Yeah you get way the hell more stats just from a single job from IZJS. Much less ZA where you get 2. And there was never much point in letting everyone theoretically equip everything when there was only one of certain weapons/ armor necessary for optimal equipment. And certain characters were innately better in that regard and it was more noticeable in vanilla with the 9999 damage cap.

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I liked it and the time speedup thing really took the edge off some of the more tedious aspects of the game but the story was forgettable

Matsuno's politically intriguing story had so much potential when I first played the game and I really loved it, unique from all the other FF games before it, but I just remember it falters near the end. Gonna see if I like it still after all this time.

It's the best thing about the 11 FF games released (did not count the online) in that almost each one has a unique story to tell and a way to experience it. Especially starting with 6. 4 is where the franchise really took off with an actual story and characters, and 6 is where they really upped their game and decided to abandon the crystal storyline in favor of something more special. And each game has its own feel, from the steampunk to fantasy to the pseudo-fantasy/real world to the ivalice feel, the final fantasy series was really an amazing series and even decades later, these 11 games are cherished. 4-12 in particular stand the test of time, flaws and all.
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I think the original board gets too much hate. Nobody's forcing you to make all your characters the same and you'd have to do a lot of grinding to max out the board and make them all the same.

Now I admit I had 3 main templates. Vaan and Basch were tanks (provoke), Balthier and Fran were DPS (berserk), and Penelo and Ashe were more the mages (especially Penelo with Ashe going for some of the magic based weapon options). They all generally used different weapons, until near the end when greatswords seemed to completely replace sword and shield, IIRC.

I haven't played the job version yet, though I do own it. Should be interesting and played differently, though I still liked my old loadouts and again, think it gets too much hate.
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I'm playing it right now, and basically decided Ashe is going to get her Cecil on while Fran pretends to be Rosa. Penelo has the black magic, and Basch is the samurai-thing, so I gave him red mage as a secondary since it was full of magick lore for some reason.
Not sure what to do with Balthier and Vaan(Vaan is currently a time mage, which seems to work). Is it me, or do guns kind of suck?

ElatedVenusaur posted...

I'm playing it right now, and basically decided Ashe is going to get her Cecil on while Fran pretends to be Rosa. Penelo has the black magic, and Basch is the samurai-thing, so I gave him red mage as a secondary since it was full of magick lore for some reason.
Not sure what to do with Balthier and Vaan(Vaan is currently a time mage, which seems to work). Is it me, or do guns kind of suck?

They are amazing... In certain circumstances. Basically, if you force rare spawns and get really good mid and late game ones early then it's one of the best. Also if you're not unlocking any new equipment or whatnot then it's the best one. Also makes for a really good solo 112233 challenge weapon type.

But if you don't do that and just stick with store things, well. Nah, usually not the most optimal equip item.

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gunplagirl posted...

112233

122333 you knob

Reis posted...

122333 you (this post is gonna get modded)

Still easier than a nsgnonsncnennenbb run to that challenge run's unbeatable boss. :l

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ElatedVenusaur posted...

I'm playing it right now, and basically decided Ashe is going to get her Cecil on while Fran pretends to be Rosa. Penelo has the black magic, and Basch is the samurai-thing, so I gave him red mage as a secondary since it was full of magick lore for some reason.
Not sure what to do with Balthier and Vaan(Vaan is currently a time mage, which seems to work). Is it me, or do guns kind of suck?

Yeah I wanted to start off by giving the jobs that made "sense" for the character to have since I really couldn't decide what to choose, which is why I gave shikari to Vaan since I felt it tied with his street urchin status, sly and can get into tight places thing. Basch made sense as a Bushi or Knight, I gave him Bushi as I was gonna make Ashe a Knight. Penelo is a mage, and I made Fran the archer and Balthier the machinist because it matched with the weapons they started out with but once I get the second job access I think I'll probably switch them out for something else asap because I'm not sure Machinist and Archer have much to offer in terms of abilities and HP.
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I feel like I liked 12 a lot more in theory than in reality.

Kinda tempted to dl it for x1x at some point

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Number090684 posted...

new game+ where everything carries over(This last one seems exclusive to the Switch version though.)

I think the Switch features were patched into the other versions recently.

saspa posted...

Yeah I wanted to start off by giving the jobs that made "sense" for the character to have since I really couldn't decide what to choose, which is why I gave shikari to Vaan since I felt it tied with his street urchin status, sly and can get into tight places thing. Basch made sense as a Bushi or Knight, I gave him Bushi as I was gonna make Ashe a Knight. Penelo is a mage, and I made Fran the archer and Balthier the machinist because it matched with the weapons they started out with but once I get the second job access I think I'll probably switch them out for something else asap because I'm not sure Machinist and Archer have much to offer in terms of abilities and HP.

IIRC, technically Bathier is the worst one for using a gun and Fran the worst one with a bow, because they have special animations that take slightly longer or something, but I doubt it makes that big of a difference for your average player. I had them using those weapons when I played initially. I can't remember what else I had them use, except Fran also got spears.
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I'm playing it too and having a lot of fun.

But I just cannot care less for the story lol

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luigi13579 posted...

I think the Switch features were patched into the other versions recently.

https://www.destructoid.com/final-fantasy-xii-got-a-helpful-update-on-ps4-and-pc-588060.phtml

They got the job reset and gambit sets, but not NG+ it seems.

The PC version has a bunch of mods to simulate various features though.
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Sir Will posted...

IIRC, technically Bathier is the worst one for using a gun and Fran the worst one with a bow, because they have special animations that take slightly longer or something, but I doubt it makes that big of a difference for your average player. I had them using those weapons when I played initially. I can't remember what else I had them use, except Fran also got spears.

Yep. Copying this from a Reddit post.

It is generally better to look at it in the other direction; who is fastest with each weapon.

• Swords - Balthier=Basch
• Greatswords- Vaan=Basch
• Dagger- Balthier
• Ninjas Sword- Penelo=Basch=Balthier
• Katana- Basch=Balthier
• Hammer- Basch
• Pole- Fran
• Spear- Basch
• Gun- Everyone but Balthier and Penelo are tied
• Crossbow- Everyone but Balthier and Penelo are tied
• Bow- Everyone but Balthier and Fran are tied

So yeah. Balthier , Penelo, and Fran should avoid ranged weapons like the plague. The difference is negligible to the average player, all things considered. But if you ever want to speedrun the game, or cut a few minutes off of certain fights then optimal animations (as well as base stats) can mean a few minutes on 20+ minute fights for the average player (that wyrm unlocked by the waterfall puzzle).

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Sir Will posted...

IIRC, technically Bathier is the worst one for using a gun and Fran the worst one with a bow, because they have special animations that take slightly longer or something, but I doubt it makes that big of a difference for your average player. I had them using those weapons when I played initially. I can't remember what else I had them use, except Fran also got spears.

Yeah found that out recently, facepalmed at my decision afterwards hehe. Heard that Fran is better with a spear and she is tall so makes sense
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Sir Will posted...

IIRC, technically Bathier is the worst one for using a gun and Fran the worst one with a bow, because they have special animations that take slightly longer or something, but I doubt it makes that big of a difference for your average player. I had them using those weapons when I played initially. I can't remember what else I had them use, except Fran also got spears.

LOL thats hilarious.
Im just fumbling my way through my first play through, so Im not too worried about it.

Huh now I understand the double job thing. Half the licenses on the second board are already unlocked, so it's not like I can have double the amount of HP increases I normally do or double the swiftness. It's just the different armor that I can unlock.

So it's not as broken as one would hope, but I'm sure given the right combination you can still have overpowered characters nonetheless. Or at least, job combos that make the best use out of each other.
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