The New Classics #46: Final Fantasy XII – The Zodiac Age

 

The Backstory: The late-’90s entries of the series didn’t click with me at all; but I reasoned that maybe the Noughties entries would fare better — and that I may as well give that remake a try since it was in my collection anyway. I know little about that game, except that the fighting system generated some controversy back in the days because of its ARPG influences. Now that sounded pretty good to me; and I was eager to reach my first fight and see for myself how that infamous fighting system fared.   

 

 

The Game: FFXII humoured me by kindly letting me skip every single cutscene, which is something I genuinely didn’t expect from the series. However, any good impression I may have garnered from that player-friendliness started to evaporate as I discovered the tutorial. Not only does it bother explaining uber-basic actions such as ‘Move with L’ and ‘Press A to talk to NPCs’, but it’s also delivered during gameplay by your captain (or whoever that guy is). Talk about clumsily breaking immersion and ruining your carefully crafted in medias res introduction, game!  

 

Lack of narrative flair aside, the existence of such a hand-holdy tutorial really worried me. Was I actually dealing with a (shiver) casual RPG? That certainly didn’t bode well for whatever was to come, oh noooo precious. I didn’t have to wait long before my first battle, and… oh, lord.  

 

 

FFXII’s fighting system is called ‘Active Dimension Battle’. I reckon this refers to the fact that exploration and combat are no longer separate; but still, the word ‘active’ is a hilariously poor choice to describe combat in FFXII. Here’s how it works: upon meeting a foe, you open a menu and input a command — let’s say, ‘attack’. You then have to position your character so that said attacks can land — i.e. right next to the foe. You can change the active command at any given moment, and retreat a bit to heal. Now, can you actually slash at things by pressing buttons? Nope, you can’t. The only two things you can do are: a) input commands, and b) move around so that the commands can execute.  

 

I swear I was left literally speechless after that first battle — like, I couldn’t believe what I was playing. I fought a couple of extra battles for good measure, and realised that I simply couldn’t go on. Now, I could comment on the monochrome greyish aesthetics, or the unexpected European medieval atmosphere; but I feel everything would be pointless after that fighting system debacle. 

 

 

The Verdict: I’m very tolerant towards fighting systems in RPGs; but as I said before, automated combat is where I draw the line. FFXII’s combat is not fully automated, as you still play an important role; but I don’t fancy that role. It’s too passive, yet too demanding: you’re denied the ARPG thrill of slashing around and the turn-based RPG joy of watching your commands unfold after input, and end up with the worst of both worlds instead. Well, that’s a miss again for Final Fantasy — next please!