Final Fantasy XII brought a lot of changes to the long-standing RPG series, like a new battle system and a more open world. It also included a lot of genre classics, things like job systems and a complex storyline spanning several characters. The game was a big hit, so it’s no surprise it would eventually get the remaster treatment, being re-released as Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. The question has to be, though, just how good is it?
Having not played much of the original, the biggest difference is obviously going to be in the graphics department. The game’s resolution and textures have gotten a huge boost, and while the textures themselves are lovely and make screenshots look gorgeous, put the game in motion and you get a different story. Animations are choppy and models look blocky, hindered by the lower polygon counts of the technology of the early 2000s. Square Enix could have gone a long way in upping draw distance; bustling towns and the game’s wilderness would have really come to life if objects and characters all existed on the screen at once. Instead, things phase into existence a few feet away from the characters, which looks bad, breaks immersion, and in general screams “All we did was up the textures.”
The Zodiac Age will likely appeal to fans of the original who maybe haven’t given it a run-through in years, and should probably be the go-to version for series newcomers who want to catch up on its backlog, but it isn’t likely to appeal to anyone else. The main plot is convoluted, although in more of a “historic fantasy novel” way than a bad one, but things like the open world, position-based auto-combat system, and various skills and jobs, are all now commonplace in the industry and aren’t likely to wow anyone like they did when the adventure first came out.
