As you can probably tell by my Playtime, i really really like this game. The original PS2 release allready was my Favorite game, The Zodiarc Age only increased my love for it with some great Quality of Life and fun extra Mechanics.

Storywise id give the game a 7/10, it is VERY Political so its easy to get confused, miss things or simply dont understand things till your 2nd or 3rd time arround, were sadly missing Iconic Villains in this game as Memorable as Seymore from FF10 or Kefka from FF6, tho we still have some very interesting Antagonists that are really well written and fun to meet

Gameplay is a huge hit or miss, for me its a 9/10, 2nd best battle system in the Franchise (right behind FF10-2) but ive also heared a lot of people complain about it beeing "Boring", since you have the choice to setup your team to play the whole game for you without you having to do any battle inputs all game long. While that Statement is true, it takes a lot of practice and Game knowledge to set the Gambits up in a way to achieve that and is a entirely Optional system one can choose to ignore completely and just control your party manually at all times

The World Building is Beautifull, from lively Deserts over mysterious Forrests up to Snow Covered Mountains, the world has a big Variety of scenery and colors, Ivalice in all its glory.

The Game has a lot of interesting Sidequests and Minigames to explore and discover

All in all id Recommend anyone unsure if they want to play this to watch a Video of the Prolog as well as perhaps a Video on the Boss Firemane (roughly 2h into the game, would spoil you some characters but give you a better representation of the fully unlocked battle system)

I have a desktop and laptop both running Fedora Linux based OSs. Game runs fine on one, but will only launch to a white screen on the other.

Mostly fun, but:
underwhelming story, bland characters, interesting-but-tedious combat mechanic, repeated/recycled monster hunter features that get boring after #15, quickenings are an insult, summons look cool but are irrelevant, the Zodiac Age class system is very lame.

yet:
the quasi-MMO feel of the world map is... okay
Soundtrack is nice and costumes are an improvement over the clownish FFX
Ivalice is a cool world, and I love the designs for moogles and chocobos.

Honetsly, a FF fan could completely ignore this game and not miss out on anything

Das Spiel hat ein einzigartiges Kampfsysthem und beinhaltet viel Liebe

Gutes Spiel das storytechnisch einen einzigartigen Start hinlegt, aber genau da aufhört, wo es hätte spannend werden können. Durch Klischés und einem extrem langweiligen Kampfsystem nimmt es sich leider schnell die Würze und bietet keinen hohen Anreiz zum wiederspielen.

Was ist gut?
+ Die Story ist sehr geil erzählt und inszeniert
+ Das Gameplay funktioniert am Anfang gut und hätte das Potential für Tiefe gehabt
+ Es gibt viel zu entdecken
+ Grafik ist top für die Zeit (was man bei Final Fantasy eigentlich nie dazu sagen muss)

Was hat mir nicht so gut gefallen?
- das Kampfsystem ist eine sehr abgespeckte Version, von dem was Dragon Age bietet - Echtzeit mit Pause-Funktion und der Möglichkeit Bedingungen einzustellen, die darüber bestimmen, wann ein Charakter eine Fähigkeit automatisch einsetzt. Das ist zu Beginn gut, wenn man es aber verstanden hat, hat man ab dem Mid-game alles eingestellt und wartet jeden Kampf nur noch ab (auf jedem Schwierigkeitsgrad und bei fast jedem Boss)
- Die Story beginnt mit einem komplexen und spannenden politischen Konflikt und schafft sich dann ganz schnell ab, da man dem Antagonisten und den Protagonisten 0 Tiefe gegeben hat und man am Ende nicht wirklich die Handlungen des Antagonisten nachvollziehen kann. Der Protagonist wirkt in 99% des Spiels wie eine Nebenfigur und die "Prinzessin", die den Kern des Spiels bestimmt, redet in den meisten Sequenzen einfach kein Wort und hat damit auch nahezu keine Persönlichkeit. Es wurde wirklich unglaublich viel Potential verschwendet und am Ende ist der Lichtblick einfach, dass Balthier an Tiefe und Persönlichkeit so viel abbekommen hat, dass er ohne Probleme allen die Show stiehlt. Er ist mit großem Abstand die Hauptfigur in der Story, auch wenn ihm das in der Geschichte niemand anerkennt.

Im großen und ganzen ist es trotzdem ein schönes Spiel, dass einem verdammt viele coole Eindrücke bietet und auch so viel Spaß macht, dass man es definitiv weiterempfehlen kann.

Final Fantasy 9 is still the King! This game is worse and way less story heavy than 9.

You don't get to sex Fran

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
First ever final fantasy game i've played and there's a lot to like
The plot in this one was very interesting and flows well
Some of the main characters are unique and good development
The gameplay in this is something I've not played ever before
The gambit system is one of the most interesting gameplay systems I've seen
Very cool boss designs
There are some negatives
The pacing of the story feels off, sometimes I would forget what the goal was but that might just be a JRPG thing
The boss and enemy designs were very dope but they just feel out of place a lot of the times...they don't seem to fit the area/universe and are just kinda thrown in
I understand that the story is not necessarily focused on Vaan but he gets no development it feels like at all
Overall was a fun game
7/10
Balthier and Fran carried

An underrated classic. This game had a really mature and well developed story which both honors past FF games but pushes the series forward in new ways.

this here? this good soup