On January 31, 2017, Square Enix announced the release date of the Zodiac Age, the remake of Final Fantasy XII. According to the FF official Twitter account, the game is going to be available for NA and EU on July 11 as a PlayStation 4 exclusive.
Hiroaki Kato, a Square Enix producer, was the first person to talk about a Final Fantasy XII remake. On an article for the PlayStation Blog, he explained the game was under development and that it was going to arrive in 2017 for EU and NA.
Final Fantasy XII released on March 16, 2006, for the PS2. Square Enix developed it, and Ubisoft took care of the distribution. Akitoshi Kawazu was the producer of this masterpiece that received critical acclaim upon release winning many GOTY awards.
Final Fantasy XII introduced many new features to the franchise
FF XII was set in Ivalice, an open-world map subdivided into zones. The scenarios and graphics were rich, and there was a lot to discover outside the storyline. The designers set it, so weather and time affected the zones and even the type of monsters in them.
The battle system changed drastically. The game switched from the standard turn-based combat to a dynamic real-time style. Players could see enemies on the field which was a huge change, and encountering area bosses was one of the best things of the game.
FFXII The Zodiac Age is being released on 11th July 2017 in EU & NA on PS4!#FF30th pic.twitter.com/EkWNf0YXgs
— Final Fantasy (@FinalFantasy) January 31, 2017
Players could often take hunting missions in towns. They had to track infamous monsters, each with a nickname based on their deeds, and slay them down. Square Enix used the open-world map, weather, and time to create fun and challenging quests.
Depending on what creature players are dealing with, they have to use different strategies. In other FF games, any character could hit a flying monster but not in FF XII. To deal with aerial threats, players needed ranged characters, so people needed to give actual thought to the squad composition because an area could be full of wolves while the next was packed with wyverns.
Controlling the squad was a problem, but Kato promised improved mechanics
In FF XII, people get to control parties of three characters. Once in the wild, all three of them are visible and interact with the environment. Square Enix introduced an AI that dictated their behavior.
People can completely control any one of the characters during combats, and use menu settings to set how the other two would act depending on the situation.
The controls were tricky, to say the least. Most of the times it was difficult to make the characters act in a certain way, and it was necessary to spend a lot of time in the menu to create an acceptable action pattern.
However, that gave people a lot of possibilities strategically. They could take any specific role on the battlefield. For example, they could take over the healer and set the tanks to lure the enemies attention.
In conclusion, get it if you can. This is one of those games that changed the formula and worked incredibly well. It basically took all the things that made the franchise good and took them to an epic scale. That is something you will understand better when you meet the first Esper. That also goes for the Job and Licence systems, they are great. In fact, the gameplay is so good, it makes the plot and storyline seem weak and poor.
