Games and… death?
The average human lives for just under 700,000 hours. Whether you think that’s a lot of time or not very much at all probably depends quite a lot on how many hours you’ve already spent on this world.
Mortality… a bit of a heavy topic for an article about games, you may say, but when you realise that you only have so much time to do anything that you want to, you also realise that you have to start prioritising. Not even the most devoted fan of music or literature will live long enough to experience all the greatest compositions or books ever written, and no gamer has enough time to play all the good games ever released. This might have been possible in the early days of the hobby, but no longer. Anyone who has a massive Steam library filled with 50-plus games bought during one of those can’t-miss sales — not one of which has yet been played (soon, soon!) — will know exactly what I mean.
Remasters and re-releases present quite the dilemma: yes, they give you the chance to experience great releases of the past that you may not have been able to enjoy when they first came out, but any time spent playing them is time not spent playing one of the myriad brilliant new games. And let’s face it, we’re living through a little golden age at the moment, with more all-time classics released within the span of the least year than probably any other year since, well, forever.
What, then, do we do with Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age? Should you pull yourself away from 2017’s latest and greatest to play a PlayStation 2 game? Read on and find out…
More than a remaster
Final Fantasy XII was released in 2006 to great critical acclaim, even bagging an exceptionally rare and coveted perfect score from Famitsu. Not everyone agreed that it was a perfect game, least of all its producer, but there was no doubt that FFXII was exceptionally good, a title more than willing to experiment and take the series into new territory.
It introduced a unique Active Dimension Battle system that is quite unlike anything the series had seen before, or has seen since. The “gambit” system let players set up complex logic trees that control character behaviour, allowing them to build a party that could eventually handle whatever enemies the game threw at them with aplomb and minimal user input.
If you have a mind for tactical thinking this is pure gaming heaven, but it didn’t appeal to everyone.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age for PS4 is a remaster not of the base game but of the 2007 expanded version titled Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System, which was only released in Japan. Whereas the original gave you only one “License Board” which you used to customise your characters, this version provides 12 of them in the form of “jobs” corresponding to a Zodiac sign.
This revamped system means your party is now much more customisable, especially as each character can have two job cards. It opens up an entire new realm of possibilities and room for experimentation, making what was already an excellent game even better and more fun.
Beyond the obvious graphical improvements and changes to the License Boards, this version also allows you to speed up the game by a factor of two or four, severely cutting down on time spent travelling or dealing with groups of low-tier enemies, should you so choose.
The beautiful score has been re-recorded with a full orchestra, but you can also choose to have the original accompany your journey.
There’s a bunch of other gameplay and technical updates that refine the FFXII experience and make this the definitive version of the game.
Play or don’t play?
So, is this a remaster worthy of your precious gaming hours? Definitely! A life spent without a few hours devoted to Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age will be the poorer for it.
Score: 9/10
Platform: PS4
