Vidya Thoughts

1. My relationship with FFXII
2. Gameplay related discussion
3. How FFXII presents its world
4. Cities and towns
5. The license board
6. This game can be a real asshole sometimes
7. Hunts and sidequests
8. How FFXII tells its story
9. Notable characters
10. In conclusion

Times of change

Much has happened since the last mainline single-player Final Fantasy released in 2001.

On July 2, 2001, Squaresoft released a Final Fantasy movie. The company had become very revered in the video game space and thought it could spread to a larger audience by getting into movies. They sunk $137 million into the project and if you read any video game magazines at all in this era, you were very well aware of it. This was no obscure release.

In 2026, video game movies manage to bring in a fair chunk of change. Games have become incredibly mainstream, so it’s not unusual for them to make a ton of money. For instance, in 2023 the Super Mario Bros. movie came out and made $1.36 billion on a budget of $100 million.

In 2001, this was not the case. That $137M budget brought back a box office return of $85.1M – it was a colossal flop. Not exactly the news the company wants to hear when it was planning to launch the next mainline Final Fantasy entry, Final Fantasy XI, its first attempt at a massively multiplayer online RPG.

Square was next to financially ruined as a result – this brought about some changes. First, although a merger with rival Enix had been considered before all of this happened, Square’s continued existence depended on it. While Enix was initially reluctant – who would want to merge with a company after such a flop – they did finalize that merger. We have exited the Squaresoft era and have entered the Square Enix era.

Square also needed to quickly make another game, so the decision was made to peel off the band-aid and attempt something that had never been done before: they were going to make a direct sequel to a Final Fantasy. Since the 10th entry in the franchise came out in 2001, it was common sense to re-use those assets to help quickly put out another game.

Final Fantasy X-2 released in 2003 and was one of the first games published under the new name in North America. It featured a dramatic gameplay and tonal departure from the original title, which falls in line with the traditional Final Fantasy trope of reinvention for each new entry. Fan reception for this game is a little less warm than the original game, but it remains generally well liked.

With XI’s release in 2002 and X-2’s release in 2003, people were starting to wonder about the next single player mainline entry in the franchise. Originally Square had said that all games after XI would have an online focus but plans changed! It was no secret that Final Fantasy XII was being worked on, but previously there had only been waits of a year-or-so between entries. FFVII had released in 1997, VIII in 1999 and IX in 2000 after all. So where was this thing?

Development hell, essentially. The project was led by Final Fantasy Tactics director Yasumi Matsuno and was set in the same world of Ivalice. It was all part of a series set there, which included a remake of Tactics as well as a game boy advance title.

Matsuno came up with the original concept and story for XII, but there were some stormy seas to navigate. First, the game was no longer going to be online, so everything needed to be retooled for a single player experience.

Second, during development, Final Fantasy’s father Hironobu Sakaguchi left Square Enix to form his own company, Mistwalker, in 2004. Walking out the door with him was a large portion of the FFXII development team, which upset Matsuno greatly. This 1up.com article from 2005 talks about the 2006 release of FFXII in Japan and mentions that Matsuno left development for a month as a result.

Then, in a combination of health and workplace frustrations, Matsuno left the project entirely about a year before the game came out in Japan. Akitoshi Kawazu, whose last mainline Final Fantasy was number two, took over to see the game across the finish line. Kawazu’s official title was executive producer and he claims the game was too far along in development to upend too much.

“Certainly as a game creator myself, I’m very interested in seeing my own things show up in the game. But as a producer for FFXII, I was very careful not to let that happen–I didn’t want my own likes and dislikes to show up in this game. I was there to make sure that the people making the game were able to get the things that they wanted to see into the game. So, there is that difference.”

With the unconventional development cycle at the time – not to mention the radical gameplay differences that we’re going to get into shortly – XII had a lot to prove when it released.

Grappling with change

In the buildup to the release of XII, I would consider myself as something of a fanboy of Final Fantasy. My mindset was ‘the next game was going to be the best one’ no matter what anybody would say. There was a year or so where I had convinced myself that FF X-2 was the best game in franchise history. Listen, I love X-2, but that might be a bridge too far.

It was announced that a demo of the long awaited XII would be packaged in with Dragon Quest VIII. Go figure right? This would be like if the most recent Mario game came with a demo of the most recent Sonic game. It was a little mind blowing. When you’re younger, I find you’re more likely to be a fierce brand loyalist, so up until this point I didn’t have much experience with Dragon Quest because it was the ‘other’ turn-based Japanese RPG.

I did play stuff like Lunar, Xenosaga, Shadowhearts…but Dragon Quest? Come on now, that’s a bridge too far! Enix made that!

Dragon Quest VIII delivered what Dragon Quest always does. Comfort food. I’ve played most of the mainline entries of the franchise at this point and I think one of the best things about it is that no matter where you go, no matter what you play, the series feels like home. And I was an instant fan. I wasn’t good at it, but I liked it. But that’s not what I was there for. I most wanted to see what Final Fantasy had in store.

And if anyone asked me, I would tell them I liked it. I could see the vision. But the truth? The truth is that I fought against the core aspects of what made it unique and as a result, never really engaged with the game as it was intended to. I read in magazines that you were expected to let the AI fight for you and I thought that was blasphemy. So instead, I manually entered commands for the party at every opportunity.

If you’ve ever played FFXII, you will understand that it makes the game move at a snail’s pace. The magazines were right. You are supposed to let the AI fight for you. To even attempt otherwise is to purposefully make the game less enjoyable. And yet, for the first several times I played it, I did just that. I’d claim it was good, but deep, deep down…I knew it wasn’t for me.

While packaging a demo of your big RPG franchise with your other big RPG franchise makes a lot of sense, I believe this was done to show how each of them was going to move forward. Dragon Quest was going to stay as the traditional, comfort food game. For fans of what makes the genre sing, this is for you! Final Fantasy, which has a tradition of changing things up with each entry, was now going to become the experimental franchise.

Final Fantasy X was the last truly turn-based entry in the franchise. Every other iteration moved Final Fantasy into a more action-oriented sort of adventure, culminating in Final Fantasy XVI only being an RPG by the loosest definition of the word. Whether it was intentional or not, juxtaposing Dragon Quest VIII with Final Fantasy XII marked the start of this.

In a lot of ways, XII feels structured like it was made in response to complaints about X. Obviously this was not the case, but I thought it’d be interesting to analyze it like it was just to showcase how different it is from X and from most of the rest of the franchise as a whole.

“Combat is too slow, inputting commands for every character takes too long and for non-boss encounters it feels repetitious.”

Fighting in XII is drastically different from every non-MMO game in the franchise up until this point. X took a break from the Active Time Battle system in order to focus on individual character actions. This meant that no longer were you waiting on bars to fill up to do moves, but instead the order of combatant turns was displayed on the side of the screen.

XII’s approach feels like a bit of a return to the ATB system as a whole. A player new to the game will likely manually choose to attack enemies. At the point of selecting attack is when the meter starts filling and then when the attack lands, the system will default to attacking again. So instead of a meter always filling up, the player instead chooses when the meter starts going. If you see a meter, that means a command has been input.

This is spread across the entire party. For teams of three, the player is constantly juggling between three meters. Meanwhile, enemies work by the same logic and will constantly attack. At this point, it becomes obvious that manually inputting commands is not the ideal way to approach things. Yes, you can slow the game down to a crawl and manually select each maneuver, but it is very time consuming and inefficient.

Also, the player still needs to make in-combat pivots to things like status effects. In Final Fantasy X, if an enemy were to cast reflect on itself, it makes sense that the next time the player acts that they would move to dispel it. But changing attacks will restart the meter, which involves pulling up the menu again to select commands.

To combat this, Final Fantasy XII introduces something called the gambit system. Essentially, this mechanic lets you program the AI of your party and they do the fighting for you based off of these commands. In its simplest form, which is introduced to you when you get your first party member, this just means after a party member attacks once, they’ll just load up another attack.

As the player gets further in, the options become more complex. In its most complete form, you set a bunch of scenarios for your party to look for and then when that happens, the AI will act, and then you order them based on priority.

Let’s say you have three gambits. At the bottom, the player would typically put what they want the default action to be. Let’s just say attack the party leader’s target. Above that action would be tactics you’d want to take priority over attacking.

In the second spot you have something like “If character’s HP <50% use Cura.” This means that your character will stop trying to attack the second someone falls below 50% HP and launch a healing spell. And then in the top spot, you might have: “If character status = KO use a phoenix down.” In this case, even if someone else in the party is below 50% HP, if someone is dead, that takes priority. And if nothing meets those conditions? You simply attack.

It sounds pretty straightforward, but as the game progresses, the player gets access to more and more gambit slots. So you’ll put in even more specific scenarios in order to counteract whatever is going on in the dungeon. Let’s say you’re going somewhere that has a lot of enemies that cast blind on your party. You may stick a gambit above your default action that goes “If character status = blind, use eyedrops.” Enemies using reflect? “Enemy status reflect = cast dispel” or “Enemy status reflect = physical attack.”

Essentially, any scenario you run into, you can program a response for. In a way, it feels like you’re coaching the party about what to do before encounters and you’re just watching the result. Instead of actively playing, the player becomes more of a manager overseeing the combatants.

At this point, pulling up the combat menu in order to select manual maneuvers feels more like calling an audible. Everything pauses around the player until they call the next play. You’re wrist deep in a dungeon and someone hits your party with poison but you don’t feel like setting up a gambit to cure poison because, well, it’s not been much of an issue until now?

Simply choose it for yourself. 90% of combat is done for you via the gambit system with about 10% of combat being these audible moments.

This cuts combat down to the bare essentials. Instead of manually pressing the same buttons over and over again, the player tells the computer to do essentially the same thing. It makes typical world exploration feel very hands off in a combat sense – you simply walk over to an area and let the AI take care of the rest.

My issue with this is that, for I would say 75% of the game, all fights feel pretty much the same. Most of my adventure involved very slight tweaks to my gambits. The game gives you the ability to save three sets of instructions, but I honestly only ever used one set the whole way through. There wasn’t a need to alter what works and a very simple set of commands with the occasional ‘use x status item for status’ adjustment worked wonders.

This hurt most in boss battles. There are definitely some I had to bust out more advanced tactics for, but up until near the end of the game, the same basic overworld traversing gambits worked for boss battles too. I would have to manually intervene at times, but it was never too frequent. This made a lot of boss battles just run together.

It’s a problem when I’m fighting a judge, one of the game’s main bad guys, and it feels the same as fighting wolves.

Yes, I am aware that a lot of early Final Fantasy boss battles involve just putting in the same commands over-and-over again, but stripping out manually selecting the abilities just makes it feel too naked. Even if a boss strategy was simply ‘attack while the tail is up’ it was something you had to actively look for. But here, you’re just advising the party about scenarios and what to do when they encounter the scenarios.

That said, from an exploration standpoint, the gambit system is great. Since random battles are gone, simply engaging with enemies involves using your gambits, so this allows the player to go from end-to-end of a zone at their leisure. There is no break in action and if you want to keep heading in that general direction while fighting, you can. Since you’re not manually inputting commands, you can keep moving.

This ends up giving the game more of a feeling of a dungeon crawler. It’s dealing with the rank and file enemies in order to get treasure. FFXII has a lot of interesting environments that are a blast to explore and this battle system lets the player do just that.

One final note about combat. Everybody’s favorite mechanic, the limit break, makes another return here. In this game they are called quickenings. Their function here is to freeze time completely and allow the player to freely damage the enemy with no fear of reprisal. This involves looking at some lovely animations.

How they’re executed is that, eventually, each character gets three levels of quickening that corresponds to three mist charge meters. Each level correlates with a mist charge, so a level 1 spell will use one mist charge while a level 3 will use all three. When a player casts a quickening, a roulette menu pops up and randomly shows quickenings for the other two party members along with a clock that counts down. Occasionally an option to restore meter will pop up, which allows attacks to continue longer.

If no usable option pops up, the player can reset what’s on the roulette until time expires. The goal here is to chain as many quickenings together as possible in the time limit in order to bring out an ultimate attack that causes damages to every enemy in the area. This is all random, with the only skillful part of the execution being when the player chooses to use it.

For boss battles, as their health dwindles, attacks can become more desperate. So pulling off a quickening when a boss is at about 20% HP can be a good way to finish the fight quickly without dealing with the annoying part. Luck is definitely required to hit gigantic combos, but I was still about to routinely get at least 9 every single time I tried it.

My earliest playthroughs of this game involved abuse of the quickening system. Any time a battle required even a slight bit of gambit tinkering or if a fight wasn’t going my way, I’d start the roulette. If I couldn’t get the chain high enough, it would mean my main three characters would probably die. But that’s okay, you can swap out dead members! So then the next three would try their quickenings and if that didn’t work, well, I’d try again.

I made it pretty far in the game doing this, which probably means this game is more forgiving than some might think. When playing as intended, I found myself using quickenings strictly in dire situations and to quickly end boss battles. If a segment of a fight looked obnoxious, I just viewed quickenings as a skip button.

“The only open area is the Calm Lands. I want to explore, this big world feels so small!”

This is where you can really see the ‘originally an online game’ roots of Final Fantasy XII shine. Every zone in XII is wide open and has various branching paths to get lost in. I won’t say they’re very complex, but they are super wide open with treasures around every corner.

Of course, everything is still linear as it has been for a while, but this does a good job to mask it. If the player goes too far off the beaten path, they’ll get slammed by enemies that are way too strong to be handled. The first time I remember this happening was with an area called the Feywood, which is accessible through the Golmore jungle.

Most of the jungle is available to explore when the player gets there but about halfway down, the level of enemies goes up quite a bit. When first arriving, the party should be in the early 20s. But in the lower half of the jungle, enemies are in their mid 30s and will destroy your party if they aren’t ready for that. And if you decide ‘hey, this must be a fluke’ and keep exploring, you wind up in the Feywood where every enemy is just this strong. Better think of another plan!

I do like that the game doesn’t just prohibit the player from exploring the area. If someone wants to do a challenge run and try to topple enemies that they have no business defeating, I say let them. But 90% of players do not engage with games like this, so I’ll just say the open-ended nature of the game is simply an illusion.

And I think exploration is something they want the player to do a lot of. If you rush from point A to point B in FFXII, every character will be significantly under-leveled. In my experience, Final Fantasy games after IV are never insanely grindy unless you’re shooting for end game content, but if the player isn’t actively fighting and exploring as much of the world as possible, XII becomes just that.

When I first played, I was not used to this, so I’d always go into boss encounters significantly under-leveled. This would lead me to going on long grinding runs where I’d cast Curaga on skeletons or something to get EXP quickly. It doesn’t help that characters must be in the party to earn EXP, so I had to do a lot of loops.

Playing through the game this time, I made a habit of killing any enemy that entered my view and exploring every inch of every map that opened up and as a result. I also did sidequests (hunts) as they opened up. I never had to go out of my way to grind because I was constantly exploring and engaging with what the game through at me.

You might say ‘fighting every enemy sure sounds like grinding to me’ and you are correct. It is. But it doesn’t FEEL that way because the player is still seeing new sights and getting rewarded for it. MMOs, especially of that era, involved a lot of grinding on generic enemies and I think that philosophy carried over into XII.

“Towns are too tiny! There’s hardly anyone else in this world!”

Towns in Final Fantasy X had a lore reason to be so small, but it should also be noted that the Playstation 2 was pretty new at the time of release.

It’s a little different these days, but back in the 2000s, console generations saw developers slowly learn about the quirks of designing software as the generation persisted. And as a result, the later generations went, the more impressive games would get graphically despite the actual hardware specs not changing.

I believe X’s world was probably made like it is in part because Square was still learning how to make the software sing. The lore reason makes it make sense to the player, so I think it was a bit of tech and story working in harmony to achieve a vision.

FFXII came out in 2006. That’s the same year the Playstation 3 came out – the console generation the game launched on was essentially on the way out. As a result, FFXII represents something of the PS2’s peak performance.

Cities in XII are massive and filled with NPCs. They all have unique dialogue that changes as the game progresses and it really helps set the stage for world building. Locales feel vast – most cities feel on the same scale as something like Alexandria or Lindblum from Final Fantasy IX. It makes it really stand out when the player goes to somewhere like the Phon Coast and sees little pockets of hunters working as a society.

Making the cities feel distinct and significant is really important for Final Fantasy XII’s story telling.

Matsuno’s way of telling a tale is more based on world building. Getting emerged in the story of Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre requires the player to really learn about various factions. Mainline Final Fantasy has been more about character stories to this point. Yes, Sephiroth is trying to destroy the world in FFVII, but a big chunk of that game’s plot involves Cloud trying to discover who he is as a person.

I’ll get to it a bit in the character section, but XII doesn’t really have any arcs like that. Your cast of main characters remains pretty static from a personality point for the duration of your adventure.

So in order to help keep the player interested, a lot of effort needed to be placed on fleshing out these cities. Archades needs to feel distinctly like the empire and Rabanastre needs to feel like a city recovering from grand political change. And I think they accomplished that.

“The Sphere Grid is too linear. You introduced a new leveling mechanic and only gave minimal choice!”

Even using the advanced sphere grid in the International version/remaster, this is generally true. Divergent pathways open up as the player reaches the end of their adventure, but by then, most people have probably gotten used to just moving in a straight line. So a lot of players may just choose the path of least resistance and keep going straight. Unless they really like Kimah- oh who am I kidding, nobody does.

The original release of Final Fantasy XII takes the sphere grid method of learning abilities and opens it all the way up. XII’s take on this is called the license board and every piece of equipment, every spell, every summon and every technique requires a license to use. To put it simply, if a player has a sword but doesn’t have a license to use that sword, they can’t use it.

All six party members start in different spots on the license board. There are a ton of panels to choose from and your only limitations are that you can only unlock boards panels next to panels you’ve already unlocked. I remember playing on the PS2 and unlocking the ability to use late game swords around when I was level 20. It’s a little overwhelming.

The flaw of the original system is twofold. It’s not only big and unwelcoming but when the player gets deep into the game, every character sort of just gets the same abilities. This issue was also in Final Fantasy X, as if a player completes the sphere grid, party members will generally feel the same save for overdrives and what weapon they use to attack.

Making your party members feel different yet customizable has been a bit of a challenge for the series. Starting with the magicite system in VI, characters stopped having individual move lists upon level up. IX, the throwback game, has individual character spells again, but those are gained through using weapons.

Typically differences in ‘feel’ for party members came with the utility of the job system, where it becomes impractical for every member of your team to learn every ability the game has to offer.

This brings me to the International Zodiac Job System version of the game, originally released in 2007 in Japan. Note the word ‘International,’ this was during a period of time where Square would re-release its games in Japan complete with tweaks made for the North American version, including English voice actors, as well as additional content. The HD remaster you’re seeing screenshots of right now is based on this version of the game.

The big adjustment with the Zodiac version is, you guessed it, a job system. Now instead of just one big board, the party can choose two from a selection of 13 individual jobs and go to boards specialized for them. This lets the player customize their characters exactly how they want while not overwhelming them with choice. The original system was a little overwhelming, so for most of the game, the job system is preferred.

Note that I said most of the game. When the party gets to around level 55 – the end of the game and into the ‘postgame’ – both job boards will be entirely full. The characters will keep learning license points though and just can’t do anything with them. While your stats go up, the number of abilities you have access to stays the same.

This makes it so the player has to strategize more for endgame fights, which is usually a delight in job system games, but the way XII handles changing jobs is how changing specs in an MMO used to work. If you’ve ever signed up for a raid only to be told you need to swap your skills because your current moveset isn’t suited for the big encounters, you know what I’m talking about.

You need to learn all of the abilities on whatever new board you’re on, which is time consuming if doing it for multiple party members at once. As a result, I think players are likely to choose a pair of jobs and stick with them.

Which is fine…but it feels weird that in a job system game, a system defined by choice, the game sort of disincentivizes the player from experimentation. It doesn’t help that a lot of these jobs have unusual names for the franchise. I think everybody can kind of guess what a white mage is, but what the fuck is a bushi? What is an Uhlan? Whatever, this game absolutely came out in the Internet era, so you can just search ‘best job for Basch’ or something and figure it out.

While I definitely admire requiring strategy and thoughtful party composition to get things done – Final Fantasy V’s most difficult battles are a shining example of why the job system is brilliant – I just think the Zodiac Jobs version postgame would benefit by bringing in the old license board for the post game. You lose some in strategy but you gain something in convenience. Let me learn everything with everyone, dangit!

“This game is too easy. No, I haven’t gotten to the Seymour fight on Gagazet, shut up. Can’t you spice things up a little?”

Final Fantasy XII is full of jackassery. I don’t know any other way to describe it.

The first point of discussion here involves treasure chests containing randomized items. In an MMO, this sort of thing makes a little more sense. Players need to replay the same content over and over again in order to acquire the best weapons. If the game just handed out the best gear every time someone did the dungeon, why would they ever run through it again?

Yet here, in an offline game, the treasure chests are random. Players can even equip an item to improve items they get from equipment. This is very immersion breaking since the game flat-out tells you this improves loot. The item description says ‘obtain superior items from chests, coffers and the like.’ So no longer did some random bad guy leave a chest in this dungeon but instead some random number generating demon did it instead.

What’s worse about this is that there are specific treasure chests that are designed to give you rare items. However, if you have the accessory to improve loot equipped, these chests will instead provide worthless filler items like ‘knots of rust’ instead. Effective usage of the tool to improve loot requires extensive knowledge of the game and what is supposed to be inside the chest already. In other words, a nightmare for first time players.

This experience reminds me of Final Fantasy II, conveniently the other mainline Final Fantasy the second lead of Final Fantasy XII Kawazu worked on. In that game, instead of using random treasure chests, they would just throw empty treasure chests and vacant rooms at the player.

You can read more about it in my writeup of that game, but the long and short of it is that there would be these sprawling dungeons with lots of pathways to explore. They would tease the player with rewards at the end of these but 9-out-of-10 times, nothing was there. But you needed to keep exploring because of that 1-out-of-10 time something GOOD was there. It’s very annoying.

The game’s ultimate weapon, the Zodiac Spear, can be impacted by this as well in the original release of the game. But there’s even more random bullshit involved! There are several chests in the game – including in the very first town, Rabanastre – that cannot be opened no matter what or the spear will just be unobtainable from the chest it’s supposed to be in.

So you get the game, see a treasure chest and open it – like you would in any video game – and luck would have it and you picked the wrong one. Now you can’t get the best weapon in the game after a whopping 10 minutes in the game’s world. Wow!

If you followed all the rules but had the item equipped that gives you better loot when you open the right chest? Tough luck pal, it’s a dark matter. There’s always next time, right?

I guess saying it’s impossible to get the weapon in this scenario is a little misleading. There is still one more way! All it requires is having almost every esper in the game (most of which are hidden) and entering an area that is on the same level as the final dungeon. Then, when you get to the room the spear is in, there’s only a 10% chance the chest spawns.

But, remember how loot is randomized? There is only a 10% chance for the zodiac spear to be in this chest. And unlike the intended way to get this item, the accessory I mentioned above is required to get it this time. To put it simply, you have a percentage of a percentage of a chance of receiving the ultimate weapon in this way. You better rev up those save states, buddy.

This basically necessitates the use of a strategy guide, a practice that had long since been abandoned by the time Final Fantasy XII was released. When I first played this game, I knew about the treasure chests and I still accidentally opened one. You basically can never let your guard down – if you want that damn spear in a reasonable way, you have to keep your eyes glued to a walkthrough.

Luckily, this mechanic was removed from the remaster, which immediately makes the remaster the best way to play FFXII. When I play something like this, I like getting all of the best weapons, so needing to use a guide every step of the way just to achieve that really sucks. In some ways I prefer the original license board to the zodiac job system, but I cannot overstate how much the zodiac spear bothers me.

The jackassery isn’t just held to loot though. Dealing with status effects is part of the turn-based JRPG experience. I don’t mind them at all, they help add some variety to the gameplay. But disease sucks. Any time the character afflicted with it loses HP, that HP stays off until disease is cured. If the character dies? Yep, still there. Revive them and they will come back with one health as their maximum and will typically die before they can be cured of disease.

That’s right. Disease stays on the character even in death. Heck, so does stuff like silence. I thought we had an agreement, developers! Status effects die with me! If you’re not paying close attention to the health of your characters, they will go down in a hurry and it’s just annoying. If you’re playing on the remaster, you probably are playing on fast-forward because the player doesn’t typically need to input anything, so if the gambits aren’t set up ahead of time, enjoy a very annoying encounter.

Hands down the worst status effect in Final Fantasy history. And the nature of how they persist after death reminds me slightly of how Final Fantasy II had two brands of status effects – ones that healed after battle and ones that did not. That game needed two different esuna spells to handle this problem, so thankfully, it’s not as bad as that. But it’s still annoying! Thankfully disease seems to be gone for good.

The section about bullshit seems like the best place to talk about the most annoying dungeon in this game, The Pharos at Ridorana. I typically just refer to it as ‘that really annoying tower’ because its official name makes it sound like a luxury resort. And I assure you, it’s not luxurious at all.

Most RPGs have a very expansive and challenging final dungeon, but FFXII decided to take a slightly different approach and made the penultimate dungeon the longest and most annoying one in the game. The final dungeon is actually relatively short, which is great news for people ready to finish the fight!

This segment involves clearing three distinct sections of a 100-floor labyrinth. Enemies here are difficult and there is only one save point midway up the structure. To make matters worse, this save point is a mimic save point. You’ve heard of mimics, right? Monsters disguised as chests. Well this game has monsters disguised as save points and they pop up in the most annoying areas. Like this one!

Having a long dungeon is not a sin, but this particular one is full of annoyances. There are segments where the player needs to touch the correct warp points or they risk getting teleported to an area where they stand a good chance of being completely wiped out. There are paths forward involving these teleporters that are blocked by invisible walls. There are segments that will lock specific abilities out and if the player accidentally elects to lock attacks, they can’t backtrack to choose something else. It’s incredibly unforgiving.

I don’t mind having dungeons filled with this sort of nonsense – I very much enjoy Sen’s Fortress in Dark Souls – but typically there’s a bit of a build up to it. The player might encounter an invisible wall here or there or another labyrinth with a slightly easier to solve series of teleportation puzzles. The game slowly builds to this instead of throwing everything at the player at once.

But no. There’s no dungeon even remotely like this. There are mazes – most notably the great crystal which is annoying because it makes your map useless and is hard to navigate as a result – and there are traps, but this is so much more expansive than any of that. It’s such a chore to make it through and I just don’t think the game properly preps the player to experience this.

I don’t recall a single time fake walls came into play before this, so having a scenario that could end in a player getting a game over because they missed one is ludicrous. Especially in the original version of the game where there are no auto-saves. If you die, you have to trudge your way all the back and it sucks. And waiting for you at the end of each section is a boss. Great!

In my ranting, I’ve mentioned Final Fantasy II a few times. When people mention some of the failings of XII, they correlate those issues with Kawazu, who worked on II. That game had a lot of what I would call player unfriendly design and this little section highlights some of that. Kawazu’s SaGa franchise is also known for stuff like that.

As I mentioned above, I believe he was there to get XII across the finish line. He might have had an idea or two implemented, but I think FFXII was always going to be an asshole game.

That’s because I think it’s actually inspired by FFXI. As mentioned a few times, XII was originally going to be an online game, so why wouldn’t they take lessons from the online game from the same franchise? Random loot? Hey, XI is an MMO, that’s to be expected. The gambit system? It’s honestly just like setting up macros in an MMO, but instead of just for one player you’re doing it for three. Asshole status effects? Dude, you could lose levels when you died in FFXI. XII has nothing like that!

Most of the assholery, I’ve mentioned here relates to the later half of the game. So if it annoys you, well, you’re probably already so deep into it that you’re committed. You’re not one of those people who quits right before the final boss, are you?

“It’s dumb that the main sidequest is playing a sport. I HATE sports. Make the sidequests involve combat.”

Final Fantasy XII is loaded with side content and basically all of it focuses on the core gameplay. So if you hated tetra master, triple triad and blitzball, you are in luck as FFXII has nothing that even comes close to an equivalent.

The vast majority of the title’s side content comes in the form of hunts. The player can go to any bar in the game to find bills targeting various monsters across the world. These monsters hit significantly harder than typical enemies and often can’t be completed immediately upon accepting the quest.

They even hunts that brand themselves as being more challenging – these are handed to the player by Montblanc the moogle, a notable character in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. A title that was sort of meant to be tied to FFXII but beat it to market by three years.

You join his guild and…it’s really nothing. Don’t worry about it. Being in a clan doesn’t mean anything. You get points that can get you some loot but it’s probably just a fun little nod towards the Ivalice series of games as a whole.

The hunts in XII are pretty fulfilling content. I mentioned above that the majority of the time, the player doesn’t need to tinker too much with their gambits, and for the majority of these hunts that is definitely true. You can do some advanced futzing if you wish to tackle these creatures at a low level but generally speaking, the same gambit rule applies here.

However, as the player gets further into the adventure, this stops being the case as the hunt content starts to require more in depth strategy. This reminds me of Final Fantasy V, where the side stuff demanded the player have a pretty decent grasp of the job system. In order to win these battles, you really need to understand your gambits and your party pretty well. Several late game enemies have HP counts totaling well over 1,000,000 HP with the super boss Yiazmat having over 50,000,000.

No, I didn’t beat all of these. I tried! But my mastery of the gambit system isn’t quite as strong as my mastery of the job system. I will also say, while I’m sure there are advanced players who can beat every single encounter in this game with a super low leveled party, for most people getting to these late game encounters require a lot of grinding. Most will finish the game at around level 50, but most people are going to need to be around 70 for a lot of the optional content.

I’ve mentioned it before but my favorite style of optional boss doesn’t necessarily require the player to grind for hours to get their stats in line, but instead requires intimate knowledge of a game’s systems in order to come out on top. Yes, I love Final Fantasy V and you should too!

Hunts aren’t the only side content – XII has a variety of side quests and hidden esper (summons) battles to participate in.

This is as good a spot as any to note that the emphasis on summons in XII is less than it has been in any mainline Final Fantasy for quite some time. In VII and VIII, summons were treated as graphical spectacles. In VIII, IX and X they are tied to the main narrative and very crucial to the overall plot of the game. In XII, using summons is much like using anything else, you learn to use it through the job board. Well, after beating it in battle anyway.

There’s a couple of mandatory esper fights but you are only ever required to learn one summon, Belias, the very first one the player battles. They function much like they do in X – the beast fights alongside a single character – but since enemies can target the summoner here and the creature gets unsummoned if the summoner goes down, it’s way less useful than in X.

I used summons all of twice in the game. Once when it’s required to progress and once in a fight that was proving way too much for my party, just to see if I could cheese out a victory with one of the game’s late optional summons. Answer? No I couldn’t. Otherwise, summons went unused and I expect my experience with espers is pretty common among people who play XII.

There are both hidden espers and hidden quests. These are typical ‘go to point A and talk to an NPC and then go to point B and talk to another and maybe fight’ styles of affair. I remember encountering a couple of hints about optional summons but there were quests that needed to be completed before even doing hunts that I had no idea where even to start with em.

I acknowledge that I might have just missed the game nudging me in a particular direction, but this is another element of the title that just feels like an MMO to me. There are tons of quests that are off the beaten path that are pre-requisites for other quests but aren’t really hinted about. It reminds me of getting attuned for Karazhan in World of Warcraft or something like that. A bunch of steps that might feel unrelated to the player but they are absolutely necessary for doing whatever you want to do.

Given that Final Fantasy XII aims to showcase the scope of its giant world, I think this approach works, even if it is a little frustrating to the player. The world truly feels like it has something waiting behind every corner for the player to discover. Having random bullshit quests just pop up really helps establish this feeling.

“I hate character-based stories!”

Starting at IV – ignore V – Final Fantasy games took more of a character-focused approach to story telling. Yes, they all tackle world-ending threats, but the journeys to save the world typically are accompanied with journeys of self discovery.

In IV you had Cecil coming to terms with his heritage and the evil nature of his former masters, in VI you had an ensemble cast with each protagonist having something of an individual motive, in VII you had Cloud discovering who the hell he even is, VIII has Squall and Rinoa go through the most realistic teenage romance in fiction, IX has basically every notable character trying to learn about the truth of their origins and X is about a guy who hates his dad.

You not only wanted to see the world saved, you wanted to see these people save the world. The story of Final Fantasy VII would not work without Cloud Strife in the lead.

Matsuno, the original lead for this game, has a very different approach to story telling than typically seen from mainline entries in this franchise. He prefers large scale narratives that delve into the history of regions as well as the motivations of the movers and shakers at the top of the world.

In Final Fantasy VII, Shinra was an evil organization, but there wasn’t a whole lot of insight into what makes Rufus Shinra tick. XII on the other hand makes sure the player knows how complex and cunning the main villain Vayne is at every step of the journey.

Among your main cast, there aren’t really any notable character arcs that occur. Your party sort of arrives as full-fleshed individuals and they navigate the world as the evil empire shapes the world around them. The story is less about their development and more about the developments of the world around them.

The narrative centers around the fallen kingdom of Dalmasca. At the beginning of the game, the king (Raminas) is assassinated by what seems to be his most loyal guard and the entire place falls to the empire of Archades. The events of the game take place about two years after this point and deals with how the former kingdom – most notably the capital city of Rabanastre – handles imperial rule and the threat of a larger war.

That threat of war between the Archadian Empire and the Rozarian Empire, mentioned in the above screenshot, is the main point of tension for a majority of the game. The player spends a lot of time dealing with the potential conflict that’s about to occur, with events unfolding regardless of what the main characters do.

Your party only meets a couple of people involved with the Rozarrian Empire but their presence always looms and the threat of all out war is constant.

The player will frequently get lengthy cutscenes when they arrive to a new location showing the upper workings of the empire – namely Vayne and the judges, the rule of law in Ivalice. There’s a lot of political discussion over the course of the game and all of it is very interesting. It’s reminiscent of the original Ivalice game, Final Fantasy Tactics, in how it makes a group of characters with motivations that don’t fit cleanly on a moral alignment chart.

And this content is all pretty compelling. But XII runs into the exact same narrative wall that Tactics runs into. About 3/4 of the way through the game, it is revealed that a lot of the course of human history has been guided by a race of supernatural beings called the Occuria. These beings would choose powerful humans to shape history through the use of nethicite – think a nuclear bomb. Basically everything about the state of the world is brought about because of these things.

As soon as the Occuria get involved, the narrative of XII shifts to the more supernatural and becomes less interesting. Look, I get it, it’s called Final Fantasy. Super natural elements are to be expected, playing it straight the whole way probably doesn’t work too well.

But the directions of the empire are a lot less interesting when you learn that they’re being shaped in the shadows by an otherworldly being. Just like with Tactics, I think if XII stuck to the politics, it would have an upper tier story for this franchise.

Having said that, I still find the empire to be full of compelling villains. I am one of the biggest X fanboys you will ever find, but outside of Seymour Guado, I don’t think the maesters of yevon are very well developed at all. This is not the case for the empire. And for the big scope story XII is trying to tell, that is crucial.

Notable characters

1. Vaan
2. Penelo
3. Balthier (AKA Ffamran mied Bunansa)
4. Fran
5. Ashelia B’Nargin Dalmasca
6. Basch fon Ronsenburg
7. Vayne Carudas Solidor
8. Marquis Halim Ondore IV
9. Vossler York Azelas
10. Larsa Ferrinas Solidor
11. Judge Gabranth (Noah fon Ronsenburg)
12. Cidolfus Demen Bunansa (Dr. Cid)

Couple of notes for this section. Voice acting quality across the board in the industry had improved a great deal since Final Fantasy X. XII is no exception. As a result, I won’t be rating individual performances anymore because they all do pretty well for what their characters are going for.

The one thing I want to mention about voice acting is that some of the characters sound really tinny, particularly Vaan, almost like they were put in a weird recording studio.

Looking around online this is apparently a result of compression, which makes sense given all the dialogue in this game being needed to fit onto a single PS2 disc. That said, it’s still noticeable in the remastered version where compression isn’t as important. Just felt the need to mention it because the weird tinny voices have always bugged me.

Replacing the voice actor segment will be one on parallels to Star Wars characters. You might have noticed I have avoided the topic entirely to this point, but it’s parroted online that XII is structured a lot like Star Wars. I think there are a lot of surface-level similarities that make it easy to compare the two, but I don’t think it’s the blatant rip-off that others online seem to.

Still, why not have fun with it?

Vaan

One weird thing about Final Fantasy XII is that some of its characters have full names, while others only get first name treatment. The franchise as a whole had full names for every character up until X, even if the game didn’t always spell it out.

X did away with this, with the main party only having first names. This must have been an argument at some point during development because the party is split in half on having first and last-names.

It just stands out a little when you hear “ASHELIA B’NARGIN DALMASCA” 80 million times over the course of the story. Not to mention the well known “I’M CAPTAIN BASCH FON RONSENBURG OF DALMASCA” that Vaan himself spouts. So, what’s your last name Vaan? Oh, it’s just Vaan? Okay.

Vaan is the main character of this game in the sense that the player controls him in the overworld. But when it comes to plot significance, he doesn’t have a lot. In this narrative about kingdoms being conquered, Vaan is a thief from the streets of Dalmasca. His brother was killed in the war that essentially ended the kingdom and he harbors great resentment towards the empire for it.

At the beginning of the game, it’s important that the party sees things through his perspective. Very early on, the main villain Vayne Solidor gives a speech that – on the surface – is very heroic and paints him in a good light.

Just like with some real world politicians, these words are mostly hollow and meant to soothe the nerves of the crowd. Self-serving shit. But the crowd he says it to endorses it greatly, so it’s important to have Vaan there to grumble about it. The player might go “well Vayne doesn’t seem so bad” but there you have the protagonist immediately correcting the record.

After this point, Vaan teams up with a lot of notable figures in the world. He can be seen as sort of similar to Tidus in that he is a fish out of water. Tidus was inhabiting a world that was entirely foreign to him, so as he was discovering it, the player was too.

Vaan is entering a world of politics that he knows nothing about, working with important figures in a dire situation. So less of an introduction to a new world but an introduction to a new class of people.

Unlike Tidus, Vaan never takes the reigns and leads the party. He is basically just along for the ride. His main goal in life is to become a sky pirate, but that’s not really delved into that much. In a way, Vaan becomes almost like a silent protagonist. But he talks. I guess the best way to put it is that he’s a player proxy that might not always reflect the personality of the player unto others?

The game will occasionally attempt to make him significant. For a large portion of the game, princess Ashelia keeps seeing visions of her departed husband Prince Rasler. This turns out to be a form of manipulation from the Occuria, who I mentioned briefly above. Vaan also can see someone through this – his departed brother, Reks. This could be seen as giving him motivation to continue along with the party.

Here’s the thing though. The Occuria have a reason to manipulate Ashelia. She is the princess of Dalmasca and can take actions in order to drastically change the state of the world. She is objectively an important figure. Vaan, on the other hand, is a nobody. He gets involved in the plot by stealing an ancient relic at Rabanastre’s palace belonging to an ancestor of Ashelia’s, but he holds no sway or influence.

Why would the Occuria need to fuck with him in order to get him to keep journeying? Nothing Vaan does in the game really sways Ashelia one way or the other, he basically is just a number in her army.

To me, this feels like it was included in order to make Vaan relate to Ashelia and to give him a reason to keep traveling with the group beyond simply needing to get away from the place where his brother died. I just feel like they could have found something more compelling.

Hell, just make him really interested in Balthier to the point he unofficialy makes himself an apprentice to the sky pirate. At least that way the supernatural beings aren’t trying to manipulate a street rat for no real reason.

As a result of being relatively inconsequential, there is a wide assumption that the original main character was intended to be somebody else and that Vaan was forced in by suits. You see, older protagonists aren’t as popular, so they might have been worried about scaring off some of their audience.

If you see the way Vaan acts in game, I definitely get why people think that. But I haven’t seen anything that makes me think that Vaan was a last minute choice. Having a ‘fish out of water’ main protagonist makes a lot of sense for a game like this. Why would anyone break down societal structures to people that are already deeply embedded in them? So my feelings are this is just poor execution.

I cannot think of a main character in this series that is worse than Vaan and that includes the ones in Final Fantasy I and III that don’t even talk. Hey, someone has to be the worst.

In gameplay, I had Vaan specialize in speedier jobs to play into him being a thief. This resulted in me setting up my gambits in a way that had him prioritize stealing until the enemy was at 70% HP or less and then he’d attack. This resulted in my Vaan being the most prolific thief the franchise has ever seen because I assure you, I am not one of those people who tries to steal every rare item with Zidane.

Gil in FFXII is more elusive than it is in other games in the franchise. The player’s primary method of earning money is to sell loot earned from combat. Even after stealing in a vast majority of battles he took part in, my team still routinely ran out of money when it was time to do gear upgrades.

This would result in selling basically anything that wasn’t glued to my characters, which is super unfortunate when going through an area that absorbs the elemental affinity of one of my weapons. Which happened more than once because I’m a fucking moron.

I cannot overstate how important Vaan was to me in this regard, without him, I would have just been perpetually broke and gearless throughout my journeys across Ivalice.

So if you’ve ever thought to yourself ‘hey, C-3P0 should be the main character’ this guy is for you. That’s right Anthony Daniels, they made a protagonist just for you!

Penelo

Vaan’s childhood friend and fellow slums sufferer, Penelo is probably the most useless character in this entire game. This feels like a partymember that was added at the last minute in order to give the group six total members. Yet, somehow, the Nintendo DS sequel (Revenant Wings) sees Penelo take the starring role. I haven’t played that game since the day it came out, so…maybe she has a redemption arc in that one?

Narratively, I have to assume she was put in the game so people aren’t constantly asking why Vaan isn’t trying to get with Ashelia. In VIII, IX and X, the main character had a love plot with the female lead of the game. Since people are used to this kind of love story by now, it’s logical to assume there would be expectations for Vaan to undergo a similar sort of arc.

This game is absolutely not about building character arcs though, so it would feel very out of place for that sort of relationship to happen again here. So here’s Penelo, to give Vaan a case of the not gays, if you will. She is portrayed as his childhood friend that he might or might not have feelings for. Their relationship is hinted at in Revenant Wings but not explicitly stated.

Much like Vaan, they attempt to tie her to a more important character early. Towards the start of the game, Penelo is held captive alongside Larsa Solidor, the brother of the main antagonist of the game and one of the sole ‘virtuous’ voices of the empire. While in captivity they hit it off and become friends. Does this do anything for either character? Not really, no. But that bond does exist!

FFXII has a vast world full of interesting characters and creatures. This includes beastman races that don’t get much play outside of NPC interactions.

Since Penelo doesn’t do much of anything, why not replace her with a beastman character and help expand that race? Bangaa are often depicted as villainous and sinister, so why not explore an aspect of that character to show other elements of that race?

Or what about Nu Mou, who seem to occupy mostly religious or mystical institutions. Penelo is one of the best magic users in the game, so the transition shouldn’t be too bad. Heck, I’d take a moogle even. Montblanc is the only one the party ever really runs into, so why not make another one? Or why not make Montblanc playable as a little nod to the FF Tactics Advance fans in the crowd? It’s not like anything Penelo does in the game would spit in the face of Tactics Advance’s story.

For me, Penelo operated through much of the game as my main healer. If you’ve played a job system based Final Fantasy before, you will know that white mages are a must for basically any party structure. So while Penelo was useless from a narrative standpoint, she was actually one of my most important characters. Wild.

Back in my original playthroughs of the game, she was also my main healer. When I needed to grind, I would put her in a party and go through the snowy area by Mt. Bur-Omisace and manually cast healing spells at the zombies there. This was my quickest way of killing enemies and I would spend hours just running in and out of areas casting spells like this. I distinctly remember popping in Offspring and Green Day CDs and grinding away while this played.

Thankfully I have since learned how to play – if I would do that again, I would simply set up a gambit for it!

He’s not important at all to the main story, but he’s packaged with someone who might be. You may not remember his name, but when you see Salacious Crumb you might go “oh shit it’s the little guy Jabba likes.” I imagine Penelo gets something like that too.

Balthier (AKA Ffamran mied Bunansa)

Most of the time, there’s some debate about who the best character in a game is. For me, there’s no debate. Balthier is the best character in Final Fantasy XII.

When writers are trying to make a quippy, snarky character, Balthier is generally what they’re aiming for. He is able to be serious when the time calls for it but the writing for him also slides in jokes and banter for him at appropriate times.

It’s a subtle touch, but it’s the difference between a character like Balthier and a character like Claptrap from Borderlands. One makes jokes and you get it, the other one makes jokes and you want to shut the game off and give up playing video games forever.

People, including myself, are often against overly quippy dialogue. In truth, I just hate it when every character in a story is just a little too smart and is constantly winking at the camera. I never really got into the MCU because of this, it just felt like every major character was trying to be snarky and cool.

However, when only one character gets to do this, it becomes their ‘gimmick’ and I don’t view it as someone trying to cut the tension to underplay dramatic moments. I instead look at it as someone acting in character.

Balthier enters into the equation at the beginning of the game when Vaan is trying to steal the ancient relic from the palace in Rabanastre. Balthier, as a sky pirate, is also trying to steal some stuff and gets roped into the adventure. Unlike Vaan, they give Balthier a reason to stick around. He pursues treasure. He knows working with the princess of Dalmasca will grant him riches, so he sticks to her.

It’s also nice that, when he joins up, the crew isn’t that quick to trust him. He is traveling around with royalty that is attempting to restore a long gone kingdom, so it makes sense that advisors to said royalty wouldn’t trust someone who openly calls himself a pirate.

But his words are as good as gold – as soon as Ashelia hands him a valuable ring, he’s basically on board for the entire game.

Riches aren’t the only reason he sticks around, though he fronts like it is. Balthier’s true identity is that he is the son of one of the game’s primary villains, Dr. Cid. Cid is a higher up in the empire, which leads to Balthier becoming a judge at a young age.

Remember, judges are high-up figures in the empire and uphold the law of the land. Kind of the opposite of a sky pirate. Unfortunately, at some point, Cid ‘loses his mind.’ This, combined with all of the shady stuff the empire gets up to, leads to Balthier bailing on his duties and becoming an outlaw.

This is only told to the player in bits and pieces, but someone returning to FFXII can see that a big part of why he sticks around with the party is in order to atone for this past. He regrets what became of his father. He has to put on the front that he only cares about treasure because it would give away his true background, but in reality Balthier cares a great deal about this mission and wants to see Ashelia take the throne.

His ‘redemptive’ back story probably plays a bit into why he keeps referring to himself as a ‘leading man’ in dialogue. This is played mostly for jokes, and is definitely part of the act he’s putting on as a sky pirate outlaw on the run, but he says it so much that it sort of becomes a defining element of his character. And to be truthful, he carries himself like a leading man would. He fits the role but he just…isn’t.

One of my favorite lines in the game is when he is assisting an injured Fran during the ending. She comments to him that he is in more of a supporting role. Which is very funny given the situation, but what is equally as funny is his reaction to the comment.

He says something like “come on now” and brushes it aside. Even though a lot of his character is an act, he still needs to put on this air of importance because anything short of the most important role is too minor for him.

When choosing jobs for characters at the start of the game, if you google something like ‘best job for Balthier,’ you’ll see a lot of people recommend white mage for him. I think this is because his stat growth makes him an absurdly good mage even though his character model and in-game actions are more in line with the machinist.

Machinists suck though. They get useless armor and their weapons aren’t great. So instead I made him an Uhlan, which is the closest thing this game gets to a dragoon. They specialize in spears and heavy armor, which had him operating in a bit of a tank role. This made him consistently useful for me. But I am also an idiot and made his secondary class machinist, which didn’t give him a whole lot of useful additional abilities.

So for the majority of the game, I had Balthier focus om physical attacks and technicks. The one I used the most is a move called souleater, which is meant to imitate the Dark Knight move darkness. I can’t say it was that useful, but it’s a change of pace from just physically attacking. That said, since Balthier mostly acted as a tank, simply attacking is really all ya need to do.

Fran

I remember when FFXII was coming out, Fran received a lot of focus in pre-release previews. I think the idea of playing as a bunny girl was just very compelling for people. The first time I played FFXII, I think Fran and Vaan were the two characters who had names I recognized. The collector’s edition of the strategy guide I owned even had her on the cover!

So remember how above when I suggested that Penelo could be replaced with a beastman and it would help improve the party makeup? Fran is essentially what I was shooting for when I said that.

She is from a race called Viera, which in game are all ladies with bunny ears. There are males but they’re hidden – you can play FFXIV if you wanna see em so badly! Viera are typically insular and prefer to be separated from society.

The reason for this is that they share a connection with nature. They listen to the forest and it tells them about the state of the world. When a Viera decides to leave the forest, it’s seen as a violation of natural laws and they are sort of exiled from their group.

Fran is one of the Viera that decided to abandon the forest, so when she comes back, she is treated as an outsider. Her kinsmen are all very cold and treat her indifferently. Through Fran’s nature of being in the party and through her interactions with her own people, it gives the player a lot of insight into that race. The other races do not get this kind of treatment – I think if someone hadn’t played FF XII in like five years, they may not even remember Nu Mous. But I bet most will remember Vieras.

One of the more notable aspects of these bunny creatures are that they react strongly to the ‘magic’ of the world, known as mist. They are able to sniff it out in an area and will take on a more beastly form if there’s too much of it in their presence. This is most clearly illustrated when the party gets exposed to nethicite, which I described earlier as essentially a nuclear weapon.

My assumption for this is because, as beings closely aligned with nature, they probably can sense what doesn’t belong in the world. Since mist is often tied with nethicite, I view it as a sort of pollution that offends the sensibilities of the Viera. Or maybe it’s a trait of Iceland, since the Viera all speak with thick Icelandic accents.

My one critique of this is that it doesn’t actually manifest in the gameplay at all. There is no super charged version of Fran that results from mist exposure and there is no way to render her unplayable from it either. The player gets shown how the mist impacts Fran in cutscenes, but everything feels normal in gameplay.

I will also say that there isn’t much to Fran as an individual. She’s mostly there to be Balthier’s partner and maybe also love interest. She is very stoic and clearly meant to be a supporting character to the more fleshed out companion. That said, since her inclusion helps more brightly illustrate this strange world to the player, I’m very okay with that.

Fran was sort of a jack of all trades character for me. She was an archer, which is exactly what it sounds like, and a foebreaker. I basically just assigned to her so she could equip heavy armor. I don’t know if I found the abilities she learned down these paths particularly useful, but she kept getting access to lesser versions of abilities other characters had.

For instance, she was my other character that could steal. I split my team of six into two groups of three for the vast majority of the game, so this led to her playing the Vaan role in the team I made for her. On top of this, she also learned low level healing magic, so it allowed her and my more mage-focused Ashelia to both take on healing duties for one of my teams of three. I don’t think she was ever the most valuable member on a team, but she always contributed something. I’ll take it.

Ashelia B’Nargin Dalmasca

This is your true lead character. While Vaan is plotting to steal something from the palace at Rabanstre, resistance forces led by Ashelia – using the alias Amalia – are plotting to storm the place. This is all a trap, which leads to everyone involved being held in captivity. This period leads to Ashelia working together with the thieves on a temporary basis. But you know how these things are – they end up working together for the rest of the game.

Ashelia, typically just called Ashe, is the princess of the conquered kingdom of Dalmasca. She is allowed to move in secret, plotting against the empire, because it is stated that she has committed suicide. Since the princess isn’t alive, nobody is actively trying to stop her from taking the throne. As long as she lives, the flame of resistance flickers.

Large portions of the early part of XII’s story involves Ashe traveling somewhere and declaring herself to be princess. When someone says something like “what proof have you of this claim?” she kind of just goes “uh well er I don’t have any” and then the party gets tasked with going somewhere to find some proof. They get it, a bunch of cutscenes happen, and then the party must go find some more.

That’s one way to keep the plot moving! Going along with her constantly trying to prove herself is the constant threat of war between Rabanastre and the Rozarrian Empire. At one point, an envoy from Rozaria attempts to get her to stray from her quest in order to talk to leaders from that faction and dissuade them from an all-out war. If the princess of the fallen kingdom of Dalmasca is against the fires of war, shouldn’t that be enough?

The problem is, Ashe doesn’t necessarily like to be used in this way. She has a very independent personality and sees great virtue in her resistance efforts against the empire. This is showcased towards the beginning of the game when Archadian Empire officials keep referring to resistance forces as insurgents and she angrily corrects them by calling them a ‘resistance.’

A lot of Ashe’s conflict in the journey comes with her trying to figure out how she wants to oppose the empire. Does she wish to meet force with force?

The Occurian try to manipulate her into wielding nethicite in order to fight the nethicite the empire has, which could potentially lead to some mutually assured destruction. But just like with the Rozarrian Empire, if she feels someone is using her and her position, she won’t go along with it.

She ultimately leads resistance forces into the Vayne Solidor’s airship to cut off the head of the snake. Not necessarily diplomatic, but a little more straightforward than threatening the empire’s capital city with the Final Fantasy equivalent of a nuke.

You might notice that this section hasn’t discussed Ashe much as a character outside of her being slightly obstinate and that’s for a reason. Her purpose in the plot is to get things moving, but as far as personality goes, she doesn’t showcase a whole lot. She is portrayed as honest and caring about her kingdom, but she very rarely shows much outside of this. She’s quite focused on her goal.

In the game’s ending, it’s shown that she very quickly separates from the game’s party in order to move into royalty. Comparing her to princess Garnet from Final Fantasy IX, that character still showed concerns about things unrelated to the crown. You still see her closest confidants, Steiner and Beatrix, right beside her at the end. Basch, the equivalent of Steiner, is nowhere near her at the end of the game.

The one bit of interaction she gets with the rest of the party at the end of the game is that Balthier returns a ring Ashe gave him to ensure he worked with her through the duration of the game. He returns it in letter form and it’s a very sweet moment and sentiment, but I did not get the impression that it was going to lead to Ashe seeking down the sky pirate and trying to get him to join her shiny cool new government. Instead, I look at it as the closing of a chapter.

And that’s okay. A single-minded character makes sense for the kind of story this game is trying to tell. Personal goals are less important than a nation’s goals in this narrative, so the princess of a newly restored kingdom probably should care more about her people than the weird thieves she palled around with for a few days.

For me, Ashe was my primary black mage, which made her one of the only characters in my party who routinely used magic. Her gambits were set up in a way where she used strong magic until a foe’s HP was less than 30% and then she’d start physically attacking to conserve some MP. This was important because she occasionally needed to assist with healing spells. Basically one of my three-man teams was held up by Penelo while Fran and Ashe sort of shared the load with the other team.

Her magic mastery led to Ashe being one of the more vital members of my crew. If I needed an “A-team” of sorts, she was always on it because, as it turns out, hitting people with Shock over and over again is a really great tactic. Never would have guessed!

Though one thing XII pulls with its bosses is that sometimes certain actions will be disabled. Like some bosses just flip a switch and say ‘for the next couple of minutes, you cannot use any magic at all!’ and I found that more annoying than actually challenging. Sorry for the tangent

Basch fon Ronsenburg

When people say Vaan was shoehorned in as the protagonist of XII, the assumption is that Basch was intended to be the lead. And I certainly see that – he is a crucial character to this story and he has the closest thing I would consider a true character arc for a protagonist. You see, he thinks he failed Dalmasca by not being able to save the king from being assassinated, so he wants to redeem himself. Hey, it’s something!

The party meets Basch while he’s imprisoned during the early portions of the game. The world believes he is the person who assassinated the king of Dalmasca, so the party is naturally a little bristly towards him. Makes sense, if you see the guy you think is responsible for society collapsing, you might give him the cold shoulder too.

Since he’s encountered in a prison, you know how this goes. You work together with the unsavory party in order to benefit both of you. Even though your party isn’t thrilled to save this king slayer, they do it anyway. Balthier – who remember, has roots in the empire and certainly knows more than he is letting on – sort of subtly wonders if everything about Basch is as it seems.

This little bit leads into an issue I have with Basch’s characterization. Everyone, including Princess Ashelia, hates him at the start of the game. Vaan directly blames him for killing his brother, even. These are wounds that are not quick to heal. And yet, with no evidence at all to clear his name, the party forgives him within like 20 minutes of him joining.

I swear, it goes from Vaan casting doubt to him in one cutscene to, in the next one, saying “Yeah dude, I believe you.” This is a character conflict that could have lingered in the background for the entire game and led to some growth for everyone, especially Vaan. But instead they just throw it aside and have them vouch for Basch immediately and it just feels rushed.

Let’s look at how a different Final Fantasy title handled this kind of relationship. Steiner and Zidane in Final Fantasy IX is much like this, with the proud captain of the knights of Pluto doubting the integrity of the theater-loving thief. Steiner does not drop his suspicions immediately, even when the two are working together. Instead, slowly, over the course of the game he comes around. It’s an hours-long process.

There’s another relationship much like this one in the next Final Fantasy game with that title’s main character Lightning and a party member named Hope. This is a major point of contention between the parties involved and it lasts for a big chunk of the game. Just because the focus – I hope you like that word, see you next review – is on something grander, there is still time for that piece of character work.

So, I just think XII could have been made more interesting by not dropping the angle so quickly. I get XII’s story is more of a grand scope than character focused, but it’s weird that more doubt is cast on Balthier than the guy everybody thinks killed the king.

After everyone accepts that he didn’t do it and that it was actually his brother, which we’ll get to later, Basch sort of settles into his role of seeker of redemption. He spends the rest of the game being the sword at Ashe’s side.

Until the end, where he assumes the role of Gabranth from his brother, because they’re gonna keep going with the narrative that Basch is dead to the public. I guess it’s fitting for someone whose duty is less to himself and more to his country.

Captain Basch was the easiest character to figure out from a job perspective to me. He’s clearly meant to be a knight, so that’s where I went. He was hands down my most valuable tank by the end of the game and was slotted in my ‘it’s serious now’ fights with Penelo and Ashe as my best team.

I might have had him use technicks a couple of times, but for the vast majority of the game, he was a pure attacker who would occasionally heal status effects. Simple but effective.

I don’t think Luke quite has the ‘misunderstood hero’ thing going before the sequel trilogy, but there isn’t a natural fit for Basch in Star Wars.

Vayne Carudas Solidor

The main villain of Final Fantasy XII and one who is unlike most villains the franchise has seen to this point. When the player first witnesses the primary, even if they aren’t evil at first, in previous Final Fantasies, it is clear that something is a little bit off. You could say they are cartoonishly fiendish – think about how Seymour could barely contain his psychopathy when even lightly pressed on something.

In contrast Vayne is typically portrayed as calm and collected. He has a clear set of goals but instead of brazenly murdering everyone he disagrees with, he brazenly murders everyone he disagrees with but frames it in a way that shows that he has no other choice and was doing it for the good of society. It’s doing the same evil actions but moralizing them!

This leads to a wide variety of NPC takes on Vayne. To the public, he’s presented as a very reasonable man who wants to see the empire’s war efforts come to an end. Several citizens of Rabanastre, tired of the disease that came following the death of their king, seem largely in favor of the man. But when you see scenes of people a little more familiar with Vayne, they all describe him as merciless and conniving. If there is power to be grabbed, he will grab it.

This is evident from the very start of the game. The king of Dalmasca is set to sign a peace treaty with the empire, one that would let the kingdom retain its autonomy. But Vayne has his right-hand man, Judge Gabranth, murder the king and frame it on the loyal guard Basch. This is done in a way to suggest that the murder took place because the men closest to the king did not want to see the kingdom be subservient to the empire.

In doing this, the empire can frame it as there being fragments of the previous regime who deeply oppose the empire. The hate is so strong that they’d kill the king! This gives Archades the excuse to occupy Dalmasca and make it subservient to the empire. So, as I said, he has the same goals as the evil villains of the franchise’s past. He still wants to rule the world, he just does it in a more stealthy way.

Vayne is also extremely aware of what those around him are aiming to do. Archades has a senate and an emperor. It is clear the emperor’s time is coming to an end and the senate favors Vayne’s brother Larsa as the next heir apparent. Larsa is younger and thus probably easier to control, whereas Vayne is something of a power hungry menace.

So, in a bid to grab power, he murders his father, frames it on a senator who he then also kills and then orders the execution of the one judge who was putting up too much of a stink about how bad murder is. From this point on, he’s the acting Emperor.

So why does he want to become emperor? Well, he thinks his father is too soft. Vayne is aware of the Occuria and their grasp on humanity, so his goal is to free humanity from the guidance of the gods. His way of doing this is through much bloodshed and destruction, which has him focused on nethicite.

In the past, the Occuria would give nethicite (in the form of various shards) to one man who would be anointed as the Dynast-King. This figure had power that could essentially topple the world, so the Occuria used this figure to shape the world as they saw fit. Ashelia is the Dynast-King Raithwall’s direct descendant.

Vayne wishes to manufacture his own nethicite and become a man-made Dynast-King, freeing humanity from relying on the Occuria. Why should the gods choose the caretaker of humanity and not a human? Vayne’s approach to this is seemingly through ruthless destruction.

His goals and motivations are very complex. He’s probably the most multi-faceted villain the franchise has had to this point. Most of the game’s most interesting events are a direct result of Vayne’s actions, so any time he appears in a cutscene, the player knows some serious stuff is about to happen.

Vayne is also the final boss of this affair and I feel he falls victim to the ‘samey-ness’ feeling bosses get in this game thanks to the Gambit system. I will admit I was a little overleveled for the encounter because I had tried to do some sidequests before finishing the game, but even still, no advanced strategies were needed. I just used the same basic gambits I had been using the whole time and won relatively drama free.

The fight had three phases. The game’s reasoning for this is that he merges with the heretic Occuria that the Empire has been consulting for the majority of the game. This makes him into something of an otherworldly demon, and honestly…I find it kind of boring. Vayne is really interesting as a ruthless and power hungry politician – making him just another really strong guy who is pals with a demon isn’t super intriguing.

I might have just made the heretic Occuria, Venat, a final boss on his own instead. Whatever. It’s a video game. The face of evil for the entire game probably should be the final boss.

The first time I beat the game, this was an obnoxious boss battle because I was STILL fighting the gambit system tooth-and-nail. I ended up winning by abusing the quickening (limit break) system and using elixirs. The final boss must be pretty forgiving if you can beat it without playing the game right.

Marquis Halim Ondore IV

Ondore, who is probably best known for having lies you cannot trust, is essentially the game’s narrator. At certain points of the story, you will have the game zoom out onto the map of the world as Ondore breaks down events from a tome he has been working on. This is the main device used to depict the movements of the empire, outside of dramatic scenes with Vayne anyway.

The Marquis is the ruler of the sky city of Bhujerba and is publicly an ally of the Archadian Empire. However, he works behind the scenes as a resistance leader and feeds crucial information to his allies about the movements of the Empire. He’s essentially a mole.

In order to allow the resistance to thrive in secrecy, Ondore spreads two lies. The first of which is that Ashelia B’Nargin Dalmaca took her own life when both her husband and father died. This allows Ashe to figure out what she wants to do without the empire hounding her and attempting to turn her into a puppet.

The other lie is that the empire executed Basch. I assume the purpose of it is to pacify the people of Dalmasca. They all assume Basch killed the king, so they want to see judgment done. Telling the people he is dead makes a lot of sense, but what actual purpose does Basch being alive actually serve?

The empire is very quick to do away with enemies. Basch is living proof that the downfall of Dalmasca is more complicated than the public is led to believe, so why would the empire keep him alive? He’s a loose end and Vayne doesn’t seem like the sort to let loose ends linger. I also don’t believe Ondore has the connections to keep him alive for very long – and yet, Basch was in the dungeons for two years.

And it’s not like the lie Ondore told was some obscure thing that maybe one or two people heard. This is a widely held belief in Ivalice. So there’s no way the empire doesn’t hear about it when Ondore proclaims his death. At this point, why didn’t they just do away with him? They have to be wondering what Ondore is up to by spouting this information – it’s even stated in the game that the empire is suspicious of him.

I just feel that was one lie too many. Should have just kept it at Ashelia. Despite being a character most known for telling tall tales, Ondore’s loyalties are never in question, at least not to the player. When the party meets up with him, Ashe is being held by the empire. After chatting with Ondore, they are immediately apprehended. The player is not left to wonder about his motives though, it becomes clear quickly that Ondore purposefully let the party get captured in order to free the princess.

Despite freeing her, Ondore still wants to hold the princess in captivity to protect her until the time for revolution is right – by his definition. The party actually has to sneak away from him and set off on their own because he does not intend to let them adventure freely for the time being. He only relents from being protective when he is fooled into believing the princess has recruited Vayne’s brother to her cause.

Vossler York Azelas

Vossler was a loyal knight to the Kingdom of Dalmasca. He is seen working closely with Ondore and functions as a bit of a man on the inside for the resistance. He dons imperial armor and helps the party fight their way to the princess and their freedom. This leads to the first of several journeys the party goes on to prove Ashelia is royalty.

This all goes smoothly right until the very end, when the party acquires proof of her heritage. Suddenly the empire swoops in and captures the party yet again. This time, it’s not an act. Vossler sells out the party and shows that he didn’t just wear that imperial armor for show.

His reasoning for this makes Vossler a shades of gray character instead of simply a villain. He has seen the kingdom of Dalmasca suffer enough over the past couple of years and he just wants to see his people see a return to normalcy. In his view, if Ashelia reclaims the throne and renounces the empire, a prolonged battle will take place and the citizens of Rabanastre of the former kingdom of Dalmasca would suffer.

In order to save his people, he must betray them. It takes the framing of the king’s murder and makes it literal. The storyline the empire wove is that a soldier betrayed his kingdom because he did not want to see his king taken advantage of. The reality is that a soldier betrayed his kingdom because he didn’t want to see his people taken advantage of.

It takes what is a relatively minor character in the grand scheme of things and makes him feel significant. His betrayal makes sense if you think of things from his perspective – most of the party hasn’t been in the position to see the changes to the kingdom that he has. Vaan and Penelo live there, but they are citizens and only see it from that perspective. Ashe and Basch have been MIA. Balthier and Fran have been pirating. So the only person who can have this perspective is Vossler and he goes with it.

I’m not trying to tell you ‘man turns on his kingdom for the greater good’ is an original plot beat. It isn’t. But I think it’s pulled off well.

Vossler joins the party temporarily as a guest character. It’s exactly what it sounds like – a fourth party member joins up with the crew. He comes in several levels above your highest – well, at least for me – character and hits extremely hard. Since Vossler is a guest to the party, the player is unable to edit his gambits, so he acts independently from the coach’s instructions.

I like this system for a couple of reasons. When first dealing with guests, the gambit system is still a relatively new thing for the player. It might be a little hard for them to wrap their head around, so it’s nice to have a guy in the lineup who is perfectly customized to function in combat. On top of this, you can look at his gambits and get an idea for how the system works. If it isn’t working for the player but it IS working for Vossler, they can inspect this fella to maybe get a hint about what to do.

The other reason I like the guest system is that it can be abused to help with side quests. Towards the end of the game, the party gets a guy named Reddas who doesn’t have enough plot importance to warrant his own little section, but DOES have enough gameplay utility to warrant a mention here. At this point, you can take Reddas around and do most of the hunts/side quests the game has to offer and have an extra man for it. It can make hunts the player is under-leveled for a little more manageable.

While Vossler isn’t the first guest to join your party, that would be Ashelia under her nom de plume of Amalia, he is the one I most firmly remember.

Larsa Ferrinas Solidor

Larsa is Vayne’s little brother and is seen as something of the saving grace of the Archadian Empire among those who aren’t totally on board with whatever the Imperial Consul of Rabanastre has cooking. There are judges, most notably Gabranth, who view his safety as the most important thing in the world.

The party gets introduced to him while he’s using an alias. Here, he briefly joins up as a guest character and discovers that his brother has been overseeing the creation of manufactured nethicite. Not wanting to see the world turn to waste, he starts making moves in order to stave off the war that’s been moving in the background. His actions range from being very naive about his brother’s compassion for others to helping Ashe’s party, as he sees the princess as the person most likely to stop the coming war.

For some reason, he is given a bit of a friendship with Penelo, even giving her a piece of nethicite for protection. As I said above, I feel like this was just done to give Penelo more of a reason to stick around.

I like Larsa’s inclusion because it helps introduce some of the softer elements of the empire. On the surface, Archades is full of ruthless and despicable people. Dr. Cid, Vayne, Gabranth and most of the judges are completely vile for most of the adventure. The senate is shown as conniving, with their interest in Larsa being solely from a ‘how can we use this kid’ perspective.

Hell, even NPCs in the imperial capital are generally very affluent and out of touch. They have basically never known any suffering in their lives and don’t show a lot of sympathy towards all of the people in the world touched by war. Larsa is there to show that, no, the world would not be better off if the empire was just stricken from the earth. There is some good there.

Maybe putting this kid on the throne will help turn the region towards true peace? After all, for a vast majority of the adventure, Larsa wants to avoid the death of his brother at all costs. He wants to end war in the most diplomatic way possible. At the end of XII, he is made into the emperor, so the player can only hope that his desire for diplomacy continues into his rule as emperor.

Just ignore how he also turns on Vayne at the very end of the game and seems totally cool with the party killing him. I swear he was basically a pacifist before that!

As a guest, in the original version, I remember Larsa being my favorite guest because he had a seemingly infinite supply of hi potions. His gambits were set up in a way where it felt like the game was a little more merciful with him around, which is great, because I was playing it incorrectly.

In this playthrough, he didn’t particularly stand out in any way. But hey, I’m never gonna complain about having a fourth man aboard my crew.

Judge Gabranth (Noah fon Ronsenburg)

Gabranth is the main face of the judges the group encounters throughout the game. He is Basch’s brother and hails from a kingdom that fell to the empire. While Basch took up arms under Dalmasca, Gabranth retreated into the arms of the empire and became Vayne’s go-to guy when he needed to get something done. His official title is Judge Magister. The much discussed killing of Dalmasca’s king is done by Gabranth, pretending to be Basch.

On the surface, he’s quite villainous as he torments and taunts the party at several points throughout the adventure. However, in scenes depicting the inner-workings of the empire, Gabranth is shown as being skeptical about the direction things are headed in. This is meant to tell us that he carries out orders, but he doesn’t mindlessly do so.

This is best illustrated in the scene where Vayne makes his big power grab by ascending to the throne of the empire. A fellow judge calls out Vayne on his bullshit and the new emperor orders her immediate execution and tasks Gabranth with doing it. Vayne taunts the judge, saying something along the lines of ‘what’s the matter? you can’t get rid of a traitor?’

The judge Gabranth is forced to kill is Judge Drace. In previous scenes, she had been depicted as someone who saw the evils of the empire and viewed Larsa as the only person who could course correct. The two agreed with each other that Larsa must be protected. As Gabranth went in to do his master’s bidding, Drace lets him know that it’s all okay and that he needs to continue to protect Larsa. Gabranth kills her and the player is left to stew on this for a while.

Even though he isn’t originally of the empire, Gabranth felt real loyalty for the emperor and Archades in general. Even with everything spelled out in front of him, admitting that his superiors were on the wrong side of things might mean that he was wondering if every action he had taken since joining up with the empire was wrong. The killing of Drace, I think, made him ponder a lot of his lot in life.

Later on in the game, Vayne sends Gabranth to deal with Ashe’s party as she is about to get some nethicite to fight with. The judge magister urges her on in this, even revealing that it was he who killed her father. I view this as Gabranth seeing the only method of stopping Vayne being one of pure force. He was sent there to stop her from getting nethicite, so why else would he egg her on? He used Ashe’s perception of him to try to get her to end things in the way he thought would be best.

But she does not do this. Remember how Ashe doesn’t like feeling manipulated? This leads to another boss fight, one I feel that Gabranth only engages with because he is just very confused about what to make of Ashe’s approach. He is still loyal to the empire, so if she doesn’t fit into his vision of how to fix things, it makes a little sense that he would decide to follow orders in this case and bide his time until he find another solution for Vayne.

He battles the party one more time, right before the end of the game. This one is framed as a desperate man, knowing he is on the losing side of a conflict. He seems reflective on how his path has been one without honor. I don’t view this fight as a man desperate to stop the party from saving the day, I view it as a test of strength. He wants to make sure the princess and her party are truly the ones who can end things.

This is evidenced by how the final battle unfolds. Gabranth turns his sword on Vayne. He now fully sees Vayne as a true threat to the empire and to Larsa, the person he has sworn to shield. This results in his demise, but at this point, he’s viewed as entirely reformed and as a hero to the resistance. It’s a complete turnaround.

This could be seen as an expanded take on what Vossler went through. In Vossler’s case, he viewed the situation as entirely hopeless and didn’t trust in Ashelia and the party. He didn’t have faith in a person behind Vayne to fix things. So he viewed the quickest path to peace as total surrender. Gabranth seemingly viewed a straight-up arms-race style contest as the way to unseat Vayne, so he chose a path of violence. Only when he acknowledged the power of Ashe’s resistance forces did he choose a smaller scale version of this.

Instead of a war with the Rozarrian Empire, simply cutting off the head of the snake would be enough. Because he had worked with the empire at length, because he knew Larsa was there, he saw that a total factory reset wasn’t necessary. So he accepted a more small-scale version of what he was shooting for.

Gabranth has the most traditional character arc of anyone in this game. You see him slowly maneuver from the light side to the dark side. There’s a reason that he’s probably the most well known figure from this game, and it’s not just because his armor is cool. While I have been critical of aspects of this game’s writing, I will absolutely say that the villain side feels very fleshed out and interesting.

Kit Fisto of course! Wait, no, Darth Vader. Sorry. I get them mixed up all the time.

Cidolfus Demen Bunansa (Dr. Cid)

Final Fantasy XII brings us our first villainous Cid. We’ve had smoking angry Cid, we’ve had Robin Williams Cid, we’ve had bug Cid…it’s about time we got ourselves a villain eh?

Don’t worry Cid fans, the game has a good guy Cid too. Al-Cid is the one member of the Rozarrian Empire who shows up in the game and he gets so little screen time – despite being a leading figure in a potential upcoming war – that it almost feels like a Square Enix mandate to include a good Cid.

Dr. Cid is depicted as the brains of the empire. Vayne tasks him with research into nethicite, which results in the creation of manufactured nethicite. The first time the party is introduced to him, the bad doctor is seen mumbling to an invisible figure. This is played off as him acting crazy. His son Balthier even confirms that he has lost his mind.

But that isn’t the case! I’ve mentioned the Occuria a lot in this writeup and Dr. Cid is how the player gets introduced to these guys. He isn’t talking to the void at all. Instead, he is talking to an Occurian heretic named Venat. This creature is also tired of the Occuria manipulating events behind the scenes and has decided to anoint the most fearsome figure of this era, Vayne, as the new Dynast-king, in order to achieve this result.

Venat aids Dr. Cid is his research into nethicite. Remember, nethicite is a powerful force that I would equate to a nuclear bomb. Since nethicite is something Occuria had gifted to humanity, manufactured nethicite is humanity’s version of the same thing. Essentially, Venat is helping Dr. Cid and the empire create something akin to nuclear weapons. This would make Cidolfus into something of an Oppenheimer figure.

This villain takes a lot of inspiration from a different man of science in this franchise, Professor Hojo. Like that character, Cid does not really care about the impact his research causes so much as seeing the fruits of his research. Hojo does not care at all about his research subjects and is more than happy to dispose of failed specimens. Dr. Cid does not care at all about the impact of his creation and is more more than happy to dispose of large swaths of humanity.

Large portions of the game’s story are a result of Venat manipulating the party. Ashe constantly sees visions of her departed husband that seem to be connected to a piece of nethicite. But when it comes time to destroy that nethicite, the mirage will shake its head and make it seem like a bad idea. This is ultimately done to get Ashe to assemble more nethicite – by slicing up something called the sun-cryst – which would then be grabbed up by the empire for their purposes.

But when it’s time to slice up that sun-cryst, Ashe realizes Venat had been manipulating her emotions and she decides to rebel. Remember how I said Dr. Cid cares little for humanity and more for his research? Since plan A failed through, Dr. Cid gave up his life in order to harness the sun-cryst into a hefty chunk of mist. This mist is used to power his ultimate invention, the airship Bahamut – a massive flying fortress that could almost assuredly wreck the world through the usage of manufactured nethicite.

He isn’t depicted as remorseful at all, he doesn’t regret his relationship with his son at all. He is singularly focused on his goal. In a game full of complex villains, Dr. Cid almost feels like a throwback to characters like Hojo who aren’t meant to make the player feel conflicted. You’re supposed to be happy to see this asshole gone and I think XII did a good job of accomplishing that.

His first boss fight, encountered in Archades, was where I stopped playing on my very first playthrough of FF XII 20 years ago. I could not figure out a way around this boss, so for years it held up in my mind as one of the hardest mandatory boss fights in history. No matter how much I leaned on quickenings, I just couldn’t keep this guy down or even come close to it.

It took me by surprise how easy it was on replay. Simply battering all of his minions is all it takes to win the day. I don’t think I needed to tweak my gambits at all for this battle, it was just smooth sailing. It was one of the easiest encounters of the whole game, hardly fitting for such a slimy asshole! Man, I really was completely lost when it came to FFXII, eh?

Their dynamic is like Emperor Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker’s. Dr. Cid was once a normal scientist in the empire until Venat got into his ear and corrupted him. At this point, the doctor fully turns to the dark side in order to fuel the heretic Occurian’s vision. Cid is like the version of Anakin that doesn’t get the redemption arc. And Venat is like that version of the Emperor from the original version of A New Hope that looks ridiculous.

In conclusion

When starting this series, Final Fantasy XII was easily the entry that worried me the most. It’s the only game in the franchise that I flat-out did not like at all. I saw it as a game that was trying to run from the genre it was in, a game that was trying to be different for the sake of being different.

By trying to grapple with the game on its terms, I was able to find an appreciation for it that I did not once have. The gameplay system is inspired. It may not require a lot of intervention, save for specific boss fights, but it is still enjoyable to engage with. The story, while not the sort of character-based story I enjoy most out of this franchise, can be very interesting at times.

It isn’t my favorite game in the series by any means, but if you strip away the need for Final Fantasy to feel a specific way, it’s still a good experience in its own way. Engaging with the game on its level and not trying to make it something it’s not helps it stand out as a game that should be experienced by fans of the genre.

Sure, there are elements that are annoying. Yes, I do think the reluctance to make any of the main party particularly fleshed out is a little short-sighted. But it simply isn’t that kind of game. And that’s okay.

My score: 3.5/5

Game rankings to this point

1: Tactics
2: X
3: VII
4: V
5: VI
6: VIII
7: IV
8: IX
9: XII
10: III
11: I
12: II
13: Mystic Quest

I’m only ranking games I’ve covered in my retrospectives. But if you’re curious where I’d place X-2, it’s probably at No. 8 or 9. This is also strictly a single player listing, so I won’t have a ranking for XI or XIV.

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