After Thirteen Years I Finally Beat Final Fantasy XII

That is right, after thirteen - almost fourteen years I finally beat Final Fantasy XII, and in my opinion it is one of the better Final Fantasy games. First let’s start off with a trip down memory lane, way back to Halloween 2006 when the game first released.

My friend and I had been huge Final Fantasy fans and had long been awaiting the arrival of the newest installment. By this point I was already three-ish years deep into my Final Fantasy XI addiction, and everything I saw about XII was looking right up my alley. The combat looked like an evolution of Square’s popular MMORPG but bundled into a beautiful single player experience. I managed to get my hands on a copy of the demo that was bundled with Dragon Quest VIII, and I was completely sold. This was going to be the best game ever. Fast forward to October 31st 2006, and my friend and I had prepared our battlestations in his basement, and after a 30 minute drive to the nearest Electronic Boutique we had our collector’s edition copies in hand. We ripped back to his parent’s basement and began our adventures in the world of Ivalice.

An hour or so into the game my friend ran into a spot of trouble. He had taken control of Vaan and was hunting outside Rabanastre for the rogue tomato, the game’s first hunt mark. He opted to challenge a dinosaur and was promptly presented with a game over screen.

“Oh no! I didn’t save!” he informed me as he clicked the new game button on the introduction screen. Though I did feel bad for him, it was pretty funny. He had to sit through the tutorials and unskippable cutscenes again. Always remember to save!

We both chugged our way through the game, but I lost interest once I got to the great crystal, an ingame labyrinth that was solely designed to annoy the player and make them quit playing. At this point I went back to my old FFXI addiction. The games felt so similar, and I was very upset with some of the game design choices made, so why not go back to something I actually enjoyed. My friend on the other hand crushed the game in its entirety, including defeating Yiazmat, the game’s strongest monster.

Fast forward to July 11th 2017 when the game released on the playstation 4. I was excited for all the quality of life changes that were made to the game, and jumped back into the world of Ivalice head first. I rushed through the game enjoying every second of it until once again my motivation fizzled. This time I didn’t even make it to the great crystal. The quality of life changes are crucial. The ability to speed up the game improves the combat and makes the game feel like it isn’t purposefully wasting your time with easy fights. To me FFIX also had this issue. It was simply just too slow, and the fast forward option actually helped push me to finish the game. As I mentioned, my interest completely fizzled and the game remained unfinished.

Then during a long stint in the hospital last year the game was released again, but this time on the Nintendo Switch. I purchased the game and waited days for it to download over the slow hospital wifi. Again I jumped in head first, but this time I plowed through to the last bits of the game. I think the Switch mobile form factor and the fact that I was stuck in the hospital pushed me through some of the game’s bad design choices. Dungeons like the great crystal simply aren’t fun and suck the life out of the pacing, and the last two dungeons make the exact same mistake. The game sat uncompleted on my switch for over a year until I made the conscious effort to beat the game this week. In short, I really enjoyed it.

The game is really good. The story is so different from every other modern entry, and the ports to the newer consoles hold up really well. It isn’t perfect though. The voice acting is excellent, but the quality of the recordings on all versions of the game are awful. The game gives you flexibility on your party leader on the field letting you become whoever you want to become, but forces you to play as Vaan in city areas for no real reason. The game has an impressively customizable battle system, but the system isn’t balanced with magic being basically useless. The world is large and immersive, but the only sidequests are shallow monster hunts. For each thing the game does very well there is something it does equally poorly. The worst mistake the game makes is obtuse design choices that feel like they were added in only to sell copies of the official walkthrough. Things like items you can only get if you don’t open certain chests, areas that are purposefully confusing or poorly designed, and items that are literally hidden in invisible chests. Those types of design decisions coupled with poor pacing really hurt what is otherwise a classic entry into the Final Fantasy series.

So here we are thirteen years later. So much of XII is great, but it also works hard to frustrate you. I think Switch is the console to play it on, but I am probably going to give it another go once it comes to Game Pass.