Uniqueness of FFXII?

[Bolivar]

Yeah, there's a lot.

For one, it takes place in the already established universe of Ivalice. It's a world that the excellent Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story both took place in and may also include the innovative Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen and fantastic Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. It's the only Final Fantasy that's a part of a larger continuity. Some had derivative works made later, but this is a far different situation than the spin-offs. It's also the only one of those games to depict a large section of Ivalice with fully realized and realistically scaled graphics.

One unique gameplay element is the way they streamlined menu-based combat with the ADB system. It allowed you to preset what actions your party members would take in certain situations instead of having to keep re-entering the same commands over and over again. This was interestingly inspired by American football, how teams will get ready to take certain actions depending on what they think is most likely to happen in a situation. For example, an offense will know to take different actions on a play if they see the other team in zone defense or lined up for man-to-man coverage. Similarly, you can adjust your party's "playbook" (the Gambit system) to use Antidotes and cast Blizzard spells when needed if you see the area is full of poison-using enemies and flying enemies weak against ice attacks.

It's also the only FF without random encounters.

FFXII is also known for its superb voice acting and this is largely due to the unique casting. While most video games consist of a mix of established voice actors and TV/Film up-and-comers, FFXII took a lot of people who had serious stage acting chops. It lent a character of credibility to some of the political intrigue going on.

It is also the only main Final Fantasy designed by Yatsumi Matsuno, and was directed by his protege, Hiroshi Minagawa. Matsuno's stories take a critical look at morality and the plots typically revolve around how a group of characters rise above the moral relativist mindset that plagues their society and search for what is truly good, even at a cost to themselves. You won't find anything quite like it in gaming and FFXII is an excellent title to check it out with.

The localization team also used different English dialects to highlight regional and cultural differences within the game.

Another gameplay feature unique amidst the series is exploration. There's no world map, the entire world is rendered to the scale of the player. And even at the beginning of the game, you can really head out and explore a good amount of areas out there before touching the main story. FFXIII tried at this with Gran Pulse, but that's only late in the game and it's a largely homogenous area. FFXII has deserts, caverns, plains, coasts, and jungles for you to explore at your own curiosity. They're all connected to eachother, you can literally walk from end to end if you wanted to. Even main areas in the stories have massive sections that are completely optional and really distinct with their own set of rewards. For example, the party travels through an abandoned mine early on, but I discovered an area off the main path that contained unique enemies along an abandoned rail line that I never even knew was there on my first playthrough.

I guess the last thing that was different and that I really liked was the equipment system. While later games made armor character-specific, or got rid of armor entirely, there are the traditional 3 armor classes of RPGs and you can decide how to assign them, or mix them, amongst your characters. There's an array of unique weapon classes you can train them in, complete with their own animations and benefits. It's really up to you to decide how you want to use them. This is a level of customization the series hasn't seen since Final Fantasy II and even then, I think this game surpasses it.

FFXII is a tremendous game and probably one of my hands-down favorites over the last 10 years. Definitely top 3. I really hope Square re-releases it soon because it's needed more than ever among the current generation of games.