Our third Final Fantasy game and the initial game that brought me to this forum actually. With the release of the Zodiac Age, this game is pretty fresh in the minds for some of you and I feel most of us are familiar with the ins and outs, so I'll be ignoring my usual "here's the plot, here's the gameplay" spiel and instead just focus on why this game deserves to be on this list. With that said, if you are just now playing this game for the first time, there are likely going to be spoilers so read at your own discretion.
I find it a little bit funny to see that over a decade later from this game's release, I'm kind of back in the same state of mind about the franchise. My options for the last few years have been a game I actively dislike, it's awful sequel, an MMO I don't care about, and a few more lackluster titles as SE focuses on branching out and slapping FF onto anything that will sell like they were the video game equivalent of KISS.
Yet I did have XII on the horizon, which as being developed by my favorite director at Square during the PS1 era, giving me both FFTactics and Vagrant story, and even surprising me with FFTA. So I was hyped when I learned he was working on XII, and so I shouldered on through FFMMO, skimpy outfit Charlie's Angels knockoff, and weird crossover titles. Yet, as we all know, XII began the franchise's new tradition of rocky development. Despite being announced before FFXI debuted, it was released four years later, which felt like a lifetime for a franchise who Golden Age had every entry releasing one to two years apart, with only the gap between VI and VII being the longest and that at least was notable with a console change and a transition from 2D to 3D graphics. The news coming of Matsuno not only leaving the project due to health reasons, but eventually leaving the company itself was also very concerning, and I still hope to one day learn a little bit more about that, cause never set well with me. The game was taken over by Ito (VI and CT) and Kawazu (FFII and SaGa) which I feel saved the project, but I'm still sad that we were denied Matsuno's full vision.
In hindsight, I feel like XII really showed it's work. After seeing the results of the last three titles that had ballooned development times and then got painfully rushed out the door in the last year of it's development, I can honestly say that I feel XII showed not only why it was taking so long, but ultimately achieved what they wanted to do, whereas the rest either got shrug of god with silly lies or boggled down with focus group input. Recreating an MMO style world in terms of scale on PS2 hardware without the aid of the HUD peripheral that Sony dropped almost as quickly as they touted it, with little to no loading times is actually an engineering feat on scale with VII and VIII's technological improvements. I've always felt that the PS2 was a late bloomer, and my god if this game, Shadow of the Colossus, and MGS3 really sent that message to gamers.
So we have our first non-MMO massive world FF and it happens to be Ivalice itself, a setting that had been slowly evolving in Matsuno's mind in the years since he created it as a flimsy expy of his Tactics Ogre universe, and I honestly couldn't think of a better setting to be the first scaled world. The level design of XII is a bit interesting because it's massive in scale to other FF worlds like Spira or Cocoon, but actually has some tighter design around it as well, which differentiates it from the usual copy/paste landscapes of Open World titles like XV. Frankly, I was in awe to all this and really saw the future of the genre with this game, but sadly SE backed down from the concept while other franchises thankfully saw the potential and ran with it. In a lot of ways, I feel like XII was the last FF to have a serious impact on the genre. Other series started to build their worlds bigger, more serious subjects started to enter the writing, and it felt like more designers began to really experiment with writing styles for their games.
XII is not about Vaan, he's the player viewpoint character, but his story arc ends about a few hours after his introduction. The plot is really about Ashe, the first playable character you're actually introduced to in the opening. Yet it still surprises me that people confuse this concept. It's also different from the Tidus and Yuna dynamic because ultimately, Vaan's story is irrelevant to Ashe's and he comes to terms with what he needs to do to grow as a character fairly early in the plot, whereas Ashe struggles with her conflict for the rest of the game. Where Vaan is important is that he's relatable, the opening sections of Rabanastre wouldn't have been as impactful if you were playing as Ashe, in her resistance bunker, with all her bodyguards, talking about how bad Dalmasca has been since the imperial takeover. It is more impactful to play as an everyman who is both powerless to effect any real change but still wants to do so, to meet a character who can freely wander the streets and talk to normal people about what's going on and learn first hand about the social dynamics of the world than a character who storywise, is in no position to do so because they are too important for such trifling matters. So Vaan is not important as a character, but he's important for the player to see and understand the world in a way that none of the other characters can't translate into without awkward writing. Tidus fulfills a similar role in X but he's ultimately too foreign and his story still requires heavy exposition by side characters and party members to get both him and the player up to speed on the situations. Vaan is a more organic means of fulfilling this role.
In terms of the narrative overall, I kind of appreciate the fact that XII is a more subdued and grounded experience. After years of half espers, dead dream dude's, schizophrenics due to alien loogies, and Time traveling witches; it was nice to have a story where everyone actually has straightforward problems that can still create complicated emotional issues for the party to deal with. Basch is probably the best example as he has not only been disgraced due to the frame up on him, but the one person he vowed to protect, hates him and it's only through the course of the story and the other characters resolving their own personal issues does he finally get his happy ending. You feel bad for this guy, and you don't even need to have some weird excuse to do so like him being some magic construct created for war, he's a guy whom the world has turned against and yet he soldiers on and does what he feels is right despite the fact the person he's trying to help hates him. It's powerful without being melodramatic or over the top in context.
Fran's own journey falls Matsuno's tendency to bring in real world elements into his stories. Her journey parallels the struggles of native groups dealing with the expansion of more technologically advanced cultures; and the sense of betrayal the native group feels when their young abandoned their cultural roots to pursue that foreign influence. While I'm sure Matsuno drew upon these inspirations from the struggles of native tribes in the Americas and Africa, I can easily see it hitting a chord with Japanese who feel the same loss of identity from Western influences in the last hundred and fifty years. It's incredibly relevant story point that has no clear answer and may likely have a similar end result as the real world for the Viera which makes it both fascinating and tragic, while once again, not being in your face about it.
This is why I love XII's story, it deals with complicated issues and interesting personal struggles without being so blatantly obvious about it. the player themselves have to read the subtext to understand and not simply be spoon fed the games themes and message. This is not to say the older games were never subtle about their own themes, but at the time of 2006, I felt SE had lost that insight as well as many other popular RPGs at the time. Even today, I still feel that SE has never quite grasped subtlity like they used to, but I blame this on the fact that the writers don't have enough faith in their own audience to get the message if it isn't spelled out to them and who can blame them? My own experience when I first came to this forum was dealing with people who seemed to miss the point of the writing, and I'm sure that was rather reflective of the whole fanbase, even I missed out on a several elements my first playthrough, but that's kind of what I like about this game is that it's something where you can still discover new meanings and minor points with each playthrough. It's not a high fructose soda you stuff in your face to get that instant gratification, it's like a wine that has to be drank slowly and every sip should savor in order to appreciate the subtle elements that make it exquisite.
This extends to the gameplay which ultimately ruined A.I. companions for me because XII offered a level of control that felt meaningful and practical that ultimately challenged my views on how I play games. It taught me to relinquish control where I wanted to while also making me appreciate the control I still gave myself. The License Board was a powerful tool that certainly had some balancing issues, but could be fixed if I simply let go and didn't settle for the lowest hanging fruit on the tree. XII came out at a good time for me, cause my own experience with FFs gameplay had largely been waning thanks to always munchkining the mechanics, but around the time of XII, I finally started to just let go and just really experiment with what some of the battle systems had to offer, and I feel that FFXII, more than any other entry is a game that really works best with this more playful approach. When you decide to sit back and simply play for enjoyment and curiosity instead of "playing to win" I feel you can truly see how much depth the mechanics have to offer.
Overall, I felt that XII was the breath of fresh air the franchise really needed and I'm a bit sad that everything that has come after it has lacked the depth, restraint, and grandeur this game offered us back in 2006. I am happy to see that people have started to come around to this game, and I hope the Zodiac Age helps introduce a whole new generation of fans to what I consider to be the last really great Final Fantasy game.
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