Finally have a full party. I'm suppose to go to the Yensa Sandsea, but I'm stopping to check to see if some other sidequests have opened up yet, and I might grind some loot cause wouldn't you know, all the shops updated.

Pros:
  • So far I've been impressed with the balance of the Job classes, about the only one that kind of feels like a gamebreaker is the Red Battlemage because holy trout does this class get a great assortment of spells, including all of the Arcana spells, but the amount of great support lores it gets makes it pretty mean. The two that have surprised me the most have been Machinist and Time Battlemage. The Machinist mainly because the class is eerily similar to my own idea of a build I was doing for Balthier in my last playthrough of the vanilla version. Basically the class doesn't learn magic but gets access to most of the Techniks. TB on the other hand is just kind of a surprise because it's not how I imagined the class would work but makes sense in context. Basically the class focuses on Crossbows and Heavy Armor which makes sense to me because Time Magic has few offensive abilities so Magic Gear isn't terribly useful, instead the class is built for survival.
  • Now that I've had some proper guest party members, the Gambit control is more interesting, especially since they have more skills to offer than first thought and they've all been rebalanced so Larsa is no longer MVP of the Guest party members.
  • Even though I absolutely destroyed him with a Quickening Chain, I still have to hand it to Judge Ghis and the Judges in general for having so much scene stealing presence. I was actually quivering with excitement when I finally got to face Ghis despite it turning into a pretty one-sided affair.
  • I think what I love about XII's quests is that so many of them are minor and only available if you bother to talk to NPCs all the time. I did a quest for Pilika (No, not that one) after her Rocktoise Hunt and did a little errand for her that got me a cool accessory and there was no real hooplah for it because it was just a simple chore. If this game had been made today, it would have had some grandiose "YOU'VE ACCEPTED AN IMPORTANT QUEST!" type line and been added to my cluttered quest queue, instead it just a hidden gem you could easily bypass and forget with no ceremony attached to it and it was so simple it would have been insulting to treat it as important. I feel like this is a better way to handle these types of things.
  • I've been hunting some of the Rare Game in this file and it's been a nice challenge for some of them, I even grabbed the Gladius from that Rare Wolf in the Westersand so Vaan has something to look forward to. Despite the game's liberal use of palette swap enemies; their stats, skills, and A.I. make them all feel really different from each other and there are still some cool quirks in this game that really show how completely ahead of it's time the game really was which just makes modern FFs feel poorer in comparison.


Cons:
  • So far White Mage has been the most disappointing Job Class. It's just kind of boring overall and with the amount of healing magic Red Battlemage gets and the fact Ashe starts with healing magic regardless of her class, poor Penelo is just not seeing a whole lot of action in my game file. Even looking at the optional sections to unlock with Espers later on, the class has fewer options I would actually consider. Course part of the issue here may be due to the fact...
  • ... the Zodiac Age nerfed the difficulty. I'm conflicted about the secondary jobs because I love the idea of new min/max but concerned how game breaking it's going to be since my party is having no problem wiping the floor with most things thrown at them.
  • I miss the Sky Pirates Den. I wish they had kept it cause it was a cool little trophy room that feels more impressive than just going to your actual trophy screen and seeing a list.
  • For a game with so many airships, sky pirates, and actually getting a hold of an airship ridiculously early, it's kind of sad how useless it all is with teleporters and just going on foot being more useful. No wonder people miss the Seven Sisters quest, you have to actually use airships to unlock it and most players wouldn't need to bother.