Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age "HD"

[Ratatapa]

So I just got Belias

1) what does espers do in this game, just a summons or give stats boost too

2) man 2nd job is fun he will be annoying to chose where to spend my liscence points

3) are important is gear for damage? Penelo is a monk/blm if I give her mostly monk gear will her black magic still do good dmg? Or I should gear both for depending thenfight?

[Tobi]

Espers also unlock certain skills/nodes on each job's board, so ideally you want to only give certain espers to certain jobs that compliment them well. So for example, MNK/BLM you'll most likely be giving them Chaos, which unlocks White Magick 11 and 12 for BLM, granting Holy, Esunga, Protectga and Shellga. Holy will be the main reason you'd give BLM/MNK Chaos, allowing you to exploit holy weakness.

The Espers are shared across all characters, so if you give your MNK/BLM Chaos, no one else can get it.

MNK is good early on when don't have many good spells/lower mp pool, though even early on magic can be pretty good still. Later on you'll mostly want them BLM only.

[EternityEnd]

Man, I really wish they had gone with Reks as the PoV character instead of Vaan. His design is much better, and having a main character struggling with memory / PTSD would have been way more interesting.

Would've also given the first part of the game a lot more weight, considering he was personally involved in the prologue's betrayal.

Spoiler: show

Or, you know, just kept Basch as the lead. Or Balthier. Or Ashe. Or allowed us to swap city exploration character.

[Silenka]

The way I see Vaan and Penelo is they are citizens of the place the rest of the party is fighting for, so they provide some necessary perspective from the viewpoint of people who are directly affected by the decisions the rest make. It is unfortunate that the rest of the party, who all besides Fran have a better claim on being the main character than Vaan, were not chosen to lead...but aside from marketing purposes (for which they wanted the usual young blonde kid with washboard abs I guess), it would have been kind of hard from a narrative perspective to do the game from Basch or Balthier's POV because of their storylines (would give too much away too early and we'd also be jumping in at a different point). Ashe may have been the best choice for lead out of the 3.

[EternityEnd]

The beginning of the game certainly would have to be changed slightly, but that's no great loss. Vaan's errand boy adventures are kind of a slog, and in stark tonal contrast to the previous and subsequent political tone.

That portion of the game could easily have followed Ashe as "Amalia," or Reks' acclimation in post-war Dalmasca, joining the Resistance (which desperately needed more screen time).

Hell, Penelo's role wouldn't have to change at all. In fact, if they included her cut backstory -- her brothers teaching her how to fight, but dying in the war -- that could give her a real reason to bond with Reks.

Vaan just shouldn't exist, is what I'm saying. Penelo is the better layman.

[Ratatapa]

I need to watch this thread with lots of spoilers

I mean it's to be expected of a12 year old game so it's my fault for not finishing it

[EternityEnd]

I need to watch this thread with lots of spoilers

I mean it's to be expected of a12 year old game so it's my fault for not finishing it

If you're referring to my posts, nothing has been beyond the first couple hours of the game. No need to worry if you thought you were spoiled by anything on this page. The Penelo stuff isn't even in the game at all. I'd spoiler tag anything that involved actual spoilers.

[Zealot]

The way I see Vaan is a studio mandate because Vagrant Story didn't sell well enough.

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[Athas]

The way I see Vaan and Penelo is they are citizens of the place the rest of the party is fighting for, so they provide some necessary perspective from the viewpoint of people who are directly affected by the decisions the rest make. It is unfortunate that the rest of the party, who all besides Fran have a better claim on being the main character than Vaan, were not chosen to lead...but aside from marketing purposes (for which they wanted the usual young blonde kid with washboard abs I guess), it would have been kind of hard from a narrative perspective to do the game from Basch or Balthier's POV because of their storylines (would give too much away too early and we'd also be jumping in at a different point). Ashe may have been the best choice for lead out of the 3.

Vaan's only there because Spirit's Within flopped and SE was anxious about having an older male lead (Basch) so they threw in a standard anime protagonist.

[Guitarman]

I still can't shake looking at Basch and seeing James Hetfield

[Ratatapa]

If you're referring to my posts, nothing has been beyond the first couple hours of the game. No need to worry if you thought you were spoiled by anything on this page. The Penelo stuff isn't even in the game at all. I'd spoiler tag anything that involved actual spoilers.

Nah don't worry for me it's a 12 year old game so

Also I agree that vaan seems useless story wise event tho I just finished raithwall tomb.

But he seemed the only one with Ashe to see her husband ghost so maybe it means something ( probably not according to how you talk about him)

But he's less cringe then Tidus was at the start of the game

[Aelfinn]

Just started playing this today, listening to the narration at the start and the voice was sounding super familiar... is that Orion Acaba? Or just sound like the voice he used for his character in critical role?

[Insanecyclone]

Just started playing this today, listening to the narration at the start and the voice was sounding super familiar... is that Orion Acaba? Or just sound like the voice he used for his character in critical role?

You mean Ondore's VA? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kane

[Julian]

Even though it would make no sense, this would have been the ultimate 6 person party:

Ashe
Balthier
Fran
Al-Cid
Larsa
That prince dude who died at the start of the game :<

edit: Fuck, Al-Cid was in FFTA2? I... I need to go replay that now. <_< >_> <_<

[EternityEnd]

Never played FFTA2, but having just played Vagrant Story for the first time prior to FFXII HD's release, I'm pretty tempted to give it a shot.

I heard FFTA2 is set in actual Ivalice, after FFXII/RW on the timeline, rather than the dreamworld Ivalice of FFTA? Makes me more interested.

[Kaslo]

Never played FFTA2, but having just played Vagrant Story for the first time prior to FFXII HD's release, I'm pretty tempted to give it a shot.

I heard FFTA2 is set in actual Ivalice, after FFXII/RW on the timeline, rather than the dreamworld Ivalice of FFTA? Makes me more interested.

You beat Vagrant Story? I'm sorry. That game has been so hard for me to play.

[arus2001]

Yeah, I can totally understand why someone doesn't finish VS. The concept of the battle system may seem sound, but their execution of it wound up pretty much ass since it meant carrying around a bunch of different weapons to swap through (mid-combat) and frequently wind up doing 1 damage a lot because hahafuckyouthatswhy.

[EternityEnd]

Vagrant Story thoughts:

Spoiler: show

Vagrant Story is definitely a flawed conception. Narratively and cinematically it's absolutely top tier. I could hardly believe it was a PS1 game with its presentation. Its cutscenes -- rendered completely in the in-game engine -- are seriously movie quality. The art style allows its graphics to be fairly ageless, and the direction, lighting, and facial expressions are seriously impressive.

Mechanically, it's a mixed bag. It doesn't provide any tutorials, and what little it does tell you is often incorrect or contradictory.

I only felt like I completely understood the combat toward the end of the game, to be honest, which is definitely a rather glaring flaw. Once I did understand exactly how it worked, and how to exploit it, it became really easy, but early on I definitely felt overwhelmed, even reading FAQs about it.

Unfortunately, no amount of learning or trial-and-error will help with the really convoluted menu system. Even binding the Quick Menu to something easier on my Vita, the amount of digging around you have to do to change or reassemble weapons/gems is tedious as hell.

Ultimately I think it's a game that would benefit astonishingly from a remaster. It doesn't need much more than some polish aesthetically, IMO, but there's so many facets of gameplay and navigation that could be fixed with the simplest of changes. Like:

There needs to be a hotkey for weapon swapping. Menus need to be far more responsive and streamlined to cut the tedium from inventory management. A simple directional compass would significantly improve the minimap and prevent constant map-checking. Having each room's name pop up or be labeled somewhere on the UI would also ease exploration. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if they turned it into a straight Crisis Core type combat system for mass appeal.

If you want a tip for the combat: completely disregard enemy type. The enemy type modifier for damage is negligible compared to weapon type / elemental affinity. All you need to do to prepare for various fights is: analyze the enemy, pick the limb with the biggest weapon weakness, buff/gem your corresponding weapon with the element it's least resistant to (even if its resistances are high), win.

That way, all you need are 3 weapons -- one for each type -- and a crossbow to destroy certain puzzle boxes (speaking of the puzzles... another flaw).

If you loathe the combat that much after giving it some effort, I'd recommend either just 1) downloading a NG+ file, and breezing through the game that way with all the various spells/gems that make life easier, or 2) watching the story on youtube. It's really worth it IMO.

[Shenrien]

Seitengrate has been RNG manipulated to give you a huge advantage in obtaining it




https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/1912...c-age/75571750

[Julian]

Well... it works >.> I couldn't get the 32 step thing to work so I just rezoned until I got the chest, counted to 4, got it D:

I don't think I'll be using it (maybe when im bored/mass farming something) but nice to have it.