So this hit steam last Thursday, and I for one am quite pleased as FFXII is probably #4 in my top 5 FF’s of all time. probably sunk about 150 hours into it back when I was like 20. Definitely one of the more underrated entries in the series at the time, though it seems contemporary opinions of the game are favourable. I suppose that would be the case considering how divisive 13 was as a whole and 14 having a pretty shitty time before a realm reborn.
Effectively a remaster using the international zodiac job version as its base (much like FFX’s remaster) the job system goes a long way in fixing the, wholly justified, complaint with the original version that every character ended up the same, which is true. (although this is also possible in FFX as well but doing a full sphere grid clear with everyone, much less getting every stat to 255 for Dark Aeons/Penance is an absolutely massive grind that takes upwards of 200 hours to do) By the time you’re about 85% of the way through the original it’s very likely you have every license board unlocked for every character.
The gambit system is probably my favorite combat system, at least in regards to how combat is entirely active and in the open world. At it’s core you’re effectively giving your allies an AI with a set of parameters to act when certain conditions are met, such as: “attack nearest enemy”, “if ally=KO -> use phoenix down/raise” so on and so forth. I remember detractors of this system saying “you make the game play itself for you.” which again, is true, you can set your gambits to effectively play the game for you while you move around. At the same time however if you actually go out of your way to micromanage the combat, personally I found it breaks the flow of the game with too many pauses (I will point out however you can set the game to be entirely active while you’re navigating menus, which has its own share of difficulties) and for the most part I prefer having a mix of both; having a fully automated gambit setup for grinding out fights, and a mostly manual setup for boss fights that require a bit more attention and focus.
As far as downsides go, the pacing of the story is kinda all over the place, granted I haven’t played in years, and am going off of memory but there were periods where there was a fair bit of story followed by parts that were simply long treks through areas with next to no story or interaction. The story for 12 is quite good, and the voice acting is amazing, it just has serious pacing issues.
As far as I am concerned well worth the sale price at the moment of 40$, once it goes off sale it’s 50$ which stretches how much I can justify getting it.