For whatever reason, I’ve never really been able to gel with the Final Fantasy series. Maybe it’s my aversion to turn-based combat that a lot of the series is defined by, or maybe it’s because I just have bad opinions. Final Fantasy XV wasn’t turn-based, and while the combat did seem fun, a brief 8 hour stint with the game was all I could manage before the un-ending maw of content and new games forced me to move on. Lame excuse, sure, but I’m sticking with it.
The only Final Fantasy game in the series that I’ve ever managed to finish was Final Fantasy X-2, which should give you some kind of idea about how much of a wrong’un I really am. Yes, I finished it as a kid, and no, I had no idea what was going on or who the blonde ghost boy was. His name’s Cloud, right?
As a fresh-faced teenager, a good chunk of my PS2 days were spent playing Final Fantasy XII, which threw away the turn-based battle system for something more akin to a single-player MMO. Instead of randomly encountering enemies and selecting attacks every turn, you’ll instead see monsters out in the wild and you fight them in real-ish time. You have to wait for your attacks to charge up before you can use them, but it’s still an incredibly engaging combat system that scratched my itch more than just sitting and waiting to attack each other.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Final Fantasy game without a party of characters backing you up, but FF12 changes the formula up with the Gambit system, which allows you to program your party members to attack specific targets, use certain abilities to exploit a monster’s weakness or heal your teammates, all without having to navigate the menus. Micromanaging your team is more fun when it’s done for you, obviously.
Despite enjoying the game as a teenager, one fateful incident involving a late-game dungeon and a party that just weren’t equipped to deal with higher level foes ultimately led to me quitting the game entirely. Knowing me, I probably traded the game in to buy Fahrenheit or The Bouncer or some other game that equally signifies my wrong’un behaviour. Trust me, no one is more disappointed in me and my early gaming tastes than me.
Recently though, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age was brought to Game Pass. The Zodiac Age is a HD re-release of the original game with a host of performance improvements, changes to the license system which allowed characters to unlock game changing abilities and stat boosts and overall balance changes to the game’s Esper summons, among other things. Unquestionably, The Zodiac Age is the definitive Final Fantasy XII experience.
However, one feature stands out above the rest as the best improvement to the overall experience, and that’s the speed mode. At any time during the gameplay, you can hit LB to toggle the game’s speed, allowing the game to play at 2x or 4x speed, depending on your preference. While the 4x speed option ends up feeling too unwieldy to actually control your character, especially when exploring, the 2x speed option has become my default setting.
It’s weird, as it’s a solution that shouldn’t really work. Playing a game on twice the normal speed settings feels like an admission that the game is a bit too slow, but Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age would still be a fantastic JRPG even without the speed mode. The speed mode just lets me get more done, quicker. Quite frankly, it feels refreshing to play an RPG these days that respects your time enough to offer a mode that lets you complete two hours of grinding in the space of an hour. Heck, you can do four hours worth in an hour if you can stomach the 4x speed mode. God knows I can’t.
With more time to play Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age because I’m running around the map like it’s an excerpt from a Benny Hill sketch, I’m more open to grinding my characters too, keeping my party at a consistent level so I don’t get one shot by the powerful enemies in the later areas. If I’m only using half the time playing, I can spend twice as much on it, which is extremely twisted logic, I know, but still.
Triggering level-ups in half the time and earning twice as many license points to upgrade my characters ensures the game is constantly rewarding. With the speed mode, the grind always feels like it’s accomplishing something, or that I’m working towards a goal on my license board that feels more attainable, drawing me back in for more. I’ve spent close to 20 hours exploring Ivalice so far, and I’m incredibly excited to spend another couple of dozen battering monsters, filling out my license board and taking down bounty hunts.
I’d argue that perhaps I’ve become more patient in my older age compared to my teenage years, meaning I’m more agreeable to the idea of a full party grind, but I am also out here advocating for Final Fantasy XII’s “hehe, Vaan go zoom” mode. I’m also quite often one bad jump away from wanting to throw my controller every time I play a platformer, so patience probably isn’t the reason. Then again, maybe it’s just spite over the fact I never finished FF12 as a kid. I’ll get it this time, though.
For someone who famously bounces off Final Fantasy games like I’m Flubber, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age has managed to grip me like no other game has in the series. I’m determined to be able to finally say that X-2 isn’t my favourite FF game anymore once I finish Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, and the speed mode is just going to help me do that quicker.
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