The Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Celebration kicked off and with it came a bunch of Final Fantasy news, as one would imagine (today is Final Fantasy VII‘s 20th anniversary too, check out our article celebrating it). The HD remaster of Final Fantasy XII was announced back in June of last year, and now they have announced that Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age will release July 11th in the West for PlayStation 4.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age adds a little more than just a facelift to the game, however, as it will include a new jobs system that previously was only available to Japan. The Zodiac Age includes what is known as the International Zodiac Job System, released only in Japan in 2007. It expands the License Board system—Final Fantasy XII's progression system—pretty substantially. In the original game, there was only one License Board, but in The Zodiac Age there will be twelve. The Zodiac Age also includes a New Game+ and New Game- (characters obtain no experience) features, as well as a Trial Mode where players battle through 100 different maps for items and money.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age sees players return to the world of Ivalice. It follows the main character Vaan, a street urchin, who gets himself tangled up with royalty and finds himself in a key role in the ongoing war. For those unfamiliar with the game, Final Fantasy XII was the first game to not include random encounters and features something known as the "gambit" system, where you basically program your characters to do certain things in response to various conditions throughout a battle. For example, you can set it to heal a party member if they are below a certain health percentage. Of course, you can still manually do everything as well.
What do you think of Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age? Are you interested in purchasing the game? Where does it stand for you among the Final Fantasy series?
