Final Fantasy XII Review

The gambit system was ahead of its audience and it is still the most interesting combat idea the series has had. You assign conditional rules to each character, so the game becomes about authoring a party that fights well without you, then intervening when your logic fails. Purists called it automation. In practice it is programming, and a well built gambit set is as satisfying as any manual input. The world matches the ambition, a seamless Ivalice with no random encounters and no battle screen, and Matsuno's story is a war between Archadia and Rozarria in which Dalmasca is simply terrain.

Balthier and Ashe are excellent, and the political scenes have a restraint the series rarely attempts. The problems are real. Vaan and Penelo are viewpoint characters with no stake in anything, Matsuno left mid production and the final act shows it, and the original license board homogenised everyone until the Zodiac releases fixed it. Ambitious, cold and genuinely different.