Finally finished this. Overall, fairly disappointed. For background, my rough ratings are probably FF6 > FF4/5 > FF7/9 >> FF8/FF10 (didn't finish either), didn't play anything else. All of those played when they came out, so nostalgia factor.
Story-wise, I felt like the opening was very strong, the story was something you could follow, hewed to a more down to earth setup tied to human affairs and not fantastical, some characters died early which is always a plus for establishing that characters wouldn't be sacrosanct, etc. However the story started to deteriorate significantly around the halfway point and became the usual "poor decision making theater" combined with weakly backgrounded save-the-world mythology. I started skipping all cutscenes towards the end just to make progress. It felt like maybe 1/3 of the story got cut somewhere along the way to hit their deadlines given how random some of the material introduced came off.
Graphically, ZA is a mixed bag; I don't understand what they were doing with the post filters on the characters giving them that weird blurry double render look. You can really feel how the title is a victim of the technical constraints of the original era, with zones being composed frequently of small blobs or tight corridors. Texture work is repetitive, some areas are very dark. On the plus side load times are wonderful on the Pro, auto-save is generous, and the teleport mechanic was a decent balance, with no worry if you did most of the hunts given their teleport stone rewards. Although in the end I preferred the verisimilitude of using the airship later, and wish they had something better integrated along those lines (chocobos instead of teleports maybe).
Character design... eesh. Everyone pretty much looks ridiculous (especially Fran, ugh), with best character probably going to Balthier for looking semi reasonable and also least emo/goofy (ffs Ashe...). Really enjoyed the concept art of baby Balthier with Cid in the end credits.
Soundtrack is generally wonderful. Giza Plains...
Re: gameplay, they unspooled systems slow enough to not get too overwhelmed, although subtleties of the gambit system like being able to assign Ally: Any + Esuna w/o having to specify individual debuff states weren't apparent to me until much later (ironically when I inspected AI NPC gambit setups...). As a once-through min-maxer with no interest in replay, the license board system with its permanent choices was not compelling to me, and ultimately filling it out felt largely unrewarding given I would unlock most things before I could use them. Entire sub-trees went unused for weapons classifications. I still have no idea what I was supposed to do with measures; the work required to switch them in/out was not worth the benefits they conferred.
The bazaar system was also largely opaque to me even looking at guides. It was never clear whether I should have the materials I was missing or where to get them, and the game presumes far too much on my time if it expects FAQ spelunking + grinding for the chance at items that I have no ability to see/judge (e.g. vs if I had recipes in-game). I had some misplaced fear that I would need weapons/armors to make others via the bazaar so I never sold them (just any loot I had more than 10 of), leaving me to have to carefully judge my funds until the endgame, when all of a sudden I had hundreds of thousands of gil and nothing to spend it on.
Having important spells/etc. in arbitrary chests in the game seems insane to me--Cleanse in some random pot? What? I'm not sure I got any top level weapons at the end of the trees; I briefly looked at getting one of the Shikari blades and it was a 1/500 drop chance on some random pot in Cerobi Stepps, assuming you were wearing the diamond armlet. FF12 loot drop system designer: go fuck yourself.
I did enjoy setting up gambits, although perversely it encourages you to optimize your playstyle so that you barely interacted with the game systems as such. With party leader on auto-attack I would just point my stick in the vague direction I wanted to go and things would die along the way, and LP would accumulate. It's not clear why you would make gambits a purchasable; it limits the dimensionality of gameplay by giving the player less choice (but perhaps avoids overwhelming them, but if they don't know how to use them, they can't judge which to buy either!) and doesn't really make any sense from a narrative standpoint either.
Barely touched Technicks other than telekinesis on Vaan; it was never clear if horology, etc., didn't work by design or I was simply misunderstanding something about them. Similarly Mist abilities rarely seemed worth the time required to execute them given they were non-skippable. I summoned an Esper maybe twice and didn't see the point in that either given my party seemed far more capable.
I probably put 80 hours into the game, with the last 40 on double-speed with an over-levelled party, license boards filled out via juggling amulets and tippets, trying to finish all the hunts before giving up when you hit the difficulty wall on the level VIIs being in areas that are way above the player level for finishing the game (top of Geruvegan, Site 11, etc.). My final party was Vaan at 68, Penelo at 64 and everyone else at 54. Vaan was set to auto cast Float and Libra, Penelo to apply Protect and Shell. Basch had genji gloves + ultima weapon. I essentially auto-attacked through all the end boss setups and destroyed them, only pausing to have Ashe apply silence, blind, and bio/toxify, and then rotate her with Basch as required by barriers. Occasionally would have Vaan apply Bubble to Penelo.
Most hilarious/difficult moment: not realizing I could pick from four different debuffs in Pharos and picking weapons. Doing all that without any weapons was, uh, unorthodox. That was actually the one time that Technicks turned out useful now that I think about it more, Souleather and IIRC Telekinesis can still be used to do damage there...
Anyway, glad I played it, but clear that the experience I want is not what FF12 offered; I'm much more attracted to the immersive sense of place that games such as Elder Scrolls, Witcher, Zelda:BOTW, even Horizon Zero Dawn, offer. That said, perversely the next game on my slate is Octopath Traveller...
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