First of all, I’m not a huge fan of the US box art:

It just doesn’t compare to the classy, white background of the Japanese and EU/AU versions.

The combat started off simple enough, but then the difficulty began to ramp up, and I started to see the Game Over screen more frequently. That mission where you have to save Fran really gave me a hard time. I started to truly get the hang of the combat in the last five hours or so, once I realised that you should always have your party members do something (i.e. use your buffs and debuffs!), and not just rely on the very basic gambits.

I always make my moves in groups, because good luck trying to pick out individual units with the stylus. It’s hard enough trying to find that dead party member you’re trying to revive when there are 15-20 other units in the vicinity.

Feolthanos was a nice challenge for a final boss, I had to tackle the last mission quite a few times, trying to find the most optimal party members. Ashe and Basch were quite useful with their buff spells, but in the end I went with the original RW fab five:

I only found out later that you could actually die in the ‘final’ final encounter of Vaan vs. Feolthanos. I would have been PISSED if I had to replay that first sequence another time! One big ‘gotcha’ is that the final missions’ enemies level up as you do, so it would not be wise to level to 99 before you beat the game. Beat the game first, then grind and do optional stuff, is what I’m trying to say.

My MVP for the game is Penelo, you really need her (or Llyud) around when shit hits the fan and your party members start dropping like flies.

Vaan still isn’t a great leading man in my opinion, but the cast are likable enough to make this a pleasant story to get through, so to speak…ignoring the taking of souls, manipulation and genocide (not cool Mydia!).

I ended up completing 93% of the game. A lot of the missions are actually missable, as you needed to talk to certain characters on your airship at set points of the game in order to have them show up. There are two Espers which I didn’t unlock (Bahamut and Zodiark), as heavy grinding is required in order to even challenge them, sadly. That goes for Yiazmat too, and I’d take a wild guess that he would have a lot of HP here, like in FFXII.

The level 3 Espers all look very cool, but I still think the Ivalice summons have the most awesome names! Chaos, Mateus, Ultima, Shemhazai, Exodus, etc.

Most of the music is recycled from the original game, and I think that’s fine. I particularly enjoyed listening to Eruyt Village in the Ring of Pacts screen, and Phon Coast during the battle preparation.

One major oversight is that Battle on the Big Bridge (also the name of the mission) was NOT the background music during the Gilgamesh fight, such a wasted opportunity!

When I heard the Final Fantasy Prelude during the ending sequence, I had a feeling that I haven’t had in a long time: that was a great FF game, I really enjoyed it! It was great to revisit Ivalice once more, and I should really try to find time to play the FFXII remaster already.