Holy CRAP! FFT and FF12 share the same world?!

Oh, MY GOD. I loved FFT and FF12 was very epic in scope, though Vaan was a poor protagonist.

HOLY CRAP!

Does that mean Ramza Ivalice was the First Age or was it Third age? Where does FF12 age fall under?

I am just starting it but HOLY CRAP!!! WHen I saw Alma I was like.. "Hah Hah, I see what you did there..." Then I saw Ramza, I hear Dalmasca, Saw Delita name thrown out.... I am freaking out and fan girling hard right now.

Yeah, Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story all share the same world and take place at different points in time.

FFXII takes place first, then there's some sort of calamity sometime after the game's events conclude. Tactics comes next and then later on Vagrant Story. It's an interesting timeline as it means things become considerably less advanced as the timeline progresses.

All three games have remained in my 'Top Ten' RPG's ever since I first got my hands on them. I'm hoping FFXIV takes more inspiration from how they handled their respective stories moving forward.

Yeah, the Ivalice Alliance games are all connected! The "War of the Roses" version of FF Tactics even has a time displaced Balthier as a playable character! The FF12 Era titles are usually thought to have taken place in the first age, where there was still a lot of magic, technology, and other races. The FF Tactics games are thought to take place far later in time, they unearth relics of the more technologically and magically advanced ages before them. However, notably, the world of FF Tactics seems to have lost most of the other races, and their society has regressed to more properly medieval standards. The reasons for this are unclear, although many fans theorize a horrific calamity or something like that.

FF12 is my all-time favorite out of every game in the series, and part of what hooked me on to FF14. (Some of the combat mechanics and UI elements are very similar to FF12's.). Vaan was alright, but indeed a poor protagonist. I was SUPER bummed when I found out that FF14's idea to add Veira as playable race was scrapped for Au Ra. The male Veira concept art looked awesome ;-;. I love playing a Roe, but if I had the opportunity to be Veira, I'd fantasia in a heartbeat.

Did the Bunny girls evolved into Mitqotes?

Miqo'tes are cute and all, but they can never compare to Veira. Though, I might just feel that way because Fran is my favorite character, lol.

Amusingly Vaan is much more interesting when he shows up in any Ivalice Alliance Game that's not FFXII. In Revenant Wings and FF Tactics A2 he's a lot more of a fun character, and in the former much more of a protagonist. Part of the problem is that the story went through extensive rewrites, with Basch, Balthier, and Ashe all having been the protagonist at various points. Initially Vaan was going to be revealed as the prince you played in the intro (hence their similar appearances) but this got cut leaving him just kind of ...there.

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Originally Posted by CaesarCV

Initially Vaan was going to be revealed as the prince you played in the intro (hence their similar appearances) but this got cut leaving him just kind of ...there.

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Oh man.... that would have been a much more compelling storyline... Also, Vaan's combat in Dissidia felt pretty..."meh". Though, my feelings about Vaan in general are "meh".

It's not "A" theory that a calamity wiped out the races in Ivalice (or at least drove them more heavily into hiding), it's in plain text if you check the background text in Tactics; amusingly, there's another Cataclysm aluded to in XII's bestiary, which makes it seem that Ivalice seems to suffer something similar to Eorzea, parhaps through similar reasons (more abuse of aether and such, less influence from Ascians...unless you count the Occuria and Espers/Lucavi).

The timeline is generally agreed (I forget if the Ultimanias have made it canon) to go: FFXII -> FFXII:RW -> FFT -> Vagrant Story -> FFTA (though afterwards taken to a Dream Ivalice) -> FFTA2 (with actual time travel taking Luso to some point after XII:RW). And before someone points it out: no, the maps aren't quite related (except possibly TA2 and XII) since said cataclysms have moved, raised or destroyed landmasses, efforts to paste one game's map next to another have been debunked by canon.

Well, if nothing else I used to consider Vaan to be the worst protagonist to date in a Final Fantasy title. Lyse has now taken that spot, though.

At any rate, even though I do wish that Basch had been the main character as originally intended I recently replayed FFXII thanks to the HD Remaster and it's hard not to consider Balthier, Basch and Ashe to be the true main characters. They simply have more plot relevance overall.

Drace, Gabranth and Larsa deserve a special mention as well. Nuanced individuals associated with an Empire who don't turn their backs upon their homeland and people? Take note, FFXIV. Stop pushing Cid so much and develop someone inspired by Drace, Gabranth and Larsa. Please.

That's mostly right, although I remember hearing somewhere that Vagrant Story isn't actually canon to Ivalice. When it was created all of the references were put in more for fun than to imply it's the same setting, which perhaps makes sense given how magic and the like work completely differently in that game. It's kind of a complicated mess since certain games (like Tactics) are more retroactively Ivalice than anything. It's...not always easy.

I really love Ff12 story but I find the battle system to be really lacking and boring (at least until now, but my character are lv 40 so I don't expect much change at this point)
And fft is the one game that made me discover the FF franchise.
#bringtimemagetoff14

FFXII's battle system is what you make of it, really. You can effectively play the game in a turn based manner, or you can let it play automatically after setting up gambits to suit one's personal tastes. I myself typically pick one character (usually Basch) to control manually whilst setting up Ashe and Balthier to perform automatically.

You can also access certain high level enemies during the early/mid-game for quite an interesting challenge.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

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I loved FFXII's battle system, and did it the same way :P. (Only difference being I manually controlled Fran, and set up gambits for Ashe and Balthier). I will say that mist quickenings -while they have epic animations and effects- did a disappointing amount of damage. Even with longest quickening chains I've been able to achieve, it still barely left a scratch on whatever boss I was fighting.

Setting up the Gambits was honestly one of the more entertaining parts of the FFXII battle system, at least for me. Maybe it just engaged my programming brain, but being able to define behaviors to such a degree was a blast.

Hey now, what's wrong with Vaan? :) (I mean sure he could be a bit annoying with his cockiness, but I didn't think him and Penelo were 'useless' in a plot/characterisation sense).
Honestly I kind of wished FFXIV's Rabanastre/Garamsythe maps more closely resembled the 'real deals', but I guess they wouldnt have had room for the boss encounters...

Just to nip some common misconception in the bud, though (and keep this discussion relevant to XIV lore): the Lesalia and Dalmasca of Hydaelyn are not the same as those that appear in Ivalice Alliance. This is a different planet in a different universe with an alternate take on the story of the War of the Lions (so says Matsuno himself).

The gambit system is actually one of my favorite combat systems in an RPG. I didn't find it boring at all. Certainly not anymore that manually hitting all the same commands when faced with trash mobs. In boss fights I frequently ended up changing my gambits as the fight went on to adjust as well as manually controlling characters. The addition of the job system fixed most of my gripes with the combat. It is an impossible dream but I still wish we could have a version of gambits for fairies/egis in XIV.

. . . and now I want to go replay XII. I'm suppose to raid tonight.

When 1.0 first came out I kept expecting Garlemald to be similar to Archades because of the similar visual design. That hasn't really turned out to be the case. Vayne was a great villian--one who was so charismatic that you wanted to like him even when all reason said you shouldn't. The closest that FFXIV has come to a villain like that for me is Gaius but he fell short because of scarce development. I think Vayne is part of the reason I was disappointed in Zenos--when he was announced I was hoping they would be similar archetypes but Zenos just turned out be far less compelling or threatening.

4.2 spoilers

Hopefully they will take his resurrection as a chance to fix that.