GAMEPLAY MECHANICS

Gambits

Since you’re controlling one character in a party of three, the AI needs to handle what your allies are doing in combat. Gambits are essentially a statement that tells the AI, “If X happens, then do Y,” and are sorted by priority. Gambits that are higher in the list will be performed above those lower in the lineup. When you have just Vaan and Penelo at the start, you cannot customize Gambits yet, but you can turn the AI-controlled character’s Gambit setting to ON so they’ll at least attack automatically when you do. Gambit customization comes into play once Balthier and Fran join the party. Once you’re back in Rabanastre, you can go to the Gambit Shop and buy all of the Gambits available.

License Board

If you’re familiar with vanilla FF12, the biggest difference is how classes are built up. The basic premise is the same - you earn License Points (LP) from defeating enemies, then spend them on nodes that unlock the ability to equip specific types of gear, or provide other benefits depending on the class. The ”Zodiac Job System” comes from how the License Board is divided into twelve separate jobs, and once a character is set to a job, it cannot be changed whatsoever. Twelve star signs implemented into the twelfth Final Fantasy game – get it? Each zodiac represents a different standard class seen throughout the Final Fantasy series, broken down as such:

• Aries - White Mage - Focused on Rods and White Magick
• Taurus – Uhlan (a.k.a. Dragoon) - Focused on Spears
• Gemini – Machinist (similar to Gunner) - Focused on Guns and Measures (weapons that can apply beneficial statuses to allies)
• Cancer - Red Battlemage - Focused on Maces and various Magick types, with exclusive access to Arcane Magick
• Leo - Knight - Focused on Swords and Greatswords
• Virgo - Monk - Focused on Poles and capable of barehanded combat
• Libra - Time Battlemage - Focused on Crossbows and Time Magicks
• Scorpio - Foebreaker (similar to Berserker) - Focused on Axes, Hammers and Hand-bombs
• Sagittarius - Archer - Focused on Bows and Technicks
• Capricorn - Black Mage - Focused on Staves and Black Magick
• Aquarius - Bushi (a.k.a. Samurai) - Focused on Katana
• Pisces – Shikari (a.k.a. Ninja) - Focused on Daggers and Ninja Swords

There are no achievements tied to completing the License Boards for any of these classes since it actually is impossible to do so for reasons I’ll explain, so go ahead and pick which ones you want. Try to balance between a couple of fighters, an archer, a healer, and a spellcaster, at the very least. You have six characters to choose for, so decide what their roles are going to be ahead of time.

Quickenings

You’ll notice on each character’s License Boards a peculiar name that can be unlocked for typically larger amounts of LP. These are Quickenings – essentially the equivalent of Limit Breaks in Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, the Trance meter in Final Fantasy IX, and the Overdrive system in Final Fantasy X. There are two headaches associated with these; performing them, and unlocking them.

For unlocking Quickenings, every License Board has four nodes that a character can learn them from. However, everyone only needs three nodes unlocked to fully power their Quickenings up. So what happens to the last node? It vanishes from their License Board, which means any nodes found after the lost Quickening’s node will no longer be accessible. Furthermore, if two or more characters share the same License Board, only one character can unlock the Quickening nodes found on that board, meaning it’s impossible for at least one of them to have all three of their Quickenings unlocked. To avoid this issue, simply follow this golden rule:

Give everyone a different job.

That’s it. As long as you have a different job for each character, then everyone can acquire all three of their Quickening nodes no problem. You will want to analyze each License Board and decide on which Quickening nodes to activate so you can access the nodes behind them, which tend to give some good boosts for that job.

For performing Quickenings, it’s not as intuitive. First, you need to build up their Mist Charge, which is a bar found below their name. They are replenished by touching a save crystal or using MP-restoring items like Ethers, Hi-Ethers and Elixirs. More Mist Charges up to a maximum of three are obtained as you either unlock Quickenings or acquire Espers (the game’s summons). Then I used this video to learn how to use Quickenings in battle. You’re basically chaining together attacks, which deplete the Mist Charge, which then needs to be replenished during the chain so more attacks can be performed, all within a very short timeframe. You will want to get accustomed to this system for accomplishing some of the challenge achievements where doing regular damage will not be enough.

Espers

These are the summons you will acquire throughout the game. Unlike in previous installments where summons were relegated to a summoner-class character, this time the Espers can be assigned to which characters/jobs you want. An Esper can only be given to one character, and that decision is permanent, so you need to think about who to give it to. A character can also only have three Espers maximum. Specific Espers unlock further nodes in the License Board for specific jobs, so I suggest you look those up and make your decisions based on the jobs you’ve chosen. This is the reason why it’s impossible to complete an entire License Board for a job without making your party horribly unbalanced.

Changing Party Leader

Once Penelo joins for the first time in the nomad camp at Giza Plains, you have the option to choose who you want to use as your party leader. While out in a combat zone, press the directional button up or down and choose your character. This can be beneficial, especially with Gambit setups that allow thieves like Vaan and Balthier to steal from enemies automatically if they’re AI-controlled allies, rather than having to select the option over and over again manually. If your controlled character dies in combat, the game will let you choose a different character to control. Whenever you’re in town, you will always have control of Vaan. You will have a maximum party of six, and if every character is killed, it’s a game over.

Targeting Allies and Enemies

You’re able to switch between targeting your allies or the enemies by first selecting your action, then pressing either L1 or R1 to swap between the two options. For instance, if you want to attack yourself for the Dustia Trick I will explain shortly, choose Attack, then hit L1 or R1, then choose your character as the target. If there’s an undead enemy you want to use a healing item on to damage/kill it, the premise is the same except you would choose your item first.

Fleeing Battles

To run around while ignoring monsters that go after your party, or to escape from an active battle, hold down the R2 button. It’s kind of annoying that you have to hold it down rather than toggle it, but it is what it is. Your characters will not draw their weapons every time they get close to a monster, allowing you to preserve their slightly faster running speed and facilitates escaping from a dangerous enemy.

Fast Forward

IZJS incorporates a handy fast forward function to help with the game’s annoyingly lengthy traversal times. To activate it, press the L1 button to speed up the game, and press it again to turn it off. I believe it is 3x faster, which could be a little difficult to use in the long term. It’s not practical for battles unless you’re super overleveled and can one-shot weaker mobs. I stick to using it in Rabanastre to reach the shops faster, and in long dungeon areas that have lengthy hallways.

Bazaar

This is a special type of shop available in all stores. You sell a combination of specific items dropped or stolen from monsters, which I call the Monster Drops, in order to unlock what I call the Bazaar Item, which can be a weapon, armor, accessory, healing item, and so on. The class monographs are unlocked with a different method, which is covered next. The Monster Drops can be sold at any shop, and do not need to be sold at the same time. It is good to bear in mind though that common ingredients might get used by a different recipe, not the particular one the player is after.

Since there are so many items available, I am absolutely NOT going to explain what all of the Bazaar items are here. I will let the Bazaar Guide from Jegged.com take care of that for me. Be mindful to not get confused between the items needed for vanilla FF12 versus the Zodiac versions. A lot of rare and one-of-a-kind items are acquired this way, which means you want to hang on to any and all Monster Drops and steals until you’re ready to sell the specified quantities, striking off each Bazaar Item one at a time.

Let’s take the Nihopalaoa as an example. To unlock it in the Bazaar, you need to sell 3 Blood-Stained Necklaces, 2 Death’s Heads, and 3 Leo Gems. The Blood-Stained Necklace is from Shambling Corpse, the Death’s Head is dropped from Dark Skeleton or stolen from Grave Lord, and the Leo Gem is acquired from numerous enemies. These can be sold at any time and at any shop, but there is a caveat to watch out for - apparently there is a glitch involved with the Bazaar, which I’ll quote from the Final Fantasy Wiki:

“When items are sold at the Bazaar, the game remembers how many items have been sold at any point of the game. While the ingredients can be sold at any time, when any item is purchased at the Bazaar using a certain ingredient, the number of ingredients in stock drops to zero. Therefore, if there are two items that both use, for example, two Bone Fragments to make, and the player has sold six Bone Fragments to the Bazaar when one of the items is purchased, the number of Bone Fragments in the Bazaar's "memory" drops to zero, meaning the player will need to farm more Bone Fragments for the second item requiring that ingredient.

“This glitch, however, also works the other way around to the player's advantage, because if both items become available before either is purchased, the player only needs the two Bone Fragments that can be used for both items, so instead of needing four (two for each item), one would only need two (two is used for both items simultaneously). With this trick, the player can potentially use the same High Arcana to create items for the Tournesol, and make Tournesol and Kumbha at the same time using the same Gemsteels.”

To save yourself some headaches, consider farming just the number of Monster Drops you need, then sell for each Bazaar Item one set of Monster Drops at a time, slowly marking off your checklist. This is smarter than selling everything at once due to multiple Bazaar Items requiring the same ingredients, which will set the Monster Drops’ “memory” to zero when the Bazaar Item is purchased.

While I won’t cover the list of Bazaar Items themselves, what I can do is write a “smaller” checklist (lol) detailing how many of the Monster Drops you will ultimately need. From there, you can look up the recipes for the Bazaar Items and where to get the Monster Drops yourself. High Arcana, Empyreal Soul and Gemsteel are themselves Bazaar Items that need to be repeatedly made – I account for the grand total of the lesser Monster Drops you’ll need for these.

Class Monographs

These are items that can be purchased from the Bazaar, which affect the item drop rates for enemies. There are seven in total. To unlock six of them, do the following:

• read the wanted poster in the Sandsea Bar 40 times (two monographs are unlocked this way)
• speak to the magic shopkeeper 25 times
• speak to the armor shopkeeper 15 times
• speak to the weapon shopkeeper 30 times
• speak to any shopkeeper 100 times total. This includes the ones you’ve already done, so it’s just 30 more times after those

The last one involves doing the Thextera hunt for Gatsly, the man sitting on the floor in the Sandsea Bar. Complete the hunt, go back to him to complete the quest, then find him again in Rabanastre’s Bazaar area and speak to him for the monograph to appear in any shop’s Bazaar section. You can get this done very easily at the beginning of the game as long as you get some levels.

The monographs will be too expensive for you to afford right from the get-go, but you can at least set them up as future purchases. Don’t do too much item grinding until you buy all of these to make your life easier. Acquiring all seven class monographs gets you the Epic of the Forgotten Grimoires achievement.

Chain Level & Monster Classification

You’ll notice that if you keep killing the same monster type over and over again, you’ll build up a chain. If you kill a different monster, it’ll break. Monsters are divided according to their Genus, meaning you have groups like Beast, Insect, Elemental and Slaven. They are then further divided according to Classification. Let’s take the Beast genus for example. There is a large pool of monsters in the Beast genus overall, but there are specific monsters in the Wolf classification, specific monsters in the Rat classification, specific monsters in the Sleipnir classification, and so on. Imagine drawing a diagram with the word BEAST in the center, then branch out into smaller circles that group monsters according to WOLF, RAT, SLEIPNIR, and so on. They’re all Beasts, but their classifications are different.

Knowing these is important for understanding how to maintain a chain level. It’s not necessarily the monster itself that’s maintaining the chain – it’s their two genera. You could kill a Wolf, then a Hyena next, and the chain will still be preserved because they’re both Beast-Wolf monsters. If you kill a Wolf, then a Cactoid next, the chain will be broken because you killed a Beast followed by a Plant. Likewise, if you kill a Wolf, then a Sleipnir next, the chain will be broken because you killed a Beast-Wolf monster, then a Beast-Sleipnir monster. The chain will also reset when you enter a town. You’re going to notice this very easily should you decide to invest time in the Dustia Trick, as you’re going to be killing a monster in the Reaper genus many times over.

The chain level will affect item drops from monsters, and improve your chances for stealing which is good for rare mobs. This is so complex and convoluted for me to just understand, let alone explain, so I’ll let a Reddit user do the explaining for me. I don’t worry about this mechanic too much other than when it’s time to farm for rare drops, but if you’re wondering what the chain is supposed to represent, here you go. You’ll want to get a chain of 50 for The Unrelenting achievement, and another 200 for Bushi Basher.

Trial Mode

A new feature introduced in IZJS is Trial Mode, a 100-floor gauntlet you need to survive from beginning to end. When starting a Trial Mode run, you first import data from a Story Mode file to inherit your characters’ levels, abilities and gear. You have the option to make saves on every tenth floor (Floor 10, Floor 20, Floor 30, etc). Make this save separate from your Story Mode file! If you don’t heed this advice, you will lose ALL of your story progress.

There’s also a second extremely important point to make; don’t be misled by information for Zodiac Age’s Trial Mode! In ZA, autosave is a feature incorporated in that version which allows you to cheese it and escape Trial Mode back to Story Mode to import some overpowered gear. You cannot do that in IZJS due to autosave not existing here. So what’s the point of doing Trial Mode in IZJS? Not much. You will need to do poaching and stealing for specific items, but you also need the best gear possible to survive (Seitengrat cannot be equipped for some challenges, but anything else is acceptable). You absolutely want to save this for when you’ve got the best Bazaar gear, acquire the top-tier abilities, and are preferably level 99 since you don’t gain EXP in Trial Mode.

In other words, ignore this feature for now if you’re a new player. You will not be touching this for a very, very long time.