First video of Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age running on Switch is released

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Listen up: in late March 2019, PAX East in Boston had Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age playable on the Nintendo Switch, and the folks at Nintendo World Report recorded the demo and released the video. It was the first time we could see up close how Square Enix’s RPG ran on Nintendo’s hybrid, a month before launch.

The date was already set: April 30, 2019, on Switch and Xbox One at the same time. Until then, The Zodiac Age only existed on PlayStation 4, where it came out in July 2017, and on PC, since February 2018. The high-definition remaster, developed largely by Virtuos, is based on the International Zodiac Job System version, which had previously stayed in Japan only.

For those who just arrived: Final Fantasy XII originally came out in 2006 on PlayStation 2 and is set in Ivalice, a world of airships and magic divided by the war between the empires of Archadia and Rozarria. The story follows Vaan, a boy who dreams of becoming a sky pirate, and Princess Ashelia, who leads the resistance after her kingdom is annexed. The game arrived with combat without separate battle screens and with the gambit system, which lets you program your allies’ behavior by conditions, like a script of automatic actions.

What came next

The game came out as promised on April 30, 2019 on both new platforms. The Zodiac Age version already came with the remaster’s extras: support for higher resolutions, 60 frames per second on PC, an option to switch between three versions of the soundtrack and immediate access to post-game modes. The remaster had won Game Informer’s best remaster award in 2017, and the original passed six million copies on PS2 by 2009. For those who enjoy classic JRPGs, it remains one of the easiest entry points to the series on Switch.