Holy crap! Did you all see that the long-rumored HD remake of Final Fantasy XII Zodiac Job Version is finally happening?! You all have no idea how excited that makes me! Depending on what day of the week you ask, Final Fantasy XII is my favorite Final Fantasy (alternating with FF5, and hey, the Four Job Fiesta starts soon, so sign up for that!) It’s gonna be so great to revisit FFXII again with all the new additions from the Japanese re-release and spruced up visuals and Fran and Balthier, oh my GOD! Two of the best characters in the whole series!
And, in typical Square-Enix fashion, with the announcement of a new game comes a couple of new figures! They’re making an all-new Balthier and a Judge Gabranth to join Fran, released quite recently in their Play Arts Kai line.
Play Arts Kai, for the unaware, is a “revision” of Square-Enix’s old line of Play Arts figures, which they distributed around the mid-aughts both in Japan and abroad. Said figures mostly had a reputation for being kind of mediocre: hard to pose and stand, with emphasis on looks over function. Kai figures were supposed to fix these problems: they were bigger, more poseable, and featured some incredible detail in the sculpts. Yet the early Play Arts Kai figures also faced harsh criticism: they looked great in their shiny, elaborately designed packaging, but the visual appeal faltered once you got them out and tried to pose them like you saw in the promo pictures.
I’ve mostly avoided Play Arts Kai since the early figures, and since then, plenty of companies have jumped into the market to release well-sculpted, articulated figures geared towards fans and collectors. “Surely, the advancements made by other companies in this market has influenced Square-Enix to improve their own product line!” I thought. And hey, those pictures looked pretty good!
Square certainly seems confident in the quality of its pieces, too – in fact, the official MSRP for Fran in the United States is $120. One hundred and twenty U.S. dollars! That is no chump change, no siree. Of course, I ordered her from Japan at a discount, because I at least attempt to be somewhat frugal with my stupid nerd stuff. I can’t say there wasn’t some hesitation with my preorder… but it’s Fran, and Fran is so rarely recognized, even by her own creators! I waited eagerly for her to grace my doorstep.
Then she arrived. And now I am here to warn you, dear readers: Don’t believe Square-Enix’s lies.