XII really clicked with me back in the day. I suppose I was just the right age or in the right place for it but it really left an impression on me.

In a word: Ivalice.

Ivalice was such a well realized universe and it was a lot of fun to get swept away in it. The gameplay was also really fresh at the time, seeing enemies on the map/no random encounters felt great and the gambit system felt interesting and compelling as well.

But I think what really stood out to me about it was its story. So many FF games fall into 'teenagers save the world' and while that's pretty great stuff when you're a teenager, you get a bit older and it starts to wane. XII's story felt a bit more mature in that its events were just concerning the affairs of a few nations in a certain part of the world that is implied to be much much larger than what we see. The drama felt more institutional, more political. More complex, basically.

Of course the whole game also feels a lot like Star Wars too which is great.

I also really appreciated a lot of the little tweaks to FF tropes. Magicite as being everyday objects used to power lights or cool fridges. Airship's being named after classic espers. And not for nothing but Ivalice was also such a broad and multicultural world as well. Sci-fi/Fantasy is at its best, in my opinion, when it showcases diversity as a matter-of-fact and unremarkable attribute of daily life. You get that Star Wars Cantina vibe just as surely as you get a Star Trek vibe and that's just a good place to build from.