Ah yes, I had been waiting a long time for this one to come out. If you are a gamer of any sort, then you must have at least heard of the legacy that is the Final Fantasy series. The games are a favorite of mine, but once they hit the PS2, I started loving them just a little bit less. FFXII takes me back to the good old days of RPG time wasting; I’m 12 hours into this one and feel like I’ve just started scratching the surface.
Plot: Well, as can be expected, the plot isn’t revolutionary by any means. All in all, its an overdone concept; A mighty empire dominates a country, a resistance movement trying at all costs to reclaim what’s rightfully theirs, a young hero fighting for revenge for his brothers death. But I don’t think that anyone really buys these games for the story. Some die-hard RPGers say that they do, but if that was the only reason for game purchase, the RPG genre in general would have fallen a long time ago. The only problem I have with the story is that there are large parts of the game where all you do is watch cutscenes and movies. These would have been more interesting if the story had some real backing to it.
Graphics: As is standard for the FF series, the graphics are top-notch. The visuals when the player is in control are excellent for in-game graphics. Most of the cutscenes are done using the same graphics as when you’re actually playing, but this is not bad in any way. The movies that pop up once every few hours look fantastic, and I looked forward to them, even if they were only used for pointless things like airships flying around. One more thing I will say; the fact that every weapon or shield you equip looks different is very pleasing, and all have amazing detailing to them. All in all, there are no disapointments in the graphics department.
Sound: The sound was a bit of a mixed package. Personally, I thought the voice acting was really well done, although I was a bit annoyed that all the characters that would be seen as “bad” had a british accent. Don’t you think that one is a little overused at this point? However, the quality was good, and I liked the creepy and unique voice of the viera (think hot rabit chick) that joins you. The music was mediocre, with many of the songs being remixes from older games of the FF series. I enjoy alot of it, like the battle music, but the music that plays when you are in a town or village just got boring quickly. The sound effects for fighting were pretty good, except the sound for using a cure spell annoyed me.
Gameplay: Before I even start, I’m going to say this; FFXII has a drastically different battle system, and you will either love it or hate it. Gone are the days of random encounters that you cannot avoid. In this one, battles take place on the map, and you can see all the enemies in an area, either by using the camera to look around, or due to the minimap that gives away their location with a red dot. What this effectivly means is that you can choose to not do any fighting in an area, and just run through it. During battle, a blue line shows up above your characters to show which enemy they are targeting, and a similar red line shows which of you the enemy is targeting. Once you choose to attack, you hit the enemy once you are close enough to them and your action bar fills up. Really, all you have to do is start a fight, and then stand next to the enemy until they are dead. Its very repetative, and not at all challenging, but its suprisingly entertaining. You can have up to two allies with you in battle, and they are either controlled manually by you, or by use of a pre-set list of instructions called gambits. The gambit system in suprisingly deep, with a huge amount of options to choose from. For instance, you can set one of your allies to use a cure spell on anyone whos health falls bellow 50%. During battle, they will attack normally until someones health falls below half, and then begin using a cure spell targeting that ally. You can choose alot of different things to do with the system, be it targeting all flying enemies with a spell effective against flyers, or casting a protect spell on any teammate that gets hit with a physical attack. You can change the gambits at any time, and put them in the order of importance that you see fit. The only lame thing is that you can even use gambits on the main character, so the computer can approach combat all by itself, whichout any player input. The whole system is allot more fun than I originally assumed, which is a good thing, seeing as how it makes up almost all the gameplay. The main sidequest of the game is hunting rare beasts for reputation and reward, but it all comes down to more of the same fighting. To advance your characters, you spend License Points (gained from killing enemies) on unlocking new squares on a License Grid. Each of these squares let the character either use new spells, equip better armor, or utilize different weaponry. After each square is bought, all squares touching that one become avaliable for purchase, and so on. The advancement system is a bit of a letdown, in the fact that every character has an identical grid, and so all characters just become clones of one another.
Overall: I enjoyed the new battle system, but in future games I would like for the old system to return. It makes this game not feel like a FF, just a new and interesting RPG. The sound and graphics are good, plot is mediocre, and the gameplay a breath of fresh air. It’s one of those game you should rent first, and if you like the basic structure of the game, buy it.
8 / 10
That’s interesting. I’ve heard that the story is actually phenomenal and better than most of the more recent FFs. Maybe it’s just too early to tell; 12 hours usually isn’t a lot in these Squenix games.
And I gotta take offense to that first comment–I play RPG’s for the stories. It certainly isn’t for the battle system. Random battles? No thanks, I’d rather get into another deep cutscene where Aeris gets stabbed.
Although I’m very curious to see what the new battle system is like. I’ve played a quick demo, but it really didn’t give me a good taste of it.
Also, wouldn’t having identical character grids allow you to make completely different characters, branching off in all sorts of directions and varying everyone to your own personal taste?
Yay! Two posts on the same day!!
…I guess it’s my turn, huh.
I guess the matter of how interesting the story is one of personal liking…I dont feel as drawn into this one as I have other ones. This is one of those games where you enter an area, there’s five minutes of cut-scenes to explain what you’re doing there, 20 or so minutes of battle, a boss fight that often has nothing to do with the story (eg. The first real boss you fight is a flaming horse creature you find in the sewers; it has no relevance to the story, and noone explains who/what it even is) and then some cut-scenes to end up the area.
As for the grid, you would think it would work that way, but it doesnt, because no character is better suited to anything than anyone else. I remember the days of FFIX, where every member of your party did something different, and it was entertaining trying out different combinations of allies. In this one, they all start out in the same area of the grid, and all their stats are the exact same, only changing by level and armor. What this means is it’s much better to just give them all the same spells, rather than have some with and some without, because it offers no advantages not to.
See, that’s the idea–complete customization. You can make your characters exactly how you want to. One can go to the leftside of the grid, one to the right, and you’ll end up with completely different characters. I expect that if you send them all the same way you’ll be destroyed in the later levels. I look forward to it; I’ll get to construct my characters exactly as I see fit. In FFX, they offered “customization”, but it was really rather limited. You couldn’t really make the characters like you wanted to, and some of them sucked no matter what *cough*the blue furry awesome guy*cough*.
In this FF, however, it sounds like you truly control exactly what they learn. Having no inclinations to any particular branch, I could make my chick this uber brawler and my strong dude some white mage loser. Yay, irony!
Based on what i understand, you(the player) gains enough points to completely fill the grid in the game for the player (you) and his allies. And Random, as your number 1 fan, i’d say that this review is refreshingly non homosexual, unlike most of your posts. What happened to Micro?
Micro is trying to deny his Bloon heritage. I’m going to take some pictures and put them on the web to prove it to the world.
He’ll post then, if only to tell me to take the pictures off of the web.
Why thankyou, Max. I wish I could say the same for you, but, as always, you are most certainly not not homosexual =).
Unfortunatly Blade, whilst it works on paper, in practice, the system fails. For example, all characters start out quite within reach of the cure spell. Now, if you wanted to have diverse characters, you might only grab the spell with the character you want to designate as your healer. However, I guarentee you that when that character dies during an important boss battle, causing you to lose the fight, the first thing you are going to do after cursing loudly and reloading your file is give everyone the ability to use cure, to prevent the same situation occuring in the future. Also, the grid is oddly arranged; If, for example, you want everyone to be equipted in the strongest mail armor (since there is no plus-side to wearing leather except that it is slightly cheaper) they all must go in the general same direction. Since they all pass over, lets say, the grid for broadsword, and since broadsword is by far the best weapon you can get at that current point in the game, you will see no reason not to give them all that weapon. Once they all reach mail armor, you have a party all wearing iron chestpieces, all weilding broadswords, and all utilizing white, black, and green magic. See where it all falls apart?
It sounds like one must concentrate on thinking of the big picture instead of that powerful broadsword at the shop.
Forgive my skepticism, it’s just that you’re the only person that I’ve heard of having difficulties with this. That’s where all my questions are coming from. Not that I’m nit-picky.
A curious problem you’ve stumbled upon, however. I must keep this in mind when/if I get the game.
Lol no worries, the skepticism is welcome.
And its not so much causing difficulties…it doesnt make it a bad game in any sense. I just prefered the old format where every character had a solid, unique skill-set at the begining.