Final Fantasy XII....disappointment.

[Icy]

It's quite late to rant about this game or even play but..I'm a bit late.

I've basically played from the first Final Fantasy to FFIX disc 2. I gave up arounf FFIX because the fighting system was getting repetitive and boring.

Then, when i got my Ps3 earlier last week, I decided to give it a try. Since www.Ign.com nominated FFXII as the game of the year 2006 and it went WOW for many people. Skeptic of it after reading a few reviews, I decided to give it a chance. The result was....as I expected.

Overall, this game is purely a display of Square Enix's ability to produce quality CGI and creativity in some fields.

Characters-

The good part of FFXII is how they designed the airships and the imperial army. Those machines were superbe and noe one would complain about them. The imperial soliders were quite neat and the Judges were unique. I liked how they imported Odin's features onto these judges from previous Final Fantasy series. Other than these two, anything else has failed. Re-designed Chocobos has basically no difference except being more realistic and the Moggles were cute from far away but the details killed them. The once chubby and flying Kupos had been fried up and enslaved...

Let me rant about this now. The "leading" roles in this Final Fantasy is a big joke. I bet that many has dreamt about this game before getting it that we'll be introduced to another well designed male hero like Cloud ( FFVII ) or Squall ( FVIII ) but what happened in FFXII? We were giving a chubby little kid, probably rnaging from 15-18 years old, that looked like a girl and dreamt to be, like any other cheesy story, a hero. However, Square made him a very annoying and annoyed kid, ignorant and will ignore about any important thing and finally, a badly dressed up kid. Light travels faster than sound. That's why you can't be sure that Vaan is a GUY before he speaks. My mom asked " Why does this girl have a guy voice?" when I just started the game. I giggled...I, as a Square Enix fan, wished for a hot and pretty female lead. Sqaure has given us that but in return, unlike other Final Fantasy female lead, she was bitchy, annoying and...annoying. If those that had played this game, you would be quite confused about how exactly is Ashe, the Dalmasca princess and leading female of FFXII. Let me say that Square Enix had failed again. Ashe behaved differently from one cutscene to another, she could be crying over the kingdom's tragedy for a moment and another moment, she's looking down on Vaan. It happens quite a few time that characters in FFXII behaved differenty, and I mean really DIFFERENT from how they were, in a span of perhaps a day in the story? Another issue about characters is that Square litteraly dropped character's developement at some point. Basch, the Dalmasca knight, was forgotten after we left Rabanastre. He who was important at start became a background character as the story goes. The same applies to Fran also. Then we have Penelo. poor Penelo, why the hell is she even in the party? She plays no role in the entire story but I have to say she got pretty in the Ending. The last issue I want to say is that so many things were not explained within the game itself. The origin of the stone, Fran's past( and her age...lol ), Balthier's story, Redaas story, Vaan's past, Penelo's past, Ashe's esscape, where did the Sword of the King and Treaty Blade went after the stone, Rosarian's army status after the supposed war, how the hell can a machine fortress "awake" and how did Vayne get it, the story of the 1st nethecite explosion, etc etc.

Plot -

How simplier can a story get? Princess desire vengeance, she seeked a greater power only to give it up and somehow defeated the grand villain and reclaimed her throne? Just where did the deph show in previous Final Fantasy go? The great romantic storyline became a straighforward kiddy tale for kids.. Yes. KIDdy tale for KIDs.

Gameplay -

It was quite good to revamp the battle system and add more complexity to the Final Fantasy series. I have to say I was eluded for hours in there until I find that, it was pointless if it's slightly tuned. Battle system is still slow and realistic. It's either you set your gambits properly so the computer does everything or you set the battle to wait, like old FF with 3d gfx, or make it active and run out of time to even cast a spell before your killed or before you mates are 20km behind you killing a supposed "black" chocobo that had yellowish color on it. Also, it was quite a stupid thing to make cities even more complex than they already were. On a map with 50npcs you can talk to. Please tell -insert sublimal name- that you have acquire such informations. The next moment, you'll be running like an ass around the city to find this npc...i spend 15min to find him...Big city, big number of people and big time walking around...

Graphic -

Splendid, not muc to complain except in cutscenes, we could see the character polygone were badly made. Eyes color were slightly brighter than the skin color ( becuz it's moving! ) but that beats the point of this game. We came to see good gfx ( the best so far in ps2 )only to see such ugly polygons during cutscnes ( not many cgi in this story...mostly cutscenes that ZOOMS on the character's face...heh...fail )

Overall -

This game is decent but absolutely not worth to worship. Took me a small 21 hours to finish the entire storyline at level 67. I know there are extras like Gilgamesh and other stuff to kill but the main point of this game is to play through the storyline but the very plot of this game is short and cheesy. I wouldn't recommend this unless you just want to see the CGIs and the supposed "best game of the year 2006" from Ign.com.

[Cereal&Milk]

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

I actually liked the game. The only real problem I have is the lack of character depth and individuality, and the half-assed story.

When it comes down to it, the quality of gameplay is pretty much determined by the player.

Besides, after killing Yiazmat, RPGs seem so much easier.

[Kn7ghT]

Also

What the ****

Also, just face it. Eastern rpgs now fall to western ones, fallout, nwn, tes

[lothia]

Try doing the side parts of the game, then it gets actually hard and fun. I found the game play very different, I rather enjoyed it being partially action and partially the same as the old. It seems to me you kind of grew outa RPG's by the fact you got bored of FF games got repetative. The story was bland, anywho I simply loved the game, and while gambits did make it kind of auto play, I prefered to play it with partial gambits and then actually doing most of it myself. Beat Gilgamish all 3 times and then come back =).
Overall the game isn't short, if you do all side stories, as I said try them and come back.

[Cereal&Milk]

Try doing the side parts of the game, then it gets actually hard and fun. I found the game play very different, I rather enjoyed it being partially action and partially the same as the old. It seems to me you kind of grew outa RPG's by the fact you got bored of FF games got repetative. The story was bland, anywho I simply loved the game, and while gambits did make it kind of auto play, I prefered to play it with partial gambits and then actually doing most of it myself. Beat Gilgamish all 3 times and then come back =).
Overall the game isn't short, if you do all side stories, as I said try them and come back.

Gilgamesh was easy.

Try Yiazmat without the run strategy.

It's torture.

[Xenonight2]

It played too much like an MMORPG, except without classes and without the social aspect. So pretty much, repetitive combat and grind, but still team-based, and a half-cooked story and half-cooked characters.

I never beat the game. The characters absolutely sucked, except for Balthier. The rabbit lady was just plain weird, the lead character was an immature little kid, the princess had PMS 24/7 (but she absolutely kicked ass in battle since she has so much damn MP without being a weakling in combat), that one little girl was useless, that one knight guy was too moody and guilt-ridden.

And the plot? OK, the plot was awful for a Final Fantasy. For reals *SPOILERS LOOK OUT!! not that it really matters*, the game starts out with this big ass war that ends really quickly because the people ruling the country are dunces, and then it's two years later and your country is under occupation. OK, that's bad, right? Except that the city is doing great! The people are happy! Everyone loves their new leaders! So how is this bad? And what do you do about it? You help a bunch of terrorists overthrow these "bad" leaders so they can rule. Hey, who's doing a better job of ruling, here? What do the people want? Dalmasca is pretty peaceful now, and there is little crime and violence.

Aughh, the stupidity of it.

At least in FF6 they made the occupiers bad.

[Cereal&Milk]

It played too much like an MMORPG, except without classes and without the social aspect. So pretty much, repetitive combat and grind, but still team-based, and a half-cooked story and half-cooked characters.

I never beat the game. The characters absolutely sucked, except for Balthier. The rabbit lady was just plain weird, the lead character was an immature little kid, the princess had PMS 24/7 (but she absolutely kicked ass in battle since she has so much damn MP without being a weakling in combat), that one little girl was useless, that one knight guy was too moody and guilt-ridden.

And the plot? OK, the plot was awful for a Final Fantasy. For reals *SPOILERS LOOK OUT!! not that it really matters*, the game starts out with this big ass war that ends really quickly because the people ruling the country are dunces, and then it's two years later and your country is under occupation. OK, that's bad, right? Except that the city is doing great! The people are happy! Everyone loves their new leaders! So how is this bad? And what do you do about it? You help a bunch of terrorists overthrow these "bad" leaders so they can rule. Hey, who's doing a better job of ruling, here? What do the people want? Dalmasca is pretty peaceful now, and there is little crime and violence.

Aughh, the stupidity of it.

At least in FF6 they made the occupiers bad.

*SPOILER*


It no longer focused on war, but instead, became centered around the so-called "Gods" of Ivalice. Apparently, Vayne Solidor was attempting to bring destiny back into man's hand and planned on destroying anybody and anything in an effort to get the power he wanted. As a testament to his will, he'd killed his brothers (not Larsa, she's his sister) before him and his own father to get the throne where he was manipulated by a traitorous Occurian.

It's all about the shit beneath the surface, and what happens when said shit hits the fan.

But that's the problem, anyway. The story switches focus WAY too many times. It moves from giving back to the people, to escaping the life of a criminal, to war, to philosophy, and back to war.

Then the big bad-ass of the game who's not so bad-ass turns into a big hulk of floating scrap metal.

Huh?

AND CID OWNS AS WELL!

pew pew pew

[daroth]

Sid had the best looking skills and cutscene attacks besides the final boss.
Loved the game, but I overleveled and ending up being dissapointed at the final boss because I was lvl ~80ish. Ah, good times.