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Final Fantasy XII Review (continued)
More User Submitted Final Fantasy XII Reviews
Date: 2007-12-28
I really enjoyed it
I wasn't following this game pre-release, having moved mostly to PC games. But my wife got me this for my birthday about a year ago, and I really like it.
One thing I want to point out is that the collectors edition is probably not worth getting instead of the regular edition (shown on this page). The games will play out identically, but the collectors edition has a nicer case and a disc with a few videos on it. The "History of Final Fantasy" is rather boring and not well narrated, in my opinion, I don't remember any of the others.
As for the actual content of the game, though, it's great!
*Characters: I find the voice acting and dialogue content very well done, with one exception--the majority of the princesses lines are grunts. I'm not sure if she is indecisive or what, but it stood out as an oddity to me. Balthier and Basche, especially, though, have great lines well executed and make the cut scenes enjoyable.
*Plot: In general it will probably hold your attention. You have the impression of a well developed world. It did seem to me that it ended kind of suddenly, though.
*Graphics: Very good, imo.
*Battle system: I like the move to having enemies on the map. Some tactical elements are brought in, such as positioning for AoE spells, reminscient of Chrono Trigger, but since it is real time you also have to watch out for nearby foes. I found the scarcity of gil (money) a plus, actually, and the difficulty level of the enemies kept it paced pretty well for moderate difficulty with a little side-questing. The best aspect of doing battles this way, though, is that there is no loading times between battles, only when going into a new area. The Gambit system is intuitive and quite powerful if you want to go in and tweak it in response to the enemies of an area. This is actually a pretty good compromise of allowing you all the time you need to plan strategy (in the gambit menu) while allowing battles to be fast paced.
*Character advancement: All the characters are interchangeable at the start, and will end up so if you level enough. I don't like this as much as a system like FF 6, for example, with unique character abilities, but it has been an aspect of many recent FF games, such as 7 and 8. The FF Tactics team is said to have been behind the development of this game--that game is my favorite--but the job system doesn't come into play here. But it is still fun, as usual, to plan out your character's development ahead of time, and since I found myself fighting random battles for a few more LP, I guess the system overall is a plus.
*Treasure: They've done away with the illogic of animal carrying around cash, and replaced it with that of stealing a wolf's hide before he is killed to sell for money. Heh heh, well anyway, you take loot related to your slain Malboro or Cactus to sell, which opens up special item packages to buy. This system could probably be improved, since there isn't much strategy other than steal and sell, but it wasn't a problem. Treasure chests, though, I found to be generally worthless, random, I think, which can be done well but here is usually disappointing.
In short, I think that if you like console RPG's you'll like this; it lives up to the high expectations squaresoft has set for me.
Date: 2007-12-21
Very great story, Very Twisty.
only about halfway through the game and I'm already pointing at every new character and declaring that they will betray me... i don't know if i should hate the main villain or join him... i enjoyed this a lot already, it will take some work for me to hate the game by the end.
Date: 2007-12-13
Varies greatly from previous FF some for good and some for the worse
I have been a fan of the Final Fantasy series for years and this is the first serial installment of the series (which I exclude FF XI) that I have sort of mixed feelings on. There is good and there is bad and I won't go into the gameplay as it has been done here so many times that I really can't say anything that hasn't already been said so I'm just going to jump straight to the what's good and what's bad to me as I feel that is where my true contribution to "reviewing" this game lies. Ok, bad news first ...
The Bad
1.) I didn't like the character progression with the license system. It was just sort of uninteresting, it wasn't bad and it suffers from how cool the sphere grid was, but most of the time it just felt more annoying than anything and most of the time I just forgot all about it anyway. In the end your true progress seemed determined by your equipment and not your license board anyway.
2.) Character progression. Early in the game your team just seems ridiculously weak and battles are difficult to the point of frustration and later in the game battles seem too easy (main quest.) It seemed the amount of challenging and balanced play was so fleeting even I hardly remember when that moment was. I also feel the battle "challenges" focused too much on status effects. Often times in heated battles especially early your entire group gets hits is mass confusion, blindness, and poison and your party eventually kills itself for lack of any capability to defend itself.
3.) Dead air throughout the game. The maps are actually too huge for my liking. There are LOTS of moments in the game where you have to reinvestigate areas for sidequests and what not and while there are mild short-cuts you spend a lot of time to walking. This was probably one of my biggest pet peeves of the gameplay itself. Teleport crystals and airship access didn't really make this any easier and some sidequests required almost an hour of just walking through areas that you've already been through and sometimes again and again. Load times were not the best either as it worked to load in huge maps. This dead time wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so many relavent sidequests as well
4.) Espers were difficult to acquire and were useless to use in battle. Granted in FF8, I think they focused too much on Guardian Forces, but in FF12 they are usually only useful in the fact that getting them gets you closer to getting pieces of equipment that are more useful than the Espers themselves. Most of the time you want to beat Chaos to get to the vendor in the corner of his lair and not the Esper himself. It just sort of felt backwards
5.) Random chests and certain events. I strongly dislike the random chest mechanics of this game especially when things are geared away from positive acquiring of items. I disliked it in Crystal Chronicles and the same frustration is carried over here. This forces you to reset the game a lot or constantly revisit areas in an effort to have a slight chance at the chests containing an item that isn't utter crap. In that same respect often you will have to revisit different locations during random area effects like when it is raining or cloudy requiring more revisiting and going in and out of areas and again enduring the load times
6.) The music. It is well below the quality of the other FF games
7.) Characters playwise are all similar in the latter part of the game. Eventually you just play with whoever you think looks the coolest
8.) Here at last is my number one problem Final Fantasy 12, the weak storyline, pacing, and narration. All of the characters could have been cool, but the storyline seems forgotten 90% of the time you are playing the game. The Final Fantasy series has its reputation strongly from the novel like quality storyline you receive and FF12 just neglects it to focus more on maps and gameplay. In the end characters die and somehow you can tell we were supposed to care, but we don't. Heck you hardly even knew who they were, so why should you care. You don't hardly know what the characters motivations or ambitions even are really or what drives them to fight so hard and risk their lives for the endeavors throughout the game. In short you don't really care about any of them either way, not even the villain. I can't say that you hate him, or anything he's just this obstacle to climb over and than he's forgotten. In the end you don't laugh, cry, or hardly care in any way. I've never left a Final Fantasy feeling that way. I saw potential for characters that was just never capitalized on
The Good
1.) The graphics. The graphics look great. The watercolor like pastel tones are a great escape from the graphics that we are used to in the series.
2.) The gameplay is innovative. I really didn't like it at first and than I realized much of that had to do with frustration over the early level of difficulty. After I got used to the playstyle I found myself liking it and I really see this as a positive evolution in the series. In the end I found myself liking ADB, but I can see how many will not. I think given time many will find the new mechanics very similar to what they are used to in the "traditional" series. Some will not like having to do the initial "programming" of the games AI with the gambit system, but once it is set you really don't have to do it again often. Many who reprogram the gambit system often for larger battles I can see getting frustrated, but me I found something that roughly stuck and stayed with it.
3.) Whilst I did complain about "too many sidequests" above most of it has to do with the constant running around and travel. The fact that the sidequests are expansive make continuing to play Final Fantasy enjoyable. If you get "everything" before finishing the game expect the last guy to be a walk in the park, but if you reserve some of the harder exploration till later and at a leisurely pace you can get well over 120+ hours worth of play out of this game. That can really help you get your money out of this game
In the end, I see this as the first step towards the direction FF is going. To me it was a bit of an ackward step, but I still am optimistic and I think looking at it more and more we are headed to good times with this piece. The storyline was disappointing and I often wonder what those mentioning a "great story" in their reviews were coming from or if they played any of the other FF titles before this one. I think if they continue to develop the battle system and work in a more solid storyline than we'll be very impressed with FFXIII, until than these are growing pains and even as a weaker FF (in my opinion) this is still a great game and deserves a good rating as it is still well above most games we see released now. I think it is well worth playing through and I think most will be satisfied
Date: 2007-12-01
Final Fantasy XII is great but.......
Final Fantasy XII is a pretty good game. The graphics are not as good as in Final Fantasy X or X-2. The story plotline is easy to understand but it's so adult like. The battle system is kind of hard but a lot of fun. It takes forever to level up in this game. The overall hardness in the game is 3 out 5 stars for me anyway. That is not why I rated the game 2 stars though. The reason the fun is 3 stars and the overall game is 2 stars is because the graphics are not as good as X or X-2. The gameplay gets pretty boring after a while. And that the story is so boring. The plus sides of the game is that at least the story is easy to understad. The overall gameplay is good(exept for the battle system). And that all the cool abilitis you can get. That is basicely it
Date: 2007-11-22
Stunning
Incredible graphics, voice acting, and storyline. Awesome new battle system really keeps the game moving. Plenty of side quests for those who wish to make the most of the game. Easily the best RPG I've ever played.
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