After a long wait, Final Fantasy XII is finally here, after such a long wait. Everything about it shines. From it’s deep storyline, to its fantastic and complex gameplay. All worries aside, Final Fantasy XII is a keeper.

The Archadian Empire has taken over the Kingdom of Dalmasca. The King has been assissnated and the princess is presumed dead. The people of Dalmasca are displeased with the Empire, especially a young boy named Vaan who believes it is up to him to take Dalmasca back. Luckily, he’s not alone. There’s an entire resistence group out there that are willing to help him out. The storyline of Final Fantasy XII is different from all the Final Fantasy games. For one, it relies far more heavily on its political drama and philosophical intrigue. What you get from Final Fantasy XII isn’t a huge epic story in scope, but rather a drama that unfolds. It’s a different way to tell the story for Final Fantasy, but here it actually works. It’s still got some good twists and it is somewhat deep, but don’t expect something along the lines of previous installments such as Final Fantasy X or VII. It doesn’t have the most memorable ensemble cast either, but you do, for the most part, like the characters.

What many fans are most concerned about when it comes to this new installment is the battle system itself. It strays away from the series roots. It is no longer the ATB style battles we’ve been used to since Final Fantasy IV. Instead it’s Active Dimension battle. All enemies in any given area of a dungeon are present at all times and will charge you upon seeing you.

You can free roam through any area, and so can your enemies. As your characters approach an enemy they pull out their weapons and you can begin to issue attacks. You can only play as one character at a time, but you can still issue orders to other characters if you want. Since all enemies are present on the map at one time, running away can be a hassle. Enemies will give chase, and some enemies will even join in the battle.

The combat has a couple of downsides. For one, getting money is downright painful and repetitive. Your enemies don’t drop money, and when they do it’s not a lot. Instead you’ll be forced to sell the items they drop. This wouldn’t be a problem if stuff wasn’t s expensive, and if the items dropped by enemies didn’t sell for so little. Also, dungeon maps are huge. It’s easy to get lost and overshoot your objective sometimes, even with the ingame map provided.

This wouldn’t be Final Fantasy without some complexity to the battle system, though. First, there is the game’s complex AI system called “Gambits.” Gambits allow you t customize what your characters do in battle. You can set your characters up to attack, or you can get more complex and have them heal anyone whose HP falls below a certain percentile. Once you get used to the Gambit system, however, it’s really easy to take advantage of. To the point where Final Fantasy XII becomes a cakewalk. Even worse, if you set them up too well, you’ll find that the only thing you ever have to do is move around the left analog stick. It is entirely possible to track through Final Fantasy XII never having to open up the menu.

Then there’s the license point system. As you battle through the game you’ll earn license points which can be spent on the license board. This helps to determine what spells, abilities and even weapon and armor characters can use. Yes, that’s right, weapons and armor. You cannot use a certain weapon unless you have a “license” to do so. There’s nothing too complex about this and it suffers from its own little issue, the fact that in the end every character is the same.

Graphicwise, Final Fantasy XII is fantastic. The towns are detailed, and so are your characters. The fact that each town has so many unique looking characters on screen at once is an impressive feat. The game also sounds lovely. Even better is the games artistic design. Towns are breathtaking. The game also sounds good. The voice acting isn’t the best in the world, but it does manage to be good in many areas.

Final Fantasy XII should please old and new Final Fantasy fans alike. Its storyline is pretty deep and its gameplay is complex and fun. Its by far one of the better Final Fantasy games in the series.

The Good

+Fantastic Graphics

+Good storyline

+The new battle system is complex

+Tons of side quests and secrets to keep you busy for hours

+Beautiful soundtrack

+Well done voices

The Bad

-Dungeons are huge and save points are few and far between

-The battle system is too easy to take advantage of

-The license board will eventually make every character the same
Rating: 5 / 5

First, the good: It’s set in a huge world with beuatiful landscapes and scenery. The FMV sequences are stunning, as expected. That’s about all the good I can say about it though.

From somewhere around hour 20 until hour 90 in gameplay, development in the story was almost non existent. Nothing really happens! It’s pretty much a series of boss fights and treks through random jungles. Every now and again there’s an extrememly casual one lined piece of ‘character development’ thrown in that barely keeps the thing going.

It’s quite badly designed also. For instance, not every shop sells the same spells… so by the end of the game, when the good spells finally become available, you still have to trek all around the world to find some of them. And even then some of them seem unattainable. Like ‘bubble’ for instance – couldn’t find it anywhere. Apparently you have to be at a certain clan level to buy this. Great. How is that supposed to make my experience of the game even remotely enjoyable? And the ‘Ardour’ spell, where was that supposed to be? Why not just make all the spells available in all the shops? Wouldn’t that make more sense? It’s just a waste of my time to have to pointlessly go from shop to shop buying crap. Believe me, by the end I HAD LONG SINCE CEASED TO CARE! Maybe people who play these games more frequently enjoy this kind of pursuit. I’m mostly playing for the story.

Somebody else mentioned that the balance between risk and reward is disgraceful. I agree. It seems like you put in so much effort to get almost nothing. The treasure chests in the game are a joke – they contain a host of the most useless stuff you could imagine. Also, most bosses who are challenged by you in any way will just status effect the crap out of you until you die.

Also the positioning (or lack) of some of the save crystals is not good – again, just bad design. I found myself pointlessly replaying certain parts after dying in boss fights because I couldn’t save.

Most importantly though, where was the character development in this game? The most random people kept popping up out of nowhere when the ’story’ required their presence. Like that french looking guy with the sideburns. What was his function in the story? What were any of them doing for that matter? Could anybody understand a thing any of them were saying apart from the main six? I know it was something about magic rocks…

Only in the final five hours of gameplay did anything start to actually happen. But way too little too late. For instance, when Ashe says to Vaan, ‘don’t interrupt me’, why was she so moody? There is no relationship in any way between these two people. Vaan and Panello are … well what are they exactly? If they’re just friends, that’s great. If they’re friends with benefits, that’s great too. But we’re never told! In fact, their friendship is never referenced in any way by any of the other characters. None of the characters are ever in any real jeopardy either and they don’t interact with each other verbally at all. Like a bunch of strangers who met on a street and decided to walk in the same direction. Then they all decided to start fighting monsters and look for magic rocks.

And then at the end Vaan says to Ashe, before one of the final battles, ‘you’ve got good friends’… is he talking about them? They barely speak a word to each other for the entire game… they’re off looking for magic rocks and then suddenly, they’re best mates?? Jumping the gun a little no? A bit of development wouldn’t go amiss here…

Maybe Vaan’s just desperate for friends or something…

I just finished the game an hour ago and can barely remember a thing that happened in it. It actually feels as if nothing happened at all, which is basically the truth I suppose. Quite unlike what I felt after final fantasy X, which was more like withdrawal.

If it was Square’s intention to make a game about six people whose relationships to each other don’t develop in any way, then they succeeded. It’s pretty much a group of people who get together and go on a quest (something about magic rocks I think???), barely speak to each other for the whole journey (no exaggeration), and then go their separate ways again at the end. Thrilling. I can barely believe I just spent more than 90 hours of my life on this! LESSON LEARNED.

I really don’t like being so critical about a game in a series that I have truly loved. I fully appreciate the efforts and the work that went into making this game, and I am grateful that there are people out there doing this. But I think you can do much better.

In short, it’s no final fantasy X and there’s no epic feel to it like there was in that game. But still, you may enjoy it. I just found the whole thing extremely pointless!
Rating: 2 / 5

This installment of Final Fantasy is definitely story driven. Sadly, however, the story is weak. Six months after playing the game, I can’t even remember what those triangular spirits were about. Thank goodness for the nice dialogue. Without it the game would be untolerable. Character interaction is minimal, and there is no real team spirit.

The main character Vaan and his friend Penelo seem to be nothing more than luggage. There’s no point in them being in the game. I can’t say that’s a good thing.

The evil guys and side characters are lame and their doings seem pointless. As with the main characters, none are truly explored.

Talking with the townspeople is utterly pointless.

The graphics are nice, though nothing mind-blowing. I didn’t want to stop to view the scenery at any point. I have to applaud them for making the cities even a bit lively looking, by adding a lot of silent characters. One point of complaint is the very lame spell effects.

The CGI scenes are nothing spectacular, definitely a step back from FFX. This was the first installment in the series where I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the CGI scenes.

The voice-acting is good, all the main characters give solid performances. *But* the Marquis and Al-Cid almost succeed in spoiling my respect towards the other performances. Thank goodness they have so few lines. All in all the voice acting is one of the best aspects of the game.

The real-time battle system is a radical change from past games. It’s nice but doesn’t make the battles less tedious or repetitive in the long run. The enemies are also mostly boring.

The party AI doesn’t really shine, but thank goodness you can limit its stupidity with the Gambit System. Too bad that lots of the useful gambits appear only at the later stages of the game.

The license board works for someone who likes perfect customization, but unfortunately I don’t. I want characters who truly differ in their abilities. And talking about abilities, I found all the skills and most of the power ups really lame and useless.

The summons, called Espers, are stupid-looking and useless in combat.

The maps are at times annoyingly large. The fact that there are no secrets or secret places, and the randomized treasure, add to the insult. Many times the game devolved into a multiple hour running through empty fields, between short cutscenes.

The music is bad. Nobue Uematsu left them and they replaced him with some clueless punk. There is zero memorability and some themes are just annoying. It’s the worst I’ve heard in any RPG I’ve played.

CLOSING COMMENTS:

When I started playing, I was positively surprised by the good voice-acting, the nice – and at times witty – dialogue and olden style of speaking used by some characters.

However it didn’t take long to become annoyed by the pointless main character Vaan, the trite and stupid plot, lack of character interaction, huge and empty fields/dungeons with random and often useless treasure.

All in all this game is about running hours and hours through fields, fighting repetitive enemies, so you could see a 5 minute stupid cut scene that advances the inane plot.
Rating: 1 / 5