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202 of 232 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Finer Fantasies (4.5 Stars), October 31, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
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
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
FINAL VAGRANT TACTICS FANTASY 12, January 24, 2007
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
So, here's my take on Final Fantasy's latest. Is it the greatest? Read on and find out!
BATTLE SYSTEM: Everything is in real-time, which any veteran FF gamer knows is not the way it used to be. Although it takes a while to get accustomed to this change I found the real-time battles a breath of fresh air--something this series is definitely going to need if we're ever to hope of seeing Final Fantasy 24 or so. It is so nice when the only transition screens you have are those that occur when going to menus, new locations or cut-scenes. Also, the ability to run for your life all the way across the map is really nice, especially in addition with the sounds of thousands of angry hooves and feet stamping after you!
TRANSPORTATION: I don't know about you, but I LOVE flying airships on a world map! Sadly, in Final Fantasy 12 this is not possible. Very ironic, because this is the powerful Playstation 2 and the game itself sports alot of airships. There are Chocobos, but that is the only type of transportation you actually steer on your own. You can take teleport crystals to warp you almost anywhere and later your airship can "fly" you places.
STORYLINE: I would disagree with anyone that says that this game has no storyline. But I would agree that there is so much leveling up/looting to be done between locations that when you reach your final destination you might forget your initial motive for going there. As a whole, FF12's storyline is not as prominent as other storylines, like FF6 and FF7. And of course part of what makes a good storyline are good . . .
CHARACTERS: Since anyone can learn any weapon or magic, the only thing that makes them unique are their looks. Fran looks like she escaped from the Playboy mansion, Vaan looks like a younger brother to Ashley Riot from Vagrant Story and Balthier is something of a mix between Setzer and Locke, which is cool. Reddas is an interesting Auron-like person, but he appears too little, too late in the game. Ah yes, and if only Elza in Balfonheim Port were a playable character.
ANTAGONISTS: Part of the reason I did not get drawn in by the storyline (what little there is of it) is because the antagonists were not very convincing. You won't find anyone as evil as Kefka or Sephiroth. For a good portion of the game I knew that the Empire was evil (obviously) but had no idea who exactly was the "Boss" and even more importantly, WHY? And it doesn't help either that the Empire's black-clad knights like Gabranth sound like Dark Helmet from Spaceballs. Or at least a very pathetic Darth Vader.
MUSIC: I own several Final Fantasy game soundtracks and of course I think that Uematsu is brilliant in his work. But I also own the FF Tactics soundtrack and I was surprised how good it was. One of the two composers for the Tactics soundtrack did the music for this game. Unfortunately, by himself, he's not that good. Granted, there were no songs that felt out of place, but at the same time, there were no stellar tracks that captured the EMOTION OF THE MOMENT or had the genius of the work of Uematsu's earlier soundtracks. Considering that you will spend alot of time collecting loot/leveling up in different locations, expect to hear the same track over and over again. Also, the ending boss theme, sadly, is nothing spectacular. I'd even say it's forgettable.
SUMMONS, SPELLS AND SIDEQUESTS: For perhaps the first time ever I found myself hardly ever using summons and magic. The summons are nice to look at, but die too easily and deal too little damage and sadly offensive magic is the same way (although Flare comes in handy at the end). Even sadder, to get alot of these spells and summons you have to go on sidequests that are voluntary, but end up feeling mandatory--or you could do the alternative and loot the land for 3 hours and search a whole world for the one shop that sells the magic/weapon/armor you need.
GRAPHICS: To me, the least important, but they're definitely good. Although only the first and last few FMV scenes are worth watching twice and unlike FF10, you can't buy them.
SOMETHING FUNNY: When Vaan is running around saying "I'm Captain Basch fon Rosenburg" I thought it would be funny if he also randomly said, "I'm Rick James, b-tch!"
OVERALL: If you're a casual RPG gamer, this is clearly a solid RPG that is very well thought through in terms of game mechanics. And let's not forget, you can easily log in 80+ hours before beating the game, which is definitely getting your money's worth.
If you're a veteran Final Fantasy gamer, one who's played since it's NES days (or at least its SNES days), then you'll see what a weak story and soundtrack this game has, which to me is below par for a Final Fantasy title.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Should you buy this game? A personal opinion of FFXII, September 6, 2007
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
After a complete playthrough, I decided to give the positive and negative points of this epic campaign called Final Fantasy XII.
Positive:
- Better than its predecessor FFXI; FFXII takes the best elements of the online version and incorporates them well into this verson.
- Intuitive combat system, challenging when played live and not turn-based
- Beautiful graphics and a great soundtrack despite the system's limitations
- Better voice acting than FFX, contributes to character development
- The best storyline in an RPG to date, there is nothing better
Negative:
- Combat system is easy; essentially automatic on regular enemy fights
- Confusing license system
- Combat relies mostly on melee and healing spells, mages are slow and almost worthless
- No progressive scan feature (not a big deal, but would be nice for HDTVs)
- Setting up spell and auto attack features for characters becomes a chore
The game in itself is an epic story told through a video game. You could easily take the policial issues shown in this game and incorporate it into a Tom Clancy novel, only set in a mideval atmosphere. I am hard-preseed to see another RPG that has something this deep and adult-oriented on plot.
The main character you play unfortunately doesn't play into the political strife of the game, and I think it is mostly because of his age. You play a 17-year-old vagrant named Vaan. While I dreaded playing a whiney teenage character due to previous RPG experiences (dot hack and FFX being prime examples), Vaan is anything but. He does go off on tangent at times, but it is nowhere near the extent that I expected. Despite his maturity on the situation, you feel Vaan is more of an observer of the politics than a player. He stays quiet through many of the cut scenes. Basch would have been my pick for the main character. He was directly involved with most of the story, and had a great redeeming quality about him I felt could have been explored more if I followed him instead.
Beyond the storyline and character development, the combat system is a mixed bag of bolts. The gambit system, which dictates how your character friends fight for you, was a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing in that I didn't have to worry about taking care of other people in my party beyond myself, and a curse in that it made the game easy. You can set up the gambit system and ADP to automatically fight battles. This makes it so you run in the direction of an enemy and it is killed without having to press a button. I didn't understand how the core element of gameplay could be automated like this and not have been improved upon (Star Ocean's battle system is a great example of how FFXII could have been).
I also found that bringing a caster character that didn't heal was a worthless slot. Fighter characters do more damage over time, and you can set them up to heal themselves. If you bring a character that only does spell damage, they take twice as long to cast, and do the same damage as a front-line fighter. There were many instances were a mage character (Fran) wouldn't be able to get a spell off on an enemy till a boss fight. I had an easier time with a team full of hybrid healers with one primary healer than I did with a damage caster.
However I consider these nuisances small toward the total scope of this installment of Final Fantasy. Plot development is top-notch, and other RPG companies can easily take a lesson from FFXII on how not to make another dull manga-looking game about "saving the world from total destruction". This game will remain timeless because of its quality, and I recommend playing this to anyone who enjoys epic RPGs.
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