FFXII delivers on all fronts. Great Story, Beautiful Graphics, and the most fun I've had playing an RPG.
I wrote this review after playing through the story once in 84 hours, and then 1/3rd of the way through my second play through using a strategy guide. I reviewed the game by my standards within the RPG genre and compared it with other square(enix) games in mind. In summary the game is great. A few things I just plain loved-others I would have normally been impressed with I may have been rigid on based on the 5 year hype period I’ve had. Anyways I’d put this as a must own for pretty much any PS2 owner. The learning curve is a bit long-but doable, there’s tons of game play hours in it, it follows the easy to play hard to master philosophy.
------------------------------
Game play 9.25 (rounded to a 9 on the gamespot meter)
Battle System: 9.5 (the most fun I’ve had playing an rpg, but very few buggy moments kept it from being a 10…they had 4-5 years to flush all those bugs out) Wow…this game was sooo much fun. I honestly think it the ADB battle system is the most fun I’ve had in any FF or RPG I’ve played. It’s like controlling your own group in an MMO, somewhere between full on action RPG and turn based lays the ADB system. This system allows strategic positioning, timing, and planning to put a large skill selection to good use. You can even control the flow of battle by directing enemy’s attention to your highly defensive characters allowing your offensive characters to go all out without taking as much damage. The AI of both your teammates and enemies is fairly decent depending mostly on your actions. The Gambit system used to automate tasks and program your AI is also very well done. Compared to the simple commands you could give support characters in say-Kingdom Hearts-FFXII has well over 50 (probably closer to 100 or more) parameters to dictate your characters actions. You can program any Item Magick spell or Technique with these parameters ranging from healing members at a certain percentage of health, to attacking foes depending on their status or target. The best thing about the Gambit system is that you still retain full freedom to control the characters anytime you want. It just makes battle go much quicker and smoother.
Customization: 9 (pure freedom, but the method and content a little bit lacking in my opinion) Aside from the ADB and Gambit systems, your skills are acquired by use of license board. Most similar to FFX’s sphere grid-this board holds the key to everything you will use. Not only in selecting your characters spells and abilities, but also what armor and weapons you can equip. Eventually (and actually quite easily) your characters can conquer the whole board. Aside from special parts that hold the special mist abilities. Mist abilities in this game are like the summon system and limit breaks rolled into one. Traditional limit break like attacks are called ‘Quickenings’ in this game. Each character can learn 3 spread out on the license board, and each one a character learns adds a full charge of their base max mp stat. Summons come in the form of Espers in this game. Like many other FFs in the past you must first find and defeat the esper’s material forms to gain control over it. It is then placed on the license board and you must unlock it from there (only one character can select each esper though…luckily there are 13 espers to spread among the 6 main characters). The whole license board system serves its purpose. I kind of wish there was more to it since by level 50 you can pretty much get all you need from it short of a few equipment slots you probably don’t need for each character. It was fun at the start though to learn it and branch off in different directions with each character. In the end though all your characters will likely have the same stats and spells available to them. Equipment was well balanced and while stats aren’t grotesquely different between levels and classes, they make a noticeable difference. Just enough to specialize your characters in roles such as tank, caster, and melee damage dealer, and create hybrids between them. A good selection of weapons and armor all the way through the game. The weapons and shields all had unique designs, however armor isn’t shown (characters have a static choice of wardrobe that you see throughout the game). OMG! They actually made elemental weaknesses balanced! So many FF’s leave me with a bitter feeling towards their use of elemental weaknesses and spell balance. This game however felt just right to me. It’s a big part of most battles, but not a necessary one either. Taking advantage of the elements can make battles much easier and efficient.
------------------------------
Graphics 10 Gorgeous! CGs, in game, all of the above! I’ve never been disappointed by a Final Fantasy in terms of art direction and graphical representation of it. This game is no exception. From the environments and backdrops to the animations of the characters, everything’s beautiful. Characters each have their own stances for all of the weapons, all of the weapons and shields have their own detailed graphics, there’s a good variation among creeps and enemies-also highly detailed. Spell effects are pretty cool. So on and so fourth. There were a few frame rate drops-more of a slow motion battle when more then 10 or 12 enemies were in battle at certain points in the game-but it wasn’t bad or frequent.
------------------------------
Sound 8 Not a classic soundtrack, but definitely fit the themes and moods of the game. I found myself humming or whistling along to the music often-but it’s nothing I’d go buy at a record store. Every zone has its own theme and many have ambience. Sound effects are good as well. Weapons have various clunk, slash, and swing noises. Characters have a few battle grunts and what not-as well as the cheesy one liners accompanyying special moves. I can’t speak for the surround sound crowd, I only have stereo. There was a noticeable effect though in the stereo even.
------------------------------
Value 10 Well considering this game took nearly twice as long to play through the story as any previous ff I’ve played, I’d say it’s got the bang for your buck. Add on the fact that it’s tons of fun, and has tons of extra content aside from the main story it’s quite apparent, this game has its value. I for one got the limited edition which included developer interviews and some nice FFXII and Final Fantasy extras in general. Looking at the strategy guide I think it’s safe to assume this game will keep me occupied for a good 2 months (200 or so game play hours)
All of the Final Fantasy games have held their value for me mainly because I never get tired of revisiting each world and story they offer. FFXII follows suite and I can see myself playing through this game for years to come.
------------------------------
Tilt 9
Story (Great story but I personally expected a little bit more) My biggest gripe with XII is the story. I was a bit disappointed with the actual main story in comparison to pretty much any other Final Fantasy game. That doesn't mean I still didn't love it-nor that it shouldn't impress most people. It's hard to describe really, the story seemed to have all the epic qualities of settings characters and all that jazz...but something felt amiss in my first play through. There are few things about the story that I can't get out of my head. Lack of focus on a main character. Although you'll run around as Vaan, to me the story had just as much focus on pretty much all the other characters (slightly more on Ashe Balthier and Basch, less on Vaan and Fran, least of all on Panelo). In one way this kind of made playing the game a bit more fun then other games since you didn't 'have' to play with any one character a majority of the time throughout he game. In other games this happens and you will quickly find your main character raising levels much faster then your supports if you're not careful. Since the focus wasn't on any one character exactly-it made it feel like more of a group game which I'd say is more in line with some of the earlier FF's. However, this group focus leads to one of my biggest disappointments which was a lack of a strong sense of commradary among the main group throughout the story. It picked up allot close to the end-but I never felt it nearly as strongly as in most other FF's. A similar problem is that despite the large amount of 1 on 1 relationships (3 heated brother relationships focused on in the main story, as well as a brother/sister type, and a more sensual partner relationship), none but one of the relationships seemed to develop much or carry too much weight (again until the very end) in the story. All of these kind of kept me from growing as attached to most of the characters as I had in previous FF's. I'll come out and say though that Balthier came out on top of my list...again mostly due to the last quarter of the story. I of course liked everyone else involved and thought they all fit well-but I cant help feeling unsatisfied with how much I experienced with most of them. (guess I better hope ffxii: revenant wings DS game delivers eh?)
For those of you looking for me to rank it in the FF dynasty It’s hard for me to order the games from best to worst in numbers. I can easily say that FFVIII is still my favorite overall, FFXII-Tactics-and XI may be relatively tied for 2nd, followed by VII, followed by all the rest.