Final fantasy may make you think of big chickens,bad j-pop, weird haircut's and may not live up to the hype, til now!
User Rating: 9.5 | Final Fantasy XII PS2
Final fantasy XII has gone under extensive renovations over the past couple of years but let me tell you, the wait is finally over, this is the real deal!!! Square Enix's Final fantasy XII's grand opening may be a year old come Halloween, but the trip you take in this ambitious adventure is absolutely fantastic. The first thing you might notice is the most obvious change over the last installments of the franchise, is that this game is freakin gorgeous! The cut scenes are mind blowing and even rival that of pure cinematic quality, every thing in the world is excruciatingly detailed, every nook and cranny is beautifully crafted and teaming with life almost every were you go! The story is another change in this installment. No more mellow dramatic love stories in this fantasy, this tale is about high-minded political intrigue and cool airship battles. It might turn off the hardcore old school fans but trust me this is a shot in the arm the series needs! The main character this time around is named Vaan who wants to be a sky pirate, he also hangs out with his gal pal Penelo, they end up encountering a princess who lost her place , a ex-captain known as Basch and last but not least two rouge sky pirates named Balthier and the incredibly sexy Icelandic looking bunny girl called Fran, she's part of a special race known as the viera. Turn based battles are thing of the past, it's replaced with a new thing called active dimension battle or "ADB". This new formula of combat pits you against your foes in real time, see a powerful enemy in the distance you don't feel like facing RUN AWAY, if not then fell free to whack away. The new real time battles also dose another cool thing, it gets rid of annoying random encounters in enclosed environments. Everything is open, vast and not a single long load screen in sight! This beats the old turn based combat buy far! Another cool new feature of the game is the gambit system. This give's you the opportunity to "program" your hero's actions even further. Using these commands allows the player to customize their party's tactics on the field and let the game play it self, as you get further in the game possibilities will become endless! Example, say you have made a white mage and don't want to waste mist points (yes mist points), no problem set up a gambit to tell your character that you want to cast cure when a ally reaches about lets say 60%, when a ally's health drops to around that amount your mage will cast cure with out you inputing a single command. Unfortunately not everything can be automated though (that's another fantasy). Now the license system if there is one complaint I have to give about this game it would be this let me explain. say you get a fancy shield you want to equip; Not so fast buddy you first have to pay license points and earn the rights to use it. The license board kinda resembles a chess board, with an odd design makes customizing your own classes a bit annoying. Otherwise to earn stuff you must use license points in one square which free's up other square's adjacent to it, thats it. The new gambit and license system could get confusing to some player's new to the genre, but once you get used to it most of you would not want to go back to the old way! Some other negative comments I have happen late in the game, which includes some frame rate issues when the going gets tough in the endgame dungeons mostly and some spells, gambit's are broken but this is not enough to hurt the games overall performance, in the long run. If there's one thing i would change about this game though is to put a shirt on Vaan already, seriously. Anyway this is buy far one of the best games of 2006 and hands down one of the best RPG's of that year and will keep you playing for weeks lasting way into the wee hours of the night. This is just one of those games you had to get last year, and still if there is only one game you can get this year and haven't played this yet do your self a favor and finally start getting into this fantasy!!!! 
