The first Final Fantasy that actually bores me.
User Rating: 8.2 | Final Fantasy XII PS2
Final Fantasy has been an ongoing series of games for many, many years now. This is something that has kept me occupied during the grueling times of boredom, and constant procrastination of homework and such. I have played many of the Final Fantasy games including a couple of the Japanese versions. Yet none such as this one has wanted to put me to sleep. Though, yes, the graphics are amazing, the scenery is breath-taking, and the characters are more than their share of enjoyment, I found this game to be the least favorite of any Final Fantasy game that I have played in my many years as a gamer. The battle system, though new and unique when compared to the old versions of FF, seemed rather dragged out and would become uninteresting to play through after a brief time of game play. Though you could switch out your characters during battles --including ones that were bosses-- you had to make sure that at least one of the characters was far enough away so that if an enemy or boss did a large attack, you could switch out one of the characters or avoid any of the major affects it would inflict on your party (which is difficult to get rid of while the enemy is breathing down your neck in order to stop you from healing your party). If party members were targeted, whether it be one or all out on the field, they could not be replaced. As for the gaining of skills AND the use of equipment through the new "license points" method, I found that though it is different from the usual ways, you should not have to fight for one or two LP at at time in order to gain your own equipment as well as have to pay for the equipment as well. The way as to gaining money can also be a pain in the butt due to the fact that not much is gotten from defeated enemies. Although you do get items from the enemies the party defeats, it is not always in a grand number, hence going back to the ability to gain armor for your party members who need it for more defensive and offensive maneuvers. The storyline in the game itself is a rather interesting one, but at times, it may tend to branch off into too many sub-story-lines. This is a part of the game that has me sleeping at the controller. It seems as though there is no real main character in the game, and it just scatters the story over the six character you get to play as. This game for the time it took to finally be released, has been a complete letdown as far as gaming goes. As I said before, the graphics, the music, even sounds and characters are really great. This is about where the greatness of the game stops. Hopefully, the next in the series of Final Fantasy will not be as a big a disappointment as this game has led to be. 
