Final Fantasy XII: A Perfect Close to RPGs on the PS2
The CG animations are just as beautiful as normal, but there is a sense that the whole team that was working on them really tried to out-do themselves, and it would seem as if they did. The animations have much more going on in them than on even the monster FFX CG cutscenes. From what I noticed, the game engine never once sputtered while I was playing this game. I never exprienced any slow-down either. This surprised me seeing as MY PS2 is really seriously near it's death. It has tons of problems, but not a single on of them surfaced while playing FFXII. During the battles and even just normal walking I noticed that everything always stayed fluid (with the exception of a random camera twitch); this must have been hard to acheive because the level of detail in the levels and enemies is highly artsy and had to take quite a while to construct.
The biggest difference is of course the battle system. It does stray FAR from the normal FF formula of battles (i.e. standing in a line while the enemy stands just 10 feet away), but I found this style of battle much more immersive. A lot more can go wrong and that makes the battles a lot more interesting...and sometimes more frustrating. There can be three characters plus a guest person that can fight at one time, this does create a better battle in the sense that its much easier to attack more than one enemy at a time.
This is where Gambits come in, you can purchase and find Gambits to program to your characters and it pretty much is their battle program. Such as you set it in it's proper priority level (1, 2, 3, and so on and so forth), so if you put 1 to be to attack a random enemy, the same enemy that you targeted, and there are a host of other Gambits to put on them so they react in battle just the way that you want them to. Gambits also help with healing, such as with every character i have their biggest priority to be that if one of my allies' health drops below 20% of it's maximum, bam, Curaga is used on them to heal nice a quick. You can turn Gambits on and off, and if you really don't feel like doing too much work, you can make Gambits for the party lead (the character you control) to fight uncontrolled. Gambits provide of interesting play mechanics, but can be frustrating when you are trying to do an attack that requires all of your allies and someone needs to be healed and you have a Gambit set to do so.
Final Fantasy X took a huge jump with it's Sphere Grid and it was cumbersome, but after learning how to use it, it became very easy to manuever and exploit. In FFXII, there is a new way of gaining abilities...you buy them. You buy magicks, tecknics (abilities that do not require MP), and Gambits. They all become unlocked as the game goes on, most of the time the best of the abilities are really, really, really expensive. However, just buying an ability to use them, I know that sounds odd but just stay with me. You can buy the ability, but in order to use it you have to obtain the license for it first. This brings in the license board, which seems very confusing at first. Its quite similar to the Sphere Grid though, what you do is you obtain LP and just highlight the square that you want or need and press X. That simple, the amount of LP needed is anywhere from 15 in the beginning to about 250 near the end, but LP becomes easier to obtain after you can purchase a certain item. The License Board has everything from spells, to tecknics, to accesories that you can wear, to the armor and weapons that you can use, to even things that make potions stronger and make your physical attack damage higher. The License Board alone will raise your HP about 1000 higher than what it would be with only leveling up. So LP is very useful, and another thing you should know is characters always obtain LP even when they are not in battle.
The sound in the game is still top-notch, but some retarded noises and kind of strange voice-acting leaves it just out of being perfect. The noises during battles can be annoying when an enemy dies or when you KO, especially when Penelo KO's....she is very, very annoying. The sound during cut-scenes is still very well done, but the biggest problem is that the voices don't always match the look of the characters. This is more of an opinion thing than an actual flaw in the game, but the sound most of the time during the game is still stellar. It always fits the environment, and the music is actually kind of catchy in certain areas. Rabanastre's music is very delightful, while some areas such as The Feywood increase their environment by playing very doomy and dangerous form of music.
The environments themselves are absolutely amazing, some areas like the Phon Coast or the Paramina Rift are just crazy with their level of detail. The area's that you fight and go through your journey in range from metropolis to a desert with sand that acts like water, to jungles, and Egyptian-style tombs. They mostly have different enemies and different items appear to be sold back to people.
Another thing in this game that should be brought up is that you can't make gil by just defeating an enemy, you get gil by stealing their items and by stealing items, this is quite difficult to get a high amount of money in the game. Seeing as only near the end of the game do any item's re-sale value reach about 1,500 gil, whereas a peice of armor is about 20,000 near the end of the game. If you just keep up a consistent amount stealing throughout the game, then you shouldn't have much trouble getting through it.
There are other side-quests such as hunting "marks" (fiends that are targets that people hire other people to kill them), killing marks yeilds more money and somtimes useful forms of armor and occasionally a badass weapon. There are other random side-quests that you have to actually talk to people to figure them out...and they all have different purposes and rewards. Overall, FInal Fantasy XII is an amazing game with a few tiny scratches in an otherwise shining gem of a game, one of the last few games on the PS2 that really gives it a hit to call its own. There are a few things in this game that keeps it a little far from the standard FF formula that gives it that nostalgic feel. Overall this game is amazing and a beautiful game that will keep your attention for quite a while.