The greaest Final Fantasy ever made; also the greatest PS2 game ever made. The next generation can wait another year.
Final Fantasy XII was designed by Hiroyuki Ito, illustrated by Akihiko Yoshida, scored by Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata, and was directed by Yasumi Matsuno (until health problems forced him to bow out in favor of Akitoshi Kawazu) in other words, the Final Fantasy Tactics team; hence, it shares many thematic similarities with those games. It is set in a heavily politicized, religious world known as Ivalice. As the game opens, you get to see the fall of the kingdom of Dalmasca to the Archadian empire, an event which has overshadowed the joyous wedding of Dalmascan princess Ashe and Prince Rasler of Nabradia. On the eve of the signing of the Dalmasca-Archadia peace treaty, the King of Dalmasca is assassinated by Basch, the captain of the Knights of Dalmasca, who is imprisoned as a traitor. The ensuing resistance is played out from the players perspective as seen by Vaan, a young thief living on the streets of Dalmasca; however the true hero(ine) is Princess Ashe and her efforts to organize the anti-Imperial resistance and obtain weapons powerful enough to destroy her enemies. Ashe is a surprisingly dark, brooding heroine - at first her ambitions seem to be to not only drive the Empire out of Dalmasca, but to exact vengeance on the Empire itself as well, even at the cost of innocent lives. Over time, as Ashe sees the world outside of Dalmasca and its people, and realizes the parallels between herself and those she wishes to destroy, does she realize that her blind desire for revenge may make her as much a tyrant as the Empire, and she grows to desire only peace between Dalmasca and the Empire, in which both countries can live in independence and freedom. Aided by the Vaan, his friend Penelo, and the sky pirates Balthier and Fran, as well as numerous other allies, she searches the world over for these relics to bring down the Empire.
Going on in the background, however, is political intrigue and infighting within the Empire itself (this is a Yasumi Matsuno game, after all), where Prince Vayne, the governor of occupied Dalmasca, is secretly laying a plot to overthrow Emperor Gramis and proclaim himself ruler of Archadia. He is also working with Dr. Cid, the empire's chief researcher, to develop magicite into powerful weapons of mass destruction and proclaim himself as the new "Dynast King" of Ivalice, in the tradition of the great historical unifier, Raithwall. Meanwhile, far to the west, the Rozzarian Empire is opportunistically taking advantage of the upheavals in Archadia and Dalmasca to plan its own invasion of eastern Ivalice - a battle wherein Dalmasca would be the staging ground between the great nations, resulting in horrific loss of life among Dalmascan civilians. This is only a taste of FFXII, which has the best video game story ever written - layered and complex, where every character has dark and light sides, some more clearly defined than others. Ivalice's history is presented in detail and plays a role in the conclusion of the game; and the intense action and drama begins the instant your game begins. This game brings a new meaning to the word "epic" as applied to gaming, and will keep you guessing as to what everyone's true motives are, even those of the heroes.
Graphically, this is classic Square Enix - it pushes the PS2 hardware to its upper limits and looks better than 90% of X360 and PS3 titles. This game is full 3-D rotation, unlike FFX; every nook and cranny can be explored. The environments are truly atmospheric and bustling, the character models are well animated and crisp, and the special effects are spectacular (especially the summoned Espers). Lighting and shading effects are in full force here. The designers actually lowered the polygon count for character models compared to FFX to free up more power for the dynamic camera and environments, but you probably wouldn't notice this if they hadn't stated this in magazine interviews, since Square's character modeling and animation techniques have continued to improve over the years,. The character models are detailed and more realistically animated than in FFX
Character designs are more diverse than in any FF game before: Lizard-like Bangaa and moogles freely intermingle with the varied human populations; and all sorts of other sentient creatures (such as the Viera bunny-girls and the dog-like nu mou) inhabit this world as well. In terms of the sound, Hitoshi Sakimoto brings his orchestral compositions to Final Fantasy in grand style; his FF Tactics soundtrack is considered one of the best soundtracks of all time. The music is grand opera and fully orchestrated, and enhances the intrigue going on during the story. It gets your pulse racing in the same way that Jon Williams' Star Wars music does. The sound effects are realistically digitized, and the voice acting is excellent, with many veteran voice actors such as Kari Wahlgren (Ashe) in the cast. Square Enix took a big gamble with the gameplay - they opted to abandon traditional turn-based battles in favor of an auto-attack realtime system typical of MMORPGs such as FFXI and WoW, only much faster and smoother. Monsters appear in real time on the world map, and will spot and chase you when seen; they even fight one another. You only directly control one character out of your 3-4 member party; you can micromanage them if you wish, but Square Enix has introduced the "gambit" system as a way to customize the behavior of the computer-controlled characters: you set the actions in terms of priority, conditions which trigger the actions, and when to stop. Learning the gambit system is especially important later on, because the game's difficulty increases rapidly, and the wrong gambits can spell defeat for your party. It adds a great element of strategy to the game, and the realtime nature of the battles makes combat frantic at times. The characters are customized by use of the license board, which dictates what magic and skills the characters can use, as well as what weapons and armor they can equip; using LP earned from defeating enemies. The characters start out with their own specialties, but each character is fully customizable. Another aspect of the gameplay is the increased freedom of movement. FFX was criticized as being rigidly linear, with few outside paths other than to keep going north. That isn't a problem here; you can explore, in real time, many various regions of the world, and there are complicated and involved sidequests galore. There are "marks" - optional beasts which can be hunted for prizes and prestige - as well as sidequests to obtain weapons and espers. Never since FFVI have you had this much freedom in a FF game, yet the game's excellent story holds up well in spite of this.
If you have a PS2, get this game; even if you are not a traditional FF fan, you might enjoy it immensely. This is one reason why I'm in no hurry to embrace the next generation - why bother when the current-gen games are still so much better?
Yasumi Matsuno poured his heart and soul into Final Fantasy XII until his declining health sadly forced him to resign from Square and take a respite from video gaming, and it really shows; FFXII is painstakingly fine-tuned and polished. It's still a little shy of perfect, but it's closer than anyone save for Shigeru Miyamoto has reached.