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Rating: 
-
Final Fantasy XII, like all other FF games has an increadable gameplay, storyline, and not to mention graphics.
But the reason I gave it such a low rating was simply the characters! There was no character development, or love or any fun between them. They were BORING. They truly made the game forgetable.
Ashe was probably my favourate character, but only because it seemed like she did the most talking. I didn't feel like I "Knew" the characters as much as I did in FFIX, FFX, or even FFX-2.
Dissapointing at the most - with the characters.
Otherwise a good game.
Rating: 
-
This installment of Final Fantasy is definitely story driven. Sadly, however, the story is weak. Six months after playing the game, I can't even remember what those triangular spirits were about. Thank goodness for the nice dialogue. Without it the game would be untolerable. Character interaction is minimal, and there is no real team spirit.
The main character Vaan and his friend Penelo seem to be nothing more than luggage. There's no point in them being in the game. I can't say that's a good thing.
The evil guys and side characters are lame and their doings seem pointless. As with the main characters, none are truly explored.
Talking with the townspeople is utterly pointless.
The graphics are nice, though nothing mind-blowing. I didn't want to stop to view the scenery at any point. I have to applaud them for making the cities even a bit lively looking, by adding a lot of silent characters. One point of complaint is the very lame spell effects.
The CGI scenes are nothing spectacular, definitely a step back from FFX. This was the first installment in the series where I wasn't looking forward to seeing the CGI scenes.
The voice-acting is good, all the main characters give solid performances. *But* the Marquis and Al-Cid almost succeed in spoiling my respect towards the other performances. Thank goodness they have so few lines. All in all the voice acting is one of the best aspects of the game.
The real-time battle system is a radical change from past games. It's nice but doesn't make the battles less tedious or repetitive in the long run. The enemies are also mostly boring.
The party AI doesn't really shine, but thank goodness you can limit its stupidity with the Gambit System. Too bad that lots of the useful gambits appear only at the later stages of the game.
The license board works for someone who likes perfect customization, but unfortunately I don't. I want characters who truly differ in their abilities. And talking about abilities, I found all the skills and most of the power ups really lame and useless.
The summons, called Espers, are stupid-looking and useless in combat.
The maps are at times annoyingly large. The fact that there are no secrets or secret places, and the randomized treasure, add to the insult. Many times the game devolved into a multiple hour running through empty fields, between short cutscenes.
The music is bad. Nobue Uematsu left them and they replaced him with some clueless punk. There is zero memorability and some themes are just annoying. It's the worst I've heard in any RPG I've played.
CLOSING COMMENTS:
When I started playing, I was positively surprised by the good voice-acting, the nice - and at times witty - dialogue and olden style of speaking used by some characters.
However it didn't take long to become annoyed by the pointless main character Vaan, the trite and stupid plot, lack of character interaction, huge and empty fields/dungeons with random and often useless treasure.
All in all this game is about running hours and hours through fields, fighting repetitive enemies, so you could see a 5 minute stupid cut scene that advances the inane plot.
Rating: 
-
I don't believe RPGs should be held to the same scale as most other games. Yes, entertainment value is wonderful but if you play the game, beat it, and then don't have your world view at least shaken a bit by the game it's just an empty shell with pretty visuals.
That said, Final Fantasy XII is a fun game. It has some interesting side quests such as the hunting quests (you're given a task to hunt down some beast which is generally much harder than normal beasts) and it all around keeps you somewhat interested from the get-go.
The characters, however, are rubbish. The only really interesting character is the pirate character who seems to have a larger part in the story than even Vaan who is is the main character. Vaan's character in general will remind you somewhat of Tidus from Final Fantasy X although he whines a lot less. His whole character motivation, and this doesn't change at all throughout the story, he wants to leave the town and be the captain of a ship. The leading man in this story is a boy who whines from time to time but has no real impact on the story.
The story is also very predictable and while there are lots of interesting things to do and places to explore you'll find yourself guessing what's to come prior to it happening.
Graphics and sound are wonderful and so is the gameplay so the game is not a huge loss. It's a very pretty game and perhaps it worth playing if only for the innovative parts of it but, again, you won't walk away feeling like the game was a huge addition to the series.
The battle system is perhaps the most unique piece of the game though. Instead of pulling you away from the world map or forcing you to face random enemies as historically done by the franchise the game has real time fighting with a semi turn based core. You still have the same menu you've historically had but you'll just have to select the enemy and your attacks will hit as it's your turn again. There are two drawbacks to this system, in my opinion, however.
The first is that the fighting, at times, seems to be a lot less frantic as in the other games in the series. From time to time I'd die, yes, but in the former games in the series there were always battles where the enemy would unleash something devastating across my whole party but with this system it's usually avoidable and less dramatic.
The second is that the game feels like a MMORPG at times (if that was the intent?). I just thought it was kind of weird but some people may enjoy that feeling.
The rest generally has been said in other reviews so I'll leave this at this. All in all, it's a fun game with lots of innovative new changes on the core Final Fantasy system. It's nothing too great, however, story wise so while I do suggest playing it I just want to warn it's nothing on the level of the other Final Fantasy games in the series.
Rating: -
I played final fantasy X and found it to be the best game I ever played but this game came very short of expectations. Final Fantasy X had an excellent story and X-2 was fun although not strong material.
In this game you might as well take time to do the side games. Going through the game you long deseperately for the twist that never happens. It is like a book that goes on and on where the ending disappoints a lot. The character Vaan is one useless main character who works like a side one. The point of Final Fantasy is the story and gameplay. The story is pointless.
The gameplay is better than X though. The live fighting mode gets rid of the most annoying part of X and all Final Fantasy Games. The Weapon system is good although I didn't like the license thing better than sphere system of X. The summons are pointless however. This game could have been great if Basch was the main character and the twists were left for later in the game.
Rating: -
...whoa the covers different in this country...talk about mind warping...it looks so much worse...anyway...
I've played every FF game from one to twelve and this is the only time I have decided not to finish a FF game.
What made the other FF games so great was the experience of watching your characters grow their relationships and strengths with great ways to learn new ablities such as the materia system in FF7 or the Sphere grid in FF10. Along with limit breaks (Trances, overdives etc...) and summonings. Along with the heap loads left to do that has nothing to do with the story such as defeating the Emerald weapon or collecting all the cards.
This FF has barely any of these traits. The leveling up is tedious because old monster models are used over and over again and the fighting system which is meant to be revolutionary is just irritating and boring. The license board system is annoying because it's impossible to see what makes characters different to others; I understand trying to master all skills but if there are no parameters at all then all characters will be very similar.
The characters bore me to death and has one of the worse main characters ever (Vaan just seems to be dropped in without a care). The main story is also nothing compared to the gold of the stories in the older plots; I can't relate to these characters at all.
Now I won't lie the FMVs are very impressive, but that's just not enough to make this great. Is this Enix's fault for joining Squaresoft? I mean FFX-2 wasn't exactly the best was it? I'll let you be the judge.
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