More Information
Rating: 
-
only about halfway through the game and I'm already pointing at every new character and declaring that they will betray me... i don't know if i should hate the main villain or join him... i enjoyed this a lot already, it will take some work for me to hate the game by the end.
Rating: -
I have been a fan of the Final Fantasy series for years and this is the first serial installment of the series (which I exclude FF XI) that I have sort of mixed feelings on. There is good and there is bad and I won't go into the gameplay as it has been done here so many times that I really can't say anything that hasn't already been said so I'm just going to jump straight to the what's good and what's bad to me as I feel that is where my true contribution to "reviewing" this game lies. Ok, bad news first ...
The Bad
1.) I didn't like the character progression with the license system. It was just sort of uninteresting, it wasn't bad and it suffers from how cool the sphere grid was, but most of the time it just felt more annoying than anything and most of the time I just forgot all about it anyway. In the end your true progress seemed determined by your equipment and not your license board anyway.
2.) Character progression. Early in the game your team just seems ridiculously weak and battles are difficult to the point of frustration and later in the game battles seem too easy (main quest.) It seemed the amount of challenging and balanced play was so fleeting even I hardly remember when that moment was. I also feel the battle "challenges" focused too much on status effects. Often times in heated battles especially early your entire group gets hits is mass confusion, blindness, and poison and your party eventually kills itself for lack of any capability to defend itself.
3.) Dead air throughout the game. The maps are actually too huge for my liking. There are LOTS of moments in the game where you have to reinvestigate areas for sidequests and what not and while there are mild short-cuts you spend a lot of time to walking. This was probably one of my biggest pet peeves of the gameplay itself. Teleport crystals and airship access didn't really make this any easier and some sidequests required almost an hour of just walking through areas that you've already been through and sometimes again and again. Load times were not the best either as it worked to load in huge maps. This dead time wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so many relavent sidequests as well
4.) Espers were difficult to acquire and were useless to use in battle. Granted in FF8, I think they focused too much on Guardian Forces, but in FF12 they are usually only useful in the fact that getting them gets you closer to getting pieces of equipment that are more useful than the Espers themselves. Most of the time you want to beat Chaos to get to the vendor in the corner of his lair and not the Esper himself. It just sort of felt backwards
5.) Random chests and certain events. I strongly dislike the random chest mechanics of this game especially when things are geared away from positive acquiring of items. I disliked it in Crystal Chronicles and the same frustration is carried over here. This forces you to reset the game a lot or constantly revisit areas in an effort to have a slight chance at the chests containing an item that isn't utter crap. In that same respect often you will have to revisit different locations during random area effects like when it is raining or cloudy requiring more revisiting and going in and out of areas and again enduring the load times
6.) The music. It is well below the quality of the other FF games
7.) Characters playwise are all similar in the latter part of the game. Eventually you just play with whoever you think looks the coolest
8.) Here at last is my number one problem Final Fantasy 12, the weak storyline, pacing, and narration. All of the characters could have been cool, but the storyline seems forgotten 90% of the time you are playing the game. The Final Fantasy series has its reputation strongly from the novel like quality storyline you receive and FF12 just neglects it to focus more on maps and gameplay. In the end characters die and somehow you can tell we were supposed to care, but we don't. Heck you hardly even knew who they were, so why should you care. You don't hardly know what the characters motivations or ambitions even are really or what drives them to fight so hard and risk their lives for the endeavors throughout the game. In short you don't really care about any of them either way, not even the villain. I can't say that you hate him, or anything he's just this obstacle to climb over and than he's forgotten. In the end you don't laugh, cry, or hardly care in any way. I've never left a Final Fantasy feeling that way. I saw potential for characters that was just never capitalized on
The Good
1.) The graphics. The graphics look great. The watercolor like pastel tones are a great escape from the graphics that we are used to in the series.
2.) The gameplay is innovative. I really didn't like it at first and than I realized much of that had to do with frustration over the early level of difficulty. After I got used to the playstyle I found myself liking it and I really see this as a positive evolution in the series. In the end I found myself liking ADB, but I can see how many will not. I think given time many will find the new mechanics very similar to what they are used to in the "traditional" series. Some will not like having to do the initial "programming" of the games AI with the gambit system, but once it is set you really don't have to do it again often. Many who reprogram the gambit system often for larger battles I can see getting frustrated, but me I found something that roughly stuck and stayed with it.
3.) Whilst I did complain about "too many sidequests" above most of it has to do with the constant running around and travel. The fact that the sidequests are expansive make continuing to play Final Fantasy enjoyable. If you get "everything" before finishing the game expect the last guy to be a walk in the park, but if you reserve some of the harder exploration till later and at a leisurely pace you can get well over 120+ hours worth of play out of this game. That can really help you get your money out of this game
In the end, I see this as the first step towards the direction FF is going. To me it was a bit of an ackward step, but I still am optimistic and I think looking at it more and more we are headed to good times with this piece. The storyline was disappointing and I often wonder what those mentioning a "great story" in their reviews were coming from or if they played any of the other FF titles before this one. I think if they continue to develop the battle system and work in a more solid storyline than we'll be very impressed with FFXIII, until than these are growing pains and even as a weaker FF (in my opinion) this is still a great game and deserves a good rating as it is still well above most games we see released now. I think it is well worth playing through and I think most will be satisfied
Rating: 
-
Final Fantasy XII is a pretty good game. The graphics are not as good as in Final Fantasy X or X-2. The story plotline is easy to understand but it's so adult like. The battle system is kind of hard but a lot of fun. It takes forever to level up in this game. The overall hardness in the game is 3 out 5 stars for me anyway. That is not why I rated the game 2 stars though. The reason the fun is 3 stars and the overall game is 2 stars is because the graphics are not as good as X or X-2. The gameplay gets pretty boring after a while. And that the story is so boring. The plus sides of the game is that at least the story is easy to understad. The overall gameplay is good(exept for the battle system). And that all the cool abilitis you can get. That is basicely it
Rating: 
-
Incredible graphics, voice acting, and storyline. Awesome new battle system really keeps the game moving. Plenty of side quests for those who wish to make the most of the game. Easily the best RPG I've ever played.
Rating: -
The game reminds me all too much of the very game I was trying to escape by playing it, World of Warcraft. The battle systems in FF games past were the very reason I grew so fond of them. Having to worry about "adds" and "hate/threat" (MMO terms) is REALLY not what I was looking forward to.
Also, the licensing system in this game it very annoying at times and is difficult to keep track of "who has which license?"
One last thing, it is very hard to feel like you're making progress in this game. I've been playing for over 30 hours now and I have 3 characters at level 21. Feels like I've been playing for years to get to that point! There are also characters I'll never use so I hope they're not important later, because to level 6 characters with as long as it takes to do so would cause me to turn off the game and want to play World of Warcraft again.
I suggest playing any one of the FFVII-FFX2 titles over again. I think that would be more enjoyable.
I hope the next FF game goes back to feeling like a turn-based RPG again and not an MMO.
(I gave this 2 stars because I do like the cinematic parts of the game).
More Information
HOMECredit Cards - Mortgages - Wester Union - Loans - Loans 