In terms of producing a story driven Final Fantasy game, SquareEnix sort of skipped a semi cycle in the series when it introduced Final Fantasy XI as the successor to the highly popular Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy XI was more of a community game that players can meet online to join in an adventure through various missions and quests than a singular story. After Final Fantasy XI was released, SquareEnix announced the next Final Fantasy game to be is a direct spin off sequel to Final Fantasy X called Final Fantasy X-2. X-2 while featuring popular characters from Final Fantasy X wasn't really presented and introduced as an rpg game. Not in the way of what past Final Fantasy games were presented. So with the announcement and introduction of Final Fantasy XII as the next true rpg game from the Final Fantasy series, the anticipation and excitement were very high. Final Fantasy XII does have a hard road to follow as it is considered to be the predecessor of Final Fantasy X, a game that some fans may consider to be one of the best in the series. Unfortunately for some of the hard core fans, they may end up being disappointed in Final Fantasy XII as it was more or less set up as a spin off of Final Fantasy XI online. In this case, how Final Fantasy XI would play if it wasn't set up as an online MMORPG game. The similarities between Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XI are quite evident. This will pleased a lot of Final Fantasy XI fans but may disappoint the majority of Final Fantasy fans that don't play the online Final Fantasy game. But one thing we can say for sure. This is indeed a new experience for the series and for fans as Final Fantasy XII is the next approach in the revolution of rpg gameplay. But is this a good thing? We'll see…
STORY
A love that is too short.
I will crush all for Archadia!
For a short time in the world of Ivalice there was peace between the neighboring countries of Archadia, Rozarria, Nabradia, and Dalmasca. During this time of peace there was a royal wedding between the Prince of Nabradia, Rasler, and the Princess of Dalmasca, Ashe. The celebration of the blissful wedding of the two countries was shorted lived however when the Archadian Empire decided to invade Nabradia and Dalmasca. Despite the combine efforts of both allied countries, Nabradia and Dalmasca fell under the onslaught of the Archadian military might. Prince Rasler fell in battle leading the combine forces of Dalmasca and Nabradia against the Archadian Army. Shortly after this, King Raminas, ruler of Dalmasca was slain at a signing peace treaty with the Archadian Empire. Princess Ashe, the only survival left of the royal family of Dalmasca went into hiding.
Two years have passed since the war and by now, Dalmasca has been occupied by the Archadian Empire. The capital city of Dalmasca, Rabanastre, awaits the arrival of a newly appointed consul from Archadia, Lord Vayne, to take control of governing Dalmasca for the Empire. However a boy name Vaan, who lives on the street of Rabanastre because he was left alone in the world when his brother died during the war, plans to spoil Lord Vayne celebration of being appointed consul by breaking into the royal palace and stealing some of it's riches. Unfortunately for Vaan, things didn't go as planned as just at the same time that he was breaking into the treasury of the palace, a rebel force led by Princess Ashe was also breaking into the palace for its treasures, while another third group, two sky pirates by the name of Balthier and Fran was doing the same thing. But the end result for all three groups, Vaan, Ashe, Balthier, and Fran, was them ending up being incarcerated by the Empire to be sent to prison for theft. Here is where our story begins as these individuals drawn together by a common goal soon learned of the Empire plans on excavating ancient power crystals called Magicite from Dalmasca to further their war efforts toward the larger western Empire called Rozarria. Realizing the power of Magicite, Princess Ashe too also wishes to pursue this goal but to use the power of the Magicite to liberate her country Dalmasca and Nabradia from Archadian rule. Vaan and the others agreed to help the Princesss on her quest for Magicite. Join them on a journey across Ivalice that will reveal the ancient history behind Ivalice and the Empire secret need for the power of Magicite.
Now I have to give credit to SquareEnix for trying a different kind of story with Final Fantasy XII. Normally in regular rpg games including those of the Final Fantasy series, rpg stories always comprised of two key elements, a love story and a saving the world story. In Final Fantasy XII you don't really have those two key elements. There's no love story here between the main characters. There's a love that is lost sub plot that is more of a prologue to the story than an actual key plotline of the main story. And instead of saving the world, you are trying to prevent a war and liberating a country that is being occupied by another country. This is a good try on something that is new but it also result in a bit of a failure in a sense that the story isn't as interesting overall and lack emotion to it. In essence the story comes off kind of plain to gamers. Having an emotional value pretty much comes from a love story plot because in a love story plot, you got two people trying to overcome odds to fall in love with each other. And as a reader of such a sub plot, you want to root for them so you start to care about those characters. So without a love story, you don't really have an emotional value to root for these characters in this story. On the flipside of things, the story is focus on trying to show us how painful it is to lose everything you love from your home to your husband and relatives due to war. This might be a good angle if done right but that's not the case here. The game doesn't really do any in-depth sub plot in telling us anything about the connections between the main characters and the love ones that they lost. It's like watching the news and hearing about some people being killed and how their relatives are coping with their tragic deaths. You have sympathy for these surviving relatives but you don't connect with them and their pain because they are still a bunch of strangers. This is how it is with Ash and her husband, Rasler and Vaan and his brother Reks. They're like strangers to us because the story doesn't really focus much on their relationship for us to be able to connect to what they have lost in terms of love ones. Hence there's no emotional attachment to the characters in this story and to the story itself from gamers. Now looking at the other key plot lines in regards to stopping the war and throwing out the occupying Archadian Empire, this too is a bit of a failure. It started out as a strong promising story but then falls short once the gameplay begins. The Archadian Empire can conquer the two neighboring countries but can't seem to stop 6 ragged individuals. That doesn't seem too realistic. Add into the sub plot that the villains such as Vayne and Dr. Cidolfus seem to be oddballs than cool bad guys. You never really can figure out what the goals of Vayne and Dr. Cidolfus were in this game. The journey of just running around looking for the power of magicite seem quite uninteresting most of the time. With a lack of direction of what the bad guys and good guys' goals are, the story seems to just fall flat in the end. Add into the fact that you just can't seem to care for the good guys to win at all really hurt this story. This is clearly one of the weaker Final Fantasy story around, very disappointing.
Score 7/10
CHARACTERS
We are the resistance!
The cast of characters is made up of Ashe, Vaan, Basch, Penelo, Balthier, and Fran. That's a nice round of 6 main characters that the story focuses on. The supporting cast and villains make up an additional 6 characters or so. Each of the main characters are presented and portrayed excellently by their voice actors bringing these animated character to life very realistically. The story itself does give each of the main characters a bit of focus in terms of their individual development but it doesn't development them enough. Nor do the main characters personalities really shine out in this game compare to the other Final Fantasy games. There are a few problems with this. The first problem is that despite having 6 main characters, the story or game itself doesn't really have a leading male and female character unlike with previous Final Fantasy games. In the past you always know that the story will eventually always revolve around a love story with the leading male and female character. But in Final Fantasy XII, that's not the case. There really is no leading male hero in this game. You might be able to say that Ashe is the leading female character but her character comes off more of a supporting role in this game because she doesn't really have a leading male character to work with. Ashe herself is a bit underdeveloped because the story didn't dig too much into her past for us to feel her pain. There's so much potential in Ashe's character since she lost the most in this story, her lover/husband, her father, and her kingdom. But the story didn't really go in-depth with her relationship with her father or her relationship with her husband Rasler so you can't feel for her grief too much. Despite previews and commercial press releases, Vaan isn't really a main hero or character in this game. Not in sense that his character is a major impact in the storyline. To be perfectly honest, the storyline could have been done without him. Vaan and his friend Penelo are more or less tag along characters that are following the group on an adventure than characters that had a real purpose in this story. With Ashe's character, she had a purpose in the story and that's to restore her kingdom. Vaan and Penelo are just tagging along to help her. Basch is Ashe's protector so he does have a purpose in the story but his personality is too one dimensional and rarely does he talk much other than a few grunts here and there for gamers to like him. Fran is much like Basch in a sense that she is mostly quiet during the story except for a few scenes where she has a few lines. The story does touch up a bit on the fact that she left her people and her village but it doesn't really show us why she left the village and how she became Balthier close friend and partner. Of all the main characters, Balthier is probably the most colorful and likeable. Maybe it's because all the other characters are too bland that he just stands out more. But he himself lacks the kind of quality that really makes him a special character in the story. I believe that some of the supporting casts of characters and villains have more potential to be great characters in this game than the actual main characters. Lord Rasler looks he could have been a great main character and hero. Judge Gabranth and Prince Larsa are also supporting characters that could have been better as main characters. In the end the best you can say is that the cast of characters have potential to be great characters but they fall flat because the story itself isn't really focus on any character in particular. At the end of the whole storyline, you just don't really care much about these main characters or what happens to them. If you don't really care about the characters than the story tends to fall flat for you and that's the bottom line.
Score: 7/10
GRAPHICS
This world we live in...
There's no doubt that the graphics in this game is probably one of the best if not the best in terms of Playstation 2 presentation on graphical achievements. The FMV in this game is in top quality that seems to come out of the latest Star Wars movies. In fact the entire game presentation seems to be design with a heavy influence from the Star Wars movies. Futuristic towns with futuristic space fighters battling it out in a full invasion scoop. Each of the background settings from the inside of spaceships to towns are done with exceptionally realistic details. The characters models are large and life like with realistic features. The only flaw in terms of the character models is that their skin seems to be smoothed out with the coloring instead of being more define and sharper. But overall the game designers spent a lot of time making sure this 3D futuristic world came off as real as possible. I like how during gameplay the character models move and fight in such a realistic fashion that it's very impressive to watch. The weather effects in each of the various different areas are too realistic in this game and it's great. This really is an impressive and gorgeous game.
Score: 9/10
MUSIC
A time for celebration.
If you look at Final Fantasy XII Soundtrack then you'll notice that it consist of over 50 excellently composed musical scores for just about every gameplay situation. From battle scores to storyline scores. Variety isn't the problem. Quality itself isn't the problem as all the scores are rendered excellently. What is a problem in terms of Final Fantasy music standard is that there aren't any really strong musical scores that stands out like with previous Final Fantasy games. If you play the game from beginning to near the end, there really isn't one musical score that you can identify this game with after you finish playing this game. I think the music is more in line with Final Fantasy IX where it's good but nothing memorable that you can consider classical scores in the future. The one best musical song theme that Final Fantasy XII has is called Kiss Me Good Bye but that is a song shown in the ending CG movie of the game. And that kind of made the best song theme useless if it's done more as a closing credit movie song than an actual song during the game. If judging by just rpg musical standard than I would have to say the music is very good in this game. But if you judging the music base on Final Fantasy standard than I would have to say the music is just above average only. The voice acting in this game is by far top notch that I just had to put this in there incase anyone is worrying about the quality of the voice acting.
Score: 8/10
GAMEPLAY
Die Gilgamesh, die!!!
A Quickening to go!!!
Game Information
Genre: Traditional RPG
Publisher: Square Enix
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 94 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Analog Control: Yes
Digital Control: Yes
Vibration Function: Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: October 2006
As mention earlier, if you've been playing Final Fantasy XI online than getting into this new gameplay system isn't too difficulty but if you haven't tried Final Fantasy XI than Final Fantasy XII is a whole new approach to everything. The way you make money, the way you fight, and the way you unlock skills and abilities. The gameplay itself is very story driven and linear so for the most point you pretty much know where to go and what to do. You can always check the overhead map for markings that will direct you on where you destination is for your next objective in the game. And in worst case scenario, you can talk to the moogle at each save points for hints on what to do next as well incase you are totally lost. For towns, dungeons, and fields, the game uses a map system that you will need to buy maps or find maps in a jar in dungeons to unlock the overhead view map completely. Still exploring dungeons, towns or fields aren't too hard. Just takes a bit of time. There are many new key features in that game that we will discuss in each of the key feature section but for now we'll stick to a quick overview of the battle system, the job system, and the loot system. We'll talk about the loot system first. In the old Final Fantasy system, the way to make gil is mostly to just kill monsters and they drop gil. That was pretty easy and simple. However in this game, making money doesn't really come from getting gil from monster kills. Oh sure monsters do drop gil but not enough to make much difference. So how do you make gil? Well you make gil from getting the loot that the monsters drop behind. 90% of the loot or items if you will call it that that the monsters drop behind when killed are useless items that serve no purpose in the game. These items are called loot. You than take these loot and just sell them to merchant to get gil in return. Now in the beginning most of the loot you get won't sell for a lot of gil so you still have a bit of a hard time making gil to buy updated weapons, armors, and spells. But as you start playing more and more of the game and opening up chests, doing mini hunts, and getting more valuable loot, you'll be swimming with lots of gil near the end. Now you're wondering why not just cut away the middle ground and get rid of the loot and just give us more gil from killing monsters than making us sell the loot for gil, right? Well the reason why there's a loot system is because it's connected to the newly bazaar system. See in addition to the regular Buy and Sell option that merchants carry, merchants now have a Bazaar menu that you can buy goods for cheaper prices or rare goods that aren't offer through the Buy menu. This is where you can obtain some of the best armors and weapons in the game. However in order to make certain rare merchandises available in the Bazaar menu, you need to sell a certain amount of loots and the right kind of loots to merchants, hence why the Loot system and Loot items are important. This gaming concept is known as farming in Final Fantasy XI. You're basically killing monsters in hopes of getting those rare loots to drop so you can sell them to merchants to be able to unlock rare goods in Bazaar. It's a very time consuming process but it's also a bit of fun. And it's definitely new to the world of Final Fantasy. It takes a bit of understanding but it's not hard to understand. Now that we got the Loot system out of the way, let's look at the Job system. With previous Final Fantasy games, party members usually get assign to a job class or automatically come with a job class. Once a person is assigned to a job class they can only cast spells or use skills or wear armors and weapons specific to that job class. In this game the job class system is more flexible in a sense that anyone can equip any armor, weapons, use any type of magic, and skills as long as they are able to unlock them in their License Boards. We'll overview the License Board a little later. But what this means is that anyone can be any job at any time. You're not limited to just having a party member being limited to only 1 or 2 job classes. The key to customizing a party member to the best of their function in the party is base on the gear and weapons you have them take on. If you want a fighter to be a heavy duty attacker that takes hits than you would want them to be geared more toward heavy armors and powerful one handed weapons. If you want a fighter to be more of a mage than you want them in mage clothes. It's actually the gear in this game that actually round out a fighter in terms of their stats base on the job class function you want that fighter to serve as. Understanding this is very important to mastering the job classes in Final Fantasy XII. Now the most noticeable change is the battle system. Gone is the old traditional turn base system where once you get into a random encounter, you are placed into a battle mode view in a 3-D turn base setting. Here in this game, fights actually take place in regular game mode instead of switching to a battle mode screen in a semi action base system using an active time system in real time or none real time. You can have the option of making it real time or not from the option menu but having it in real time make the flow of the fights go faster since this game is pretty much a live action battle system. The battle system is pretty similar to those of the Tales of Destiny series where you can control one party member while the CPU controls those other party members. The only difference here is that the option that Final Fantasy XII provides is so much more than what a Tales game would provide. For this active time system, Final Fantasy XII uses an Aggro system combine with the Gambit feature. The best way to describe it is like this, as you wander through various dungeons and fields you'll see monsters roaming around. Far different than the random encounter system seen in past Final Fantasy games but not so unique that other rpg games haven't already used such as system. The aggro system comes into effect as soon as you get close to a monster. If you get too close to a monster and it sees you than it will aggro you. So think of the word aggro as another word for attack. However the unique thing is that there are different types of aggro. Some monsters will aggro base only on sight while others will aggro if you use magic around it or if your HP is low. For example an undead skeleton will aggro you base on sight but if you are far away and it can't see you but if you are low in HP than it too can aggro base on that criteria from far away even though it can't see you. That's what I mean when I say different types of aggro condition. However not all monsters in this game have an aggro to them. Some monsters are peaceful monsters that won't attack you unless you attack it. The thing about understanding aggro is that not only are there different types of aggro, you also have to be aware of your surrounding areas becomes even if you aggro only one monster initially, some monster will link with other monsters in the area and next thing you know you're being gang up by a bunch of monsters instead of just one initial monster. Once you do aggro a monster, the only way to get rid of the aggro is to run and zone into another field or dungeon area or to stand and fight till the monster or monsters are dead. It's a bit different from random encounters but it's something that you'll get use to pretty quickly. Now when deciding to fight, your party members will wait for you to individually input their command just like a turn base system. However this might not be too practical if you are fighting in real time in a semi action system. It slows down the flow of the battles. Which party members or monsters get an action first is base on the speed gauge of the action gauge. What effects the speed of the action gauge can be spells such as haste or slow or gears that a party member wear. For instance, party members that wear light armor would probably move faster than party members that wear heavy armors. The action you can do of course varies base on regular attack, use items, cast spells, use Quickening, or summon an Esper like with most rpg games. As stated this is semi action game on a 3D game environment where you can move around the entire game field but in order an action to take into effect you need to be up close to a target. Inputting commands to all four party members might be a bit hard to do if you are on real time mode so the best you want to do is rely on the Gambit system. Like with other action rpg games that have party members where you the player control one party members and the CPU controls the others through various settings on how you want the CPU to control the other party members in terms of their behavior in battles. What's great about Final Fantasy XII is that it allows you to have the CPU control all four party members for almost every situation through the use of Gambits. This is almost as realistic as you can get in terms of an AI playing the game as if a real person is behind it. What Gambit does is allow you to pre-select each party member behavior in battles for each situation. For example if you want them to be a healer or heavy damage fighter or cast spells for certain type of conditions or weaknesses, Gambits can do that for you. In essence Gambits are conditions, reactions, and actions that you can place on each party member during fights for every possible situation as if a real live person was controlling each party member. The list of settings of each conditions, reactions, and situation is truly impressive that has never been done before. For the first time ever, you can actually play the entire game by having the CPU pretty much do all your battles for you from beginning of the game to the end of the game including those boss fights. You don't even have to worry about the CPU messing up fights for you because through the use of Gambits, you can change the conditions, reactions, and actions quickly that you can adapt to each fights perfectly. For the first time ever, I actually play an entire rpg game where the CPU pretty much controls all the fights for me. I might change the Gambits setting here and there to adapt to each fights but that's about it. Now you're thinking well if the CPU is controlling all the battles than that's no fun. But that's not the case here. You can still control the movements of the party members and it is fun to actually sit back and watch the fights and observe the fight than worry about healing each party members or taking the right actions against certain enemies. In other words it's a more relax atmosphere that makes it still fun. And really in this real time semi action rpg game, you are better off having the CPU control most of your party members. This active time system with Gambits and Aggro is a whole new level of rpg gaming. You're either going to like it or you going to hate it. I personally enjoyed it a lot as the flow of the game and the battles are very fast paced. Now we'll look at some of the other new features that this game offers up in terms of key elements.
Gate/Save Crystals: You can find save crystals in towns and dungeons. Besides simply providing saves for you in the game, save crystals will also restore your party health to full. Gate crystals act in the same way as a save crystal but they provide an additional option that allow you to teleport to another Gate crystals that you have already visited. This is a great way to quickly travel and revisit previous towns and dungeons without having to trek on foot through various areas. Licenses: The center point in terms of feature is center on Licenses and the License Board. In order to use everything in this game from magick to equipment, you'll need to first activate the licenses for them. You can always buy magick, equipment, and technicks from shops but they won't be useable until you are able to unlock their Licenses on the License Board. Each party member has a License Board that already have some licenses revealed and activated as a starting point. From each individual starting point on the License Board, you can slowly activate new licenses for each party member depending on how you want to develop them as a fighter in this game. For example if you want to develop a fighter as a healing mage first than you would want to activate the licenses that open up healing magick and any other license gear and augmentation that would strengthen that party member as a healing mage. Eventually at the end of the game you're most likely to have unlocked all the licenses on the board but at the beginning you probably want to prioritize what licenses you want to open up first to develop each party member the way you like. In order to unlock a license you'll need to spend license points which you get from killing monsters and bosses in this game. In a strange way the License Board is very addicting in itself. Espers: In Final Fantasy XII we see the return of the Espers which were previously called Guardians in the last few Final Fantasy games. The interesting thing to note here is that all the Espers in this game are new and original. In previous Final Fantasy games, Espers or Guardians were always reincarnated ones from previous prequels. Summoning Espers will require you to have the right amount of Mist Charges as each Espers vary in levels from 1 to 3 when it comes to summoning cost. When you summon an Esper, all the other party members disappear except for the party member that summons that Esper. You can't really control what an Esper does once it is summon but they usually just use their special attacks on nearby enemies. Each Esper themselves have their own special finishing move that they will use if the right conditions are met. Espers are nice to see in this game but not really too practical to use in this game. Quickening: Quickening are powerful individual attacks that can be combine into a combo attack with other party members to do massive damage to a monster that can end with a finishing powerful area of effect spell called Concurrences. There are different types of Quickening and each Quickening can vary from level 1 to level 3. Quickening uses the same Mist Charges that summon Espers use and will drain all your MP once you start a Quickening. Early on in the game to midway point of the game, using Quickening can be very helpful to you in destroying some of the tough boss fights if you are able to chain the Quickenings into combos.
Keep in mind like with most other things, in order for a party member to use a Quickening, they first need to unlock the license of the Quickening on the License Board. Once that's done than Quickening option will be available on the menu screen. Gambits: Gambits are customizable commands that can direct characters to automatically perform certain tasks during battle or while adventuring. Gambits are broken into two category, one is "target" which represents the character or foe an action will be carried out on and the other is "action" which is the action that will be perform on the target. You can buy Gambit commands at a Gambit shop or find Gambit commands in treasure chests. Magicks: Magic or in this case Magick comes in five types of category and they are White Magick, Black Magick, Green Magick, Time Magick, and Arcane Magick. Any party members can use magick but you'll need to first unlock the magick spell on the License Board and then purchase the magick at the local Magick Shop. Technicks: Technicks work in a similar way as magick but they are more or less technique skills that work more as special abilities. And once again anyone can use a technick as long as they have it unlocked on the License Board and you manage to purchase the technick at the Technicks shop. Mist Charges: In order for you to summon Espers or use Quickening attacks, you will need some Mist Charges available. The Mist gauge will start off with level 1 gauge but as you gain higher Espers and Quickening, your Mist gauge will reach level 3 consisting of 3 charges with different levels. The number of charges you need to use in order to summon a certain Esper or Quickening will vary base on the level of the Quickening and Esper. Once you use a Quickening or Esper regardless of their level, your Mist Charge will reset to zero. Your Mist Charge will slowly refill as time goes by as you move around or you can automatically refill your Mist Charge at a Save Point. Battle Chains: When you start defeating enemies of the same type of classification in consecutive rows, you will start to build up a chain known as Battle Chain. As the Battle Chain start to grow in level, so do the chances of monsters dropping the rarer valuable loot. In essence the best way to get rare drops from monsters is to create a high battle chain. Loot/Bazaar: Items that drop from monsters are known as loot. Most of the loot are useless items that you can just sell to make money. Some of the rarer loot are ones that you do need to acquire and sell in order to activate certain goods to be available to be sold in bazaar. Bazaar merchandise themselves won't become available until you sell a certain number of required loot to shop merchants. Most of the bazaar merchandises are much cheaper than ones that are sold through regular shops and some are even exclusive to only bazaars.
The first thing you want to do when looking at the gameplay after analyzing all the new features and changes in this game compare to previous Final Fantasy games is to see if it's still fun to play. And the conclusion to that analysis is that it is very fun to play and enjoyable. What makes the game good or great in this case is the easy flow of the game and the fast pace of it. The game can be a semi turn base system or a totally real time active system automated by the CPU. That's the beauty of this game play is that it let you dictate what sort of battle system you want to use. Even if you want to use a semi or full automated system, the game total customization of what you want each party member to do is so great that you can actually relax and not have to worry if the CPU is doing the right thing or not. The introduction of Gambits is probably the best thing for this new active time system. Dungeon crawling becomes more fun as all you have to do is maneuver your party members through the various corridors and the game does the rest. It makes the pace of the gameplay very fast and enjoyable. Leveling up is also easy to do but not a major requirement in this game, it's really have the right gear to fully set your party into a lean mean fighting machine. The thing that's great about the customization is that each party member pretty much can be set up into any particular jobs just by having them wear the right gear for it. You can also customize each party member's strength and weaknesses through the License Board as well which once again with the right gear on, they can easily be fully maximize even without any major leveling. In here it's not about the right level you are on to beat the game but the way you customize your party member. The change in the gil system or how to obtain gil in this game can be a bit rough at first as most players will struggle to make money in the beginning of the game. Very similar to how players struggle to make gil in Final Fantasy XI. But as you start to sell off your loot that you acquire from monsters and chests, you'll be swimming with lots of gil near the end of the game. The game does take a bit of getting used to but in general it's very fun to play. The only problem I have with the game is probably the low drop rates and low steal rates and randomness of some of the loots in chests and from monsters. This is assuming you are trying to get a complete game and obtain all the best weapons and armors in the game. This really becomes a major time sink in the game and an annoyance that it takes away the fun of the game. Why SquareEnix likes to waste our time like this is beyond me. I know that getting the best weapons and gear in the game should be a bit hard but come on, having some of the monsters that drop these loots at a drop rate of 3% or less is just plain ridiculous that there's no fun in trying to obtain the best weapons and armors in the game. Outside of the horrible drop rates and randomness of items in chest, I have to say this is one of the most fun rpg game I've played in a long time.
Score: 10/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
50 Million HP boss? No way!
Leave it to SquareEnix to ensure that Final Fantasy XII offers the best there is when it comes to extras. If looking at the hours spent on just the regular story gameplay, you are a looking at about 80 hours of gameplay. Now if you are looking to do a complete game which includes all the small side quests, extra bosses, and mini games, you can chalk the total gameplay hour to over 160 hours. That's a full extra 80 hours of gameplay. That's staggering isn't it? There's only about a couple of mini games in this game that are minor that you can do to win some cool items. The mini games are however in my opinion kind of hard to do so it takes the fun in trying to do them. There are quite a few small to medium size quests in the game that you can do early in the game to near the end of the game. Each side quest will reward you with gil or items upon completing them. Now the main bulk of the extras clearly come from the enormous amount of extra bosses that you can fight. These are delivered to you in the Hunt Club, the Notice Board, and at the Clan Center. These boss fights known as Hunts can range from pretty easy to super hard bosses. There's even a boss that has over 50 million HP that will take you hours to try and take down, even days if your party levels aren't that high. This game is really rewarding when it comes to offering so many extra challenging bosses for players to fight. In addition to the extra bosses known as Rare Monsters from the Hunts, you also have extra hidden Espers that you can fight to acquire them. Gamers would definitely be satisfied when it comes to the extra offerings that this game gives. The disappointment comes in the fact that there's no real replay value at all. No new game+ or anything like that which is truly sad as this game could use some better encouragement for players to try and play this game again as I can see some gamers not giving this game a fair shake on its first try.
Score: 10/10
Final Fantasy XII is the last Final Fantasy game for the Playstation 2, paving the way for Final Fantasy XIII on the Playstation 3. In a strange way, Final Fantasy XII also marks an end to the way the old Final Fantasy system have been played since Final Fantasy VII and a new beginning to a new system that is more adaptive to this generation of gamers that play MMORPG. I believe that the days of the old turn base traditional system have become irrelevant in this new generation of gamers in place of a newer active system that combines real time and turn base called the active time system that was introduce in Final Fantasy XI and in Final Fantasy XII. I fully believe Final Fantasy XIII on the Playstation 3 will also use something similar to this active time system. It's the changing of the guard I suppose just as Final Fantasy VII was the changing of the guard from the old school Final Fantasy 16 bit era. You are either going to love Final Fantasy XII or you going to be very disappointed by it. The new generation of Final Fantasy players especially those that are online gamers from Final Fantasy XI will probably love Final Fantasy XII more than those that haven't played Final Fantasy XI. There's no middle ground here, you'll either going to love this game or hate it. As a Final Fantasy XI player I fully enjoyed this game but yet at the same time I was a bit disappointed from it as it lacks the emotion that most Final Fantasy game carries. That's more due to the fact that the story wasn't as interested as it could be nor were the characters very interesting. The one thing you can always say about previous Final Fantasy games in the last 10 years or so is that they always had key central characters and a love story that gives off a special feel to the game. Unfortunately for Final Fantasy XII, it lacks a key central character and a love story to help give that special feeling. If you were to rank Final Fantasy XII amongst the other Final Fantasy games since the introduction of Final Fantasy VII, than I would say it's more inline with Final Fantasy IX. A more forgettable game as time grew by which is unfortunate.
