Not exactly a Fantasy
| Platform | Presentation | Controls | Variety | Audio | Depth | Value & Fun | OVERALL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PlayStation 2 | 2.00 | 8.00 | 9.00 | 7.50 | 9.00 | 3.50 | 6.64 |
| General Information |
| Previously played game in the series: Final Fantasy (NES) |
| Gameplay Description |
|
Final Fantasy XII is an RPG in which you take control of Vaan, an orphan from the city of Rabanastre. You'll fight enemies in a real-time battle system that has you controlling up to three characters at a time; directly controlling one, and indirectly two others, and occasionally have a fourth battle "Guest" who will help you but you can't control at all. You can stop battle and choose an action for the characters out of your control, and you can set up "gambits" which tell your party members what to do in predefined situations such as if a member is under 50% health, cast Cure. As is typical of RPGs, there is levelling up, and equipping characters for better stats and resistances. A twist is that there is a License Board in which you must unlock the ability to equip these items or use new spells, using points earned in battle. The battles are heavily skewed toward managing the many status ailments. There are different spells and items that remove or cast status effects and are required for success. Something unique to the battle system are Quickenings. These are basically super magic attacks that use all your magic power, with each character being able to equip up to three (which just allow a more powerful quickening as opposed to differences). You must press a button in correspondance with an available attack from one of your characters, and doing so uses your MP. After that, you must charge, which means an extra press. There is luck involved as it's not guaranteed an attack or charge will appear, in which case you press R2 to shuffle and hope one shows up next. To summarize, press a button if you see it, otherwise press R2. Aside from following the predefined path for the game, there are sidequests that can mostly be grouped into two categories: fetch quests and hunts. Fetch quests are pretty self-explanatory, you fetch things for people. Go find a certain item and bring it back. The others are hunts in which you go to a notice board where someone has posted a bounty for a particular monster, you talk to the poster then kill the said enemy. |
| Dedication Meter | 90.00 |
| FFXII is a monster of a game that requires a lot of time and patience. Either sidequests or grinding is required, and the game balloons in length because of it. Expect over seventy hours to complete, and that's conservative. Keep in mind I don't tend to daudle too much in games either and it took me 79 hours. | |
| Presentation | 2.00 |
|
Nearly everything presentation-wise in Final Fantasy XII is an absolute disaster. Let's start with the things the game doesn't tell you: Guns, despite having low attack (at least you have that), ignore equipment from enemies and thereby can be quite strong. However, with enemies such as giant robots and monsters, among snakes and other animal creatures, it's hard to tell what "equipment" even means. Similarly, the game fails to explain the advantages of any weapons outside of direct power, at least until you buy and equip it, making axes and hammers wrongly appear as the best weapons. Additionally, an important aspect ignored in the game are Quickenings. Learning them also adds a multiplier to your total Magic Points (points used to perform magic spells which can attack, defend, heal, etc.). So, for example, you have 50MP, and learn a Quickening, your max MP jumps to 100MP. Learn another, it's up to 150. As you can see, this is very important. The only way to learn about the existence of Quickenings in the game is to go to the very edge of the License board (you start around the middle and work outward as the game progresses You very likely won't come close to learning everything on the license board, even by the end of the game.) and for squares no directly adjacent an already acquired license, you can only see the type, which would say Quickning...which you'd have no idea what it was, because the game doesn't tell you that either. Another thing with the license board is that you only get the general category of what a hidden square is, making it quite difficult to find the right license for an item. Typically they follow a pattern, however, it will suddenly change and throw a license off in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason, leaving trial-error-reset tactics or just looking up a chart online, because you can't really afford to be wasting your points. The explanations for spells can also be a little ambiguous. For "Esuna" the description is that it "removes negative status effects". However, this is not all-encompassing, and maladies such as Petrify (slowly turn to Stone, another status effect in whic your character is effectively dead) and Slow (take longer to attack/cast spells). The spell "Float" lets you hover above the ground...whatever that means. I'm still unsure what "Float" does. A good attempt to clarify range of magic was made by showing a circle on the battlefield of the range, as well as arrows beside the characters it affects if it's aimed at the party. However, the circle can be a bit hard to see, and more importantly, there isn't one for physical attacks, despite the fact that it clearly follows the same principle. There's also one that's hard to criticise, but is annoying nonetheless. Pretty much anyone who has played a few RPGs will not even bother trying to cast Poison on a boss, because bosses are ALWAYS immune to status effects. It's just always been that way. Suddenly enter FFXII where it is critical that you cast these status effects. During your adventure, you may notice your characters occasionally spontaneously combust. Well, this is another thing the game doesn't explain, which are traps. Traps are only visible if you find the technick libra on the license board, learn the license for it, buy the technick from the one shop that sells it, then apply it to your character repeatedly as it wears off over time. Do this in every area for the entire game, or else you run the risk of dying while walking in an otherwise empty hallway. The main idea here is that the game is absolutely punishing to those looking to enjoy the game by themselves, with no help of a guide. The best example of this is in the contents of treasure chests, which are percentage-based in both appearance and contents, meaning there is, for example, a 50% chance a chest will appear in this spot, with a 33% chance of a great item, and a 67% chance of complete crap. This doesn't just apply to the occasional chest along the road, though, as it also applies to rewards for optional bosses, which also follow the 50% chance of crap rule, meaning if you didn't know that, you've effectively wasted your time. |
|
| Controls | 8.00 |
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The controls are fairly straight-forward and don't require much finesse due to the generally menu-based battle system, despite being "real-time." For battle, you press X to bring up the command menu (halting battle), hold R to run away, and the right analogue stick to manoeuvre the camera. The menues are generally laid out simply enough, and navigation through them with the D-pad is functional enough. The main serious issue is with the camera control as it can get quite awkward in narrow corridors or up against a wall where the camera will get stuck at a weird angle and obstruct your view. |
|
| Variety | 9.00 |
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Final Fantasy XII packs on the content as if the game were meant to be a full-time job. The game is massive, and generally keeps things as fresh as it can, though the battles rely a bit too heavily on an excessive number of different status effects. There are quests everywhere, including the terrific idea of "hunts" which have you do bounties for people who want to be rid of certain monsters. It adds depth to the world and is an enjoyable concept. More traditional sidequests are also easy to find. Despite the side-effect quibble, there are a lot of different enemies and bosses that require unique tactics for each. There's no real way to capture in writing the variety in the bosses other than they vary in every way possible. Progression through the storyline is a little lacking relative to the rest, though, as it follows a bit of a repetitive path of fetch-dungeon-boss-travel repeat. The intent seems to be for this to augmented by the sidequests and hunts, but for those who do those casually as merely supplementary to the main story, it can become tedious. |
|
| Audio | 7.50 |
| The audio rarely stands out, but certainly isn't problematic. The actors seem a bit lacking in character and emotion, although that could partially be attributed to the dry script; regardless, it's a bit boring to the ears. The same applies to the mellow background noise for music, which outside of the ending score is much without its charms. It does its job as getting rid of the silence without being annoying, but not much else. | |
| Depth | 9.00 |
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If there's one thing to give praise to the game, its the depth. The numerous (albeir unexplained) weapons are very much welcomed, as are the obscure Quickenings. As you've probably gotten by now, the game could have used with fewer status effects, but the idea is put to relatively good use. The character system in combination with gambits creates the opportunity for some very unique and varied techniques. Timing, target, element, MP conservation, which character to control, among many other things play into each battle. The license board allows the customization of each character, although the game doesn't really permit too much uniqueness, given the nature of the status effects and constant need for healing. Characters don't level up in specific categories, such as intelligence for magic use and strength for physical attacks as some games, so pretty much every needs to learn healing magicks. |
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| Value & Fun | 3.50 |
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I'll tell you first why I found this game entirely unenjoyable, and second how you can enjoy it far more yourself. Firstly, of the 79 hours the game took me to complete, approximately 30 hours were spent grinding. Secondly, this can be generally avoided if you understand that hunts are mandatory and you have a guide to help you. I'll explain first the reason for the insane amount of level-grinding. There are two things to know about me: 1. I do sidequests are only if I feel like it, and 2. I do not level-grind unless absolutely necessary. What this led to was a continuously more difficult and frustrating, losing battle against the increasing disparity in my own party's level and the minimum level and equipment needed for success. Having gone through more than a third, perhaps a half, of the game without any Quickenings didn't help either. But it's not all just grinding sucks, this game sucks. There are also some fundamental issues with the battle system that will exist regardless. The gambit system is essentially a sloppy fix to a tedious menu system forced by an obnoxious battle system. Gambits are not as accurate or quick as your own input, which means by assigning them, you are effectively saying that you'll trade efficiency just to speed things along. If you want to have the absolute best results, you'll input every single command youself by pressing X to bring up the menu and giving every menial command. Also aggrevating is the real-time vs. turn-based paradox that exists in the system. While no, you never enter a battle screen and enter commands in a turn-based fashion, your physical location plays a very strange role that is mostly irrelevant once fully in battle. The tactics that become most practical are the most annoying, time consuming and boring. For example, magic slowly charges over time, but only as you walk. What this means is that the most practical thing to do is that after every battle, you run in circles for a while to let your MP restore. Not only that, but this applies to all the characters following you, who won't move if you run in a little circle, so you have to do large laps. Similarly, the best tactic for targeting a wild enemy is to shoot it with a projectile weapon which gets it to target you, then run back past your other characters who cheap shot it while it tries to get within range of your character. It's bizarre, stupid but unfortunately effective. Another irritant is that despite supposedly not having random encounters since you can see monsters on the map and avoid them, monsters also consistently fall from the sky or pop out of the ground and immediately attack. Real-time or not,this is a random encounter. The most enraging of all could be the occasional lack of a save point before a boss. No wait, the most enraging is not the lack of a save point before a boss -- it's the lack of a save point before a boss...after you just beat a boss without a save point before it. Yes, that does in fact happen. The sidequests, which could have been a redeeming feature for those who enjoy them, cripple themselves in absurdity. The short answer is that they are convoluted, confusing, non-directional fetch-quests, from what I experienced. If you need more detail as to why, read the following example of one sidequest I attempted: -Read the Hunt board (hunt down a certain monster for someone) -Go find who posted it and get further information -Go kill the enemy -I am given a flower taken from the enemy as proof of its demise -Talk to the SAME GUY a second time and he tells you to give the flower to his wife -Cross the desert to talk to his wife, get told to go back and tell something to the husband -Get told to take something back to the wife -Wife says thanks, and I get nothing -Leave the city -Immediately return -Talk to the kid who now stands at a dock -Agree to help him look for his dad -Watch cutscene -Cross back and find the living cactus -Bring the cactus back -Go back to the camp and talk to the wife and get told to find seashells -Find tiny sparkles near the shore -Bring the shells back to the wife, who then asks for an item from a different hunt which I had already done. This item was not in my important items, but instead in my Loot which means I could have sold it and been screwed. -Agree to give the item -Get asked to go back to get something from the husband -Go back to husband, get told I can get it "by those crates" -Circle several crate piles until finding the item -Walk back across the desert -Get asked to go get something from the edge of some cliff -Cross the water again and enter an area with overpowered enemies that I have to constantly run away from -Search serveral cliffs -Find item and return across several desert screens and the river -Wander around for 10 minutes -Come back to talk to healed person (reason for the wife asking for help) -Get given a key to freakin dungeon As you can imagine, I am lucky the disc and my PS2 are both still in tact. |
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| Overall | 6.64 |
| The game can be fun, despite the boring, pompous story and flawed battle system, if not for the utter failure in presentation. Be prepared with a guide and you're set. If you love sidequests, you may be fine. Oh, just be sure to have 80 hours to spare. | |
Posted by Ellyoda Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:00:00
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