As promised: FFXII

Yesterday I promised to do two reviews, one for SoM, the other for Final Fantasy 12. I'll begin with things I love about this game: ....

Done! Scratch one thing off my list. Now things I'm surprised about: The ratings this game has received by popular websites. Almost all of them gave the game a near or actually perfect score. I cannot believe this. I'll give them that the game looks fantastic for the last final fantasy game on playstation 2. Here's the opening. Save for that there isn't much I liked about it.

The story was meh.... you follow some wiener kid named Vann around on his stupid adventures. Some "epic" crap goes down and you wiener you way through meeting some rabbit girl.... ughhhhhh just remembering all the time I wasted on this "hit" game makes me want to cry. All I remember was the ending was so unspectacular that it took like 2 minutes of a cut scene to finish up.  That can be found here. I was wrong, 5 minutes, but who cares, there is a ring and ship, ending complete. Yay! It ends with the kid doing his dream and becoming a "sky pirate." Great dream kid, you wanted to become an outlaw and did it, great lesson you're teaching the youth of today.

Onto the important bits. Combat. It's a real-time fighting system with the Active Dimension Battle (ADB) system. Take the traditional ATB systems and put them into a concept where you don't enter into a battle scene and just fight it out then and there. You still have the bar that charges up before you can do anything besides moving around, or you can just run off without fighting the target. This is both good and bad. You don't have to waste time fighting every little thing that comes at you, but you're also put into situations where you could and probably should kill something just because you need the experience.

On top of the ADB system, we are now presented with the gambit system. It's basically your AI for your party. What happens is you setup conditions and then what those trigger. So something like "ally hp < 30%" and then something like "use crappy health potion". It's just as it looks, when any allies health drops below 30% that character uses a crappy health potion on the afflicted character. This can be both a savior and an annoyance. The savior bit is self explanatory. The annoyance... let's just say I setup proper gambits for all my characters and then just walked away on one of the harder optional bosses in the game. I should note that I was wayyyyyy under leveled for the encounter and I did die on it. That's not the point. The point is, assuming your did do a proper setup, had all the items you needed, and whatever other prep you might want to take, you could literally set this up and do an entire encounter without taking a single action aside from walking to the area you needed to be. I don't recall there being a single fight where positioning mattered, so you just walk in and let the game go while you're off getting high or checking your facespace or bobbing for apples or running a presidential election.... whatever you're into doing. This is a major flaw in my eyes.

I already hit graphics, but I'll touch on it again. One of the good points of the game, as I said, is its graphics. It does look pretty good for a ps2 game. They gave areas weather cycles too, a nice added touch. Rain in the Giza plains, dust storms in the.... area where there were dust storms.... ha! Nice looking cutscenes in the game too.

On the topic of graphics, it brings me to how non-linear it is. Granted you have the usual story-line you have to follow, but the maps are setup with a lot of wide open areas so you don't have to follow a tiny narrow path like FF13 has. You can also revisit virtually any area you've been to for whatever reason you might have. To grind out license points (have to touch on this still), items to get money, whatever you need. That brings me to hunts. Hunts are a sort of side-quest you can do. You go around to areas and draw out a certain special monster for some kind of reward. Basically just something entertaining to do while avoiding that lack luster story line.

Over to that license system. You get license points when you kill stuff. Spend the points on a grid to unlock things. Use of weapons, armor types, skills, mp, hp, whatever. Its an interesting system, but fails in my eyes. If you really wanted to (I did) you could basically max out your characters around 3 or 4 hours into the game. It's a flawed way to do things. I know I'm going to take shit for that (maxed out all classes and levels without leaving the first 2 areas in Final Fantasy Tactics for ps1) but its not the right way to do things in a game. It should be stepped throughout the game. Take WoW for example, you can't just make a character and then BAM! Max level with max gear. You have to actually work for what you get. Spending time isn't working for something. Having skill actually matters.... I can't believe I'm saying that after hearing what WoW has turned into...

Anyways, I'm getting sleepy, so I think its time to end this. Overall, 3/10 for FF12. Some good things, but mostly baddy bad bad bad.

Need another suggestion for what is to come next. My current option is Punchout! (I assume for NES, not this Wii version.) I'd like to avoid that if possible. Older games are harder to review in a negative light, since most of them are genre makers. Plus, I'd like to get into some newer games, 2010 and beyond, since I've done a 2006 and a 1993, both older titles.