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View Full Version : Final Fantasy 12: (some spoilers ahead)


reploidx
11-09-2006, 04:14 PM
So i didn't see an review for this game yet, so i decided to give it a shot. I just got this game last night from my workplace (Gamestop) and already i clocked in seven hours and i'm going into the second city. But enough of me going into my gamer insomnia.

This new installment of the Final Fantasy series takes you back to the world that was made in Tactics. The empire is looming over casting a shadow of war and destruction, but masking it with peace. This where the hero comes in. You play Vaan, yet another street rat who is pissed off at the "man" for brining him and his city down on its luck. Ever since the king was assassinated by the Traitor Basch, and the princess killed her self after her new husband died in battle.
The game first opens up at the battle of the fort in Nibilnia (i think thats what its called) and you play as a stapping young lad named Reks, and you must fight your way into the fort to save the king, who is about to sign a peace treaty (or what the generals call it, a full surrender of the kingdom). So now your on your way in the Tutorial, and it shows you how to work everything (its like MMO fighting with turnbased, you can run around, but you have to wait for your action bar to fill up to actually attack) After that, Reks gets shanked and betrayed, then your thrown towards Vaan.
Vaan, now plays delivery boy, teaching you further about the hunting system, the Gambits, and how to aquire "Licenses"

I'll start with the Licenses: What these things are is pretty much saying that, if you buy one thing (i.e. Heavy Armor 1 License) then you can equip certain things that the license gives you, as well with skills. If you buy License for White Magic 1, you can buy the spell cure and use it.

Now with the Gambits: These i have a problem with. What gambits do is when battle starts, they run your characters. As soon as battle starts, just put your controller down and go get something to eat and drink. After battle, you can control the leader. What i do is have Vaan as my leader without a Gambit, and the others on Gambits and just run around like i would in Guild Wars.

Hunting System: This is weird and neet at the same time. What this does is let you go "find a mark" and then you must go into the field and hunt these big monsters, when you slay the mark, you get a reward. So the bigger the monster, the bigger the reward.

Something else that they do is that you no longer get Gil from monsters, you might, but it doesn't tell you. But, another nod towards MMOs with this game is that after you slay monsters, they drop loot, yes loot. Then what you do is take thus loot and go out and sell it at stores, thus getting your Gil, as well as opening up new items in the Bazaar menu (think of it as rare item stuff)

On the Graphics side, all i can say is breathtaking. The Cutscenes are very beautiful. Everything is very well done. The opening battle scene is like medieval star wars.

Sound: yet another masterpiece from Square. The musical score sounds like something from a major motion picture. They also have a mixture of classical with metal for some of the fight scenes.

Controls: weird, but not clunky. As i said earlier, you get to run around on the field during attacking monsters, but you get to choose what to do (your standard attack and item, but to get into magic/techniques, its under one menu that opens up into a new menu to select between black/white magicks and technicks). It takes about a few minuets to get used to, but after an half an hour of realizing i don't have to button mash to hit things, it was easy.

Overall: 8.5 out of 10. This is a good game, its definatly better than the debacle of X-2. The story seems good already, but they throw out the twists early than usual. But only 7 hours into the game i can't say if this is the best one ever. I will suggest to go buy the game if you havn't already, it is worth the fifty bucks.

Tristate0999
11-09-2006, 05:13 PM
The Final Fantasy series is the only regret I have of getting rid of my PS2. This game sounds like it's a step up from the other FFs that have been put out lately. I'll have to head to my friends house when he gets this.

junior
11-10-2006, 11:49 AM
Definitely a very good game. It's gotten excellent reviews in all of the various magazines (the Japanese magazine Famitsu gave it a perfect 40/40), and nearly everyone has liked it.

The OP obviously hasn't played too far into it, but...

For once, the 'kid' acts like someone his age. There's one hilarious scene where he naively asks a semi-rude question of another party member, and the rest of the party just stops and stares at him before shaking their heads and moving on.

The setting is similar to the setting for FFTA. The world is called Ivalice, and all five of the races from FFTA are present. The Nu Muu are somewhat rare and hard to find, but they are present (there's one in the clan headquarters). There's also a new common race called the Sqeeq that wasn't in FFTA. But the FFTA plotline itself has no relation to the game.

Some enemies do drop cash. But you'll only get it from intelligent humanoid-type opponents. The Bazaar itself isn't so much a place to get rare items (though it is the only place to get certain items). Rather, think of what happens in an MMORPG if you put raw materials (i.e. the 'Loot' you received) up for sale (in this case by selling it to an NPC vendor), and then someone comes along and crafts an item out of it and puts that item up for sale (in the Bazaar). That's what the Bazaar system emulates (though from what I've seen, a purchase option won't reappear in the Bazaar after you buy it even if you sell the same loot again).

The Gambits are an interesting approach to handling party AI. Other games sometimes have multiple party members with the others acting on their own AIs. But the ability to build your characters in FFXII however you want means that creating a set AI for a given character isn't necessarily a good idea. You don't want the Healer AI running for a character that you designed as a Paladin. The Gambits are a nice workaround for this, and with a little careful forethought can be quite useful. For instance, you can set one to heal a party member whenever that member's health drops below 50%. Or you can set up a Gambit that tells a character with a ranged attack weapon to give priority to attacking flying enemies first (since melee weapons can't hit some flying enemies). As pointed out, you can effectively automate fights (though I wouldn't recommend it during boss fights). Initially, I used a strategy similar to the one adopted by the OP and left the party leader's gambits off. But eventually I set things up so that all of the characters had their gambits active, and I would supervise the fights and intervene as necessary in order to make sure that things ran smoothly.

My single biggest complaint involves the speed at which you earn license points (one for each character per creature killed) versus the speed at which you make money. You simply don't earn the latter quickly enough, and you end up with large amounts of equipment, spells, and techniques available on the license board that you simply can't afford to buy from the merchants.

barrelOfgoblins
11-10-2006, 08:27 PM
man i love this game! i could do without the gambit system thought (i only use it for the very basic commands) right now im kinda too reliant on the "limit breaks" but i have to say that the boss fights are BOSS FIGHTS i havent faced a single boss that beat the first time if you ever played WoW its kinda liked that

Zutan
11-12-2006, 11:02 AM
its fun. i picked it up at walmart on friday. ive got about 10 hours under my belt so far. the licences are a little confusing lol. dunno what to get and what not to get. maybe il restart at some point.

my main complaint is the "guest" party members. they royaly piss me off. they attack freaking anyhthing that moves. even if its peacful or yellow (warning) got obliterated last night by a fire elemental because the one guest decided he didnt like how it looked at him.. dont attack elementals.. they are very mean, this one hit my party members with a spell that did like 300dmg a shot(all of them at once). having to go back to a save point that was 20-30 minutes ago is a royal piss off lol.

junior
11-12-2006, 01:07 PM
Actually, the elemental probably attacked because someone cast a spell. This is one of the parts of FFXI that got carried over, and there's at least one NPC that mentions it in their little conversation text. Basically, just as in FFXI, elementals have "Magic Agro", and will attack anyone who casts a spell within agro range. That includes the Cure spells that are often part of the gambit AI.

As for guests attacking non-agro creatures - I've never had them do that. They've always stuck to the hostile mobs, and ignored the non-hostiles.

Also note that you can get your party to move quickly through an area without attacking any creatures by entering flee mode. I've found it quite useful for a lot more than just running away.

^_^

Zutan
11-15-2006, 12:39 PM
i think what the problem was was when i would stop fleeing he would stand there for a second and as the elemental got closer he would turn and go after it again so id hafta run. but the elem cast a spell and nuked me.