Re: FF XII Thread: Talk Away!!!
Star Ocean... those are fun games.
And I have a laundry list on what I really think of Final Fantasy XII so far, got a while? Good, here it comes. It's 100% spoiler free, so don't worry!
Ok, from everything I've heard about the length of this game, I'm more or less half way through, so I thought I'd give my review of it so far. Like the thread title says, no spoilers here, so read on!
Let me preface all this by saying I do LIKE the game, I DON'T love it. I think it has flaws, and my inflated expectations probably didn't help.
Know what else doesn't help it? This game is called Final Fantasy. It would seem a lot of people really love or hate this game from what I read on the internet. I think if this game wasn't called Final Fantasy it would get a lot more love. Or maybe a lot more hate, depending on your perspective. Either way, I have expectations for a Final Fantasy game that perhaps I don't have for other games, but when you're one of the biggest, most beloved, (and one of my personal favorite) video game franchises of all time, the bar is just set that much higher. Anyway, that's enough talk, onto the actual review!
Ok, characters. Outside of two of them, why the hell are they here? There have been virtually no character moments what so ever. You can sum up every character in the game in about 3 sentence max. Two have a real reason for what they are doing, and the others seem to be there because... well they have nothing better to do. Some of the GUEST characters seem to have a better reason to be there. Honestly, I couldn't care less about any of these people or what they're trying to do.
Story: I don't think it's that great. It starts off with a bang and seems really interesting... but then it's soooooo slow after that. The story itself never seems to move on with your characters present. (Except in a few places.) Most of the time when the story is moving on is a cut scene, far away from where you are with characters that you've only seen maybe once. The story is all about politics, which honestly doesn't interest me much. SO FAR there is no "save the world aspect at all..." it's just "take down the empire," which would be ok if they made the characters interesting.
Musically, you hardly even notice it's there, and when you do, it's not impressive. Every other FF game has at least a few memorable tracks, but not in this one, not even for boss battles. The music during a boss battle is a little better, but still. When I'm playing a game, the music adds a lot. Remember the boss music from FF 6? You knew you were fighting a big battle, and the music was very appropriate, you were pumped. Not in this game, like I said, you don't even notice it. Music is one of the things that was truly great about past FF games.
The battles in this game are only ok, IMO. I don't mind the free roaming, but I fail to see the point. This is just like every other FF battle system except the fights aren't random. If we're able to move around, we should be able to dodge attacks, or take out an opponents knee, or if we have a big ass gun, it should do a lot more damage 3 feet away... not the same as it does 40! Also, with this system you don't get a chance to see the designs of the bosses, because the camera is focused more on their feet. You can, of course, adjust it, but you'll probably be needing to enter commands at some point. Again, I don't mind having this system, but if we're going to have it, make it worth it. If future games will have the battle system just like this, I'd rather throw it all out and go back to the old battles.
I'm kind of on the fence about the Gambit system. I don't use much of it. You can set it up so all your characters practically play the battles for you, but I don't find that fun. Of course you can also enter in as many commands as you like. You have to play with it to see how you like it.
The world itself is HUGE. Easily the biggest world ever in a FF game, but honestly, a lot of the times I don't feel like traversing it a lot. In this game during the right conditions MEGA powerful enemies roam the areas... and if you run into one, chances are YOU ARE TOAST! So that's a downer, though you can always leave an area and re-enter until the conditions aren't there... most of the time. Also, enemies respawn way to quickly for my tastes. If I just spent the last 30-40 minutes wiping out the enemies in one area, I don't want to see them all back less than 5 minutes after I cleared them out, it's just annoying. There are a lot of nice looking areas in the game, but it can be hard to just take a look around sometimes.
One thing I really love/hate about this game is how you get money. I think it only makes sense that enemies aren't carrying around thousands of gil for no reason. In this game you have to sell things enemies drop... suck as their skin, or a claw, etc. HOWEVER, these things sell for so little, you never have ANY money whatsoever. Now, I'm not saying they have to sell for thousands and make the game to easy... but the items aren't worth anything, and a lot of things in this game are VERY expensive. You can go into town with 30,000 gil and literally buy almost nothing. So, good idea, but you HAVE to get more for your items... or enemies have to drop more stuff, it's ridiculous.
I like the hunts side quests... being able to fight powerful, optional monsters is a lot of fun, but most of them aren't worth it. You usually get some money (not a lot compared to the prices of things,) and some items. Sometimes you'll get a weapon that's helpful because you're strapped for cash, but honestly most of these are just for the fun of it, because you certainly don't get anything earth shattering.
Summons and Quickenings (think overdrives) are only ok as well. If you can keep a summon alive long enough (it's just the summon and the character who called it) they can be a big help... IF they last a while and pull off their super move. But they can get beat up pretty bad.... and then might not even use their super move. FF X had the best summon system far and away. Quickenings aren't bad if you can chain enough of them together, but if you can't they're pretty worthless. Oh the best part about these two things? They take ALL of your MP. While your MP will slowly regenerate while you move around (even in battle) if you use one of these moves you are really gambling that you WILL take the enemy down. I don't mind if they take all your MP, but with using all your MP you'd think these are desperation moves that will bring total chaos on your opponent and they really don't.
Well that's about all I have to say, I think. Finally, eh?
If I think of something I forgot, I'll add it later.
Let me close by repeating, I don't HATE this game, but I don't LOVE it either. In terms of other Final Fantasies, it's in the middle of the pack for me, but probably closer to the bottom than to the top. It definitely has it's flaws, and it just isn't what I've come to expect from a Final Fantasy game. I admit I might be being a little too critical, but I would say that is more SqaureEnix fault. This game has been in the works and had a release date for years now. When you take this long to get a product out, it's only going to inflate expectations. There are some good ideas in this game that if expanded upon, would be great to have in future games. But I also think that Square would do well to go back and look at some of the things in past Final Fantasy games that worked well and incorporate them into Final Fantasy XIII. I hope they will, because this game has a lot of POTENTIAL, but a lot of it is never reached, and that's a shame. I REALLY WANT to feel like this is my favorite Final Fantasy ever, but it just isn't. This isn't a BAD game, but it certainly isn't what I expect from a Final Fantasy. I still suggest people buy it and play it... but for $50? Eh... that's up to you... if you can borrow someone else's for a few days, it will help you a lot.
I'll give it a 6/10. All in all not a BAD game by any means, but I think it falls far below what my usual expectations of a Final Fantasy game are.
t for FF Tactics! I just love these kind of themes. That's why, FFX also had that small tinge that I felt when I played FF tactics.
Actually I had the same problem while going back to Besaid and finding myself in battle with Dark Valefor... I could have used Yojimbo, but chose to get a game over and avoided Besaid for a while. Well, I had save just before, so that wasn't a problem. That's the key, save all the time, or else you'll be pwned by random Dark enemies that sometimes appear out of nowhere XD
