I don't care if people think I'm sick, stupid, or have poor taste

[theRepublic]

I watched my friend play a lot of FFXII while hanging out in our room at college. Here are some things that that struck me (and him) as odd.

He got kind of lost about where he was supposed to be going at one point (actually that happened more than once). He came to an area where the first enemy was a bat that was 5 levels higher than his strongest character. It killed several of his characters before he ran away. Several hours later, we figured out this was indeed the correct area. Since he was nowhere near as strong as he needed to be, grinding had to be done.

That big special attack that you can do when your magic meter is full is not explained well at any point. We eventually figured it out though.

The big special attack is so powerful, and your regular attacks are so weak, that battles seem unbalanced. (Most apparent in boss battles.)

Those creatures you can summon are very weak. (Maybe they level up too? He didn't use them much since they were so weak. Not well explained.)

At one point near the end of the game, you need to summon one of those creatures to break down a wall to continue. This is the only time this occurs, and we did not know it was even possible for the creature to do that. We had to look it up to figure out where to go and what to do.

Story was weak compared to FFX. (opinion)

The only thing that saved the game was that the battle system was so different. It helped keep things fresh. Otherwise, this game would have been a real stinker.

Keep in mind that my friend put in over 200 hours into FFX, and beat all of the secret bosses.