Final Fantasy 12 is awesome.

[Magnific0]

I had posted about this in a twesterm thread, and since it was completely ignored and think it's a good opportunity to post some of it again here:

For me Final Fantasy 12 took the franchise in the right direction, gameplay-wise, world design wise, screenplay-wise. The early stuff I've seen from XIII worries me a little in that it may turn out to be a step backwards to a Final Fantasy X kind of game, I hope it's just an early impression (not that it would be awful, but as I just said, it would be a step back)

Final Fantasy 12, I think it's what a Japanese developer like Square needed to set itself apart from the tired anime-themed JRPGs most japanese companies are about. There's nothing wrong with anime or super-deformed characters, but there's a time and a place for everything and specially today a Japanese videogame company must produce games that help them restore their status in this industry. I think Square-Enix hopefully won't dissapoint.

SE with FF7 and every FF after it seemed to have made a commitment to raise the bar high for JRPGs, they just don't please themselves doing more of the same, they like to explore new things, they have no real set formula. It's hard to please everyone by doing that, and probably it's a very risky business model too. It's just hard. They set out to reinvent the franchise in every game, you could say. Not many developers do that or even achieve a great level of success while doing it. They've been doing that for over 20 years now. That's admirable.