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Zkuq on 19 July 2013
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Galvanizer said:
Zkuq said:
It was semi-open world in the sense that you couldn't go anywhere you wanted from the beginning, and its mature story was boring and way too slow-paced even for me (and I don't generally mind slow-paced stories). Also, its characters weren't exactly great. I really liked the game but its boring story and unmemorable characters just killed the chance of the game being something great. And I didn't like the summon system, it wasn't at all good or useful.

Also, from a completionist's point of view, the game featured a ridiculous system for getting the Zodiac Spear, the best spear in the game. It was either "don't open these random containers scattered along the game" or "have fun opening the same container a thousand times". I'd like to see the person who thinks that's good design.

It was open world. Restrictions were in place for certain areas as it would have affected the story if you arrived there to early. The prime example being Archades. As for the story being boring and slow-paced, that's purely subjective. I never found any of these as concerns. There characters were not heavily developed, but they were still great characters. You don't need loads of character development to make a great character. However, I do agree that the Espers were very weak to use. Thankfully, they improved them in the International version.

As for being a completitionist, that shouldn't alter if a game is good or not. There are games where the developers don't expect you to be able to 100% get everything. It's a respectable design choice and one that's heavily used in MMORPGs. FFXII is an offline MMORPG.

There was practically no way besides grinding ridiculous amounts if I wanted to do anything besides follow the story, if I recall correctly. That's not open world to me. Most of the so-called open areas were too difficult to even run through, let alone be played. The game became truly open only once you advanced the story enough, before that there was no true openness. The story was slow-paced, that's not subjective. To get the story to advance even just a little bit, I had to fight a good hour or two, and that just screams slow pace. The story would have been interesting, had it not been prolonged for so long. Story-wise, the game would have been interesting if it would have been half or so of the game's actual length. And yes, in practice you do need more character development to make an interesting character. The characters certainly had interesting roles, they just weren't fully developed. In fact, they were barely developed at all. As for the improvements in the international version, I couldn't care less. I never got that version because they never released it outside Japan so it doesn't concern me.

That completionist thing isn't a huge thing and it certainly doesn't affect my overall opinion of the game. However, the game was definitely designed so that you could get everything so you can't use the argument you just tried to use. As far as I remember, all the other items were much easier to obtain. And in fact, it's pretty obvious they meant every item to be obtainable: The Zodiac Spear is clearly meant to be obtained by avoiding those certain containers, yet they wanted to make sure everyone has a chance so they put a container with a very low chance to spawn the spear. That is poor design, it only serves to make the game worse, and it really caught by eye as an example of bad game design when I played the game. It's the little things that matter, too, and this was one of those things.