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Nem said: Oh feel free to LOL because i have played the game. It IS grindy because if you dont grind the battles become too difficult to overcome. It is boring, just look at the regular attack bar. Lets stare at that fill up, its awesome gameplay. The story was almost non-existant, you spent 90% more time grinding and traversing the world than getting any sort of interactivity or conversations with other characters. The pacing was slow. To advance the story it would require hours of dungeoning and the story would hardly move at all.
I'm glad you liked it. i didnt think it was terrible like FFXIII but it was really boring. It needs a faster paced combat system. Oblivion paces faster than FFXII by far, and that is not very good, but at least it doesnt make you grind. Or you know... it can go back to turn based. Offline MMO just doesnt work for me. Its pointless. |
LOL! You call FFXII boring? It's more faster paced and interactive than Fire Emblem: Path of Radience (your avatar). GTFO of here with your bias, bro! Heck, I fell asleep playing FE9 and it doesn't even use Gambits to make the game play itself.
Also, there's nothing wrong with grinding in FFXII. Why? Because it doesn't have random battles. As a result, grinding becomes an extension of simply exploring the field map. The depth of the battle system comes from the huge amount of weapons, spells, and abilities in the game that you can use. Also, there's loads of story. Look at the depth of the event scenes. Also, talk to all the NPCs and read the entire Bestiary. There's so much depth put into the world.
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Bex said: Vaan didn't influence my opinion of Final Fantasy XII to the extent that he ruined the game for me on any level, I just didn't care that he was there. Basch and Ashe, as well as Balthier and Fran, resonated with me more. Also, why is it a good thing that I'm supposed to dislike him? I don't remember anything about him other than that he was there. I played up to getting the Sword of Kings or the fight against Cid, whichever follows the other, so I know nothing of Vaan's character beyond that point. |
The fact you don't regard Vaan having any important relevance to the story of FFXII, even up to the part you stopped playing, is a testament to how well written FFXII is. It's a very complex script with a lot of depth and ramifications.
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Scoobes said: I didn't say the story was poor, I said it was told poorly. Two different very different things. There was a lot of potential in the story but when the main characters at the start are effectively bit parts it becomes difficult to care about the events that are happening later in the game. They should have just had Balthier or Basch as the main character from the start, telling the story from their POV from the very start of the game. Or alternatively, pulled a FFVI and presented the game as a full ensemble and shown multiple POVs in great depth. Instead, I was left thinking "this is a pretty deep and involved storyline" but combined with "I'm completely detached from this story because the POV is removed from the core of this storyline". |
The thing is, the story wasn't even told poorly. Far from it, actulally. FFXII probably has the most well writen script to ever appear in a video game, yet alone a FF game.
| Zkuq said: 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. |
So much BS in your post.
FFXII was open world. From very early in the game, you can get to places you're not even meant to go to yet. That's a huge contrast to past FF games, especially FFX and FFXIII. Also, the game has a considerable amount of optional locations that are not required for the story. The story was not slow paced. Stop feeding your preconceptions of what good story pacing is in a video game. If the game design dictates that there must me loads of gameplay between cinematics, how then is that a poorly paced story? It isn't. Rather, it's good gameplay pacing. As a video game, gameplay pacing is more important than story pacing. As for the characters not being majorly developed, I don't care for how much depth they have. What's important is not their amount of depth, but if they're interesting. In any book, film, or game, you can have interesting charcaters that have very little depth. It all depends on the quality of the script and the character dialogue.
Lastly, the game was not designed so you could get everything. In contrary, it was the opposite. It was designed so you could not get everything. Hiroyuki Ito, the director and game designer, confirmed that he didn't want all players to get every item, especially the best ones. He wanted FFXII to feel like older games on the NES where getting good items was randomized and if you didn't get them, you just carried on playing the game.
| Fayceless said: The gameplay was only okay. Interesting, but I felt like I should have had more control earlier on. (FF13 was worse with it's gameplay pacing) The setting was interesting, except for the ridiculous mash-up of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The very first scene you've got laser-shooting planes flying over a battle with dudes with swords and armor. How stupid is that? The characters were mostly uninteresting and forgettable, or just plain annoying. The story was absolutely worthless, complete garbage. I can't count how many times I facepalmed playing that game and I didn't even finish it. It's completely devoid of surprise or intrigue because I saw every "twist" coming from miles away. It's so painfully generic that the only-decent gameplay couldn't quite get me through. Yeah, I'm a hater, but I loved FF10 and I expected so much more. I was severely disappointed. You'd need something a heck of a lot better than 12 to revive JRPGs. |
If you liked that linear, anime-filled garbage called FFX, I don't expect you to be able to comprehend just how great FFXII is. It's like a 5 year old saying that they think Teletubbies is better than Hamlet. It's an opinion that's worthless.
| kupomogli said: There's no problem with the open world, etc, it's just a shitty game. I've tried replaying this game four times because I really wanted to like it. There's a lot about the game to like. The world itself, the graphics, etc. The battle system was a joke though, and it's not based on having no control over your characters. The battle system's gameplay was broken. For as much as I've played into the game, the problem with the battle system is that there's no need to set your characters with anything but attack, there's also no reason to give characters bow and arrows, guns, etc. No reason to use magic other than support spells because even when it's the enemies weakness, the damage is a joke and you'll just have to waste time standing around to regain MP. Here is basically what happened at every boss battle I got to. I cast blind with all my characters until it affected the boss. Then everyone continued to attack. If I needed to restore health, I'd personally choose the magic or items to use to restore the characters health. Another major problem with the game is t hat whenver you set a character to attack, the ATB filled then the character attacked, but then there was like this 5-10 second cooldown or something where a characters attack or skill could not start the ATB, even if you placed the next attack or skill into queue. If the action goes off, a regular attack, you should be able to immediately set the next action to start, not go in queue for 5 -10 seconds then start the ATB. One thing I noticed against enemies is that bosses, not counting the attack chains, would get their turns to attack or use magic three or four times before characters could go a second time, and this is without haste. If not for blind working on every single boss, the game would end up being a massive grinder the likes I've ever seen, because protect didn't really help and it ended so quickly. A good comparison and contrast for Final Fantasy 12 would be Final Fantasy 10-2. Final Fantasy 12 has amazing story, world, music, and side quests, but the battle system is complete shit. Final Fantasy 10-2 on the other hand has a good world, music, and side quests, but the story is complete shit. The difference is that everything else can't make up for the shitty gameplay of FF12. The battle system more than makes up for the issues with FF10-2. |
The battle system is designed in a way that you can make it as challenging or as easy as you want it to be. If anything, you can basically create your own difficulty level for the game. That's how deep the battle system is. The things you brought up are not problems for me as I customize the game to ensure I'm weaker than enemies. That way, every spell becomes effective and I'm always on my toes during battles. It gets very intense at times. 
