#2
Final Fantasy XII is the game that made me fall in love with RPG's. I spent countless hours as a kid playing this game along with FFX. I think the thing I loved the most about this game was the World. Ivalice is probably one of my favorite video game worlds ever. The world is rich with many discoveries and diverse and interesting locations. I was always excited to come home from school and continue exploring the world.
The Battle system is a shakeup from previous games using a Real-time system with no battle transitions but you still have your command menu where you give a command and the character will perform the action when their bar fills up. It also introduced the gambit system which basically let you customize the Ai behavior and how your party members act in a battle. It's a great system although somewhat flawed. It is vital part of combat and battles just wouldn't work well without it. In my opinion Square should've stuck to this kind of combat system and looked for ways to improve upon it, instead of going the action route because it's a pretty unique system and feels like a natural evolution of Final Fantasy combat.
One of my favorite activities from this game were the hunts which are special quests where you hunt down special monsters for a reward. Several of them have their own special narratives attached to them. Some contain unexpected encounters, and one contains one of the longest boss fights in a video game.
Another great thing about FFXII is the visuals. This Is a PS2 game but it looks amazing despite that. They could've released it as a PS3 game and it wouldn't look out of place with some of the early releases for that console. And the remaster is comparable to some of the better looking games on that console.
The Story is good for what it is. I can't say it has my favorite characters or the narrative is breaking new ground. But it's not a story I dislike either.
It's a wonderful game with great gameplay, a great soundtrack and an incredible world you can spend many hours exploring.
Last edited by Eric2048 - on 03 January 2022
