It wasn't bad, but I didn't like it a whole lot. I'm mainly going to compare FFXII and FFX since they were both on the PS2 and they took some of the issues with their first attempt on the PS2 and fixed them with this game.

FFXII improves the graphics and voice acting from FFX in that the character models look the same all the time instead of what looks like a low, medium, and high polygon model for the characters in FFX. Also, I didn't find any of the stupid sounding dialog lines that run rather rampant in FFX. However, the quality of the dialog is very low (compression?) and coupled with the way the characters speak, I found it very difficult to hear and follow what the characters were saying.

The battle system, while interesting, would get rather boring for me. I mean, there are still 'random' encounters where you'll be running and an enemy just pops out of nowhere. I did like FFX the most in this regard because I did like to take my time to plan things out, but FFXII removed the annoyance of having a battle event every 10 seconds while running in FFX. Heck, you could practically call out when you're going to run into a random battle and be fairly accurate too.

With the story, I hardly felt any emotion for this game at all. I found FFX to be great in this regard, but FFXII fails in my opinion because of the dialog being hard to follow (I don't really read or hear people speak like that apart from reading a book for an english class) and the sound quality of the dialog is also poor, as stated above. What's worse is that I didn't feel any connection with the characters aside from maybe Penelo and Vaan. The relationships between characters felt stale and events just seemed to feel like a train wreck that I would rather try to drive around instead of enjoying the usual ride of a good story. To FFXII's credit, FFX took a second time through so I could understand the story more, but I'm not sure I have much of a desire to go through FFXII again as I would FFX (which I've played through multiple times).

There some more things I could say about it, but these are the main kickers for me.

FF should have a open world map like 1-9

Square has dropped the ball with 12.

First, my RPG history:

Final Fantasies I, III, IV, VI, VII, IX, X, X-2, XI (PS2), XII
Chrono Trigger & Cross
Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, Paper Mario: TYD, both Mario & Luigi games
Xenosaga Pts 1, 2, and 3
Kingdom Hearts 1, CoM, and 2
Golden Sun & GS:TLA
Tales of Symphonia
Several .hack games

Chrono Trigger is absolutely my favorite RPG (and game) ever, FF IV is my favorite FF, although I really enjoyed most of the games I listed tremendously.

That's not a complete list, but at least gives a good overview of some RPGs I've played. Xenosaga 2 is easily my least favorite of those listed. That is perhaps the only game on the list I would place behind FF XII in enjoyability.

FFXII did several new things for a Final Fantasy. Its battle system was interesting I suppose, but handled improperly. I strongly believe that the battle system would have been enjoyable if you didn't effectively have idiotic AI for the vast majority of the game (until you finally earned a sufficient number of gambits). By artificially limiting the intelligence of everyone who wasn't being actively player controlled, I feel like the game creators took away a sense of involvement in order to provide a sense of action which did not adequately make up for something every previous Final Fantasy had: control of the entire party.
Don't get me wrong. I don't mind games where you control a primary character and only tweak some controls for others. Kingdom Hearts and the first .hack games (the ones I played) did this remarkably well. In those games, you control the main character and set some options for what you generally want your party members to do (prioritizing healing over attacking, items over magic, etc.). Those games, however, gave you as much control over the AI in the beginning as you'd get in the whole game, rather than FFXII's approach of making you micromanage to take advantage of any gambits you may have picked up that would help you out.

So the battle system was one negative. Next, is the story and characters. They were dreadful. The story was really bad for a modern RPG. There was no mystery to it whatsoever. You could figure out from very early on exactly what the outcome was going to be and who was going to be doing the fighting. There was absolutely no character development. None. I'm not joking. There was far more character development in Final Fantasy IV, a game that came out on the SNES. There was also more character development in Final Fantasy VI, VII, IX, X, and X-2 (yes, even X-2). There was one really compelling character (Balthier), one who seemed to feel irrationally guilty over something he had absolutely no hand in (and actually suffered because of), and another character who could have been compelling if her story was a bit more fleshed out (Fran). The "main characters" were terrible. Ashe is a whiny princess who doesn't grow at any point in the plot, until she miraculously changes at the drop of a hat in the finishing scenes. Vaan actually played no role in the plot other than being there. Seriously. He could have been taken out of the plot entirely and there are maybe only a handful of scenes in the game that would have needed altering.

So story is another negative. Keep in mind that fans of Final Fantasy games normally rave about the story of the games and generally are fans of the "choose items from a menu" fighting system that the series has always had.

As others have said, the graphics are very good for the PS2. Exceptional, really. Unfortunately, the game still doesn't look as good as FFX. Some of this is preference and some of it is a nature of technical resources. Let me explain: First, FFX's color palette is generally more vibrant than XII's. XII suffers from what I call the "realistic is brown" effect. Things, people, and areas seem to have almost a constant brown filter cast over them. That is entirely preference. Other aspects of the graphics stem from the very nature of the game. Due to the real-time battle system, Square-Enix could not stick to pre-rendered backgrounds, which they used in FFs VII-X. With pre-rendered backgrounds, you can fit as much detail as you can conceivably fit in the display resolution, no matter the limitations of the CPU & GPU. Unfortunately, with pre-rendered backgrounds you also can not change the camera angle dynamically. Because everything is rendered beforehand, it is only rendered from a particular set of points of view. This way, you're allowing for amazingly beautiful environments and can spend much more of the GPU's power rendering polygons for nothing other than characters and movable items (chests, for instance). This works just fine for other FFs because battles take place on a separate battle screen. With XII, however, there's no battle screen (battles happen in the same areas you run through normally) and the angle needs to be dynamically changeable during battle. This means that every single thing you see on screen has to be rendered realtime. This means dividing the polygon rendering previously only being spent on characters (more or less) amongst characters, buildings, vehicles, and everything else in the environment. This often leads to far more barren environments than in FFX, and less detailed character models. It was actually revealed while FFXII was in development that the characters used far less polygons than in X. It's simply quality texture work that helped them to look as good as they managed.

So, graphics are a plus compared to most PS2 games, but didn't appeal to me as much as X.

The soundtrack was fine. Heck, it was actually very good. Sadly, it still doesn't measure up to the last FF soundtrack Uematsu had a hand in (FF X) or any of Uematsu's previous work.

Soundtrack is another conditional plus. (+ compared to most PS2 games, - compared to X and previous FFs)

The leveling system was great. Very few complaints here at all. I liked it just as much as I liked the Sphere grid in X.


So, in the end, I'd probably give it a 7/10 overall. That is not a bad score in my book. It's a decent RPG, but I prefer every other FF I've played. I do mark it down (not in the score, but just in how fondly I remember it) for doing so many things worse than previous FFs and for changing so much for the worse. (I didn't mention it, but I don't mind getting rid of random battles at all. I love Chrono Trigger, Cross, and Tales of Symphonia for adequately ridding themselves of that antiquated convention. That is perhaps the only change for the better in XII in my opinion.)

If you like older style JRPGs a lot, I doubt you'd enjoy XII. If you want something with a focus on the story, stay away from it.

Other than that, I can't really give any other details, but I've probably posted more than you're willing to read anyway.

 Edit: Like others said. It's not a bad game, it's just not good for a FF. I definitely recommend X as a great entrance to the series if you can find it (should be cheap). If you like X, then you should try some of the other entries as it really will give you a feel for the series.

I didn't hate FFXII, but it was definitely a step down for the franchise from FFX.

While I appreciate innovation, the new battle system wasn't great (imo), where they tried to may everything more fluid and streamline, they instead made it seem more broken up than Turn based. In turn based you KNEW you had to wait for an attack to be performed, but in FFXII there was an awkward pause (especially early on when all this was new to the player) where you'd issue a command, run around until it charged up and then attacked. That really broke up the pace of combat.

As for the story, I wasn't a fan. I've always stuck by Final Fantasy's ideal that the characters relationships with each other and at times the world was more important then any other story element (which is why 6, 7, 8 are my favourite FF's). FFXII totally broke any emotional connection with the "main" characters (I say "main" because they were the ones you controlled) because it focused more on the warring nations, while good in other RPG's where you don't expect emotional depth in the characters, it was a bit disappointing in a Final Fantasy title. Fact that it was a plot about political unrest and deceit, I would have liked some more plot twists and turns.

8/10 in my book. Innovation (despite not being a step forward) is always appreciated and you can't argue with XII outstanding production values, a standard of S-E's main FF entries.

Final Fantasy 12: GREATEST. FINAL. FANTASY. EVER.

See, lots of people want their role-playing games filled with females with Montana-sized mammary glands, 15-year-old guys with Sword Issues, tacky teen romances written like self-help books, and Evil Father Figure Villains. I play bubblegum games too, they can be fun -- FF10 is a typical example -- but games can be much, much more than bubble gum.

So why do so many people hate FF12? Simple: it smashes every single convention of every JPRG, as well as most of the cliches of US and European RPGs.

It's also one of the most anti-imperialist videogames you'll ever play.

That's frightening to lots of people. Especially in the US, because this place is in deep denial over its collapsing Empire.

FF12 has a tremendous story, and some of the best characters ever created in any work of media -- film, TV, you name it. (I spend lots of time analyzing film, television, and media productions. FF12 stands up to the best of the best). It has three independent, strong women characters, who are as tough as the men. No bimbos, just complex people. It has breathtaking scenery and set design. It has a clever real-time battle system, making you feel like you're actually in the game world.

It has one of the deepest stories of any FF game, including geopolitics galore. The references to colonialism and neocolonialism are accurate and astounding. (Hints: Archades = US Empire, nethicite = Tolkien's Ring of Power, and Dalmasca = occupied Iraq. Oh hell yes.) It has the best voice-acting of any game, period. It has a ton of quite subtle and adult character development. It has the first credible interracial romance I've seen in any blockbuster media production (Fran and Balthier).

So give FF12 a try. You may not like it, but I guarantee, it's one of the few games you'll ever return to, many years from now, and find yourself stunned at just how amazing it truly is.

FF12 didn't grasp my attention to long. I was extremely hyped about it, but as time passes by and the release date gets closer I found it not amusing anymore. So I could say I hate it.

I love it, but I can see where people don't like it. It is really a solid game. I love the combat style - I can go make food (with my gambit setup) and know my guys are doing well :D It's different but not less worthy than any other ff game. Maybe it's a launch pad for ff13 in gameplay - combat etc.

God dammit you did it. :|

I find it odd as so many are praising FFX as I thought this was the weakest of the lot, ignoring FFXI (online only bullcrap) and any earlier then 6 game which I've yet to play.

FFXII on the other hand I thought was excellent. Story was good, graphics were amazing for PS2, heck better then some next gen stuff I've seen. It was fecking worth my money, 70 hours first play through, 2nd play through, well less but still.

Although there were flaws I thought, like the fact it took frigging ages to level up and it was a waste of time leveling up everyone, 2nd play throught I just stuck with 3 and played with them. Also, jsut the whole style of the battle system, to be honest, I missed the changing scene and my characters standing ready and me controlling each of their actions. I mean Gambits made it so the game played it self sometimes. Also, because of all the early leveling up, I seemed to spend hours pointlessly running about until enemies reappeared. I mean sure, get rid of random battles in exchange for endless boring battles. Random battles at least had a point.

It's not my favourite FF but it's the best on the PS2 sure.

C'mon guys..
When you played FF12, did it even feel like it was a Final Fantasy game? Let alone a game made by Square?