So let me give you a story on this. Twas early November, and it was road trip time, so me and some friends went out, got groceries, spent hundreds at a book store, and found the last copy of FFXII for sale. (We went to University in a town of 5,000. A decent book store is a luxury). We were happy.

 I'm just realizing now that this rant will contain spoilers. At this point, please turn off your eyes if you are interested in playing the game still.

 We get home, boot another roommate off the ps2, and hear the sweet symphonic sounds of the game. Seemed quite similar to FFV, but the game was beautiful, and the opening music was heart pulling, the songs of games I have loved before.

 Go through story, wonder who the fuck the narrator is every time he begins talking. Get in game, do some quests. Wondered why some people will talk with you and some won't. Not that I didn't notice the speech bubbles, but made the crowd seem weird.  Did hunts, figured it would be a challenge so I leveld up a bit. Then crushed the Rogue tomato. Killed the wolf thingy with Vaan, and then decided to try the cactaur. Spent 20 minutes dodging and hitting (Oddly, it prevented his multihits) only to die to 1000 needles. Well, crap. You probably don't want to hear even more details, but I really liked the game at the beggining.

 I can tell you precisely when I began getting disassatisfied. I was perterbed by the story, but figured it would get better as I entered the Wraith King's tomb.  The game had also become startlingly easy, since all charecters can be modified to whatever you want, you only keep them weak if you want to, so the difficulty depends on whether you really think Balthier looks cool with a gun. Otherwise, after a few levels, you'll probably notice that swords and knives are faster and harder and work against all enemies. But guns make a pretty noise!. Essentially, the people in my party who didn't annoy me were all fully attributed and made into decent warriors. Really, everything died against me, no issue, no hassle. Even the first flying boss, which should have been lethal without any ability to attack the air (Despite the fact he was about 4 feet off the ground) I actually just put the controller down and let my people swing at the air, letting the auto heal and my guest who could hit him kill the boss, within 3 minutes nontheless. Anyhow, I enter the tomb, and finally, a challenge! A demon wall! Without knowing or expecting it, I'm faced with a boss battle that actually hurts! And I even died, with 1 hit left on him but unfrotunately a wall against my back, the boss has conquered me. So, I try it again, and now that I expect this, have berserk and other joyously painful spells ready and crush him. Finding out it really did nothing, I shrug and keep going, happy to have a challenge. Another demon wall, another challenge! Wait, no, this one was a pitiful fake, who didn't even make one of my charecters disappear to up the challenge. So I finish the Dungeon, nearly kill the Esper before he gets a single spell off, and then my thoughts were curious about the first boss. The game told me to run, there must be some bonus for killing him! Huzzah, I check online, and I am to get a new sword! Well, I don't need it, but I like being rewarded. So I run through the unmapped rooms, and get a treasure chest. 67 gil. I'm confused, run around in circles for 30 minutes, convinced I missed something. I fully realize later that it's just an invisible circle in itself. The slimes have bothered me to no end by this point, but I recall saving and loading will replace the treasure chest. 24 gil. 36 gil. 70 gil. 24 gil. I put down the controller for a week.

 I was quite okay with random treasure chests to that point, but when you get a reward for an optional boss as a random treasure chest, it begins to piss you the hell off, especially after 7 tries to get it. I never did. You'd think they'd have the decency to ensure that legendary treasure chest was the correct item at least the first time? I played through the game more, getting more and more disenchanted with the story. It felt as deep as a muddle puddle. You're not saving the world, you're prevanting a war... and proving she's a princess. There's a dead brother, a bunny that doesn't belong (Despite the fact you see other Viera outside their city in the game) a pirate who's the son of a researcher for the evil empire, a princess who's supposed to be dead yet is alive for some reason, and.. you want to stop someone. So, a bunch of stones are required, apprently Final Fantasy forgot it's love of Crystals, and while you get the stones, you just happen to find the evil empire in your way. The story wouldn't be all that bad, albiet thin, but there are no charecters. Who the hell is Penelo? She gets kidnapped, loves Vaan, and has no personality. Fran, boo, Viera kicked her out. Vaan? Dead brother, just a kid out for adventure. Balthier? Well, he's a pirate looking for riches that happens to have a vested interest in this story for some reason. At least Basch and Ashe kinda make sense, seeing as it was their kingdom they swore to defend, although they begin to drop into the background. Other charecters include a dead prince that kinda disappears, an alive prince who seemed to be entirely irrelevant but to warn his country wanted a war, the main bad guy who apparently already has the powers of a god, but is quite content to wait despite his apparent political acunem  and skill which would let him know the tides are turning against him. Judges who could have been cool but end up acting like kids, and the villians little brother, who seems to be a nice person who just guides you every now and again as a "Crap, we need them to go here" storyline.

If the charecters were actual charecters, the story would have possibly meant something to me. Instead, it's not even a save the world story, it's a prevent a war between 2 countries that you never visit because the country Vaan (Whoc ares) lives in is in the middle and would be occupied/destroyed. Yep, this brings a sense of urgency. Especially with all the talk of senate delaying things and others. Political intrigue? Certainly. Deep plot of mystery? Absolutely not.

Since this has taken far too long, I'll just point out grievances in short form:

Music: Sakimoto, I loved your work on BoF 4. Sadly, I can't recall a single song you did for this game. Did you try to be epic, or elevator music?

Charecters: I'd love to see some in this game, maybe I'd like the story

Random Treasure Chests: Will it be an Elixer, or 4 gil? Come back tommorow and it'll be different anyway.

Difficulty: I was crushing the game without ever using a single Mist Knaak. No enemies could stand up to the aweomse onslaught of charecters with swords and shields who can cure. Hell, I wouldn't even need to play the game if there was a gambit to guide my leader to where I wanted him to go. First time I tried a Knaak, I did 34,000 damage.

 Traps: So random caves will randomly place random traps that randomly appear to randomly deal 2000 damage to your stupid AI friend, or make you diseased? Okay. It's kinda like playing the game with someone jabbing you with a pin, doesn't make it harder, makes it more annoying.

Elementals: Lovely enemies, you can see them and realize not to screw with them till you're ready.  Sadly, they didn't get that memo and will often decide that since you attacked the target they just cast regen on, you are their enemy. Watched my friend get KO'ed many a time by an enemy that was quite passive till it got bored.

Loot: I bought the signets. Better loot, right? Well, that or thousands upon thousands of pebbles. I can't guarentee that was their only effect, but it sucked.

The world: Ahem, the 6 cities you visit all on one continent. This is personal preference, but with that sense of scale, it would be like playing Contra and ending after you've shot 20 guys.

100 Floor Dungeon: Nothing says "Crap, we spent too much time making the game pretty to remember to make it long" like a 100 floor dungeon. And sure, it's long, if you like the side quests and hunts. I did, and then I stopped, realizing that I'd need to get back to the horrible story again.

Charecters: This is just how they look. Though not as bad as Kuja, who was clearly born a woman, the faces seemed immeasurably dull to me. And apparently Vaan was meant to be a woman, as they dressed him in traditional video game woman style, revealing useless clothing.

Of course, not all the game was bad, they did plenty right. But what I saw, was a game with a mediocre story, no charecters to make me care, a difficulty that you had to make hard, forgetable music,a battle system that intentionally removed you from it, nothing else made me want to continue. I played and played, expecting things to improve, and they only got worse.  "Look ma! I'm killing Vayne with no hands!".

Graphics - 10 (Beautiful.)
Sound - 7 (Good voices, forgetable music)
Replayability - 0 (Unless you really want to kill a boss with 50 Million HP)
Fun - 2 (You're watching a boring story play itself, you just select the scene)
A game sold entirely on its Franchise sucked more than a dozen legions full of Hoovers.

For the record that was 1,700 words. I'm horrific.

And the game is horrible.

So how does it compare to FFX? That's the last one I played, and reminded me a lot of what you wrote. The whole game seemed sort of pointless (and silly) - way too linear. At least some of the enemies were actually hard.

Until I saw my housemate "play" the game. Only used the same 2-3 chars, never bothered to switch. They became ultra-powerful, and basically got everything they could. Then when he needed to switch to other chars - in one battle they got enough XP for 10-level ups.

...

Anyway - so how does it compare? Should I bother playing it?

PS - really enjoying FF3 (DS). Its exactly what I was hoping for - except way too easy (barely challenging - never die). 

I greatly Prefer X, storywise infinitely, play wise, well, some may like the idea that you don't play a game, you just buy and enter gambits, run around and let your charecters fight things. So if playing a MMORPG style game where you don't even need to target if you don't want to sounds appealing, give it a shot. At the very least, you'll enjoy the backgrounds.

ff12 is good, not ff high class caliber though. best overall experience. great graphics (for ps2), ok story, interesting battle system. if like how the old ff's are than dont get ff12. if you just want to play a good length game than have some fun. dont go into thinking it will be amazing.

if there is a choice between ffx and ff12 choose x hands down.

Want to know why I disliked FF12... simply put it felt like Playing FF11, which I had for 3 years by 12's release, without any of the community or you know.. fun..

I think you were more than a bit too hard on it specifically because you are expecting a lot more out of Final Fantasy.

I skipped a lot of the parts that seemed heading towards spoilers as I am still finishing this game.

Here is where I agree with you:

Characters:

Much lamer cast than FFX definitely, especially Vaan and Penelo...
I liked Bash, Balthier and Fran though.

Story:

Some people liked the story because it was political and had characters who all had their own plans and such, it wasn't your usual go save the world, but what's so bad about a simpler story?

FFX's story was very straightforward, but it was done perfectly attaching you to the characters and making the whole ending part of the game the most memorable ending I can think of.

This one's story was ok at best.

Sound:

I agree that the Music wasn't as impressive as is usually the case with FF games but it was decent, the voice acting was actually really good and better than X.

Some of your other complaints are way overdone.

You complain about the elementals, sure they can get annoying if you happen to activate them against you, but what about random encounters in old FF games? Those were much more unpredictable and could end you getting killed a lot easier.

Random treasure chests were kinda annoying, but it's not a big issue.

The traps, you obviously didn't figure out that using Libra reveals all the traps to you so you can sidestep them :)

Haven't done the 100 floor dungeon yet, so can't comment.

Here is the core of your complaints that we can both agree on: the combat system, the skill board and the Mist attacks.

First of all:

The combat system sucks, I mean I understand that some people actually welcomed the fact that they didn't have to put effort into grinding, but if you are so annoyed by that why are you playing this game? The game is called Final Fantasy maybe you've heard of it? You go around grinding and shit, it's the core of the game...

I ended up turning off all gambits and just switching characters constantly to do stuff when I had to, it was kinda awkward but much better than the automatic single player MMO crap that they were trying to do with the gambit system. So I do understand your complaint about this system and agree with you totally, but it is avoidable if you turn the gambits off.

Second:

The skill board, this was also a misstep and Square Enix's has admitted it as they are now releasing a version of the game that is called FF XII: Internation al Zodiac Jobs that replaces this board with actual jobs you choose for specific characters which would have made the game a lot better. Too late but they realized the error.

Third:

The Mist attack system was overkill and it made things way too easy, but also it wasn't fun to do either, I mean sure you had the great looking spells and whatnot, but in FFX there was variety in the overdrives and each one was delt with differently, making it interesting.

Overall, I think the game is much weaker than FFX in every way except voice acting and graphics. But it is a good game if you compare it to games generally speaking and to JRPGs specifically it is still one of the best ones.

The combat system really is the root of the problem of this game and I am pretty sure they aren't sticking with it for FF XIII or god help us all lol... no seriously I would be pissed :(

Game looked great too, might be the best looking PS2 game ever.

Edit: Oh, also the story kinda get good in the middle in my opinion but now it's starting to drag again. 

FFXII shows a continuing decline in the quality of original FF games being produced by Square. While their spin offs are perfectly fine, the main series games seem to be getting worse and worse with each title.

Agreed. I use to be a huge fan of the FF series (played all of them and beat most of them and the spin-offs) but they've just been going downhill fast.

I tried to get into XII two times and both times I just got bored with it. The sound was great, the story was decent, the characters were entertaining, the graphics looked beautiful, but the game just couldn't hold my interest. Aside from the leveling, I even really liked the combat with the gambit system. I didn't really attach to any of the characters though(blaming that partly on the horrible beginning of the game), I suppose it could have been that political stories just don't interest me much either and the writing really just wasn't that great.

And since I mentioned the beginning, I'll go ahead and explain that a bit. In the beginning of the game they introduce, what, 4 characters and then take them away (of course you get most of them back, but you don't know that). It just really made things annoying and a little confusing at first; I was actually wondering if they were going to take Vaan away from me 15 minutes after getting him. That whole beginning sequence could have been a great memorable area that drug me into the game, but instead I was more worried who all these characters were, what happened to them, and I wasn't paying attention to the other things going on in the game.

I can safely say that in the first 8 or so hours of the game nothing memorable really happens. In FFVI, you have Terra confronting the Esper. In FFVII you're breaking into the Magitek researhc facility. In FFVIII...in FFX you get to see the world end in the first 10 minutes. With FFXII, there's not much to drag you into the game like the others and that's just bad for a game like Final Fantasy games. Sure, the palace gets attacked, but at that point I've already done 3 hunts, been trying to get chain 100, done some mandatory worthless fetch me this stick quests, and a whole lot of other things so I just don't care about the palace.

As for how this affects my judgement for FFXIII, it's making me happier and happier that I don't plan to buy a PS3 just for that game. I have the funny feeling that they are going to go easy on the story, have more or less lame characters, mediocre music, and concentrate solely on making the game look pretty.