And just thinking some more about this game (sorry, I'm awake for some odd reason), the stuff that happens in the beginning of the game:

• You see the young knight guy get married to Ashe
• You see the young knight guy die and then Ashe kills herself.
  
• You become another young soldier and meet Basc. Enter tutorial level.
• You all die.
• You become Vaan so we already have lots of random character introductios and changes. Fine in a book, bad in a game.
• Oh, Hi Penelo! I bet you're cool, oh wait you have to go. Nevermind.
• You do a lot of pointless quests.
• You do hunts and get caught up in that for a while
• You do more pointless quests (damn darkstones)
• O, Hi Penelo again! You're staying this time. Awesome. Oh, you mean you're leaving in 15 minutes? Damn.
• You muck around in sewers for a while
• You finally start doing something interesting when you break in to the castle...except it just wasn't done well.
• Big invasion of the castle. You meet two completely random characters for some completely random reason join you and don't outright ditch you. At this point, you've already stopped caring.

So yeah, by the time you start doing anything memorable you've already gone through many character changes and introductions and done A LOT of pointless quests that are just busy work. On top of that, you've probably also taken the time to do things like hunts and fiddled around in the desert. By the time the game actually starts to begin, you're invested into the game time wise, but not story wise.

-edit-

And I got farther than that point, just that's the point when I really didn't care about the game and only continued because I had already invested time in it.  That wasn't even enough to keep me playing though. 

I can agree that after FFX the FF serie have had a problem with the games. FFXI the online that was not that good really and FFX-2 that was horrible. But still FFXII is better then those games not as good as games like FFX,FFIX,FFVII,FFVI. I have played around 27hours on FFXII the story is not that good really and the license system ok but not more then that. Why is it so hard to get money on that game?

The Japanese people loved FFXII and rest of the world but still there is few of us that dont like it that much. I need to finish the game before I can judge the whole game. I am still having big hopes for FFXIII because it is on a new console. FFVII ps1 was great with cinematics and deep story and FFX was also great with voice acting, so Square-enix should to something special with FFXIII. And I can honestly say that all spinoffs of the final fantasy serie sucks including Crystal Chronicle dont even start with me with Dirge of Cerberus.

FFXIII is the last game I am hoping for, if that game dont blow me away I will probably stop playing the serie. Same thing happend with the Zelda serie for me Link to the past and Ocarina of time were awesome. Then came Majoras mask then Windwaker and Twilight Princess >_

Yes, I am aware you can see traps.

Oddly, your NPC's are not and tend to run into them anyway, particularily your fourth member with a mind of their own. In later dungeons, you just sigh, heal, and wonder why the hell they did that.

I actually loved Final Fantasy XII. Perhaps I'm one of the few people who like the way Matsuno makes his games.


The Licence Board was awesome. It actually let YOU customise your characters rather than your characters being developed for you and you just earning experience.


I like the Gambit System, but I felt it wasn't complete. I hope Matsuno expands on it in his next game. I think something like it that allows some more user involvement would be great.


I seldom like video game stories. I thought the story in XII was good (I do enjoy political stories), but a little boring. I did enjoy the dialogue, though.




Final Fantasy X one the other hand is probably one of the worst games I've ever played.


You didn't have any input into how your characters were developed (except kimahri where you chose which path to go down). All you did was follow a predetermined path on the sphere grid.


Battles were very easy, and any atmosphere that an area was trying to create was completely destroyed when you entered a battle. The new equipment system was very boring, in my opinion, and always having too much money made things much too easy.


Voice acting was absolutely horrible and in some cases painful! (laughing scene...) Because of this the whole story was ruined.



Matsuno has left Square Enix so I have little to no interest in Final Fantasy XIII.

Bad voice Acting can ruin a game, a nice example of this is Baten Kaitos/Origins. Generally though, the solution is turn it off. Which turned Baten Kaitos from an annoying game that would be hard to play through to one of the best RPG's of that Generation.

Maybe because they are not on your console of choice?

Tis ironic that FFXII was the best of the series, atleast to me, since FFVII.

The battle system was far more innovative, although similar to KOTOR. The gambit and license system reminded me of FFT, one of my favorite FFs.

Ultimately, you are entitled to your opinion, as yours is in the minority. Many many people thought FFXII was the rebirth of a stupid series (I hated FFX, btw, and I've been playing FF since 1 came out in the US).

If you want turn based combat, go play Lost Odyssey when it comes out, or buy Blue Dragon now. IMO, FFXII makes me want to buy a PS2. The game was phenominal.

Also, if the game is easy, try some of the hunts @ lower levels. The hunts made the game sweet. You spent 20 minutes on the cactuar? It took me about 3 minutes to beat him. I guess you've never played a Final Fantasy with a catuar before, eh?

Yeah I agree with mrstickball. 12 was the best game of the series since 7. 8 was good but nothing spectacular, 9 was insanely bad, in 10 you had a lot of stuff to do wich was cool but I didn't really like the story and the characters, 10-2 was pretty bad :/ Pretty much everything in 12 was made almost perfect. The only thing I didn't like is that except for the main storyline there's nothing much to do :/

I have a PS2 capable of playing all the FF games since FFVII, and I still share the same opinion.  FF is not as good as it was in its glory days on the SNES.  It isn't because they were on the SNES, it's because they were better games.