I can apply this kind of excuse to pretty much every million seller game out there. Games sell because they are being advertised - uh oh, what a surprise. But would people keep buying something they dont like just because it's being advertised even if they dont want to play it? No.

   This "Brand name" excuse is stupid. What's so special about "Final Fantasy" name that makes it sell, while names like Tomb Raider, Crash bandicoot, Sonic, Resident Evil and Street Fighter (in Japan), Tekken, etc etc etc. have lost their popularity? Why cant all these franchises sell the same they used to because of their "Brand name"? Why did japanese people have suddenly given up on Resident Evil with its 4th installment but didnt give up on FF with FFXII?

   People arent mindless sheeps, Kasz216. Final Fantasy XIII is the most anticipated game amongst the users of this website, if you cant understand what's so special about Final Fantasy then ask them why do they anticipate it more than anything else despite it being so far away from release.

Put a 100 million dollar advertisment budget behind it and i'd bet Haze would of sold.

None of those games had built up anywhere near the brand loyalty final fantasy has.  I mean Resident Evil didn't have it's own novelty drink... nor a tradition stretching back from the NES.

You are unnecessarily limiting the scope of this discussion, which obscures exactly how much Final Fantasy sells in comparison to other entrants in the genre. Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana are hardly typical of the genre, even on the SNES.

Dragon Warrior sold 500k in the US because copies of it were given away for free when you subscribed to Nintendo Power. That gam was such a commercial failure that the enormity of it still echoes throughout the halls of NoA. Final Fantasy's initial worldwide shipment was 400k. After that they made more of them.

Would yo ucare to compare it to Illusion of Gaia? Terranigma? Mother 2? Legend of [Blank]? Tales of Blahblah? There were dozens of RPGs on the SNES that clawed for the kind of popularity FF2 had but never came close.

Final Fantasy was never average.

   Oh, so people on this website anticipate FFXIII because of the "100 million dollar advertisement budget behind it" ?

   Makes sense. Yeah.

as i stated many of times , its my least fav FF ive yet to finish it !
and i purchased it the day it came out + im a FF junkie

1.  That was such an awesome deal.  I felt like I stole from them.

2.  Been playing FF from the start.  it has always been great.  Been looking forward to new ones ever since playing the first.  Oh and FF2 was huge back then. I once acted like I liked a kid named jon so I could stay the night and play FF2.

i cant believe that people say that FF sells because of its name.

Final Fantasy XII was... okay. Wasn't really that great or anywhere near the best (FF) game ever, but it was enjoyable. I've played it thru once, probably won't again, and here's why:

The Good:

+ The audiovisual realization was solid at worst. The graphics were quite good for a PS2 game, and I liked the soundtrack - most of the time, at least. Voice acting was pretty bad in most cases, but not bad enough to be disruptive (excluding Vaan and Fran).

+ The combat system was a refreshing change from the old games, except when it came to spacing - unless the enemy was dead slow, hit-n-run attacks weren't really feasible - partly because almost every enemy had a lunge attack and/or MAGIC, and partly because you couldn't really block an enemys charge once it decided to chew on your mages. Even so, it worked, and I liked it.

+ Balthier, because he was the only sane person in the group. Well - the only one who lived thru the game. And was a good character IMO, even if you had to wait for the exposition for a long while.

+ The Gambit system. Who knew that queuing up IF-ELSE blocks would be arguably the best part of the game? It required some tinkering to get the most out of, but it allowed for some quite powerful and versatile setups, and served its role well. A bit too well, perhaps...

THE BAD (I'll probably repeat several things that twesterm and others have already said, but only because they're valid complaints):

- The game was a bloody cakewalk.

Most of the regular mooks were tougher than the bosses, and the bosses only required gambit switching because of the cheap "Oh look, I'm invincible to damage/status" - moves that stayed active forever. And as far as gambits are concerned - yes, you can KO bosses with them and only them. IE. that one light golem mark at Nabudis Necrohol and Ixion, provided you're at least at level 60.

- The License system was the single most irritating, pointless and grindtastic secondary level-up system I've ever seen in an RPG. Irritating because you had to pick your upgrades blind and EVERY-FREAKING-THING required a license, pointless because you got so much LP from the nigh-mandatory grinding, and grindtastic is self-explanatory.

- Who the hell decided to cripple the Gambit system by taking away almost all of the useful ones for most of the game?

- Random. Bloody. chests. And who said the game wasn't grindtastic? Then again, I did find chaining kills to be oddly entertaining.

- Most of the characters - I'll just cover the party here.

Vaan: Defeated Tidus to become the immortal God-Emperor of the universe of incredibly stupid. Had a presence in the story, but didn't really do anything that couldn't have been done by someone else. And had the most aggravating, infuriating, homicidal rage-inducing voice "acting" I've ever heard. Hell, Tidus was horribly annoying, but I didn't ever want to strange him with his own guts.

Basch: Auron plus an emo twin brother, and minus the balls.

Fran: Hello, player! I'm female Basil Exposition with British Intelligence! Now with a crapload of shameless fanservice and tacked-on character development!

Penelo: The stupid half of the Exposition duo. At least she's way less annoying than Vaan ever was.

Ashe: Had a plot twist that was telegraphed a light year away, and behaved like a bitchy Ally McBeal with an hyoooge obsession. Otherwise fine.

- The plot. Seemed awfully generic and cliched, to be honest. All of the supposed political maneuvering was essentially the Big Bad pwning everyone else, the pacing was constantly off, most of the plot developments were visible way before they happened, and while there were some quite interesting elements (ie. Venat/The Undying, Gabranth) it didn't really excite me that much. And massive text/cutscene dumps are a really weak way to tell a story while building a lead wall between the story and gameplay elements.

- YE OLDE BUTCHEREDE ENGLISHE IRRITERANDE

- It felt horribly like a single-player MMORPG when in combat. The overall feel on battle maps, the dungeons that felt like raid instances, the grinding and its mechanics, THE LICENSE SYSTEM, and even the combat system attributed to this.

***

You can pretty much add most of the standard Final Fantasy pluses/minuses on top of those already listed.

Despite my little rant, I'd still give the game 7.8 / 10. The gameplay mechanics were essentially the saving grace for me, while most of the games other qualities were lackluster at best, retarded at worst.

Nice thread.... guess some people just can't stand that some of us thinks this game is a big pile of shit.

Be my guest, like it but I sure as hell don't.

All right, explain your thought process to me.

How do you come to the conclusion that this thread is reactionary to someone's dislike, rather than celebratory of our own affections?

If it were the former, why would I invite people who didn't like it to participate?