+1 Khuutra. I thought FFXII was great. Great gameplay and graphics. If only it had a better story.. it coulda been goty. But still, a great rpg.

Graphics are one thing I can honestly state that I was astounded by in FFXII. Some of the details I saw in faces were great especially when you consider this was on the PS2. When I first saw Gran Kiltias Anastasis in a close shot I could have sworn it was this gen for PS2.

God of War 2 had the settings but this had great character detail.

On the game as a whole for a game, it's was excellent, great gameplay, story was interesting. Problem for me was that it just didn't feel like Final Fantasy, only now as I'm playing Vagrant Story for the first time, does it feel like a 'sequal' to that, maybe as a game better suited as just another in the Ivalice world not as a main FF game.

The battle system was not something I'd associated with Final Fantasy (FFXI had too strong of an influence on it) and meant that I spent needless hours leveling up when in many previous FF games, I have never had to and 'leveled' up for fun. This pointless repetative task of running about was as far more annoying for me then some people claim the random battles were, but random battles are Final Fantasy.

Loved Final Fantasy XII, put 140 hours into it, got every mark including Yiazmat, and really liked the real time battling, that said I still like turn-based just as much, but enjoyed the changed of pace alot.

I really enjoyed the game until I got to the desert area before the temple. The desert area was extremely large, and I felt compelled to explore every nook and cranny. This took forever. When I finally got to the end of the desert, I was faced with an amazingly tough boss that killed all my characters in 1-2 hits, DESPITE all the grinding I went through exploring the desert area.

I figured I'd probably need to go up 2-3 levels per character to beat the sucker, and I estimated such an endeavor would take at least an hour and a half, so I promptly stopped playing.

Also, long periods of grinding expose the main weakness of the battle system. It can get incredibly boring when your characters are on auto-pilot while taking out weak creatures.

But up until that point, I loved this game.  Give me tips to keep on loving it!

mm, if you were fighting in the Sandsea, were beating the normal enemies that easily, and saw everything, you weren't fighting a boss when you got killed.

You were fighting an Entite. You can't reliably fight those things until level 50.

If you lost to the boss that easily, you were having one of two problems: you forgot to use the item that cuts its power in half, or you were severely lacking in armor.

One thing that many people assume about this game is that grinding will let you win, but defensively, levels aren't even half as important as your armor.

for me this is just trolling.

Hm.  I assume Entites can be avoided?  Whatever this thing was it was guarding the temple.

And what item is this!?!  I need it NAO! (Or whenever I have time to go back to FFXII - I haven't played it since...October?)

As far as armor goes, I remember buying what weapons/armor I could, but I don't recall having much money.  I'm too lazy for hunts.

And check my edit (just in case you didn't see it, lol).

Oh! Uh.

Okay, okay.... let's see...

It was guarding the temple? Now, which temple do you mean?

As to getting money, the best thing yo ucan o in terms of money is chain kills of the same general enemy type (like you can kill different Malboro species as logn as they're all Malboros and in the same area). The thing about chainign kills is that loot is dropped in levels - the basic one is actually 0, with chain levels going up to 3. With each chain level you get more and better loot, as well as random refills of your health and MP.

The way you increase your chian level is just by killing your enemies. But htere's a secret to this!

Most people who chain enemies pick up the dropped loot as soon as they see it. But this actually makes your chain level up about five times more slwly than it would if you just left the loot lying there. So the best and most time-efficient way to get loot is to kill enemies of the same type, and leave the loot where it is until you start getting level 3 loot.

If you do this, you will never, ever, ever be in a bind for money. There are some areas in the game where you can get like 150k gil in about twenty minutes. Or considerably more.

Now, uh...

What kind of boss were you fighting? Was it a giant bird, or a T-Rex, or what?

BIrd-ish thing.  Like a pterodactyl, I suppose.  It's been awhile.

And if you leave loot just lying around, it won't disappear?  See, this is when games confuse me.  They do something new that I'd never expect, and I don't think to try it.  Like the cover system in Company of Heroes.  I was getting my ass handed to me in the beta becuase I didn't know what those colored circles meant.  The idea of a cover system in an RTS never crossed my mind, and I didn't bother with the tutorial.  xD