Final Fantasy XII certainly had dramatic elements but a good writer would find ways to make them exciting. I would say that any good complex story has some level of mystery that makes you want to continue forward and find out what will happen next. Then when the mystery is explained you are rewarded and satisfied.

For me (and I will say that again, for me), Final Fantasy XII didn't do that for me. It felt like one long session of "who cares."

QFT

The part I didn't like was the MMO feel. The environments were just a little too huge, but the worst part was the way it treated treasure chests. Do they really need to make a chest only spawn 20% of the time and then only have the good item 1% of the time?

Some of the battles were epic... I actually enjoyed fighting (Tiamat?) for 3+ hours to take him down.

I haven't beaten the game yet, so feel free to look contemptuosly upon my comments if they disagree with you :)



I think that soccerdrew17 expressed the feeling I've gotten from the game so far pretty well (forty hours in). It is a great and solid game, but there's something missing which FFX definitely had (X also had some annoying voice actors and XII avoided that.)

What's missing is hard to describe, because it IS a great, well-polished game...

There's no leaving Midgar and realizing there's a whole wilderness of a world to explore. There's no creepy realization that you have to use the lives of an endangered race (your own race) against the empire who is preying on them in order to bring about justice, and then failing in your task only to realize there's a whole new world to explore and save. There's no slowly unfolding mystery where it turns out the whole world's drama is tied up in your existence. The Final Fantasy games do a uniquely good job of giving you this expansive feeling toward the world that you're exploring, where they pull back the curtain one step at a time and the world gets both wider in scope and deeper in meaning as the game goes on. XII hasn't really given me this feeling -- most of the cards seem to have been already on the table at the beginning of the game. I'm hoping the ending changes my opinion, but I'm far enough through now that I think I can understand some of the complaints.


I agree that the combat system works really well and is a good new realization of the Final Fantasy ATB system. The one problem with it is that while it feels really new for the FF series, it feels really familiar (often in a bad way) for anyone who has played an MMORPG in the past decade. Yes gambits are new, but they're introduced into the game too gradually for something that is supposed to make the game somehow more tactical than past ATB systems. A combat system that really looks like it's trying to do something no game has done before is more exciting than one mostly borrowed from a neighboring genre. However, I'm glad to see its not a permanent direction for the series, and as an adventurous departure from the old systems I think it was a success -- I thought they made some of the battles in XII a lot more challenging than they had in other recent games, without making them impossible for beginners. It's definitely a fun game, even if they overdid some of the respawn in areas. (Exploring sometimes feels like playing an MMO when no one else is online, which gets repetitive fast.)


The story is well written in terms of the actual dialog, and the voice acting is excellent, but the storytelling doesn't move quickly enough -- the pacing is off. That the lead designer of the game wanted to make the main character Balthier and was told there had to be a younger lead that teens could relate to makes me think maybe too many cooks spoiled the soup. The story I've heard is, said lead designer then had some sort of nervous breakdown and quit working on the game partway through. This suggests to me that story could have been very different without all those development problems.


I really want to love FF XII, by the way. Since I got a PS2 I've played through every Final Fantasy game since IV with my girlfriend (a lot of them are 2 player in battles). It's one of the only series she likes so I'm always hoping they can outdo themselves and make an incredible game. FFXII is interesting, almost like a Final Fantasy for grownups, but with a pup of a main character. There just aren't many images or feelings from the game which stuck with me since we got a little bogged down in it six months ago and started playing Tales of Vesperia instead. And in the end, that's what I want the most from a Final Fantasy -- those lasting impressions and images from the worlds and characters they create.

Oddly enough, I kind of agree with KD. FFXII is still one of the better in the series. The biggest sour apples are FFIX, FFVIII,and FFX-2.

The combat was not "EASY" either, most just never ventured into fighting tougher things, like all the mob hunts the game had. The one thing the game DID lack that the others were so great for is character developement. Vaan's purpose was so bland and pointless. The art direction was also simple for certain characters which made them very unmemorable(Vaan and Penelo).

But Vaan is not the leading man, Balthier is :)

the lead designer suffered heart issues during the middle of the game's cycle. He was then forced to retire for his health's sake.

just for those who were wondering.......

Exactly;  the pacing and layering of mystery just seemed off.  Almost like it was patched together and not carefully dreamed up from beginning to end.

Yes, I've heard that.  "Heart issues" -- stress related?  Is he still working at SE, or will he ever again, I wonder?

*edit* by the way, I think the guy is genious.  I just wonder if his more creative reputation made people at square feel like they had to rein him in once he was in charge of a sacred final fantasy project.

Ugh, no wonder I ignored that last time.  I'll read it when I get home...

Though I've been told how to make FF12 tolerable, I still haven't tried to. My main problem with the game is and remains that the only way to succeed is to do what goes entirely against both standard gaming logic and standard RPG logic. I can't think of a single other RPG where you're actually better off running about with only one character in your battle party to avoid a total party KO from traps and overpowered enemies that give far too little exp for their difficulty. Nor do I recall any other game which had mimic save points that were not only all over the place, but often the most dangerous enemies in the area they appeared in. The game seems to be determined to make sure I won't want to play it, so why should I force it?