If there's one thing I loved about the game, it was the Judges. I loved their stories, their corruption, their influence, their look, etc. I loved everything about the Judges. I also loved the political/war-like story to this game. Other than that, I don't necessarily love or hate the game. I never finished it because I got about 50 hours into it and my file somehow was deleted. And then I restarted and got about 70 hours into it and my file was deleted again. Never tried again after that.

I've never played a FF game before.

The problem was not the story, it was the pacing of it. Nearly all the cutscene and character story background is in the first 15 hours. After that its bland, long time of playtime without cutscene, this is not RPG to me. The battle system was ok at best.

Im pretty sure most reviewers didnt finish the game before reviewing it. Im a long time RPG fan (played nearly all RPG in english since 17 years), it looks great for the first 15 hours, but after that its a huge dissapointment.

^^^

I agree with your point about the pacing, it wasn't balanced. When they finally did start running with the story near the end, it felt out of nowhere.

I was also thining about it like this: The story is so huge and over-arching that they needed to go into more detail on the smaller scale to connect the dots better...if that makes any sense.

I have the game haven't finished it. I was bored the first 4 hours of gameplay.

from what I've read on this thread and seen in reviews.
I think it actually fails in story telling, telling u more the story of a place but through the eyes of a underdeveloped character, that for the story telling in a game that is like 35+hours. is a failure in story telling.

the story seems interesting, but is not the same as story telling. if the history is good but the way u tell the story lacks of interest on the characters and we're humans we must be moved by this characters we must be allies with the characters.

my conclusion is that a story could be rich, but if the way u are telling me the story is boring and I loose my interest sometimes, well that's not a balanced story.

If that's the case FFXII might have fit better in a book.

Yeah it makes sense, it would have been funnier, after all RPG is suppose to be like playing an interactive book or movies. Not fighting and crossing big maps for hours and hours... Im not saying all game should be like xenosaga (15 hours cutscene for 40 hours of playtime),  but at least it should be balance and should get us somewhat involve in what characters are feeling. I also think that a good RPG normally have plots twist that will affect you, like when we discover that Tidus (main character in FF X) is in fact the product of the imagination of the faith. Your main character you played with, you see the reality through his eyes, is in fact a product of the imagination, and at the end vanish because the faith finally are able to rest. Another good example would be Suikoden 5 when you realise that your own sister and teammate (at time) is with the enemy and that she helped them to try to kill your best friend. And thats after 50-60 hours of gameplay, after you know both characters a lot.

FF XII didnt get you involve in the characters, theres no plot twist that really affect you since you dont really care about the characters. The majority of the game is crossing maps and doing battle, without even a couple of minutes cutscene just to know whats going on between the characters or what the characters are thinking about what theyre doing. Everything else was ok, but theres a big part missing considering this is a 70 hours RPG not a 20 hours action game.

My review would be very harsh considering its an FF game and that it looks so much like FFXI (weapon name, item name, monsters name, skills name, game engine), prolly 6.5/10, with another name on it,  I would tend to give it 7/10. In any case its below average comparing to all the very good RPG on PS2. People should play : Suikoden 3 and 5, dragon quest 8, Xenosaga 1, 2, 3 (2 is only OK, but its part of the story), Rogue galaxy, Final fantasy X, Shadows hearts 2, castlevania curse of darkness, valkyrie profile 2. If you missed any of those one, go buy them now!

12 and X-2 are the only FF games since 7 that I couldn't bring myself to finish. I just couldn't get interested in it, although I do think I liked the battle system more then the traditional.

A big letdown for me. Not a good star for new, then, Square-Enix.

So im outta, start thinking of X or XIII.

i too liked the "feel" of the game... it reminded me a lot of FF Tactics because it was in the same universe, so the nostalgic goosebumps i would receive probably pushed me past some errors with the game.

Vaan was annoying, Fran was hot but not too useful, penelo was whatever, but i really was drawn to SOME of the characters like Ashe and Basch, who had cool backstories and were strong characters. Balthier is now my favorite FF character so far.

FFXII was just missing a certain Umpph that other FF titles had. hopefully they learned their mistakes for 13 and versus :)

Yeah lets hope they learned, the problem is according to the reviews FFXII is a masterpiece, lol!