FFXII was, without a doubt, one of my most anticipated games of 2006. In fact, when I found out that it was probably not going to get a PAL release until later in 2007, it was enough to tip me over the edge and go and get my console modded just so that I could import the US release early. Everything I was reading about it was positive - dark, compelling story, modernised battle system, graphical sophistication, polish… everything is there. It is undoubtedly a great game.
But I hate playing it.
Before anyone jumps down my throat, yes, I know that it takes some getting used to. I’ve played 16 hours, so I think I’ve given it a pretty fair run. Everyone seems to be raving the game, so the opinion I’m about to deliver is probably going to go against the grain for a lot of people. I want to make it clear that this is just my opinion. If you really like the game, then good for you, I hope it continues to give you a lot of enjoyment.
First, some history from me. The first RPG I ever played was a fantastic old dungeon crawl game for the Macintosh called Dungeon of Doom. My father got it along with a stack of other games back when I was around four years old. I didn’t really discover the game properly until I turned 9 or so, though. I was playing it on an old Mac Plus that the family had had for several years. I continued to play it until around 1995, when we upgraded our Mac Plus to a Mac LC575. That was when I discovered a shareware RPG called Realmz. I then proceeded to play this for years, culminating in obtaining the editor and scripting my own scenario for the game. It was about the point that I completed that when we moved to Australia. Couped up in a tiny flat for 3 months while we arranged new schools, housing and the like, my father decided to purchase a Playstation for me and my sister. Like a lot of people, I got my entry to JRPGs via Final Fantasy VII at this point. Since then, I’ve played practically every RPG to have gotten a PAL release on PS1 and PS2, and several NTSC imports as well. I even went back through the NES and SNES back catalogue and played through all the good RPGs, including all the FF games and several others (Tales of Phantasia comes to mind as being the most impressive).
That lengthy pile of crap above is just to preclude anyone deciding to try the ‘you obviously don’t like RPGs’ card. I do like RPGs. I like RPGs a great deal. Until recently, I didn’t exactly know what it was that drew me to them. I believed it was the strong storylines, and that is definitely a part. Final Fantasy XII has crystallized for me exactly what it is that I like about RPGs.
In my opinion, there are several types of RPG fan. Three main branches seem to exist. There are those who play RPGs for the tactical gameplay, who love to think their way through every situation. There are those who play RPGs for the numbers, the thrill of levelling up their characters and making them as powerful as possible. And there are those who play RPGs for the compelling plot. I used to assume I was one of those last. However it seems that I’m part of the first group. This is actually quite interesting to me, because I pretty much hate strategy games. But it’s also not that surprising, since I absolutely love strategy RPGs like Disgaea.
Final Fantasy XII makes some really significant strides forward for the series, and the genre. The elimination of the concept of random battles is really important - this convention is a throwback to the NES, which was physically incapable of doing it any other way. Other games (including Square / Enix collaboration Chrono Trigger) have done this before, but it’s the first time that a Final Fantasy has gone with an enemies-on-map setup. I really like this, it’s a great move. The elimination of the delineation between the ‘exploration’ and ‘battle’ modes is also a great thing. Having to wait while the battle system loads, then wait while it unloads again is incredibly frustrating. Tales of the Abyss is a big offender here - if you’re attacked on the world map, there is a 15-20 second wait after a battle while the world map reloads.
I like these refinements to the franchise, yet I hate the battle system they’ve moved to. It’s an odd thing really. Maybe it’s because of late I’m turning a more technical eye to things (as a programmer, you often can’t help but think ‘how would I implement this?’ when playing some games) but it seems like Squenix have essentially thrown the baby out with the bathwater when they got rid of the old battle/exploration divide. It’s pretty clear that the whole battle system is designed around gambits, rather than gambits around the battle system (for the uninitiated, gambits are basically if/else scripts for the AI of your characters).
Let’s talk about the ‘classic’ Final Fantasy battle system. I can’t recall what it was called in the NES and SNES incarnations, however from FFVII to FFX, it’s had what’s called the ‘Active Time Battle’ or ‘ATB’ system. Though FFX called it something different because of a small tweak. Essentially, every character and monster has an ‘initiative’ gauge. This gauge starts at 0, and builds up at a rate defined by the ’speed’ stat of the character or monster. When the gauge is full, the character is ready to perform an action. A menu will pop up with actions that the character can perform, allowing you to select an action. The character then instantly performs that action, their gauge is reset and the cycle continues (in the case of a monster, the menu obviously doesn’t appear - the AI chooses an action). FFX changed this a bit, by having an action order instead of a gauge. Essentially this would figure out the order of actions ahead of time, and each action had a different ‘recovery’ period which would dictate when the character would next be ready to perform an action. However they were basically the same system.
FFXII does it differently. You never see an action menu unless you physically summon it. This is because idle characters have a full initiative gauge. When you (or a gambit) issues a command to the character, they have to wait for that action to become ready. You could think of this as being reverse to the ATB system. The gauge starts at full, and when a command is issued the gauge begins to empty at a rate depending on the speed of the character and the speed of the action. Once initiative hits zero, the action is performed. The difference is only slight, but it has fundamental repercussions for the way that the game is played.
The changes to the battle system really irritate me, because I see no reason for them to have been done. ATB would have worked perfectly well with FFXII. It would have interfaced with the gambits and everything. Additionally it would have been a lot more intuitive and natural - if a character is idle, then they should be in a ‘ready’ state. If I tell them to attack they should be able to instantly whack something. In real life I don’t walk up to something, then charge up my ‘attack’ skill for two seconds, I instantly make a hit, then I recover from it. Once I’m ready to attack again, I do it instantly. Some things might not be instantaneous - an action can take time to perform, eg magic - but reversing the way things work in this way is, frankly, bullshit.
I hate gambits. Before I get any condescending idiots saying “you don’t understand how they work!” or the like: I definitely know how they work. My 9-to-5 is programming, I know how if/else works. I’ve actually implemented this sort of stuff. My problem is not a lack of understanding, it’s a lack of options coupled with a lack of interest and a high level of frustration at the way they’ve made it work. What I liked about FF games was that I was in control of every action. I could sit and take my time, consider every move and even strategically plan ahead of time the sequence of actions I wanted to take. The argument is that gambits still allow me to do this, because they’re just automating what I would normally be doing anyway. This isn’t really true. Certainly there is some monotony in the old system, but with Gambits as far as I’ve seen you can’t do things like automatically attack the weakest / strongest enemy, use ice on fire-based monsters… Most people suggest that you set up your lead character to steal from monsters automatically (since without that you don’t get enough drops to keep your cash flowing properly - see also my point on the game being badly tuned) however your character will continue to steal even when the monster has already been stolen from. Useless actions. If you issue a command to a character, they will often begin to do it only to stop because their gambits kick in and override it. There is no way to, for example, designate a character to attack a specific monster and then have them continue to target and attack that monster until it’s dead, then return to normal gambit operation. Really, the gambit system is a good idea but deeply flawed. Automating things is one thing, taking all my control away and making my commands more like suggestions is another.
A number of fans of the system have said to me ‘well, if you don’t like gambits, turn them off.’ That would be a great idea. I’d love it if I could choose not to use gambits and get the old ATB system back. I can’t. If you turn off gambits your characters will stand around and do nothing. They’ll continue to do nothing until you tell them to perform an action. To do that, you have to manually call up the menu. Then navigate to the correct character, then tell them to do it. Once they charge up and perform that action, they go back to doing nothing. It is painfully difficult to play without gambits. This is what I was meaning when I said the battle system was designed around them - they are not optional. Squenix just pretends they are.
The plotline that I’ve played so far has been very interesting. However it is a vastly different style to the previous games in the series. It’s very much focused on the setting, rather than the characters. There is no real main character, and the characters themselves while interesting have not shown any signs of being compelling. What it boils down to is that plot-wise the game feels more like a western RPG like Baldur’s Gate than it does an eastern RPG like… well, Final Fantasy. FF games have always had an anime-esque aesthetic and plot. They are quite linear, have very well-defined characters, and are very focused on the idea of narrative. FFXII does away with that. Unfortunately, they don’t go far enough towards the western RPG plot style, and they end up feeling stuck in the middle. FFXII’s plot feels like it would make an absolutely fantastic novel, but as a game plot it does not compel me to continue, because only one of the characters really engages me (Balthier).
And while we’re on the subject of characters, I want to bitch and moan about the license grid. They basically took an excellent system in FFX, and shat on it. Some people seem to love it because it offers so much flexibility. I hate it because it offers so much flexibility. You could argue that FFX had the same thing - if you played for long enough, you would eventually have every character end up exactly the same. The difference is that the sphere grid was huge, and every character started off in a different spot. Yuna started out in white magic, Lulu started in black magic, Auron with break attacks and power… For most of the game, if you followed the appropriate paths each character was quite different and had a well-defined function in the party. FFXII doesn’t have that at all. Everyone starts out with a slightly different permutation of the same setup. The only difference between the characters will end up being which Espers and Quickenings you give them. They have no unique skills or abilities. This would be fine if there were strong cues as to how you’re intended to develop each character, but there is nothing like that. FF5’s Job system is a bit like this as well, however with that you’re actually attaching a role to a character, in comparison to FFXII where you’re developing random skills. And it really is random, because the license grid is completely hidden to you. You can’t plan ahead of time what to develop because you don’t know what’s there to get. In order to find that out you have to get images of the grid, which is clearly a money-grab. This game was designed to be obscure without a game guide (see also: don’t open random chest #1431294 or you can’t get the strongest weapon in the game), and I think that’s extremely low.
I absolutely hate grinding. Some people love the whole levelling-up grind, but I hate it. It’s the reason I can’t play MMOs. Grinding with a purpose - for example in FF7, grinding in the mithril cave just past the Midgar swamp to unlock the top-tier limit breaks - is usually okay. That’s optional grinding. FFXII basically requires you to grind for hours in order to be strong enough to do the next area. This is probably a result of them trying to bring in elements of FFXI, but really this is one thing that should never have come along for the ride. In my opinion, required grinding is a sign of very poorly balanced RPG design. A properly balanced, well designed RPG will be tuned so that if you fight and kill every enemy on the way to the next area, you will have levelled enough that the next area will be perfectly balanced for your party. Grinding to level up heaps should only be necessary to make the next areas easier or to complete optional bosses and areas. Games like Tales of the Abyss hit this level of tuning perfectly. The FF games from 5 onwards were pretty much bang-on too. FFXII doesn’t come close. It’s a throwback to the must-grind play of FF4.
I wish there was some way to watch the storyline for this game without playing it. 
Overall I’m extremely disappointed. It’s like they’ve made a list of all the things I liked about Final Fantasy deliberately replaced those things with things I don’t like. It also feels a lot like they’ve tried to make it bridge the gap between JRPGs and western RPGs. That’s a commendible thing, but it assumes that we actually want that bridge to be gapped. I don’t. I want my old FF back.
I finished the game very recently, and while I agree with some of your points, I’m sorry to see you didn’t enjoy it =( anyway, a couple of responses to your issues with the gambits - like you said, they are basically glorified if-then statements, and only if they could be nested, but overall I really liked what the gambit system had to offer. with Gambits as far as I’ve seen you can’t do things like automatically attack the weakest / strongest enemy, use ice on fire-based monsters…
I can’t remember at what point in the game, but yes, it’s definitely possible to target the weakest/strongest enemy, attack fire-based monsters with specific magic.. you can target enemies with certain statuses, you can target enemies if your party member is of a ceertain status … in fact the entire system gets SO specific that I don’t use 90% of the conditions. Make sure you check out the gambit store in each town every time you enter one. Furthermore, you can pick up a lot of gambit “ifs” (at least, I did) from treasure chests on the maps. You only have 12 gambit slots though, so I don’t know if you would have room to get so specific without changing them in and out between areas.
> Most people suggest that you set up your lead character to steal from monsters automatically (since without that you don’t get enough drops to keep your cash flowing properly - see also my point on the game being badly tuned) however your character will continue to steal even when the monster has already been stolen from.
I got around this by doing “if Foe HP = 100% then steal” - then the lead character only steals when the enemy HP is full. Sure, it means it won’t steal again when your other party members start attacking … or it’ll just keep stealing from every enemy in the map instead of attacking first… but I found this gambit pretty useful for me.
> There is no way to, for example, designate a character to attack a specific monster and then have them continue to target and attack that monster until it’s dead, then return to normal gambit operation.
Hm… why don’t you try “Foe: lowest HP” plus “Foe: party leader’s target”? I pretty much used these two continually in the game …
Finally, regarding your point about lack of customisation… I actually had a bit of fun with customising my characters, although not perhaps to the degree of detail you like. I had a designated mage/bow user, dedicated tank/attacker, and dedicated stealer/random other everything/party leader for my A team and my B team. You can teach everyone the same thing, but you don’t necessarily use everyone the same way… one can argue that there’s not a huge need for a black mage in this game (most attack magic is nearly useless) and sometimes EVERYONE needs to be a healer to survive.
Certainly, this is not a traditional FF … it’s different, but good. Kind of like .. I don’t know, snake meat vs chicken meat… regular sex vs lesbian sex.. or something. Anyway, hopefully you can come across more gambits to be able to tweak to the level you want, soon, if you’re still inspired enough to beat the game.
I didn’t say anything about lack of customisation - the opposite. Far too much of it, and not enough hints. Everything has this feeling of generic sameness which leeches all the connection out of the characters and makes them feel like cardboard cutouts.
I’m using Foe HP = 100% - Steal at the moment. It sucks. Designate a target, lead character steals, the other guys notice, start fucking CHARGING their attack, lead character meanwhile begins a steal action again, despite already pulling it off. Other characters deal damage, but the steal still completes because the gambit only kicks in when the character is ‘idle’.
Also, I don’t really care if you might eventually get the gambits you actually need to make the game remotely interesting. I don’t want to have to fuck around scripting AI, and I strongly object to having to pay gil (which is already far too scarce) in order to get those gambits. I also object to the very concept of having to fuck around grinding random treasure chests to get them. This is not an MMORPG.
The fact that I feel like I’ve hardly progressed in the plot at all despite grinding for 16 hours, yet the enemies are still wiping the floor with me would probably indicate I’m not doing it ‘right’. But of course to do things correctly you have to buy the goddamn fucking guide to know what the fuck you’re doing.
I think the bulk of my problem is that every signal the game sends me is saying ‘this is an Action RPG’ but it’s not.
EDIT: Since I’ve finished Gears of War now and I have some time off, I might go back to playing the infinitely more engaging Tales of the Abyss and wishing Namco weren’t cheap fuckers who can’t be bothered dubbing their games properly.
EDIT2: On the upside, it’s well and truly killed all interest I had in the whole Final Fantasy franchise. Now I don’t have to whore myself out to Sony for a PS3! I can play proper Hironobu Sakaguchi-designed RPGs on my 360 instead.
Judging from the number of “fucks” in your reply, I guess there’s nothing that can be done to salvage the relationship between you and FF12 =( I’m so sad, losing a FF fan is like a huge moral loss for me, so clearly I can’t let this go.
Regarding your point about the sameness of the characters, my first RPG was … dun dun dun… FF8. A lot of mixed feelings with this game out there; I enjoyed it because I didn’t know better at the time, and probably that primed me well for the expectation that “all your characters have access to the same magic and abilities, and the differences in their weapons don’t make up for a huge difference” …
Anyway, I have to admit that I probably haven’t run into many of the same problems you have because of the time I spent grinding in the early parts of the game, such that I never had problems with the license board because I’ve never had a shortage of license points … (don’t know what it is? learn it anyway! even if I never use it!) Nor did I ever have a gil shortage, which I don’t understand because everywhere I read is people saying how the game doesn’t have enough gil… plus gambits were relatively cheap. I just must have been incredibly lucky or something.
In the end though, I guess the gameplay appeals to a certain type of person that has to enjoy the grind and whatnot, and it’s really not for everyone. Why torture yourself to play something that you’re not getting pleasure out of - gaming is supposed to be about having fun, after all! Honestly, near the end game it’s a LOT of grind.. so it’s probably a wise decision to stop now instead of near the end after you’ve put 80 hours into it
As a last ditch effort to make you rejoin the ranks, maybe you can rekindle your interest in the FF franchise by going back to the earlier ones? (I don’t have a DS, but FFIII is certainly making me interested in getting one.. my boyfriend is very much hinting he wants one for his bday in January…)
(When you get around to playing Blue Dragon, do review it!)
Just want to comment on your gambit part of write up, I think you need more time to play with the gambit system to get more used to it.
First thing first, there are many gambit in this game, only a few of them are available in the beginning, but once you progress a little (access to gambit shop), you can start to buy a lot of them. They pretty much cover whatever you need to do.
For instance, you said that if you set up the steal gambit, then the character will keep stealing. But did you try to use Foe: HP=100% steal gambit? With someone else do HP=100% attack this will pretty much take care of steals. Yes there are situations where you have to manually steal with this setup, but it’s only on rare monster/bosses, which you can change the gambit to fit that situation. This is one beauty of the gambit system, you have enough slots to write gambit for one situation and only activate when it’s needed.
Also bear in mind that steal is the only part of the battle system that can not be fully automated in this game. Everything else can be automated if you set up the gambit correctly. For instance you said there is no way to have everyone kill one enemy till it’s dead then another etc. In fact there are multiple ways to do that which I am not gonna list here. The gist of this comment is that, perhaps, just perhaps, you should give this game’s battle system one more chance, before you let it go. You like the plot right? Then that enough will motivate me to finish a RPG. In my opinion, the battle system of this game is probably the best in the whole series.
Well, I just beat FFXII last night, and I’d just like to throw my two cents in here. It seems to me like you didn’t really give the gambit system a fair chance. Of course it’s not going to be as smart as a person manually controlling everyone. As a programmer, you should know that automated systems aren’t going to be as good as an expert in control, but there are still dang good reasons for making automated systems. In this case, it takes all the boring monotonous decisions out of battle and replaces them with the interesting high-level optimization problem of gambit setup. The combat system is no longer one of “oh look I’m injured I’d better cast a heal spell” but now one of “how do I best refine these characters’ scripts so they perform optimally,” which I think is FAR more interesting. I also think the pleasure found in defeating difficult enemies by issuing manual commands to your characters pales before the experience of defeating said enemies by setting the controller on the floor and watching the well-oiled machine you created do the job itself.
Don’t underestimate how much the gambit system evolves throughout the game, as well. It starts simple and relatively stupid because it HAS to - this game isn’t marketed at programmers. By the end once you have all 12 gambit slots full for everyone, all gambits purchased, and most spells and abilities available, the system becomes quite involved. (Also note that all gambits are purchasable, and for a virtually nonexistent cost. You could probably buy every gambit in the game for the cost of one endgame hat. Grinding is in no way necessary for getting them.)
I think tuning a game like this is quite hard because a large factor of player performance comes from how well he or she can tune the gambit system. I only ground for 3 or so hours, tops, in the entire game. I stopped doing optional content halfway through because the main plot was becoming too easy. However, I also watched one of my roommates have quite a difficult time in places I breezed through because his gambits weren’t very good. I personally think this could have been better solved by some sort of dynamic difficulty adjustment system, but for some stupid reason those are anathema to the current gaming industry. I think they did a pretty good job, though.
My main complaint with the game echos yours about the license grid. It really only allows for meaningful specialization in the mid-game. In the early game people haven’t become different enough to be meaningful, and in the late game you run out of things to buy and are forced to get magic for your fighters and fighting ability for your mages. In the late game, though, characters remain effectively specialized due to their equipment and gambits. I don’t really think an FFX-style system would have worked, though, because in XII everyone having white magic is Very Important. I think it would have worked better if they dropped the equipment licenses and have the entire thing be lots of augments / abilities / magic with obvious directions like “expanding this way makes you a better mage and this way makes you better at taking damage” and the like.
Also the summons were totally useless after the very beginning, but whatever.
So while FFXII was far from perfect, I would definitely rate it in the top 3 FF games of all time along with 6 and 7. Just play the combat game for what it is - an optimization problem - and it’s plenty enjoyable.
Regarding the steal issue, the way I got around it was to make sure my party leader always had the ability to steal (hell, everybody eventually had the ability), and everybody (including the party leader) had Foe: Party Leader’s Target, which is like the first “Foe” gambit you get (and the most useful). Once that’s done, you just control the party leader manually. You can set some of the other characters up to heal once a party member’s health gets below a certain point (I found that 70% was best starting off, but the ideal drops off after a certain point), but always make sure that your party leader has the attack gambits set at a higher priority, because if he heals anyone, then the Foe: Party Leader’s Target becomes useless and everyone moves on to their next gambit. Also, using the Ally: Any gambit with specific skills and items is quite useful for healing if you don’t have the specific “Ally: Status =” gambit, because if you set up, say, Ally: Any with Phoenix Down, then they won’t use it unless someone is actually dead, and only one person will use it. You don’t get the proper “Ally: Status =” gambit that you’d think you’d need for Phoenix Down for a loooong time, so it’s a good way to do it. Also, due to the fact that you can pause the game and go into your meta menus at ANY TIME (except during some cutscenes), you can change your gambits in the middle of a fight in case you’ve been fighting undead (slicing your way through, of course) and all of a sudden a flock of flans drop out of nowhere and you need to start torching them instead.
Basically there’s two things to remember:
Manually control your party leader until the battle’s pretty much over.
Don’t be afraid to fix your gambits on the fly.
Do those, and the MMO-style fighting won’t bug you as much and you can enjoy the storyline more. As for the “don’t open random chest #1431294 or you can’t get the strongest weapon in the game” bit, yeah, that pretty much sucks, but it’s the only case of that happening in the game, and if you know where said random chests are (there’s four of them), it’s not an issue at all. That’s why God created Gamefaqs.
At heart I agree with most of your complaints about the gambit system and license board, but it’s not difficult to adapt to it or work around. Most of the more tactical gambits don’t appear as early as they should, money is scarce but there’s enough of it going around to buy what you need if you have a plan and don’t, say, buy every single technique/spell/etc. Ingame documentation is certainly poor, but you can use inactive characters to scout the license board for you, for example.
My main issue with your rant is that you claim grinding is mandatory and the game is too hard to be played though normally. I know this isn’t true since I had something of the opposite experience and managed to tweak things such that I was roaming around Nabudis in the 20s.
Three important factors: equipment is radically different in this game than in any previous title, and it isn’t explained very well. You’ll want to mix and match armor types, and which armor is best for which role is largely counterintuitive. Light armor is good for mages and tanks due to the massive HP buffer, mage armor is sometimes better for physical damage dealers using magical weapons like katanas, and heavy armor is often more rogue gear than anything.
Second, support magic is pretty important if you don’t want to be quickly obliterated in an important fight. Decoy, Reverse, and Bubble are all unfamiliar spells, but they’re extremely powerful and should be bought as soon as possible. Do the clan hunts as soon as they’re feasible.
Finally, in a lot of earlier fights (before Decoy, basically) the game almost resembles an RTS at times. You can use a character to kite powerful mages or AE-spamming heavies around a bit while your other two polish off their friends. When confronting a mob, you’ll generally want to send in your best physical tank in a bit early to get their attention so you only have to worry about one HP bar, not three. And when dealing with large dragon-types, you can position your support members to the side or back of the creature to avoid breath attacks entirely.
Anyway, know that tedious level grinding and chest popping isn’t actually required (or particularly helpful, the HP/power curve is pretty flat) and hopefully a change of approach will make the game more enjoyable for you.
@ Vinland:
Wow, Nabudis at lvl 20?? I stayed out of there until lvl 45 at least, since I got tired of those enemies ganging up on me
My major wish for the game was that Reverse status needs to last longer…
Pretty much everything that people say are the game’s virtues are things I don’t like.
I don’t think I’ve got my gambits set wrong, I think the gambit system itself is wrong. I don’t want to be able to fuck around with them, I have no interest in doing that. I want to be able to turn them off and play without them.
They’ve tried to turn it into a realtime RPG, but haven’t bothered to look at the games that have done it right. Take Knights of the Old Republic for example. At any point I can tell the game to pause. The action stops. Then I can issue commands and queue up actions on each of my characters, unpause, and continue. The only way to ‘pause’ FFXII is to go into the menu, and all you can do is tweak gambits.
I get absolutely zero fun out of building AI scripts and then sitting there and watching my characters do things. If there was a walkthrough or similar which was absolutely rigid - use these characters, open these licenses in this order, get this equipment, go to this place, etc. then I would probably continue playing. I just don’t have time to fuck around for what feels like hours with my brain switched off. The plot is interesting, but the characters are unengaging and in the case of Vaan and Penelo they’re downright unappealing. If it was an action RPG where I was actually involved in things other than steering my characters to the next fight while they do everything, I might be interested in playing further.
The whole gambit thing pushes me towards playing quickly and constantly having to be thinking ahead while my situation is changing. I can’t do that. I plan too strategically, and if my current status is constantly changing then I can’t keep up. So when I encounter a harder battle, I just get overwhelmed. I had the same problem with X-2 - the battle system was just too fast, and I can’t keep up because there’s no way to get things to stop while I figure out what to do. The removal of all control over the characters just makes it worse.
I think I’d probably be less frustrated had the game not been so heavily hyped. Best FF game ever and such. It certainly isn’t. It’s the worst core FF game I’ve played next to FF2.
The fact that people go around talking strategies for this game using MMORPG terms like ‘kiting’ and ‘tanking’ just reinforces my dislike for it.
>it’s the first time that a Final Fantasy has gone with an enemies-on-map setup
Just like to point out that Final Fantasy XI was very similar. To me, FFXII seems like an adaptation of FFXI that was made for a single player, meaning a single story line and AI. I think the gambit system is smart, however I think that they could have done it in a different way; it is essential to have some amount of control over your teammates, however the gambit system allows you to control your main character as well, and through this you can eliminate all human interaction excluding running around between battles. If the gambits were only active on the party members the player was not controlling, the system would be that much more effective. There would still be human interaction in battle. To me, that would be the biggest change I’d make in the game.
A suggestion I’d make is to just play with gambits such as “Foe: Party Leader’s Target” for attacking. And only on non-party leaders. This way, you still have to decide when you want people to cure or heal status ailments or buff. Granted, this means you’re doing extra work when there is a simpler method for you. But if that’s what you’re looking for in the game, then it might help.
I see where you’re coming from where you say how much you dislike the license board. The concept of it is great, but with the simplicity of grinding it’s far too easy to fill out the board with exactly what you need. Add on the 2x LP accessory and it takes no time at all. If armor and weapons were based on level rather than licenses, as they were in FFXI, then perhaps that problem would be solved. Then you would have each character start with certain skills and branch out from there. More like the sphere grid, where characters start with specific roles. Sure, with enough grinding it wouldn’t matter. But it wouldn’t be like now, where all of my characters are practically identical on the board.
The thing I look at about FFXII that makes it the best FF game to me is the story. I haven’t beaten it, I’ve only gotten maybe 30 hours in. But for once, the game takes place during a real war, and not just during a conflict between small organizations. And the story is not a tale of love between two star crossed lovers. It’s a rags to riches story about how unlikely companions save the world. Still cliché, yes, but I like the fact that it’s not all about the love. I think it’s more fitting.
hi i am just someone who happened to pass by. just noticed this post in blogsuki. read it and wanted to make some comments.
anyway i agree with you about the gambit system.
i also don’t really like the story. later in the game, there are only few cutscenes. compared to the story of ffx, suikoden v and tales of the abyss, ffxii’s story pretty much sucks.
about the characters, i only like fran, balthier and penelo. they are only the most interesting characters in the game. well the other interesting characters are larsa, reddas and al-cid but too bad al-cid isn’t a main character and larsa and reddas are only guest characters
the good thing about the places in ffxii is the people in the cities really seem like they are doing something. running, doing their own stuff, etc. they aren’t just standing there for you to talk at them like most rpgs.
and in dungeons, etc. some of the monsters attack the other monsters and the monsters aren’t all in the same level like the annoying elementals in almost every place. there are also some other travelers seen in the dungeons, plains, etc. like a bangaa or a seeq. it doesn’t seem like you are the only party traveling in the fields.
but i hate the fact that the monsters are always the same. they just change their color and add some other details but they are pretty much the same.
what makes me want to keep playing this game is the awesome battle system, the espers, the quickenings, the license board and the difficulty of the game. yes for me the game is hard. it is hard to get loot and money. some of the bosses and summons are also hard. not to mention, the great music.
“They’ve tried to turn it into a realtime RPG, but haven’t bothered to look at the games that have done it right. Take Knights of the Old Republic for example. At any point I can tell the game to pause. The action stops. Then I can issue commands and queue up actions on each of my characters, unpause, and continue. The only way to ‘pause’ FFXII is to go into the menu, and all you can do is tweak gambits.”
I think you are playing this game on Active mode, which is much harder than Wait mode. If you play on wait mode, the moment you press X to issue commands, the game pauses (just like KoTOR does).
If you use Wait mode and issue commands manually to everyone, this game plays identical to previous FFs.
BTW, I play the game on Wait mode and fastest battle speed. Play this game on Active mode and fastest battle speed is a real challenge and not recommend.
I’m on wait mode. It only waits while you’ve got the menu open. KotOR has auto-pause features, with the pause being on it’s own button so you can issue commands in realtime too.
Final Fantasy XII > Any other Final Fantasy game, besides VII.
(Did yall hear about Final Fantasy XIII heading to the 360? That’ll be some slick shit right there.)
I must say, Though I love the story, something was nagging me a bit about the game. In the end, the gambit system, though arguably a good notion, is both poorly implemented (you made lots of those points as well as I might have from a programmer’s standpoint, so I’ll not list them) and overly depended on by the game. I will say that as for the grinding you seem to have to endure (if any, because I don’t ever remember ever stopping to level), it alleviates the need by doing what it does. Leveling is seldom a chore more distasteful than being deprived of the story. As you also mentioned, the lack of definition among the characters is kind of disappointing, though I suppose I self-imposed roles on certain characters based on their personalities in the end to good effect. As for the liscense grid, yes, I hate it. The sphere grid, while not perfect either, was at least something to plan for, and a good measure of characters development and roles beyond just “shooting for corners” as I call it in FFXII.
Ironically though, the thing you seem to hate most–the lack of time to think–is what I think I like most about the game. It’s fast-paced, but tactical, and that makes for good times. That was actually the one thing I always gave FFX-2 though I absolutely detest everything else about the game–the battle system was good.
I suppose I belong in all three groups, since I’m a sucker for a good story, love making my characters the best they can be (If I mention the Yoshitsuna, do I get a prize?), and love a strategy-based romp through monster country. On that note, I have a recommendation, if you haven’t already found it yourself; Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter. Given your complaints about XII, this sounds like it’s right up your alley. It’s s a game that gives you all three…and should you decide to give it a try, I invite you to drop me a line when/if you beat it. If you have, feel free to drop me a line anyway. It’s always nice to find someone who’s done it as I don’t know any beyond the gamefaqs community.
Adieu
I’ve played Breath of Fire games before (though admittedly not 5) and really didn’t enjoy them at all.
I also really didn’t like FFX-2’s battle system, again not just because it was too fast, but because it gave me no option to play it slowly. I didn’t really pay much attention to the problems though since I assumed it was simply a result of the fact the whole game was crap.
In the future I’ll make sure to stick to non-Squenix RPGs, I think. This whole experience has left me feeling quite bitter.
Yeah, I know what you mean about being jaded by the company. I almost gave up after X-2, but I offered them one last shot before I left for good.
As for Dragon Quarter, it’s not suprising. I hear that a lot when I mention the Breath of Fire series. People were disgusted by the end of III (…I’ll control my venting on that) and as a result never played VI, which was a solid game. V though, is a complete departure from the rest of the series that plays more like Final Fantasy Tactics without the grid-based movement. I do strongly recommend it.
As for Square-Enix…the companies should have remained separate entities. They were good competetion for one another, and with the merger, their games have suffered a quality shock the likes of which I’d never seen before.
If you don’t like the gambit system…
Then get Square-Enix to publish a “Gambit Building Guide for Dummies” book…
It would probably answer most of your questions of the Gambit System…
And based on the many of “fucks” you’ve used in you replies…
I think that it goes against your “opinon” and that it is actually offending some people…
If you haven’t realized it yet… Time passes by and things improve and get better…
What I mean is that Final Fantasy won’t always stay the same as random encounters, which I thought was highly irritating… Things change and people will talk about it…
My opinion is that this game REALLY improved and I like it a lot… I haven’t beaten it yet and I really really like it…
Maybe you just need to give it a chance… and play it until the end…
Hey, look, a reply almost three months after the initial post! Go me.
I don’t like FF XII, either. Actually, I pretty much gave up on FF since IX. FF XII feels like a mixed bag of a Skies of Arcadia rip-off, a bad gaming engine, and too many setting elements from that crappy FF Tactics Advance thing.
From the late FF games (after VI that is), I feel VII and IX are the only worth ones. X-2 presented a decent battle system, but the whole concept/story was so retarded that made me scream of agony.
You want a pure FF experience, Negs? I believe you should go (re)play FF IX.
If you think an automated system cannot match a real players input, you got issues. As a programmer, yes, the AI can be smarter in a given situation than even player input. There is no thought, it’s an instant process.
Gambits, are not as deep as true AI programming. It’s close, but it’s just a trigger macro based system. Of course it was not intended to be that deep, but the point is if something was gonna be done, it should have been done right.
Stuff like Ally: Any -> Potion, and the player just auto tossing potions regardless of health all day is retarded. Telling the AI to do something based on a trigger is fine, but it should be smart enough to know not to keep tossing it when it doesn’t need it.
It’s smart enough not to do this with Esuna.
It’s smart enough not to keep casting Protect on the same charachter if it’s already active.
So why stuff like Steal and Potion not having the same smarts?
There’s problems you can’t work around, and those two are examples.
I agree with the op in that the ATB system should have remained in place with the gambits. It would have allowed for more, precise gameplay overall.
They should have also added an ingame player swap like in FFX. To allow you to swap party members while in the fight without going into a menu. Why they didn’t carry this into FFXII I just don’t know.
its fairly clear why potions etc keep being used in gambits…if a person already has protect etc it isnt in need of it again until it wears off, a potion on the other hand, if set to any- and use- will just keep throwing. characters hp drops below full and a potion gets used to heal it. thats why u choose hp less then 90% or something, depending on how high u wanna keep it. its a fairly simple idea and its clear why it happens…
Just was this while looking for low lvl guide.
I am a True fan of ff7, every ff game after has dipped further and further away.
And well i will admit this game dosent suck as much as x2 did its still pretty crap.
Any x2 fans should probably go watch some more charlies angels and come back to me in a few years when we can have an adults conversation.
This game has so many flaws its ridiculous. Gambits??? what the hell man, i’m no idiot but i’ll be honest i dont even bother to wonder what there doing half of the time, i understand the concepts and whats supposed to be done but it just aint happening right.
My main beef with the game is this fact that you HAVE to grind to be strong enough to get further with the story, any person that says otherwise obviously took extensive scenic routes on there story line completion. Every guide i see tells me i am 7 -10 lvls lower than i should be for an area.I mean during the judge fights in the leviathon i was lvl 7, guides all say recomended lvl 14. aand the gap is only getting bigger. Its got to the stage where i cant afforf gear or spells, i have misspent a load of lp while not knowing what to do etc. i’m being forced to go grind mobs for hours to get exp to get a few lvls higher so i can contiue a very poor story.There is no character development and our lead guy looks like a girl half the time and thinks/acts like one too.
Think its time that ff games went back like in 7 where the lead characters were all early 20’s or more. not a 17 year old kid who truth be told acts like hes 14 most of the time.
A bitter post, my appologies but thats what brokn dreams taste like. This game is far from the best ff game ever and nor far off one of the worst imo
That is the exact problem I had when I was playing - I was getting thrashed on the Leviathan because I wasn’t high enough level, because I thought that, like other FF games, they would have bothered to tune it so that grinding to level everyone up was an optional component. It’s not.
So I restarted with a power levelling guide and followed that and was finding the game a lot more enjoyable. Stopped a while ago, might go back to it.
Apparently FF13 will go back to a standard battle system. Thank god.