Final Fantasy 12?

[Unclesatan]

Been playing this alot lately.. I actually played a demo well before it was released, and thought it would be REALLY STUPID. I thought the entire battle idea was retarded and I vowed to never play it.

Well shit, I just went back on my vow. This game is freaking awesome, on the level of Final Fantasy X-2 (YES, X-2, BECAUSE IT HAD A GOOD CLASS SYSTEM DAMMIT)

I really like the Gambit system, I'm a freak about that kinda stuff, so I like all my party members to be ultra-customized.

I did all these marks and found some badass armor.. Vaan has 946HP and the rest of my party has >650

>_>
<_<

Okay, maybe I don't like ALL my party members like that, just the reliable one.

So who's played this? I have 3 quickenings on Vaan already, Basch has the other one.. I'm too lazy to get them for everyone else. I set Vaan up with a bow too (the strongest one I can get, from the vendor outside the Wraithwall Tomb), and I've had him with his bow since the beginning of the game.. it's fun to be TEH MAITY HUNTAR. I have that one bish Penelo as my uber-mage, since she got like 930 license points when I finally got her on the Dreadnaught again.. so I bought all this powerful magic, so now she's a Time/Green/White/Black mage. She still doesn't have as much mana as Vaan though.. although, that's not saying much, considering Vaan has 210 mana and everyone else has >80 mana... LOL.

Right now I'm just training my characters up and doing marks.. I removed Fran's Bow, since Vaan is just way better at that anyways, and gave her this badass Cypress Staff, which gives like 30 evade (more than any shield I can get at the moment), and 38 attack (my bow has 41 attack), and she kicks ass with it. She always hits 2+ times, dealing well over 400 damage per attack..

I stayed up till 5:00 in the morning training my characters, is that a bad thing?

My Chars, in levels..

Vaan - 21
Basch - 20
Balthier - 15
Fran - 17
Penelo - 18
Ashe - 18

I don't really like Balthier that much. I had him as my healer/anti-mage (cause I got these ammo rounds that silence enemies; ftw), but Penelo does that better now anyways since she has Slow, Silence, Protect, and all sorts of shit..

Ashe is my super healer though. She can cast Raise for 9 mana LOL.

[Ryvius]

12 has good points, but too many bad points for me to enjoy. Bottom line, I had played like 40 hours and still wasn't having fun. The license system was fun at first, but since everyone can unlock all of the license board your whole party ends up as super-powerful red mages by the end of the game. Quickenings were actually fun, but they became useless on the game's powerful enemies later in the game. The characters seem barely connected. You could take out half the cast of playable characters, and the game's story wouldn't really suffer.

I was SO excited when this was coming, the graphics looked awesome and the fact that it was in Ivalice was enough to get me excited over it. In the end though, it dissapointed me.

[Unclesatan]

Odd. I've had loads of fun so far.

I've developed my chars differently, each one of them.. so none of them are super powerful red mages at all, only Penelo XD

And you could say the same about all of the Final Fantasy games.. about the take out half the cast of playable characters thing. Look at Final Fantasy 9. What exactly is the point of Vivi, as adorable and awesome as that thing is.. he's just a prototype black mage who went commando, and happened to team up with Zidane and his buddies. He provides not a whole lot to the story.. as deep as his little blackmage mind is. Final Fantasy 8? Zell.. lol. Without Zell, there would be little to no comic relief in that game, and that's pretty much the only reason he's in there XD

Final Fantasy 7? How about Barrett. Without Barrett, the game wouldn't be different AT ALL, unless he has some sort of secret role near the end of the game.. (my disc 3 didn't ever work for some reason), in which case, my bad.

Final Fantasy 10, oh lord. Sure, Khimari is kewl and all, but you could replace him with nearly any other character and the story would be the same too.

It's unfair to say that about just Final Fantasy 12.. I think the story is pretty engaging, and it actually makes you think lol.

At least in my opinion. To each his own right?

[Domo-kun]

In final fantasy, the people who join you on your journey are there as companions, they aren't really there for story, however atleast in other FF's the main hero has a story.

What is Vaan's story? oh he doesn't have one it's just getting intro trouble and bumping in to the right people. FF12's story to me was pretty non-existent and the entire game was very poor and lazy.

FF12's battle system was pretty much an indentical rip from FF11 the MMORPG. The only difference was quickenings. Which brings us to the next point, after a certain point in the game, quickenings are useless, it ends up being a waste of MP. However they are very pretty just useless after a while, S-E should of made these limit breaks.

License system was a rip off of the sphere system, everything was pretty much the same only you had to learn to use equips too. Not really impressive to me.

It's a shame because after playing FFX, I was so looking forward to playing this game but after a while it just got so boring. I did complete it though and it's not as bad as FFX-2, atleast FF12 had minimal story xD [X-2's battle system is waaaay better tho imo]

[Contra Fates]

FFXII is one of those games where you either loved it, or you were just like: "Meh" about it. I loved it at first, and I was super excited about it...but as I went further into the game, there were a lot of things that just, irked me. And it's unfortunate, because FFXII was perhaps the most likable cast out of any FF game I've played. None of the characters were outwardly obnoxious, and most of them were suave, believable, and easy to listen to. [Minus Penelo, she always sounded like she was breathing right against the microphone all the time.]

But, there were a lot of things I couldn't stand about FFXII:
-The Espers. Seriously. They were USELESS. They were way too weak, and rarely accomplished much of anything. It wasn't even worth doing the quests to get them.
-Treasure. Having a 'chance' of getting treasure is LAME. If there's treasure, just GIVE it to me! I jumped for joy in Star Ocean 4 when they not only gave you items, but gave you EXP for finding the treasure chests.
-Too much politics. The storyline could have been really, really good...but it was too glossed over by all of the politics involved. This is what made FFXII better suited for a movie than a video game.
-Poor villain. Vayne was so unfortunately forgettable. I really don't remember him...much at all. I remember Larsa no problem, but not him. In fact, Gabranth was a far more successful villain than Vayne was.
-The battle system. As mentioned above, it was just FFXI...and I didn't like it then, either. =/
-The FMVs. The characters actually looked better in the in-game graphics and cutscenes, than they did in the FMV sequences! It was really bizarre.
-The Soundtrack. Soundtracks to video games should be a little like background music. But FFXII's soundtrack was ONLY background music. All of it was easily forgotten, and none of the songs were particularly memorable. None of it. It just all faded away while you were listening to it.
-Weapons for everyone! I really didn't like that the characters could pretty much all use the same weapons. I like the characters to be at least somewhat unique...and they really weren't, at all.

As for the things I DID like:
-Larsa. Hi-Potions for the win!
-Al-Cid. Lol.
-Vossler, too!
-The License System.
-The Marks
-Quickenings
-The classic FF feel to it.
-The refreshing character designs.

That about sums it up for me. xD

[Daesy]

FFXII is one of those games where you either loved it, or you were just like: "Meh" about it. I loved it at first, and I was super excited about it...but as I went further into the game, there were a lot of things that just, irked me. And it's unfortunate, because FFXII was perhaps the most likable cast out of any FF game I've played. None of the characters were outwardly obnoxious, and most of them were suave, believable, and easy to listen to. [Minus Penelo, she always sounded like she was breathing right against the microphone all the time.]

But, there were a lot of things I couldn't stand about FFXII:
-The Espers. Seriously. They were USELESS. They were way too weak, and rarely accomplished much of anything. It wasn't even worth doing the quests to get them.
-Treasure. Having a 'chance' of getting treasure is LAME. If there's treasure, just GIVE it to me! I jumped for joy in Star Ocean 4 when they not only gave you items, but gave you EXP for finding the treasure chests.
-Too much politics. The storyline could have been really, really good...but it was too glossed over by all of the politics involved. This is what made FFXII better suited for a movie than a video game.
-Poor villain. Vayne was so unfortunately forgettable. I really don't remember him...much at all. I remember Larsa no problem, but not him. In fact, Gabranth was a far more successful villain than Vayne was.
-The battle system. As mentioned above, it was just FFXI...and I didn't like it then, either. =/
-The FMVs. The characters actually looked better in the in-game graphics and cutscenes, than they did in the FMV sequences! It was really bizarre.
-The Soundtrack. Soundtracks to video games should be a little like background music. But FFXII's soundtrack was ONLY background music. All of it was easily forgotten, and none of the songs were particularly memorable. None of it. It just all faded away while you were listening to it.
-Weapons for everyone! I really didn't like that the characters could pretty much all use the same weapons. I like the characters to be at least somewhat unique...and they really weren't, at all.

As for the things I DID like:
-Larsa. Hi-Potions for the win!
-Al-Cid. Lol.
-Vossler, too!
-The License System.
-The Marks
-Quickenings
-The classic FF feel to it.
-The refreshing character designs.

That about sums it up for me. xD

The funny thing is...everything you hated i loved.

• Though Esper's sucked, it was fun getting them

• The treasure did suck 95% of the time. The 5% rarely happened

• The storyline was probably one of my favorites in any game i have ever played. What makes me mad is that it wasn't BROAD enough. What about Rozzaria? You hear about them but don't see them. Al-Cid is hispanic/french/german/something not Rozzarian.

• Ok Vanye did suck. But he had the whole creepy calm Seymour vibe. Loved it!! Though the best villian was Bergen. He was a BEAST!

• I liked the soundtrack. Maybe because it was background music. Come on you know you get excited over the Rabinastre theme.

• Weapons for every was truly horrible. How am i gonna get 5 Zodiac spears??

• The battle system was ace. Random battle in FFX runs me bonkers.

All in all, I loved this game.

Irks:

• Vaan complaining all the time. Anakin Skywalker/Tidus syndrome.
• Rozzaria not being expounded on
• Those creatures in the sand. Ew.
• Giruvegan. 12 hrs of being lost. Had to get the walkthrough.

[BlackJack]

I don't have a Sony gaming system. Any of them (except PS1).
Otherwise, I might play this, since Ivalice is the Land of Awesome Badassery.

[Fuyumine]

It IS the land of awesome badassery, and well worth buying a PS2 to play it!

If nothing else, I would definitely buy a PlayStation 2 for its RPG library.

Anyway, I only have one big complaint about FFXII, and that's it's length.

I poured about... 70+ hours into that game, which you may look at and go "TOO SHORT, CHRIS?! WTF!" But about 50 of those hours was spent powerleveling (I was level 80 before my second boss), and about 5 of those hours was spent doing side quests and such.

Another thing that bugged me about the game was its anticlimactic ending. I won't give too much away but... the final boss fight doesn't feel like a final boss fight. Once you're done you're ready to take on the next mission, but it's the end of the game. >:\

[VinnyThunder]

I'm not that far into the game but so far it's one of my least favorite in the series. The gameplay doesn't grab me, the music isn't engaging, and the story hasn't interested me very much so far. I'll have to keep playing to see if my opinion improves.

[Fatal Impurity]

With FF12 I liked the story, graphics, battle system and the character designs.

On the other hand I hated the license system (having hated FF10's sphere grid too), the uninspired music and the way that the whole game felt aimless and confusing.

It seems like the story never really guides you anywhere and just leaves you to it. Think of it as Oblivion syndrome where it's so freeroaming, and theres so many side quests that you don't do much of anything since your dipping your fingers into so many different pots. Also too much leveling was required in order to pass to the next part without being crushed into little pieces. Not to mention the insane amounts of party equipment/item management you had to sit through whilst working your way along the license board.

For me something just seemed out of place, missing from the classic FF formula that kept me powering through FF7, 8 and 9 with much zeal. I can't quite put my finger on it but there was definately something missing.