I have never played FFXII...How long/difficult is this game?

[Nightsintodreams]

I have never played Final Fantasy XII. Its shocking, I know.

My question is: How long should I expect to be investing in this game, and how difficult is it? Is there another Final Fantasy game that it would be comparable to?

Any and all feedback is welcome. :p

[Fynn]

It is actually one of the unique games in the seires in how it's structure. It definitelly is the longest. As for difficulty - it all depends on your playstyle. IMO, if you focus only on three of your character and consistently level them and thinking very thoroughly about you Licence Board and Gambit tactics, you should be OK. :) It certainly requires investment and attention, but it is also very rewarding.

[Quindiana Jones]

As it gets longer, it'll become less hard.

:erm:

Wait, I want to rephrase that. You can blast through the game in fairly standard FF time, avoiding all the side areas and missions. This will be make the game more difficult, as you will likely miss out on some of the most useful equipment and spells etc, not to mention you'll be underlevelled. If you take your time and explore all that this phenomenal game has to offer - which is a substantial amount - you'll probably sink over 100 hours into it, and you'll find it a really fulfilling and rewarding game. :D

[Lonely Paper Star]

I also have never played FFXII, and I was doubtful about it since it looked too long for the amount of patience/time I had. Then again, I've been playing Persona games lately, so maybe it won't feel as long. And hopefully not as repetitive as P3 was.

A friend of mine told me it was underrated, and the past two comments noted that it was rewarding. So... I'll play it after I finish P4. I try not to play more than RPG at once. I'd get overwhelmed. O_o

[Evastio]

How is the battle system? It seemed really fast paced. The fact that characters constantly attack (from what I've seen in videos) make it seem like you need to input non-physical attack commands as fast as possible. If that's the case, boss fights must get really hectic, especially when your characters need healing.

[Edge7]

I didn't really like it the first time I played it; it felt way too time consuming, you never have enough gil to buy anything (especially when you need to buy magicks which are a MUST. I spent way too much money on equipment, if that indicates anything). However, I feel like I don't mind the grinding so much now.

Basically what I'm going to say is that if you don't put any time into grinding, this game will kick your ass. Make sure you spend your funds on status debilitating abilities, as well as standard healing and elemental magic.

(Also, the game tricks you. Balthier and Fran start with a gun and a bow respectively; however, Balthier is the slowest with a gun and Fran is the slowest with a bow. I gave Balthier a ninja sword personally, and Fran a gun.)

[Cloudane]

It's not difficult, although I do remember there being one point where it did get a bit tricky and it just meant I had to run around levelling up for a bit. But I don't remember any really difficult Seymour-like battles.

As for length. You could blaze through it fairly quickly but {purely in my opinion, others will disagree} you will be disappointed as it's a rather dull main story. This iteration is much more geared towards taking your time exploring and doing all the side missions, in its very MMORPG-like style, rather than treating it like an interactive movie as you might have done with something like XIII.

[Mirage]

How is the battle system? It seemed really fast paced. The fact that characters constantly attack (from what I've seen in videos) make it seem like you need to input non-physical attack commands as fast as possible. If that's the case, boss fights must get really hectic, especially when your characters need healing.

Not really. You can make time freeze during menu navigation, as per usual in Final Fantasy. Additionally, the gambit systems allows for very precise AI customisation. You make your healer automatically use Cure every time a character drops below 50% health, for example. You can also set other automatic actions, such as making your party members automatically switch targets to attack whatever you are targeting, automatically attack things you're not targeting, etc.

You can also set priorities so that a healing rule takes priority over a status cure while you are in combat, but not when you are outside of combat. You can also set rules for backup healing if you wish. Take my earlier example, a character will be healed if he drops below 50%. However, you can also set a higher priority rule that says "if HP below 25%, use even stronger cure". That way, it will use a mid-level cure if you are just below 50%, but an even stronger cure if you are below 25%.

The amount of AI rules you want to set is entirely up to the player. You have up to 10 (I think) AI rules for each party member, and each rule can contain any type of target, any type of command, and any type of condition. You can turn rules on and off any time during combat, and you can override any AI behavior anytime by selecting a different action manually. If you do that, your custom action will be performed first, then the AI will continue their normal behaviour after it is done.

The more, and more advanced rules you set, the less you need to do yourself. So if you like keeping yourself busy, you can set it to a minimum of rules, covering for example only auto-engaging targets you manually attack with the main character, and using Cure when at low health, then do everything else manually. If you want, you can even turn off the auto-engage rules and do this manually for each character too.

Personally, I set rules that let me easily deal with trash enemies automatically, and only do full efficiency manual control when I fight bosses or extraordinary random monsters.

[Wolf Kanno]

The main game is fairly easy though it has more Wake Up Cal (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WakeUpCallBoss)l bosses than previous entries if you are not doing side missions. Grinding isn't much of an issue as long as you do the Mark Hunts, not all Mark Hunts can be completed as soon as you get them but doing what you can will net you levels, gil, and good equipment that will help you get through the game. Sadly, once the bulk of the optional quests unlock, completing them will make you drastically overpowered and you can curve stomp most of the games story bosses but that's nothing new to the series...

It can be a very long game, it really depends on how much of it you do, it's got a lot of areas to explore tons of quests and side missions, and the world is pretty huge. So expect 60 hours minimum to beat, over 100 if you plan on doing everything...

[Formalhaut]

XII will absorb you of much of your time, because of the battle system, and it's many intricacies, trying to farm treasure chests for rare accessories was incredibly annoying, but then that's only if your doing every single side quest in the game.

Difficulty? Well, it's not exactly extremely difficult, I would say it's average. If you played it through as a standard playthrough, you should be fine. I think the reason why there's so many challenges in this game (No license board for example) is to just make it harder.

[Evastio]

How is the battle system? It seemed really fast paced. The fact that characters constantly attack (from what I've seen in videos) make it seem like you need to input non-physical attack commands as fast as possible. If that's the case, boss fights must get really hectic, especially when your characters need healing.

Not really. You can make time freeze during menu navigation, as per usual in Final Fantasy. Additionally, the gambit systems allows for very precise AI customisation. You make your healer automatically use Cure every time a character drops below 50% health, for example. You can also set other automatic actions, such as making your party members automatically switch targets to attack whatever you are targeting, automatically attack things you're not targeting, etc.

You can also set priorities so that a healing rule takes priority over a status cure while you are in combat, but not when you are outside of combat. You can also set rules for backup healing if you wish. Take my earlier example, a character will be healed if he drops below 50%. However, you can also set a higher priority rule that says "if HP below 25%, use even stronger cure". That way, it will use a mid-level cure if you are just below 50%, but an even stronger cure if you are below 25%.

The amount of AI rules you want to set is entirely up to the player. You have up to 10 (I think) AI rules for each party member, and each rule can contain any type of target, any type of command, and any type of condition. You can turn rules on and off any time during combat, and you can override any AI behavior anytime by selecting a different action manually. If you do that, your custom action will be performed first, then the AI will continue their normal behaviour after it is done.

The more, and more advanced rules you set, the less you need to do yourself. So if you like keeping yourself busy, you can set it to a minimum of rules, covering for example only auto-engaging targets you manually attack with the main character, and using Cure when at low health, then do everything else manually. If you want, you can even turn off the auto-engage rules and do this manually for each character too.
Oh, okay. That's good to know.

I keep forgetting that later FFs gave the option to have characters automatically cure/revive characters. That sounds really convenient and fun. If only I had access to the later FF games/systems that later FFs came on.

[Mirage]

If you by later mean those that have CPU controlled characters, then yes. Although, that's still just 12, 13 and 13-2.

[Flaming Ice]

Haven't played that much of the game but my cousin said there was a monster that took 10 hours or so to beat ~.~

[Mirage]

Most likely untrue, unless they were severely underleveled.

[Flaming Ice]

Most likely untrue, unless they were severely underleveled.
http://guides.gamepressure.com/finalfantasy12/guide.asp?ID=2353

This one

[Mirage]

There are many videos around with kills way less than 10 hours. If you know what you're doing, you can do it in 3 hours, and in izjs, 1 hour.

-edit-

Actually, here's a vanilla FF12 Yiazmat kill in ~90 minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chHeBen4Yuo

[Flaming Ice]

There are many videos around with kills way less than 10 hours. If you know what you're doing, you can do it in 3 hours, and in izjs, 1 hour.

-edit-

Actually, here's a vanilla FF12 Yiazmat kill in ~90 minutes

Final Fantasy XII Final Hunt Yiazmat (part 1/6) - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chHeBen4Yuo)



Ah, I played the game but only a bit because its my cousin's. I think he lost the game or something like that =/ (or knowing him he could've broke it in two >.>)

[Heath]

Echoing what others have said, it's not necessarily a difficult game but it's certainly a long one. Ironically, the way the game is set up, it's much less stop-start than the previous entries which had random battles. I think it's very much a game you can make as long as you want, within reason. If you like exploring, getting various Espers and hunting the marks, then that'll considerably lengthen your game. It's the only FF game I think I've ever clocked up 100 hours on in one playthrough.