Plot and pacing

Overall, I thought FFXII's plot was interesting and a move in the right direction for the series. It was a more mature, realistic plot. The problem I had, however, was with the pacing, which came close to ruining the story for me at points. The plot was exclusively told through cutscenes with hours and hours of dungeon crawling in between. I felt the story telling was limited and was not emphasized and developed enough to really care.

But what also bothered me: how would I make it better? I can't really come up with anything that wouldn't completely change the game. It had a gameplay-first priority, which I can appreciate. And I thought the game was worthwhile overall.

So what did you think of FFXII's plot? If you didn't like it, how would you change things?

XII's plot was grounded in the history and geography of the setting in a way that felt a lot more natural than RPGs that have stuck kingdoms and villains willynilly just because they felt the game needed them. And there are political intrigues and intricacies, such as the Marquis's dance with the Empire, that most games would not bother with.

I do agree there were some problems with the pacing. Generally, there seems to be long slogs in between the actual story-related confrontations or plot advancement. That may be FF in general, but more than some of the others, XII seems to offer you the promise of "the story will progress when you get to here," leaving you aware of how very far, literally and figuratively, you had to go to get to the next plot point. For whatever faults a game like X or XIII have, there is at least the hope that when you get to the end of each map something important will happen.

Although I really liked the character concepts, they certainly could have spared some more time on character development. Fran and Balthier appear to have one of the more emotionally realistic relationships in the entire FF series, but we don't get much of a look at it or the thoughts and pasts of the other characters. We are often put in the position of observers of the action rather than getting the privileged insight we should. That said, XII has a large supporting cast that is far better developed than other FF games have offered.

One of the issues the FF games always have to deal with is accommodating players who want to play their 50 hours through the main story and move on as well as those who would spend 150 hours acquiring every item, ability, etc. in the game. XII offered all that extra stuff in the huge expanses of space in between the major plot centers. For those players like me who try to "complete" the game, that only ended up drawing out the story more.

Ultimately I really liked the game despite the problems with pacing, temporally and spacially, though admittedly I enjoy treasure hunting and min-maxing and the tremendous flexibility that allows a player to create self-imposed rules to play the game in one's own unique way(s).