Gripes with XII

I am a big XII fan. I really enjoy the game play, the main playable characters (all three of them), the sidequests, and more. The story was hit and miss but the overall themes were there, mostly.

Since returning from University, I've finally had time to play games. I booted back up my XII to resume playing it where I left off (just before Giruvegan). I subsequently resumed hunting loots for bazaar goods to get more weapons; it's a perfect game or sorts where I get most things as soon as I can get them.

But then I began hunting for one loot with a mere 5% drop rate, and spent hours finding three of the damn things. I then had to get three copies of the Yagyu Darkblade and trust me, that was tedious in the extreme.

If there is one gripe about XII, it's the sometimes inane drop rates. Not to mention the treasure chests and the VERY inane rates for those. If you're anything like me, farming for loot is a necessary evil. One that should be limited as much as possible. Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't stand farming loots and treasures in this game. I wish there was an option to speed up play; I know FFXIII-2 had that option. Just make the game play faster, to facilitate faster farming. That would be excellent!

Also, gambits. I like them, but I wish there was an option to create more than one deck. That would save so much damn time. I generally have a standard deck for my characters that see them through most generic encounters, but most bosses have a special method to fell them. Now I have to de construct my primary deck, build a new one (for just one battle!) and then...urgh! Why can't we make multiple decks!

I also didn't like how many weapon types just seemed to be nerfed beyond comprehension. Crossbows were near useless, even in the early portions of the game. Maces were mostly useless, and lets face it poles and hand bombs were hardly spectacular weapons either. And measures? Don't get me started. I wish these weapons were improved. Literally, as soon as great swords appeared, they overwhelmed most other weapon types. This would have given greater variety to the game, I think.

Basically, this entire thread is moaning with a touch of improvements. Discuss.

Berserk + Hastega + Greatsword on 2 members = beat 99% of all monsters and bosses.

The game is above many but far from perfect. I doubt anyone would argue its combat balance or loot system were entirely on point. What most would argue is that it was a beautiful game that tried something new, a consistently impressive move for a flagship series like Final Fantasy and why many fans love to love or love to hate them year after year.

The version my country never saw looks more fun and alleviated some of the problems. Maybe if the HD updates of FFX/X-2 sell well enough they will bother with giving it to me. Even that still didn't have Larsa riding on Fran's shoulders and shooting things, but I can't have everything in life.

My main gripe is that it felt like one big long slog in the "field" area. The environments were nice but the actual design of the levels wasn't great. I think they tried to make the game the opposite of X after having took criticisms about it too much to heart, and it didn't go well. By the end of the game I was just sprinting through the dungeons with 50 monsters in tow - I'd had enough!

Yeha I can agree about the weapons and such. The looting was crazy too with random treasures. I think you might have been using measures wrong. Those are meant for you to hit yourself and your party members with for free buffs.

My gripe with XII is that the rest of the game doesn't live up to the hype of the opening sequence.

I always hated having to wait that second for my party to put their weapons back up just after fighting when running around in the field. I'm impatient. :|

Story aside the game is PERFECT if you enjoy the concept of it all. (Being that it was executed to almost perfection) The only faults being the ones you mentioned: The loot in chests and drops being RIDICULOUS to get anything good. I think this was more of a fault with trying to be to much like an offline MMO.

There weren't enough vieras.

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Originally Posted by Hypoallergenic Chie

There weren't enough vieras.

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Did you not stay in their village much? :P

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Originally Posted by thekingsfalldown

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Originally Posted by Hypoallergenic Chie

There weren't enough vieras.

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Did you not stay in their village much? :P

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The village was too small. Also it wasn't everywhere. Additionally there was no additional costumes for Fran.

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Originally Posted by Hypoallergenic Chie

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thekingsfalldown

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hypoallergenic Chie

There weren't enough vieras.

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Did you not stay in their village much? :P

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The village was too small. Also it wasn't everywhere. Additionally there was no additional costumes for Fran.

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Yeah sadly a lot of the stuff they had planned simply wasn't cabable by the PS2 hardware. (Such as choosing what character you wanted to be in towns) That stuff while the PS2 could do on it's own, it couldn't handle with everything else on top of it. I would have liked to see more vierras in the game, though it may not have fit the lore because they generally don't leave the village ever.

While the entire world was epic in scope, it created a weird detachment with the character development. We had a multiple hour slog through a field with no character moments, followed by a sudden burst of discussion, exposition, and actual plot activity. The gameplay-story segregation seemed worse in this game than in any previous title. The majority of the game is just exploring around the field, and the cutscenes felt extremely discordant from that. We went through hours and hours with these emotionless combat automatons, and then suddenly be expected to empathize with them in the story scenes. I think the lack of combat instantiation actually emphasized this, as it made the combat and the rest of the world blend more seamlessly. This, in turn, made the jarring cuts between the story and the rest of the game stand out much more.

This actually isn't hard to fix. You just need to add some character interactions to help break up the endless dungeon crawl that is the world. Have character banter that triggers as you walk past certain areas, or depending on the situation in combat. Just something to make me feel like there are actually people there. I'm also not entirely sure what makes this worse in this game than in any other (since your characters are never actually "characters" on the world map in any Final Fantasy), but it's definitely there.



The Gambits need to be fixed. First, we need the ability to build and maintain multiple Gambit Decks. Since you can't do so, and changing the gambits are such a chore, you build and refine a single deck, and never, ever change it. Which results in you essentially setting up your Gambie Deck, and then never having any input on combat again, with the exception of some bosses (who are frustrating because you either have to tediously micromanage, or you have to rebuild your Deck both before and after).

This is actually one area that FFXIII improved upon. The Paradigm system is essentially a collection of different Gambits that you can switch between mid-combat. Of course, FFXIII ruined this by making the individual Paradigms have incredibly minimalistic planning and thought go into them, but the overall idea of the system is solid.



Most enemies also have too much health. A lot of fights would be completed before they really began, or effectively done in the first minute of combat because you have the correct Gambit setup to destroy them. But a lot of mobs have so much health that fighting them just becomes a chore. The bosses get incredibly ridiculous on this account. You can set up a Gambit Deck to perfectly fight 90% of them, and then you just spend a half hour watching things play out, providing no input.



While they're at it, they can remove cheap difficulty. There are two specific instances that come to mind. The first is best illustrated by Yiazmat, but it really applies to any mob with a similar ability. If an enemy can kill you, and you can do nothing to block or prevent it, that is not "hard" it is "cheap". There's no thought, no planning, no strategy. It's purely luck-based whether you succeed or not. There is no accomplishment in defeating Yiazmat, because all it means is that you got lucky. Whoop de doo.

The second instance of cheap difficulty is actually supposedly due to a hardware limitation of the PS2, rather than poor design, but since it breaks the combat system, it deserves a mention. Certain abilities are so graphically intensive that they prevent other abilities from being used. Scathe, Sandstorm, and other similar moves prevent all ability use until they are completed. They do not, however, freeze combat time. So buffs can wear off, and regular attacks can be performed, but no new buffs can be applied, nor can healing be done. This makes Baknamies one of the cheapest foes in the game, as they just sit and spam Sandstorm one after another, which prevents you from doing anything except attack, while their buddies keep attacking you. If you want to make a turn based system, fine. Do so. Turn based systems are awesome. If not, then all actions need to be able to play out in real time.