Why a lot of fans don't like this game *SPOILERS*

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Originally Posted by Roto13

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Originally Posted by Mr Cactuar

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Originally Posted by Serapy

Gambits is unique, I don't see how is that wrong. The way how I see Gambits is like it's making you feel more comfortable in certain situations.

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Because they're boring and make things way to easy.

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Only slightly easier than inputting those obvious commands yourself.

Also, watching the same action a million times in VII was no more interesting because there were a few different camera angles.

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True, which doesn't make them boring. I played with gambits on, I had a lot of fun. So you are wrong on this one, Cactuar or maybe it's because I'm dumb, huh?

Sometimes Gambits is needed when you go AFK for a bit :P. I'd turn Gambits on when I need to go to bathrooms, make a drink quickly or whatever. There are some long fights in the game that can last more than an hour, so I'd use gambits in those situations as well.

But if you disagree with the idea then just disable gambits, it's simple as that. The battle system is completely different than the other FF games so there's a very good reason why the disable gambits option exists ;)

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FFXII was my twelth Final Fantasy (1,2, 4-10 and TA), but it's quickly become one of my favourites. The music was fantastic. It's not Uematsu, but that's not a bad thing. Uematsu has some fantastic music, but to say the music isn't good would be a huge disservice to the composers of the soundtrack. The music slotted seamlessly with the environments and so the music added to the overall ambiance of every area that you visited. It didn't define the area, it added and developed the individual regions of Ivalice. The fact that the scenery and the music complimented each other so well in, what was, one of the most immersing and impressive Final Fantasy worlds yet was a definite plus to me. There are numerous great pieces of music, such as the Sochen Cave Palace, Seeking Power and The Forgotten Capital that I really enjoyed listening to and enhance the experience of exploring Ivalice which was, in my view, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the whole game.

The absence of random battles were also another enjoyable thing. In dungeons it would mean you might have to plan the route you'd take because you'd be bump into different monsters depending on the way in which you went. It also seemed a lot more natural and added to the overall depth of the environments. I mean, random battles are terribly artificial, really. If you were actually exploring a temple infested with monsters, sure, they might jump out of nowhere in a deserted corridor, but chances are they'd be wandering around the dungeon itself, using magic upon themselves and prowling around looking for intruders. It made the game quicker and added to the flow of the game, while random battles are, let's face it, fairly disruptive.

As Vivisteiner, the absence of a love story doesn't weaken the game at all. Actually, I quite welcomed this change. Too many films and computer games these days feel the need to throw in love interests and love stories when they aren't really necessary to the plot and serve as a distraction, whereas FFXII departs from this rather successfully. Sure, I enjoyed the love story of the other games, but it was a breath of fresh air not to have one.

As for the story, I found it to be terribly engaging and enjoyable. History is one of my passions in life and the study of historical conflicts often means examining the domestic and foreign causes of strife between the nations. That we are given a rather complete picture of a conflict that develops and escalates as time goes on and is effecting all the citizens of Ivalice instead of just the party and a group of choice nobles was rather nice and in my view a fair bit more realistic. The game is not dull, it's just a bit more complex and needs more attention paid to it than some of the others.

FFXII is a fantastic game and I think some people slate it more than it deserves.

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This post wins my eternal respect - that comment about the music alone is like, uber truthfulness.

Hm I started playing it 2day at my bf's place and I didn't feel it was that terrible! It's just different, it has a good story at the beginning so so far so good :)

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Originally Posted by Roto13

Also, watching the same action a million times in VII was no more interesting because there were a few different camera angles.

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It's not because there were different camera angles, but it employed different directorial techniques for using the camera, different shots, movements, etc. that made the battles just as cinematic as the cutscenes.

Of course after a "million" times the novelty might wear off, but overall it made the battles far more interesting than XII, and even the more fixed-camera uses in VIII and IX. I'm sorry if you yourself do not personally enjoy things like that.

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Originally Posted by Setzer Gabianni

Quote Renmiri on FFXII

I bitch about the game a lot, mainly for the lack of story and weak characters, but it is still the best of the series out there.

She loves it more then X!

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Nah.. Don't love it more than X. I'm a FFX fan girl and highly biased towards it. But XII is a good game, I actually played it twice as much than X (450 hours of X and 1,000 hours of XII) :p

My opinion of FFXII:

Plot

The plot for FFXII is highly political, which makes some fans a bit sad. If you are a big fan of FFT, like I am, then you will really appreciate the similarities in the plot as a genre. There is no need for an epic love story to make it a good plot. FFT showed us that. That being said, I wish there was more depth to the plot. It seemed to me they could have easily added more depth to the plot, especially by adding a bit more background to the characters. As I appreciate the fact that it is not focused on characters, I found that they did not balance it out enough.

Battle System

Hands down the best thing to happen to FF. I love the new battle system! I seriously find it more engrossing and much more interactive that the old, select action->sub-menu select->target and sit and wait type deal. FFXII uses the same principles, but gives you a lot more control. Especially the fact that there are no random battles. I am sorry but sometimes I want to get the hell out of a dungeon and not fight my way out or pray that the Run command works when my HP is critical.

Gambits is an iffy topic for me. I find throughout most of the game, the gambits available are not that useful. It is only towards the end of the game where the most useful gambits come around. I like the fact that I can have my team able to revive and heal people so I do not have to always pay attention to the HP bars. It allows you to take more time to think about a battle plan. Sometimes it gets frustrating having to override your gambits because your stupid Charge Gambit is not efficient enough (I want there to be a MP<5%!). Besides that, I tend to leave my party leader (Vaan) without gambits unless he is doing a repetitive action (like stealing or using the same spell for ten times in a row). The rest of my characters have Gambits on to do the basic stuff, though I still constantly intervene, especially with Fran and her magic. Part of me wishes for more Gambit slots but then I realize if there were more, it'd become too automatic plus having only 12 (or is it 10?) allows for better planning.

Summons...make me sad. They are pretty ineffective after the first quarter of the game, aside from the normal field battles. Though I wish they were more developed within the plot, I have to say that they are not a cost effective thing. Sorry, 3 MP bars to use a summon or use the same bars for a Quickening? I'd go for the Quickenings. If they made the summons less exhausting on the MP then I think they'd be worthwhile. Since that is not magically going to happen, they can go keep dust.

Yay for magic being useful through the whole game~

Audio-Visuals

Visually this game is stunning. It has one of the best visuals to date for a FF game. It is pretty~ That aside the music is good. I get irritated by those comments where they say the music is not memorable. Sorry to burst your bubble, but most FF scores are pretty not memorable to me. Maybe it is due to some internal factor within but it is true. The only songs I know are usually the opening/game menu screen ones and the vocal theme songs and inserts. That aside Aerith's Theme and that Opera one from FFVI are the only "memorable" ones for me.

Overall

I think FFXII deserves all the critical acclaim it got. The game, with all its faults, is still one of the best FF experiences I ever had. As with any game, there is always room for improvement, but FFXII's good points make up for its bad one. The game was well thought out insofar as it has something for every player. It has plenty of content that allow the players to come back with tons of side-quests (even if I did not do half of them since I am not a completionist).

Seems I'm late to this party, as I lacked the enthusiasm for this game sooo much that it took me an entire year to play it to the end. I finally finished it earlier this week. This is Final Fantasy we're talking about here, even FF8 was worthy of my usual week-or-so finishing time, yet this took a year I was that unexcited by it??? Anyway.

I haven't read through all 10 pages yet, so apologies for any replication of things already said!

I'm not actually ranting about FFXII here... in the very very end when the story and character development started to appear (far too late) I loved it. Next playthrough, who knows. But following is my take on why I was less than enthusiastic, referencing Mr Cactuar's thoughts.

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Originally Posted by Mr Cactuar

1. The music.

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Normally I would hesitate to put this at number 1, but now that you mention it I don't know, maybe it does deserve top spot. I observed the lack of decent music myself. Music is a HUGE influence, especially in emotional scenes, which is a lack that we'll get to shortly.

I gave FFXII a mention for this exact reason on the Narutofan forums as a reason for Naruto Shippuuden not being as well received as Part 1. This won't make sense to most people I guess, but my point is the power of music applies everywhere not just FF, and is very well known for the effect it can have on a storyline as it unfolds.

Losing Uematsu was the stupidest thing they've ever done IMO. I got the impression he left out of poor treatment (or put it this way, if they really wanted to keep him they would have tried harder), and you just don't do that to someone who injects pure love into your game.

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2. Random Battles. If it ain't broke, don't replace it.

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Urgh, yes and no. Doing away with random battles doesn't have to be a bad thing - Chrono Trigger did it well. What made it annoying for me was that it reminded me of MMORPGs. I play single-player games like Final Fantasy to get away from World of Warcraft grinding, and this just reminded me of it and fed me with more. I've had enough of grinding dammit!

I kind of get your point here. FF is FF, people love it for what it is, or hate it for what it is. People hate Marmite, but do they turn it into chocolate? No, they continue making Marmite, as they should, because even though some people hate it, they have a very loyal fan base and will be in business forever. Same with FF. Once they turn it into Offline WoW, it just becomes another erm.... Solo MMORPG.

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3. Where is the love?

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Where is the character development come to that?! That was my biggest disappointment. I did not GIVE A TOSS about the characters at all.

I assume everyone has played FF7 by now but do edit my post if the lack of spoiler tags is inappropriate... anyway the death of Aeris hit me. Hard. How can a person feel so much impact over the death of a fictional character? Because you'd gotten to know her and care about her and "your" character had had fun with her.

In contrast, I kept thinking "you know, if any of this lot were to die I wouldn't bat an eyelid". I didn't know them, didn't care about them, and this continued for 99% of the game. They didn't even talk to each other most of the time! Sometimes they would have a little bit of dialog in a new area: Balthier would make the occasional cold, snide remark, Ashe would bark angrily about revenge like she had a very bad case of PMT, and the two pirate kids would giggle together which I already knew about from the existence of Revenant Wings. (And I can't think what the point of Vaan and Penelo's existence was, other than to introduce Revenant Wings, to be honest)

It did happen eventually. Towards the end of the game we found a little more about them, got a hint that they were actually friends (I wasn't really sure!) and that they cared about each other etc. Shame it was too little too late!

There was love - Balthier and Fran. I didn't even realise until the ending though (from the Bahamut scene onwards) - up until then I thought they were just buddies.

Character Development was #1 failure for me. I think on second playthrough I'll feel better about it, but the first time I just felt like a stranger amongst strangers.

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4. Whacky doodly piddly pop.

That made no sense to you? Really neither does the story off FFXII.

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I don't know.... I think it made very good sense. Older FFs have been weirder.

What didn't make sense was the Shakespeare language, which is something I'm rubbish at following. I lost count of the number of times I had to pause the game and re-read what was said (subtitles are a must) to make sense of what just happened, and often these were epic moments. What should've been an epic moment was ruined by "WTF did he just say?" /google ffxii game script


Edit: Here's my "Point 5":
You're not really given any reason to care about the cause you're fighting, IMO. You're plunged into a war between two nations with no real "good" or "evil" side just, one slightly more evil than the other. For most of the game (right up until the sun cryst decision i.e. the start of the endgame) I felt like I was playing the villain. I was following this PMT-filled bloodthirsty wench on her crusade for revenge, I didn't like her and half hoped someone would smack her upside the head and tell her to stop being so spiteful.



It was ok, but if I had to pick a "worst Final Fantasy", XII would be it. I hope and pray XIII is as VII-like as it looks.

I was really trying my best to stay out of this thread after my initial comment but two post caught my interest...

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Originally Posted by Mr Cactuar

How is it one of the deepest stories in any FF? Jeez, FF1 almost has a deeper story. Really, you're presented with a story about 2 major warring nations and the struggle for your small nation in between it all to gain control of its own state again. Thing is, is that its all pushed into about 1 month of a time span. You see the part at the beginning, you see Vayne taking over power of Dalmasca then you start off on the journey.

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Most of the FFs are never presented in a practical timeline. The opening scenes are literally a mix mash of a two year period, its point is to make the player understand what going on. I don't think a typical narration would have worked as well as actually seeing what happened.

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There is no backstory for any of the nations, you have no real idea as to why the nations are warring, the reasons as to why the monsters are there are stupid, and there are massive plotholes. How the hell did Penelo and Vaan learn to fight? What does the senate Archadia of the do? Where did the Judges of Archadia come from? What sort of country is Rosaria, whose to say they aren't the 'bad' guys? Why isn't Dalmasca an actual ally of Rosaria? What are licenses, why exactly are they there? They tried to cram waaaay to much into this game, and attempting to deny this is useless.

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Read the beastiary, it tells you most of this info. Why doesn't the story do it for you? Cause your whole party is intricately involved and aware of the political climate. To them its common knowledge, for them to have to explain everything would break the fourth wall and destroy the immersion of its tale. Rozarrio has a history as a very militaristic nation. The game states its an empire in name only but the military is in actual control. House Margrace (Al-Cid) is trying to limit their power but the military hardliners are taking Archades acquisition of Dalmasca as the first warnings of an impending invasion (which is wht Al-Cid is secretly helping Larsa and Lady Ashe).

Archades is a nation fromed from a city-state that was controlled by a Senate. Its military eventually gained control and overthrew the senate establishing the kingdom as an empire. Eventually House Solidar overthrew (the game hints to key assassinations) the military influence and created the Ministry of Law (The Judges) as a means of controlling the military. Consequently, House Solidor took control of the Imperial throne. Archades is not located in an area with resources or easy access to water. Thus they had to expand their empire through military might. Their only advantage is knowledge and technology. This is all explained in the beastiary and in-game citations of characters. The explanantion of Dalmasca's relationship was already explained by Heath.
There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" in this story. Like the real world, there is no clear cut answers. I feel this is the strongest quality of its story.

The game opens up Vaan training to fight in the sewers. He may not be a professional like Balthier or Basch but he does have some experience. Penelo may not have any in-game explanation but logic can give you a few answers.

The liscences are an extension of the control Archades has on people according to the design team. They are suppose to symbolize the oppression the Judges and Archades have over people.

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I'm not saying that everything in a game should be explained to you, but I just could not get into this game because I had no rational reason as to why everything was and why it was happening. Square should leave these sort of games to people who can make them, and make them well.

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It sounds to me like you never bothered completeing the beastairy or read up on anything. The game actually gives you a wealth of back story into everything. XII's Ivalice is easily the most detailed world in the FF series.

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Originally Posted by Cloudane

Normally I would hesitate to put this at number 1, but now that you mention it I don't know, maybe it does deserve top spot. I observed the lack of decent music myself. Music is a HUGE influence, especially in emotional scenes, which is a lack that we'll get to shortly.

I gave FFXII a mention for this exact reason on the Narutofan forums as a reason for Naruto Shippuuden not being as well received as Part 1. This won't make sense to most people I guess, but my point is the power of music applies everywhere not just FF, and is very well known for the effect it can have on a storyline as it unfolds.

Losing Uematsu was the stupidest thing they've ever done IMO. I got the impression he left out of poor treatment (or put it this way, if they really wanted to keep him they would have tried harder), and you just don't do that to someone who injects pure love into your game.

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I agree with you that music is incredibly intrical to telling a story but I disagree on a few points. Uematsu is a wonderful composer but not all of his works are fantastic. In my own opinion, his last nearly perfect soundtrack was VII. The others that came after have good soundtracks but not really all that memorable outside of a few tracks. This is how I percieve the soundtrack of XII as well so musically it doesn't bother me. Besides, even if Uematsu did work at SE during the games production, he wouldn't have done the soundtrack. Sakimoto is the composer for Ivalice. He's been the composer for all of Matsuo's Ivalice projects, so to have someone else compose for it would seem awkward.

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Urgh, yes and no. Doing away with random battles doesn't have to be a bad thing - Chrono Trigger did it well. What made it annoying for me was that it reminded me of MMORPGs. I play single-player games like Final Fantasy to get away from World of Warcraft grinding, and this just reminded me of it and fed me with more. I've had enough of grinding dammit!

I kind of get your point here. FF is FF, people love it for what it is, or hate it for what it is. People hate Marmite, but do they turn it into chocolate? No, they continue making Marmite, as they should, because even though some people hate it, they have a very loyal fan base and will be in business forever. Same with FF. Once they turn it into Offline WoW, it just becomes another erm.... Solo MMORPG.

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The only true defining feature of FF is that it tries to be revolutionary. For this reason I don't feel that XII is really any different from any previous FF before it cause the series has never had a defining formula like DQ and other RPG series. ADB is really no different than ATB, you just get to move around freely. Granted I agree we could have done without the grinding for the ultimate weapons (I need HOW many electrums?!) but for the most part, I feel many of the MMo elements work in its favor. It just needs balancing.

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Where is the character development come to that?! That was my biggest disappointment. I did not GIVE A TOSS about the characters at all.

I assume everyone has played FF7 by now but do edit my post if the lack of spoiler tags is inappropriate... anyway the death of Aeris hit me. Hard. How can a person feel so much impact over the death of a fictional character? Because you'd gotten to know her and care about her and "your" character had had fun with her.

In contrast, I kept thinking "you know, if any of this lot were to die I wouldn't bat an eyelid". I didn't know them, didn't care about them, and this continued for 99% of the game. They didn't even talk to each other most of the time! Sometimes they would have a little bit of dialog in a new area: Balthier would make the occasional cold, snide remark, Ashe would bark angrily about revenge like she had a very bad case of PMT, and the two pirate kids would giggle together which I already knew about from the existence of Revenant Wings. (And I can't think what the point of Vaan and Penelo's existence was, other than to introduce Revenant Wings, to be honest)

It did happen eventually. Towards the end of the game we found a little more about them, got a hint that they were actually friends (I wasn't really sure!) and that they cared about each other etc. Shame it was too little too late!

There was love - Balthier and Fran. I didn't even realise until the ending though (from the Bahamut scene onwards) - up until then I thought they were just buddies.

Character Development was #1 failure for me. I think on second playthrough I'll feel better about it, but the first time I just felt like a stranger amongst strangers.

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http://forums.eyesonff.com/2110033-post64.html This should give you a better idea of the cast...

I feel there was quite a bit of growth but unlike previous games it was less talk and more about action. The cast had no reason to become buddy buddy with each other and actually there is quite a bit of dialogue between them (separated by long spans of dungeon crawling). I feel that unlike previous FFs, your cast actually has real motives, their stories are far more real, and personal. Lady Ashe's struggle to choose between saving her kingdom or getting revenge was beautifully told. Her personal growth is the heart of XII's story. Certainly she's unlikable but then is there a rule that says characters must be likable in a story. Its not like you and I like every person we meet, so there is a stronger sense of realism cause she is such a flawed character.

Please note before reading what follows that I don't dislike the game. However, it's not the FF I like best, either.

Why? In my opinion, it is the clear product of overwork.
The game has too much of everything. The costumes are too elaborated (and, in the case of females, too skimpy), the dungeons are too long, the sidequests too many, and too complicated, without an efficacious way to keep track of them all (except for Hunts), and so on.
The game itself is too long. Heck, I'm at almost 120 hours, and I'm nowhere near a solution of events! Am I ever going to see the end of it?
Everything is overdone. The game's got a lot of grandeur in it, and that's a good thing, but the developers seemed to forget that it also needs to catch - and hold - the attention of the player.
That could have been done with a solid plot and strong-minded characters, but it has not. Van is a stupid kiddo to say the least, and he's supposed to be the lead, but it clearly shows he was added in the cast just because people at SE were afraid not to sell enough without an androgynous blonde boy in the cast. Come on, could someone who is no longer twelve ever really like him? On the other hand a character like Bash, who's got the most interesting backstory of all, is shoved aside to leave more spaces for Ashe whining about the nethicite.

The game's got many good sides. The battle system is one of the funniest I tried, and graphics are great under every aspect, just to mention a couple. But it just misses that special something...

Some fair points Wolf Kanno.

It's very much a matter of preference I think, rather than the game being "good" or "bad". Yes the politics are very real and the characters are very real etc but my personal opinion is that we get enough of that in, well, real life.

I think the gist of the matter for me, is that it's Final Fantasy so I expect it to be fantasy (in every sense of the word), as it's always been from FF1. Cheesy cliché stories about Evil Bastards wanting to destroy the world, a young group of adventurers who end up saving it, initially moody characters with "issues" that are unraveled and resolved throughout the game, the team having a laugh and bonding with each other and of course some romance etc.

Yes it's all very cliché and some people think it's a tired old routine, but IMO this is the whole point, and previously I would've said "if you don't want cheesy fantasy clichés, go play something else thank you very much because the rest of us like it and want it to stay that way". Obviously that doesn't really apply now :p But that was the point of FF for me I think. It's like if Doctor Who suddenly started using proper realistic science and instead of 'wibbly wobbly timey wimey'. Just not right IMO.

To each his own of course, but I think this is exactly why I was disappointed with it, this may apply to other fans.

If this is signaling a permanent shift in the way Final Fantasy is written, then fair enough, I shall be the one to bog off and play another game. Lost Odyssey looks good, they say it "contains everything a good JRPG should, including a pointy-nosed stompy monster." :)

My to cents: Its to much going around killing monsters without any story to accompany it, which makes it boring for me, haven't played the game in about a year and only got to the san yeansea (correct spelling?).

Thinking about picking it up again now though... but I'm gonna need to find myself some good guide on how to be a more effective lv`er or something.

Levelling isn't too bad in this game actually. If you enter a new area and keep dying all the time (especially expensive if you have phoenix down on gambit) just go back and fight stuff for a couple of levels. I'd usually head to where thar be lots of skeletons - there are a few of those areas - and chain-kill them for lots of valuable bones to sell in addition to the XP :)

If you're like me, the main problem you're "stuck" is because you don't find it all that motivating. Rest assured it does get good at the very end.

I am now playing this game second time around, and I only have two negative things to point out:

1. The game had so many sidequests, dungeons, levellings, hunts etc., and so few cutscenes that when you finally had a new cutscene you had forgotten where you were in the story. Or at least, I had.

2. The License Board system made everyone the same very quickly, and I am not sure if the ranged-ability of the ranges weapons made up for their extreme weakness compared to swords, greatswords, spears and axes. The Zodiac System sounds brilliant and is just what I would have wanted in the regular game. *curses Square for their "international game"-concept*

Some of the music is indeed pale and blend in, but I find some of that in every FF-game, to be honest. I absolutely love the FF-X soundtrack, but almost the entire disc three is made of "mood"-songs that are forgotten the minute they are finished. A lot of the XII themes are great tunes - Rabanastre, Lowtown, Westersand and the Esper battles comes to mind immediately.

I am also one of those who found the plot and lack of a love story refreshing. Not because I disliked the plots or love stories in any other FFs, but simply because it was something new. Then again, X was my first FF, so I guess I am too new a FF-geek to be in love with the old school. (Nothing wrong with that, of course).

Oddly enough, though, I found the game much, much more fun the second time around than the first.

It really disappoints me how a character with so much vivid potential such as Basch is just ignored and casted away. He could of been the total badass in this game. Damn.

Basch was to me an ok character, but not too interesting to be honest. I was quite interested in the back story of Balthier and Fran, though. Not just their seperate history, but how they met and hooked up. Even in the official strategy guide, it's says that Fran is Balthier's "business partner" (yup, with the quotations marks).