I have been searching bad reviews on this game after i finished it, because to be quite honest those reviews are the only true ones.

How this game got 40/40 and 10/10 in the high review magazines is a complete and utter mystery.

I have wrote a review oin this in another forum and shall also place it here. I completely agree with shadow...this game is crap.

-----------Rewiew: A bit of a mess and contains spoilers...if you can call them that!-----------

Well, Where to begin. I am going to try and remain level headed but believe me it is going to take it out of me.

I will be soring this game out of 10 for each aspect, then an average score will be decided which I don't even know myself yet (but you can bet your arse it isn't going to be over 7/10)

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Music:

Before I headr the music for this game I had serious reservations about what it would be like without Nobuo. Some of that initial worry was unfounded, some of it was spot on.

Firstly, the music usually fits this game. There are a few nice tunes like the main theme, rabanastre and even 1 of the boss battles. Overall hitoshi has doen a reasonable job.

No, it isn't on the level of Uemstsu. No way in hell and I never thought it would be. I can name 3 or 4 tunes that really stick in my mind from this OST, compared to almost all of the previous installments. Alot of the music in this game sounds too generic, that would be my main complaint.

less real melodies and alot of mainly generic sounds that flow from 1 place to the next.

I give 6.5/10 for music. It is a reasonable effort and on the whole it fits the game.

Story:

This, is undoutedly where this game utrerly breaks down. I have to base this review on its own merits but also, I must compare it to other RPG's and previous Final fantasy games.

To put it bluntly, the story is extremely thin. At times, it seems to be going somewhere but then you spend 5 hours fighting meaningles battles, to be presented with nothing but a vague direction to a new area. Nothing more.

The saddest part is this game is classed as being "50-100 hours long" when in reality, the story occupies around 2 hours. Much less than any other RPG I have played. The endless battles and ridiculous plotless bosses just keep coming and coming and unless you are braindead, you get bored very quickly. The sad excuses driving you forward just make you want to attack the TV. following on from this:

The character deveopment is none existant, and this is the biggest crime of all. The main charcters are basically, just there (including the elusive bad guy). No explanation of their motivations, because, apart from Ashe, they have none. It is laughable to expect that anyone of any real intelligence can believe these charcters would just stay together through it all for no reason.

You don't care 1 iota for any of your charcters, because, quite simply, you don't know them! What little dialogue there is, as mentioned, is simple an excuse to drive you to a new area of the game and progress. The lack of dialogue in this game is an absolute and utter pitiful disgrace. This is supposed to be an RPG and so I must come down hard on this game for its insulting plot. The only one who has any real depth is balthier and that isn't saying much at all.

I give the plot 3/10. The 3 points are there for the reasonable tying up job at the end, wheer baltheir gives back the ring and also the main NPC discussions around the towns. I also give 1 point for the main running storyline of the empire. For the record, FFX-2 scores 1/10 and FFVII 10/10

Voices:

Surprisingly this game has very good voice acting with the exception of Fran who is an annoying talentless noise. I believe she is played by a male to be quite honest.

Vayne solidor at the end is without doubt the coolest, though we must be very respectful to the performance of ashe and bathier's actors. Compared to othe voice acting this is about as good as I have heard along with X and metal Gear Solid.

The voice acting, little of it though there is compared to X, is solid throughout from all but 1 character.

I therefore give voice acting for this game 8/10

Sound

The engineering of the voices is absolutely disgraceful. I could and have done better with a regular mic attacjed to adobe audition. The quality is reminisent tof a 32 kbit/s MP3 in mono. It is nothing as clear or natural sounding as X for sure.

That isn't the only downfall. It seems for the english release somebody got very very lazy. hardly any of the NPC say anything, instead we are back to subtitles and worse, periodically your main charcters don't have voices either! At the end of the game, vayne is talking but his crew isn't when replying. FARCICAL.

The main sound effects are as you would expect, apart from the ridiculous volumes and over-the-top effects, especially during the special moves

The sound engineering therefore must recieve 4/10 because it is awful and downright LAZY

Gameplay:

Now, this started off very good. You had all these cool new things to check out. gambits, mist attacks, espers, license Grid and clan battles. Let us not forget the miles of areas there is to explore. This game is huge on that front. So, for somebody who doesn't care about plot, the gameplay is a plus.

Well, it would be a big plus, except the gambit system ruins the main battle and the new battle system completely. Throughout this game I survivied by 2 gambits: attack:foe and cure: ally. Worse still, the develppers deliberately left in an exploit to get your party up to level 99 without touchinga button.

Pathetic. you can watch your party destroy the foes without any interaction or brain power throughout the entire game. It truly is disgusting. Ater a few hours this gets samey and you realise that there is hardly anything to really acre about tactically. bad bad move by enix.
This gambit system is the single biggest disaster in Final fantasy history. You don't need a brain, it limits creativity, it makes every battle attack attack attack and it gets you to level 99 without touching a button. IT IS A DISASTER.

Then there is the second problem, you gain around 2 or 3 espers from the main storyline. The last few come right at the end of the game and are worthless to you in battle. The others are all side quests which again, is disgraceful (since you won't be using them at all anyway). Mist attacks also become as useless and so, youe nd up back wheer i said--- foe: attack. NO GOOD.

The mist attacks become useless but at the start of the game I suppose they help. Unfortunately, here is another problem. Your MP is taken to 0, the same as when using an Esper. So tactically this makes it a last ditch attempt at killing a boss for example. The 2 worst things about the mist attacks however, are i) The damage is mostly down to luck as your shuffle the attacks and ii) you aer sat there waiting hours for these silly moves to finish.

The license grid is yet another huge let down. It starts off promising, but then you realise at 30 hours into the game (29 are battles), that this will be finished in no time and that you won't even be using the magics much.

By far the worst thing gameplay wise is the repeative battles and ridiculous amount of bosses. When you get to the final area before bahumut you will absolutely know what I mean.

I also hear (since I could stomach no more) that there is an enemy on this game devoted to the writer which has 50,000,000 HP. YES 50 million! With your main attacks capped at 9999 it is known to take 8-9 hours to beat this thing, leaving your characters to mindlessly fight it with the gambits. ARE ENIX SERIOUS! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?

It just sums this game up: an endless boring battle with no brains. An excuse to add time to your game timer and make the game look good.

It fails. IT FAILS

Has anyone noticed the loading times are much worse for this game too? it is a joke. On a few screens, consistently, 16 seconds to load the next area (i tested this properly). And after the Esper's are dismissed....Is there anything in this crap game that isn't poor?

Then we have the sidequest hunts for weapons/armours which is a mess. A total mess. You have random chests with ridiculous drop rates. You have enemies with ridiclous drop rates. You need a guide to get the stuff, and even with it there is a huge amount down to luck. You may not open certain chests or you cannot get the hardest weapons and even more laughably, every chest in this game contains worthless items 99.9% of the time. Unless you are daft or just plain stupid, you will not be loading your game up time and time again to get the "correct item". No this system is the Second biggest disaster in final fantasy history
If not for the clan battles and the extra side quests, the gameplay would be right where it should be, a 1 in 10. However, I have decided a fair score will be 5/10 when taking everything into consideration.

Graphics:

final fantasy has always been strong in this area, pushing every system to the limit. This is certainly no different. The areas are detailed, the charcter sprites good, the FMV's wonderful as usual. The Areas are as vast and beautifu as ever before. I cannot give this anything other than 10/10

{FF7 Music: 10/10, Story: 10/10, Gameplay: 10/10, Sound: 10/10, Graphics 9/10}

FFXII:
Music: 6.5/10
Story: 3/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Voice: 8/10
Sound: 4/10
Graphics: 10/10

The final average score for this travesty of a game is 6/10

Firmly placing it as the second worst Final Fantasy game of the modern era. This game will never be played by me again. I belieev it has 0 replay value whatsoever and the biggest mystery is wheer people see the story and also, how they get to 8-10/10 reviews. I will never trust famitsu with the scores. They talk garbage, which is apt really, because on the whole that is exactly what this game is.

I know why this game sucks so much though. Here is why:

Yasumi Matsuno as the writer and the other has-been's. No, you are not Yoshinori Kitase or hironobu sakaguchi or Kazushige Nojima my friend. You are a talentless fool. Don't come back.

No nobuo, yes he is missed.


DISASTER.

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Luckily my friends the above genius' will be back (with the exception of hironobu) along with the very talented Masashi Hamauzu who did a great job in X.

So, there is hope for XIII but XII is not a final fantasy game. Don't kid yourselves that it is. it never will be, those tactics amateur bunch are not what made this series great and thank god they have pissed off for XIII.

XIII will be a good game with the main dudes back, I will never trust the lot that brought us this yarn ever again. That is what happens when you take away the main forumla. 0+0 does not equal 2. It never will do, so stop looking for anything in this game. It is not there!

Now I am sick of moaning. So I will just let it be. Enjoy the game if you can.

DLPB

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/review/R109645.html <<<<so damn true!