Not Much of a Final Fantasy.....

[Jerseymilk]

Secondly, NO MORE RANDOM BATTLES. The most ANNOYING part of any effing FF. Listen, it's not that I don't want to fight Monmster A, B, C, D & E inbetween getting to the next save point. BUT I LOVE THE FACT IT IS NOW MY DECISION. Before it annoyed me, now I find myself running to the monsters. BUT when I want to get from point A to point B because I forgot something, I want to do it in a short time without a Random Encounter every 10 paces. RESULT.

I couldn't have worded this better myself. This is *exactly* how I feel too.

[Setzer Gabianni]

Look, it's simple. This game succeeds where so MANY past Final Fantasy games failed BUT failed where so many previous ones succeeded.

Aye and it pi$$es me off to see they failed on stuff they knew how to do. It could have been the perfect FF, with good graphics AND good music, good gameplay AND good story.

Alas... SE isn't on the business of amusing Renmiri

Opinions differ, love, and many people thought the characters and storyline were great. The music wasn't , it was different. Alright? Can you imagine any of the music from previous FF's kinda like fitting in XII? Orchestrated music was the way to go dude.

Cuchulainn, I <3 your positives, but I disagree with the negative. Tis just me of course (maybe other people too haha )

[Sophie Peithos]

I don't think you can really say that FFXII 'isn't an FF game' simply because the formula for the series is so diverse. Compare FFIII to FFVIII and you'll barely find a similarity between them. Stylistically the series changes almost completely every three games or so.

That being said, I agree with almost every negative comment that people have made about the game so far. The plot, characters and gameplay all have some serious issues despite being based on very good ideas. The only exception was the music which, while there is nothing particularly memorable, was more appropriate to the game style than Nobuo's compositions would have been. Nobuo's scores demand too much of the player's attention for a game where battles are fought expediently and without any kind of transition.

[Neo-Omega Mk XXV]

I don't think you can really say that FFXII 'isn't an FF game' simply because the formula for the series is so diverse. Compare FFIII to FFVIII and you'll barely find a similarity between them. Stylistically the series changes almost completely every three games or so.

That being said, I agree with almost every negative comment that people have made about the game so far. The plot, characters and gameplay all have some serious issues despite being based on very good ideas. The only exception was the music which, while there is nothing particularly memorable, was more appropriate to the game style than Nobuo's compositions would have been. Nobuo's scores demand too much of the player's attention for a game where battles are fought expediently and without any kind of transition.

Uematsu's been on the decline since FF7 IMO. FF6 was his masterpiece and FF7 was his last really strong score. FF8 was a mixed bag, and after 9 & 10 I don't believe that the series's music is anything exceptional anymore unfortunately. FF12's music wasn't stellar, but by and large pretty decent, and no worse than what I heard in 10. At least it didn't have a wretched death metal song as the last boss's music.

I agree with Setzer on the storyline - I really enjoyed it, though I have problems with the presentation and I think that in some ways it doesn't work so well as a video game plot. But it probably has the least scenes out of the entire series that I'd be embarrassed to show my non-JRPG playing friends (which is most of them). I'm starting to think that the spread of the "gamplay is good, storyline and music are bad" viewpoint is becoming a herd phenomenon. I.e. it's true because "everyone knows it's true".

[Setzer Gabianni]

The ONLY thing, a very minor thing, which bugged me about the storyline, was that I wanted more Judge love ;w;