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

[Mr Cactuar]

Now don't deny it. Alot of Final Fantasy fans do not like this game. Many fans of FFXII have asked why? Well here are my reasons and opinions as to why much of the Final Fantasy community felt disappointed with this game.

1. The music.

Really. Ask yourself. Do you remember much of the music from FFXII? The only tunes I remember and have bothered to download are the Main Theme and the Battle on the Big Bridge. Why the music isn't up to standards? No Nobue Uematsu. The composer for all the music in FFXII was Hitoshi Sakimoto. The only piece that was done by Uematsu was the Main Theme and Battle and the Big Bridge. Hmm...

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

Sure. They can get annoying. They can get tedious. But it's what makes Final Fantasy gameplay, Final Fantasy gameplay. This new method of killing monsters really arrogated me. The majority of the time you'd be fighting 1 monster at a time. Boring. And some of the monsters are just pathetic. I remember when I first played FFX, my first FF, I got to the calm lands. I ventured west before saving and came across a mighty Malboro. It was the weakest of all Malboro species yet it was still 2-3 times bigger then my characters. In FFXII, the Malboros are pathetic. They're roughly as tall as Vaan and just die so easily. Many other monsters had this effect too. And where are Cactuars and Toberries?

3. Where is the love?

The greatest argument in the Final Fantasy community; did Cloud love Aeris or Tifa? Love stories make Final Fantasy that much more better. Look at FFX. That love story made that game. FFVIII's story basically was the love story. Last time I checked, these 3 FF's are the most loved ones around. Hmm...

4. Whacky doodly piddly pop.

That made no sense to you? Really neither does the story off FFXII. Basically I can sum it all up here. Go collect object. Come back. Destroy object. Go do thing. Go collect object.... The idea of FFXII is really good. 2 warring nations, with your nation inbetween and trying to find the peace. It was just paved out for the player so badly, and ineffectually that you just lost touch with it all. The characters were mostly brilliant (Balthier and Gabranth come to mind) but they developed poorly. Ashe had to be told to do everything, Vaan was uninteresting and Penelo was mostly forgotten about for a large majority of the game. It was there, but it just wasn't built on.

This was my 5th Final Fantasy. Me and 3 friends of mine, who also play FF all bought this game at roughly the same time. We talked about it, we laughed about it and we enjoyed it. But, for me, It just didn't touch me like others did. While this game has its good points, I do believe that they could have done better.

Lets give good luck to XIII.

[demondude]

Though I agree with some of the arguments I still liked this game.
I didn't have any problem with the music I thought it was very atmospheric and I loved the new battle system.The only thing I disliked was the breaking of some traditions like tonberry being turned into a ship.

Plus cactuars were in the game but they look different I can't remember the name however.

[Vivisteiner]

1. Music

Answer: Sure, the music was weaker than Nobuo's. But I liked many other themes in it. Not up to Nobuo's high standard, but still decent enough.

2. Random battles

Answer: Random battles are less enjoyable to the battle system of FFXII IMO. Sure, they're fun as well, but the fluidity is just not the same. Im sure a lot of people will agree with me. FFXII's battle system is the best in any Final Fantasy.

3. Love stories

Answer: Who needs love? Sure, emotion is important and I felt that FFXII was lacking that, but love? A waste. FFVIII had crappy, unrealistic love. The love in other games was mostly genuine(even if cliched), but I dont follow your argument that love is necessary. If anything, the love stories were getting stale. I think the political nature of FFXII freshened things up considerably. And no, the love stories didnt make any FF game apart from perhaps FFVIII. And that love was complete .

4. Im not even gonna copy that down.

Answer: There is something called intelligence. And if you follow a story carefully enough, you'll understand it. Maybe not completely first time, but if you replay it, more and more of the pieces fit. And, as I know all too well, the story does make perfect sense. Sure, the character developement is lacking, but what is really interesting is the politics. The individual wills of the key figures in Archadia, Rozarria and Dalmasca and how they clash. You can pick these up with subtle references without them being spelt out to you like in FFX. (Dont get me wrong, I love that game). Although I do wish there had been a few extra cutscenes just to add a few extra elements to the story. Anyway, I thought the story was good.

If I came across as rude its because Im sick of the endless topics of infantile bashing.


One thing Im worried about the Fabula Nova Crystallis: Im Nomura sick. But still, he's good at making plots (even if I dont much like his character designs). Lets hope he doesnt disappoint.

If you're curious as to my opinions...

FFIX: 100/100
FFX = FFXII: 95/100
FFVII = 93/100
FFVIII = 89/100

I would give FFIX more if I could. Because the other four game combined aren't as good as it.

[demondude]

Vivisteiner your argument about ff9 being better then the other four combined is..............









Absolutely true I lift my hat to you fellow ff9 lover.

[Slothy]

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

Sure. They can get annoying. They can get tedious. But it's what makes Final Fantasy gameplay, Final Fantasy gameplay. This new method of killing monsters really arrogated me. The majority of the time you'd be fighting 1 monster at a time. Boring. And some of the monsters are just pathetic. I remember when I first played FFX, my first FF, I got to the calm lands. I ventured west before saving and came across a mighty Malboro. It was the weakest of all Malboro species yet it was still 2-3 times bigger then my characters. In FFXII, the Malboros are pathetic. They're roughly as tall as Vaan and just die so easily. Many other monsters had this effect too. And where are Cactuars and Toberries?

I agree with pretty much everything Vivisteiner said (though I think I enjoyed the soundtrack more than most), so I won't rehash everything he said. I will say that Random battles are broken. I hate them with a burning passion even.

They absolutely do not make FF gameplay what it is. If anything, they completely detract from the enjoyment of the gameplay. I'm willing to tolerate them in older games, where there really wasn't a viable alternative at the time. In those cases, they were a necessary evil, and I can live with that. These days though, there is absolutely no reason to have them in games. They pull you out of the game making for a much less immersive experience, and are also incredibly annoying when you just feel like running through an area uninterrupted (particularly if you need to stop playing and are just looking for a save point).

As for monster types, I don't really care if there were no Cactuars or Tonberries, or if they made the majority of Malboros easy to kill; there were still plenty of times I was fighting multiple enemies at once, and there were plenty that made horrible experiences with Malboros from prior games seem like a cakewalk.

[ReloadPsi]

With the exception of the point about random battles... ah, who the hell am I kidding? I totally agree with all of that. Though I gotta admit I loved the music in Rabanastre and will never forget it. Probably because I didn't hear all the game's soundtrack, I gave up half way through the game.

The overall plotline was a case of tl;dr, in that I paid no attention to it because it was so smeggin' dull.

What a lot of people don't realise about the new battle system is that, aside from the monsters not being random, it was just FFX-2's system with free movement: Everything still happened on an ATB gauge but actions could happen simultaneously. So few people realised this, and I'll bet loads of the people who pan this battle system admit to liking the one in X-2. However, running around and then having to stand still for a bit while you wait for your party to eventually take a swipe at an enemy really did get old after a while.

Unfortunately I will probably never complete this game and see the ending, but does it matter? I won't understand the ending anyway.

[Jessweeee♪]

It's just very different from the other games


....the story reminded me more of the older ones than the newer ones if you ask me.

[Elpizo]

My guess as to why this game gets so much hate is because people expected exactly more of the same and didn't get it. Thus they were dissapointed. I wasn't disappointed one bit, but maybe that's because I played XII before X. I liked almost everything about XII, except the random treasures. I liked a lot of the music, especially 'Battle for Freedom' and the story was great. And XII easily has the best Cid in the entire series.

The same can't be said about X however, which, after VI, is the worst FF ever in my humble opinion.

[Mr Cactuar]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing XII. I'm just giving reasons as to why I didn't find it as good as others.

And the battle system really wasn't that good. Black magic was basically useless, and with the right gambits you can play the game without touching the buttons other then control stick.

[Elpizo]

Black Magic is useless in many FF games. In VIII barely anybody uses magic, aside from maybe aura or some cure spells. At least I never did. In X I didn't either, Tidus and Auron could handle it just fine with Yuna to back em up (depends on who you play with, of course). In III summons are superior, same in IV and V. In I a black mage with Flare will never hit as hard as a hasted Warrior with Excalibur. In II I never bothered leveling up magic, weapons did it better. VI's saving grace is Ultima. In IX Black Magic is good because characters are job specific and summons aren't automaticlly superior to it.

It's has always been like this. Melee attacks are in almost every FF game superior to magic. Black Magic ceases to be great end-game, in most FF games. XII just made it so that you didn't always have to press the confirm button to use your best attack (namely: attack), that's all.

[Heath]

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.

[Ashley Schovitz]

I like the game a lot, but only for it's battlesystem. It has the best battlesystyem to date, but it lacks in music and story. The story had a good concept, but it was poorly executed. I was really pulled into the story in the beginning, but once you start going on with a full party and start hitting the fields and dungeons then the story lacks because it takes way too long to come to another cutscene or conversation. The lack of random battles is no dissapointment to me, I don't really care if they have them or not as long as they're paced well like in VIII to me it seemed the most well paced and IV seemed very fustrating with the rate of battle screens. Eventhough with the dissapointment to the story and music, the graphics and gameplay help it so much that it's over VII in my book.

[Jessweeee♪]

I wouldn't say the game was bad, it just really depends on what you like

Not one game in the series was bad. I mean, look at the sales! A lot of people hated FFXII a lot of people liked FFXII, same with every game in the series n.n




As for the black magic thing, I never really used magic much except in FFX. Used Lulu just as much as everyone else ('cept Kimahri, of course, I never gave him a purpose in battle) and she always seemed to have enough MP to use magic in place of Attack every turn :P

[Vivisteiner]

The one thing about Final Fantasy, as Jeswee said, is that it comes with a high production value. Whilst fans might not like the different directions it goes in, it will never be a bad game.

(SPOILER)Apart from FFX-2, which is emotionally scarring. XD. Couldnt resist the jibe, hehe.


Black Magic I only used in FFIX and sometimes FFX. (Flans!)

About the music. Actually, I liked it. I just thought that a few flat tracks brought it down, such as in The Tomb of Raithwall. Also, it lacked a bit of variet.

I liked the battle music for Ozmone Plains and Giza Plains. 'Symphonic Poem Hope' is beautiful.

[Slothy]

Black Magic I only used in FFIX and sometimes FFX. (Flans!)

About the music. Actually, I liked it. I just thought that a few flat tracks brought it down, such as in The Tomb of Raithwall. Also, it lacked a bit of variet.

I liked the battle music for Ozmone Plains and Giza Plains. 'Symphonic Poem Hope' is beautiful.

Are you and I the same person or something? I agree completely, both about the black magic (I rarely used in it many FF's except IX, and occasionally in X as Vivisteiner said. It really isn't all that useful in most of the games except for rare cases when an enemy has a weakness to some spell that makes it die really easily), and about the soundtrack. In fact, I just ordered the soundtrack today. Yeah there were some less than stellar tracks, but it was still a great soundtrack overall. I could say the same about pretty much every FF soundtrack except VIII, where the less than stellar tracks seemed to be most of the album. I think most people were too busy complaining that it wasn't done by Uematsu to notice the soundtrack.