Ok so I just started a new game on my FFXII (I'd already beaten it but I wanted to play again). I decided that I'd have a better strategy this time and made the decision to buy a butt load of phoenix downs, go off and fight Dustias, get Vaan to level 20-25 and then go off into the palace. That way when Fran and Balthier joined I'd have a really high levelled party.

But here's the catch,
I can't buy phoenix downs! What?!

I searched around the web thinking that perhaps you can't buy it this early but pretty much every site I went to said you could buy it immediately. So now I'm all peed off cos I wondering if it's one of those horrible things where the European version (I'm in the UK) is different from the Japanese/US version. Please note as well I'm NOT playing the international version. Ugh! Why do Square do this? Seriously what is the point of changing the game like that, weird tiny little things, for other countries.

So yeah, is this so? Are some versions of the game programmed to not have phoenix down as an easily obtained item at the beginning? If so what versions? And is there any way I can grab a huge loads of phoenix down some other way?

Thanks.