FFXII could have been a masterpiece..

[felfenix]

A lot of the problems with the game are really due to corporate interference. Why wasn't there a lot of development and interaction with Vaan, Panelo, and Fran? Because those characters were only in the game at corporate's demand, because they thought Basche, Ashe, and Balthier wouldn't appeal to audiences. Which is ridiculous. The game should have just had a set 3-4 person party, without member swap, like earlier FFs, and at least gotten rid of Vaan and Panelo. Also, the way the game kind of suddenly ends, somewhat randomly and poorly paced, is likely due to Yazmat leaving.

As for the comments on 13 having focus, I didn't feel that way. Just because everything was a straight line didn't make it focused. Most of 13's quest could be completely removed. The whole game is the main characters wandering around, not even knowing their main goal. 13's plot was aimless, until the end, in which you learned that 90% of what you'd been doing was pointless, and you go back to where you started. Where 13 really succeeded over 12, IMO, was character interaction. I liked that the characters in 13 had relationships. They fought, they made up, they grew. Whereas in 12 nobody talked to each other, except for the couple times throughout the game that Ashe told Vaan to STFU.

Del, have you tried playing through 12 without doing any marks? That seems like it would clear you issue with the game up pretty easily. The dungeon crawling in 12 didn't bother me as much as the long periods of just trudging along the only road fighting in 13, hoping the next cutscene, or SOMETHING other than walking straight + fighting would happen. Overall, I thought FF12 was a LOT more focused than the FFs on the NES, in which I would often not even know where to go next back in the day.

My biggest issues with 12 were Vaan, Panelo, Fran, the license grid, and the story feeling random and incomplete at the end. I also didn't like that there was some kind of programming flaw which led to magic being queued, but not physical attacks. If you had two characters casting fire at the same time, they wouldn't both just use it at the same time, but one would just stand there and wait for the other to finish. So it felt like the magic was turn based, while the weapon combat was not, making weapon based healing/damage superior for high end gameplay. Other than those issues, I thought it was one of the better FFs in the series.