No Love story...?

[Evolavas]

I heard from someone, that FFXII unlike many others doesn't have a love story. I always kind of liked a little drama. Is this true, if so, does the main plot make up for it?


NO SPOILERS

[Tavrobel]

Actually, not really, and the main plot is predictable, and not at all surprising or interesting. Every single time, I'd call out the events with near pinpoint accuracy.

It's not a bad game, though. Lack of love is not really all that new; FFI, II, III, and V don't have the "traditional" love stories as the others do; however, in IIIj, Sara falls for all four of the Onion Kids and FFV has Bartz/Faris and Bartz/Lenna, if you looked at it in a certain way.

FFXII doesn't lack any drama, that's for sure. Drama != Love.

[LunarWeaver]

The only two that really focus on love are VIII and X anyway. Some others have nicely developed fluff, but it's nothing huge. Zidane and Garnet have a nice love thing going, but it's not the main focus of things...But I'll give IX a "maybe" to keep everybody from chewing me out.

So there's really not a love story, but there's still plenty of drama to be swept up in I guess. And I also found the plot to be surprisingly straightforward.

[Zeromus_X]

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather have a straightforward plot than a confusing, convoluted storyline that requires me to use a book just to figure out what's going on.

[LunarWeaver]

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather have a straightforward plot than a confusing, convoluted storyline that requires me to use a book just to figure out what's going on.

It's not just you. Metal Gear Solid 2 is my favorite of the Solid trilogy Edit: series, not a trilogy anymore, you think anybody should listen to my opinion on plots?

What can I say, I like needlessly convoluted

[Tavrobel]

Yeah, because references to other works of writing and a plot that requires a little bit more than common logic and higher thinking skills is just SO unnecessary.

[Raistlin]

MGS2 was decent until the last 30 minutes, when it became a drug trip.

The plot is definitely one of my gripes about FF12. It's really bad at first, but after 20 hours or so it starts to pick up a bit. It's better now, but still not great.

[Roto13]

Ashe was in love with her husband and she does keep seeing him all over the place, but that's about as close as it gets to a love story.

[Timerk]

There is love in the love that a knight has for his queen, or the love that queen has for her country -- I really think that is the big relationship in the game. There are also some psuedo-couples, but at the point I am at, nothing really for certain.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

FFXII's story is great; I certainly did not miss the presence of a sappy romantic sub-plot or the obligatory accompanying J-pop song. But don't worry, Nomura and company are coming back for FFXIII, and they can be relied upon to serve up yet another helping of the same angsty, meandering, teen-targeted dreck you've so come to enjoy.

[Raistlin]

FFXII's story is great; I certainly did not miss the presence of a sappy romantic sub-plot or the obligatory accompanying J-pop song. But don't worry, Nomura and company are coming back for FFXIII, and they can be relied upon to serve up yet another helping of the same angsty, meandering, teen-targeted dreck you've so come to enjoy.

You don't have to have a sappy romantic sub-plot to have a more complicated, better developed story. That's just how many of the FFs have done it.

[Lexy]

I don't think saying that the plot seems needlessly complicated automatically translates to "I'm too dumb/have too short of an attention span to understand the plot". There are plenty of games/books/movies with complicated plots that are done well, and plenty with complicated plots that are done poorly.

[Wolf Kanno]

It all depends on how you would define "convulated" if you were hoping for something like Tactics, Xenogears, or Vagrant Story... all I have to say is that you've come to the wrong series. If you really think about it, most of the FF's have pretty simple stories. The few that have complex plots with weird "story altering" plot twists are pretty bad in my opinion. FFV's multiple world plot was weird and never really explained, but then again FFV's plot wasn't all that great to begin with (though it's definetly one of the better games)

If you're looking at FFVII-FFX for complex well written plots, I feel you've come to the wrong place. Each game has a horrible plot twist that tends to kill the game for me.

FFVII- Cloud's past after all the hype was a major let down and since I started with the earlier games, I can safely say I wasn't exactly brought to tears when Aerith died.

FFVIII- time travel was poorly explained as well the whole "we all grew up together" twist was pretty stupid

FFIX- Was going really well until Zidane's past was explained... I usually don't care when a game rips off another games plot but I can't forgive a game for doing it within the SAME GAME! Zidane only wishes he was as cool as Vivi.

FFX- I'm dead but I'm also a dream? WTF!Now you're just being pretentious...

Now with exception of FFVII and FFX I can safely say I like most of these games but come on people. Sometimes it's better to have a well written story with characters that are actually like real people. So FFXII doesn't have some weird convulated plot about Vaan being an alien and the half brother to Princess Ashe who is the reincarnation of a goddess who has been brought back to reunite with her immortal lover Balthier. And the empire isn't using the souls of the dead to generate a weapon capable of drawing Ivalice into the higher plane dimension that it originally was in before the original emperor stole the power of the Demon god Ulithitar and created this world even though the original emperor is actually a 13 year old Japanese kid in a coma which makes everything I've written above about the plot to be irrevelant.

I feel FFXII has a good storyline, there is no real love story, but the relations the characters have with each other is far more interesting. No one really trusts each other, everyone has something from their past they try to keep hidden, and though they all don't really get along at first. They each begin to slowly find their reason to be there. That is what the story is about on the character level. It's not earth shattering, but it works in a very good way.

[Christmas]

The lack of LOVE is perfect.

[Raistlin]

I'm not looking for more complex, necessarily. The story was simply very poorly developed for the first 20+ hours of the game. It has been getting better, though.