Believe me, I understand the idea of tradition, especially with the FF series. I've finished all but a two of them (FFIII and FFXI). And honestly, I prefer the older games way more than the newer ones. Even FFXII ranks below FFIV and FFVI in my mind.

But one tradition of the FF series is innovation. Each game always tries to break the boundaries, whether in story, cinematics, graphics, or gameplay. But another tradition is that a game comes along every so often that reels the series in and reminds us of our roots. This is why FFIX was more appealing to the older fans who had started on the older games. FFXII does this as well, not in gameplay though. The world itself is a reminder to us of what an FF world is supposed to be like and I love the game for it. The gameplay was the developers trying to basically reinvent the wheel so to speak.

That's fine, I like the LB/Gambit system but it's still not my favorite system. I prefer the older style of games but I won't let my bias' blind me into believing that anything new is automatically evil or wrong. Now it seems to me that you have played this system going in with an open mind and you just came to the conclusion you don't like it. It pretty much comes back to your sense of tradition within the series. Now that's fine with me, you don't care for it. I like the system, but even I don't want it to be standard for the series. So we have some common ground.

The thing, is my idea of tradition within the series is different and I probably have a much more loose view of it than you do. Nothing wrong with either view though. I just play the system and see it for the well crafted stragetic wonder that it is. It gives me freedom to be completely crazy or even to be cut-throat traditional, the gambit system builds the other half of the system allowing me to have a level of strategy in the series I haven't seen in the main series since FFV.

Basically, my main argument is that the system is technically designed to appease both sides of the debate. The crazy young innovaters who like playing god with their characters and the "old geezers" like you and me who prefer a more defined and strategic approach. I just find it odd that you are decrying a system just because it allows a mage to wield a giant two handed axe and wear leather armor and yet still be able to cast Flare, when it comes down to it,even though you don't have to make it that way. It just seems rather OC to me rather than a real argument.

Hell even Tactics allowed you to get mages who could equip heavy armour or use swords. Doubt any one really did but the choice was always there. To be perfectly honest with you, I felt the same way when I first heard about the system. It bothered me that the characters had no classes and the LB seemed rather random to me. But then I got really deep into the game and looked at the board and realized my classes were there. Sure I had to make do with a few things and I lost quite a bit of the hardcore stat differences in the class system. But I realized the flexibility of the system and how I can work it to what I wanted it to be.

The main difference between us in the end, is simply the fact that I can ignore the possibilty of non-traditional elements in my game, you cannot. I don't believe either view is wrong and I understand the idea to maintain the status quo but I just feel that FFXII doesn't really break the status quo or any tradition really. It just allows us to bend the rules a little more than even the job class system did. To me the Liscence board is basically a less structured Job class system. By sacrificing a bit of the old structure, though, the player was granted a greater level of freedom than we have ever been given. I don't think that reason alone is for the system to be condemned, though I don't feel it should be excepted whole heartedly either.

Yeah, definetly beating this poor horse's corpse like it owes me money