Ya know what Anakin Skywalker and I have in common?

Apart from the willingness to commit mass murder for the ones we love?

We both hate sand.

Sand sums up the first ten godforsaken hours of this game. If it isn't sand it's a small relief of boring corridors and a sewer level.

I can tell you right now I wasn't a fan of FFXII until over ten hours into it. Slogging through the two Sandeas was a nightmare and none of the previous areas did the game any favors.

And that's not even getting into the storytelling. One thing you can say about FFX over FFXII is that pacing was never a real problem. Pacing was THE problem in FXII.

People often debate who the main character is. There is no frickin' main character because the pacing is so unforgiving in its badness. Each character drops in and out of relevancy with huge *THUNK*s and you might as well forget they even exist for hours upon hours. Poor Basch gets the worst of it because after the godawful Sandsea section he is utterly worthless to the story. He becomes worth a damn again at the very end of the game as in the final frickin' dungeon.

Plenty of people would argue Penelo was completely superfluous and never had a real place in the plot at all.

Fran too.

Balthier sits there talking smugly for half of the game but only on the way to Archadia does he actually do anything of worth.

Overall you get the impression the heroes are even a bigger bunch of bumbling, ineffectual buffoons than usual. The "Real Plot" is happening elsewhere and the villains are the only ones doing anything of interest.

Heroes: Let's get the Nethicite!
We got the Nethicite!
We can't use the Nethicite!
Let's learn to use the Nethicite!
We still can't use the Nethicite!

The whole part with the Henna Mines or whatever they were should have been dropped from the game. It was padding for Fran's arc but Fran didn't deserve an arc to begin with.

Gabranth being the Kingslayer had dramatic weight and importance...in the first two hours of the game. By the time he actually reveals himself and his part in that conspiracy to Ashe and the others? Yeah, the audience has just trudged through 50+ hours of other game crap and we've long since stopped giving the slightest smurf.

And the list of flaws in the game goes on.