Final Fantasy XII

"We Waited And Waited, And Now It's Here. Was It Worth The Wait?"

Yes, yes it was. Final Fantasy XII is a major departure from the FF Series. Not that the past games were bad, but this game is just so new and refreshing. We'll go over what makes this much different from past games in the Gameplay section. If you have played every FF game 1-10(11 is excluded as it was just a big online game, and I never played it anyway), then this game will be a big change for you.

Story: 10/10. The story starts off somewhat slow, but it realy, realy picks up about 20% in. The main character is Vaan, a young kid dreaming of becoming a Sky Pirate. Just recently, his brother had to try and save the king. He stormed the castle with a group of soldiers and fought to the top, while a war of airships raged outside. Upon reaching the throne room, however, the king was already dead. Now Vayne, AKA The Governor, has taken over all of the land, and Vaan, an Air Pirate Balthier, and a bunny-girl named Fran and a few other characters set out on an epic quest to dethrone Vayne and save the land, discover what the empire wants with a mysterious crystal sunstance known as Magicite, and uncover a great secret. But they will come across many challenges along the way. Many people will betray them. Many will stick by their side. Many will die. There will be chears and tears, joy and sorrow on their journey. Will they make it to the end? Will they be able to rid the empire of Vayne, and discover the hidden secret behind his actions?

Graphics:10/10 The graphics of Final Fantasy XII are simply phenominal. Every corner of the game is highly detailed and just packed with color. The cities are massive, and there are many, many different characters in every area. You just can't go anywhere without stopping to admire the backgrounds. And things arn't "Flat" either. There is this one lighthouse in the game that has 110 floors, so it's HUGE. And as you run toward it, it's not just a flat image in the background; It steaily grows larger and larger, taller and taller as you draw near.Same goes for everything in the cities. And as you look at these things in the background, it almost look like they are done in CGI, slowly coming up to you. And the entire title screen is actually a massive CGI cutscene of the war I talked about earlier. And as you climb certain dungeons in the game, you can actually look down over railings and such to see some of the paths and floors you have traversed below. They reall outdid themselves with the graphics on this one. And the CGI cutscenes are so realistic, you could almost swear you were watching a movie. And things even change over time. Depending on your current gameplay time, some areas could be rainy or sunny. Giza Plains could be a desert or a marsh. The deserts could either be calm, or a sandstorm could be raging. All the characters in the game are highly detailed as well. You can see every scale on a Bangaa, every hair on a Wolf if you look closely. And the developrs were not afraid to give some monsters certain little "details".
And the human characters are also very detailed. Everything from their clothes to the hair on their faces, it was all very well done.

Sound: 9/10. The Voice Acting is also superb. A lot of people don't really seem to like it, but I love the British accent everyone speaks with. It goes to show how much practice they did to do all the Voice Overs in this game. However, the sound loses 1 point because of the music. The music is not very FF-Like, although most of it is very good. The main reason I am taking off a point is because a few tracks are just terrible in every way, with Lowtown's theme as a prime example. And everytime you defeat a boss, you get that classic FF victory fanfare, so thats nice. It may take some people a little while to get used to the new music style, but I am sure you will find a few memorable tracks to hum here and there.

Game play:10/10. Now here is the big change: No more random battles. Final Fantasy XII's battle system is very, very similar to KOTOR(Knights of the Old Republic). You select an enemy to attack, then your ATB gauge fills. When it is full, simply near an enemy and the character will slash out at it. Characters can also cast magic, use items, summon, and use this game's version of the Overdrive of FF10: Quickenings. Quickenings are realy powerful attacks, and you can enter commands to make your characters string tons of them together, and end it with a super-attack like Cataclysm. You can also set up AI programs for your characters called Gambits. With the right Gambits set up, your characters can do almost anything all by themselves. For example, if you don't want to open the menu and select a healing Magic constantly, you can just set up a gambit like this: Balthier: Use Curaja on >Ally with less than 30% HP. Now he'll automaticlly heal a character when his or her HP drops below a certain point. There is a gambit out there for just about every action in the entire game, there are gambits for using potions, using ethers, reviving characters, casting magic to remove status and heal, using items to remove statuses, and cast protective and helpful spells on characters at certain points. There are alsa a whole slew of Gambits for attacking, gambits that make characters attack physically, use magic against enemies, etc. Or, you could just turn off the Gambits and control everyone yourself, it's your choice. Now onto the License system. Unlike previous Final Fantasy games, you cannot just pick up a weapon or armor and use it. You must first obtain a License for it using License Points, which are gained by killig enemies. There are licenses for every single spell, weapon, accessory, skill, and piece of armor in the game. There are also special Augment licenses that increase a character's status, kinda like the Sphere Grid in FFX. And now to the money: Gil is very hard to come by in this game. Very, very few monsters drop Gil, so in order to get some, you have to get "loot" from monsters. Just about every enemy will drop some kind of loot that you can sell; For example, Wolves drop Wolf Pelts and Malboros drop Rotten Fruits, etc. Killing monters and selling loot, then using the money to buy new magic, skills, weapons, and armor, then going and killing monsters until you have enough license points to get a license for the stuff you just bought is the primary focus on game play. Also note that like FF10, FFXII does not have a world map. You go from a city to a desert to a chapel to an ancient ruin(Not really, just giving an example) Everything in the game is connected by towns, cities, massive deserts, huge forests, and grassy plains, all of which you will traverse during your quest. Now, onto the Hunts. The following is just a HUGE sidequest that you can do throughout the game. People post bills and wanted posters for monsters in the taverns in the game, and you can hunt down the enemies for a reward from the bill poster. It's a lot more fun than it may. There are many, many many hunts to do, and the difficulty is ranked I-XX(1-20). The first hunt is killing a lowly little monster with around 50 HP called Rouge Tomato, and the final hunt, which I will not spoil, is a rank XX monster with, no, this is not a typo, 50,000,000 HP. (Final boss only has about 200,000 HP, so...yeah, they went overboard with rank XX) Finally, the Espers from Final Fantasy VI have returned. You can summon them in battle and just stand by as they lope around smashing enemies in. The only downside I can think of about the gameplay, and this is very minor, is the occasional Guest character that joins your party for awhile. I don't really like Guests because you can't even control them, and if all your characters die and the guest still lives, it is still game over. All-in-all though, the gameplay is fantastic and very, very fun.

All-in-all, Final Fantasy XII is a truly fantastic game. It has a 100 hour storyline, amazing in-game graphics, even more amazing CGI cutscenes, a KOTOR-Style battle system, great voice acting, good music, an epic, deep storyline, an ultimate boss with a record-breaking 50,000,000 HP, and enough sidequests to keep you entertained that many hours more. Final Fantasy XII gets the highest honor; It deserves every bit of a 10/10. Buy this game and play it well.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/09/07