"Decent, but lacking in important areas"

Over-hyped games are funny in a way. Whenever a large title is announced, it is often brought up as one of the best games before it even comes out. These games range from living up to it to falling completely on its face. The games that miss often have the great features that make a game what it is removed.

Final Fantasy XII is no exception to this rule. It lacks the charm that makes Final Fantasy what it is. That's not to say it is bad, it actually has quite a few good ideas, but the execution of these ideas is off.

Graphically, the game is gorgeous. You'll feel as if you're actually in a city or out in an open field, sometimes walking through realistic rain and trees. FMVs look fantastic, and Square Enix shows off its power in many of them, specifically near the end. This, along with God of War 2, is one of the best games graphically for the Playstation 2.

Music takes a bit of a hit without Uematsu on board, but that doesn't make it bad. There's a couple tracks that you may find yourself humming every now and then while playing, but I don't remember the name of anything, outside of the end theme. While decent, it's nothing that your going to remember for a long time. It lacks the charm that other games in the series had, where you would hum a track that you liked as the scene played. Final Fantasy XII has none of that, and it hurts. I like music in video games, and when I can't find one song that I really enjoy...it bugs me. It isn't bad, but it does feel dull.

The story is something that you either like or you don't. It's about the countries rather than your characters, as they journey in an attempt to find a weapon in order to stop the war between the nations. Sounds kinda typical, and it is. However, the dialogue and voice acting is superb, so the story flows pretty well. The big problem is with the character development. Unless you're really listening and digging, you won't notice it. Your main character, Vaan, just appears to be along for the ride. In face, with the sole exception of Balthier, I found the playable characters to be forgettable. None of the other 5 seem to have a personality to them. Penelo, the "cheery" one, just seems to be there for no reason. She lacks the charm of someone like Yuffie, Selphie, and Rikku. Ashe lacks the attraction that Aeris, Tifa, Celes, Terra, Faris, Rinoa and practically ever other female lead had. Fran has some interest to her, but sadly, it's touched for a second, then disappears. Basch is sort of the fallen knight, and they do ok on him for a few minutes, then it disappears. Balthier is developed at a decent rate, but in small spurts. However, he's the "cool" character, so he gets a bit of a pass.

But with 5 forgettable characters, he can't carry it on his own. What good is a story with a good flow if I don't care about the actors? Since they play a part in the war between the nations, it just makes the story seem unfullfilling and lifeless. They did a nice job on the story itself, but not on the parts that are needed to tell it: the characters

Final Fantasy XII's gameplay is far different from the rest of the series in its battle system in that it is in real time. No random encounters sounds great and you and your party will face enemies on a large map. You control one character while the computer controls the other two or, in the event of a guest, three (co-op would've been interesting). To stop the computers from acting stupid, you set Gambits for them, and yourself if you wish. These are commands that allow your party members to perform commands based on different situations. For example, you can set one gambit to attack the nearest enemy, but if a party member's HP gets low, you can set it so that the member will heal them. This saves a ton of monotony of continuously entering commands for the other members, and for the most part, is executed pretty well. There are some spots that you may not have the preferred gambit, but these are few and far between. In addition, if a party member dies, rather than fighting with just two characters, you can go into the menu and put a third member in. You get a game over only if all six of your characters die. This is an interesting feature that can help if enemies are swarmed all over you.

Leveling up has returned after taking a hiatus in Final Fantasy X, and the system is the same there: fight enemies, gain experience points. However, you also acquire License Points, which you use on a License board. This board is your character, they can't even equip a bracelet without the proper square opened on the license board. It usually isn't a problem, even at one license point per enemy, you'll gather enough shortly to gain enough for the square that you wish. Licenses also control what magics you can use, Quickenings (limit breaks), summons, increased potency for items and magic, and stat increases. It truly is an innovative system that allows for maximum customization.

And that's good. But Final Fantasy XII, with a semi decent story, an innovative battle system, and a great amount of customization fails in the key area, not just for RPGs, but for any video game. It misses what older games even as old as Pong and Tetris have.

The game is just flat out not fun.

On paper, everything looks great. However, leveling up is a chore in this game. While license points aren't a problem to gather, experience points are, as you won't get a large amount for enemies. What's worse, your standby party members don't level up with you, so you'll be spending twice as long leveling if you want 6 powerful party members. Enemies will also gain massive stat increases when near death, so attacks that were doing 1200 at one point may find themselves doing 600 when the enemy is near death. Enemy levels also increase at a quick rate, so you'll find yourself doing a lot of grinding as you go through the game. And while you can move around the environment, it doesn't help much. You can't run away from a dangerous attack; the enemy will chase you down and hit you regardless of how far you run. What good is a large area for fighting if you can't exploit it?

And this is a problem when it clearly shouldn't be. While most enemies that you encounter are on par with your level, there are these large spheres which have very high levels wandering around. Normally, this isn't a problem, but if you provoke them, they will come out at you and beat your ass in. Problem is, anything can provoke them. Even something as simple as a cure spell ON YOUR PARTY can turn these spheres into mass killing machines. You can flee, but eventually, you WILL get caught and you WILL take huge damage. This can be frustrating fighting enemy after enemy to level up, only to lose it all because a sphere got pissed that you healed yourself.

Boss battles, while not nearly as threatening as these spheres, can pose quite a challenge. Bosses have attacks that are so amazing that they get their own cutscene. However, the boss does not attack you. Rather, you see a spectacular cutscene where your characters disappear for a second, then you go back to the battle and take damage. It would've been nice to see your character get blasted into oblivion, and it just feels awkward to me. They also get more powerful as the battle draws near a close, but sometimes these bosses get really cheap by casting spells that make them invincible for a short time. This doesn't make the battle harder, persay, but your party pretty much will stand there doing nothing for a long time waiting for the chance to attack. It's boring. I did like the feature of putting a health meter on the top of the screen during boss fights, as it allows a bit more strategy when fighting, but with stupid mechanics such as making themselves invincible...it doesn't matter much.

Ok, so battling is a chore. So what, right? There is nothing to do BUT fight! Even the large sidequest, the hunts for monsters in order to help people with problems, involves fighting enemies. You need to do this in order to get experience, license points, and "loot" which you sell to get gil. Speaking of gil, this is the best way to gain gil for most of the game. The equipment and magic that you buy is extremely expensive, and you'll have to sell loot to gain enough to buy it. However, after a while, you'll find a better weapon, often in the next shopping area, and you'll repeat the boring process again.

What's worse, since everyone can equip these weapons, you'll want to buy them for your whole party. This not only makes farming even MORE boring, it also destroys the total customization that the license system gives you. Previous FFs, such as FF6, FF7, and FF10 had this problem, but those characters at least had SOME differences to them. FF12's characters have no real differences between them, outside of the Quickening animations. There's no point to having one character be the dedicated healer when you can have three killing machines with the ability to heal. And since the gambits give you little control over the action, you'll find yourself walking to an enemy, watching your party kill it, then repeat. It's just too boring, and if you want to control things, setting up only one character doesn't stop the boredom. Controlling all 3 just gets to be crazy and tedius.

In addition, the game is too long. If this was a 30 hour game, it could probably get away with some of this. However, FF12 is about 60 hours long, and that's without doing many hunts. Considering all you do is fight throughout most of the game, that's a lot of boring battles. There's a ton of hunts to go on throughout the game, and there's many secret summons and optional bosses to fight, but I don't think I will be playing this from beginning to end again.

RECAP:

Pros:

-Beautiful visual presentation
-Great ideas with the licenses and battle system
-Story told very well

Cons:

-Music and characters dull and lifeless
-Level grinding gets boring
-Fighting takes up most of game, makes it not fun
-Too long for a game of this type
-Customization useless when everyone can be the same

Final Fantasy XII is not a bad game by any means. The designs and ideas that the developers showed actually have some creativity to them. However, the execution of these ideas is lacking, and the music and characters lack the charm that previous Final Fantasies had. The game feels like a grind fest and the license system is rendered useless once you have the powerful equipment for all three party members. Fighting is the major ploy in this game, but it feels boring, dull, and unrewarding after a while. The game is just disappointing. Fans of the series will definitely want give it a try, but if you want a fun Final Fantasy for your PS2, stick with Final Fantasy X.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/19/07