Final Fantasy XII

"Absolutely horrible...."

Usually I am very careful when I'm giving a negative review to a highly anticipated game like FFXII. My reviews usually start with things like:

"Don't get me wrong, it's a good game, but..."

or

"It has some goodness in it, but it's just not for everyone.."

However, this time, I'm gonna have to just put it on the line straight.

This is one of the worst games I have ever played.

Coming from a fan who has played almost 'every' Final Fantasy to date, not only I can honestly say this is the worst Final Fantasy ever, it's also one of the worst games I have ever played. It pains me to say that, really, being a fan of the series for so long, but enough is enough.

Let's begin.

I'll start with the good stuff. This is the most beautiful game, and probably the most visually creative one in a while. Squaresoft has never fail to deliver on its technical marvel and this one is no exception. Environments are full of details, characters look as good as ever. I don't have to go on about the FMVs, it is just like any other Final Fantasy games, absolutely beautiful.

However, that's all the good things there is to this game.

Let's turn to page 1 of "RPG 101". What is the most fundamental elements that make up a good RPG? Any experienced RPG gamers would tell you, story, personalities, battle system. I don't know how pretty you look, it's the inside that counts. You can fool those young gamers that will simply be dazzled by all the glitters, but we are not fools, and please don't mock us with this lackluster effort.

Final Fantasy XII has a decent story to begin with. It illustrates the political struggles between certain individuals and races. However, hours into the games, the story weighs less and less. In the end, we don't really care what is going on with the story anymore, we just keep pressing the X button to skip the dialogues. This can be attributed to the characters, which I'm getting into now.

FFXII has a collection of the dullest characters in videogame history. We have 6 usable characters (and some guest characters who would fill in the blanks from time to time, uncontrollable) to play through the game. Of the 6 characters, probably only 2 characters has really said anything in the entire game, and that does not include your protagonist. The protagonist, Vann, remains close to invisible throughout the whole game. He has no opinion, REALLY BAD voice acting, and pretty much just "yeah sure" towards the end. His sister Penelo, is even more invisible (I don't know how this is technically possible, but heck). I wasn't counting but, did she even has more than 30 lines of dialogue?

Such boring characters with really lousy voice acting, you just start to lose your interest in them. And the story is way too serious, there is barely any light moment in this game. It feels like we are sitting through an entire screening of Moby Dick re-written in Shakespearean language. I've never yawned so much for a game.

Ok, here comes my favorite part. Gameplay.

The game mechanic has so much flaws I don't know how the HECK this game made it to the shelves.

The gambit system is pretty interesting. Unlike many other RPGs now you sort of LOSE controls of all your characters. You assign commands to your characters prior to battles (or in battles) and they will act accordingly. So, during all battles you can just watch as your characters attack the enemies. Sounds good right? Yes and no.

First of all, they REALLY should have added a "cancel command." Now we don't get to control our characters, if we want them to perform an emergency action, we have to interrupt whatever they are doing. But if they have an action waiting to be performed, we will have to wait for that action to be performed. So my second character died, I want to revive her. But instead, I'll have to wait for my first character to cast a useless healing spell, because it was waiting to be performed.

And comes the money issue. Almost all monsters no longer drop money. You will almost NEVER have enough money to buy what you want. You'll have to sell stuff that monster drop in order to make money. And the license board thing. You will NEVER have enough license points to upgrade yourself. And since even if you have enough money to buy an equipment, you wouldn't have enough license point to wear it.

So, it comes down to leveling. I HATE games that requires excessive leveling, and this one takes the cream. Why do I have to feel like I'm doing office work while playing games? And the sidequests in this game is immense, but awful. Most sidequest really does not make any sense. It feels like the developers just think of a random reason to put them in there. For example, there is this guy proposing marriage to this air stewardess. She wants to refuse him but doesn't know how. So they made a bet. If you, a total stranger, who just met them about 30 seconds ago, can deliver a letter to her six other sisters, then she'll refuse his proposal.

WHAT THE HELL? Does any of that make any sense to you?

And among all ther sidequest and main game, the things you are required to do are irritating as ever. You pay an informant for a information, he'll be like, "oh I wanna hear some gossip," and then, refuse to tell you the information, which you just paid, unless you learn some gossip for him. As the game goes on, it gets more and more irritating.

There are tons of sidequests in this game, but all based on one principle: backtracking, walking around, fighting. You will be spending at least 90% of your time just walking about or getting to your destination, and without so much of a good cause.

Lackluster story, boring characters, mundane actions, and repetitive gameplay is the dagger to your heart of boredom.

Fans of the series definitely knows what Espers are. Whatever you call them, summons, guardians, espers, they're basically mythological beasts that you can summon to the battlefield to help you out. They usually play a quite important role for the past series but for FFXII, they're complete garbage towards the end of the game.

In FFXII, Espers would take on the battlefield instead of your usual characters of 3. Only the person who summoned the esper would stay in the battlefield. Espers have HP too, and if it is drained, the esper would leave. Esper's HP is relative to the characters' level, and whatever they do on the battlefield cannot be controlled (duh, does that come as a f**king surprise?). At level 99, most espers has the HP of about 6000. Most bosses (at least optional ones) can wipe your esper out with one single attack or two. So you basically summon your esper, watch the cool animation, and see watch it get owned.

And difficulty of this game.....I don't know what's the deal with difficulty but since when does a good game have to be hard to be considered good? Of the best RPGs in the history of mankind, not all of them are hard to conquer. Take FF7 for example, it can be finished by anyone without a walkthrough.

Difficult games are fine, within reason. It can be difficult, but it has to make sense. It seems the developers really got lazy and just go, "well, let's just make the players unable to use attack, hence making it difficult." I am not kidding, there are numerous battles in the game that you are unable to use attack, magic, or items. That is the cheapest way to make the game difficult, because the way I see it, the developers just got lazy to think. And what's more, most bosses towards the end of the game would throw up a "perfect barrier" to guard against all attacks. There is nothing you can do, just have to wait for it to go away. C'mon does this crap make any sense at all? If a monster has that sort of abiity why not just use it over and over? We can just have a monster that's untouchable, and use an instant death spell to wipe everyone out, there, you happy? The most challenging game in history of mankind. Pathetic.

It is also not a surprise to run into an enemy that is 20 levels higher than you and wipe you out in a blink. It is also not surprised that you will have to do extensive leveling to get through most of the game, unless you know absolutely what you are doing. In the end, almost every battle will end up with the same strategy. You need to have a tank to take the damage, and others would heal. Can you imagine doing 80 hours of that over and over?Do you remember the Emerald/Ruby Weapon in FF7? Those crazy monsters with a whopping 1 million hp? Well take this: there is a secret boss in this game that has 50 million hp, 50 million! Even with very high level characters it'll take about 4 hours for ONE FRIGGING battle! Are you guys out of your mind?

RPG is like a movie, things have to make sense in order for us to enjoy it. We assume the role of the characters, we have to care for them. When we lose our motivation to further advance, it is the moment that the game failed. FFXII has failed in almost every aspect except for graphics. It is shallow, boring, and pretensive. It is evident that those game developers got lazy halfway and just start putting random stuffs together.

Squaresoft has faded, since merging with Enix, the only quality game I can think of is probably Kindgom Hearts series. Everything else has gone right to the bottom. I've just finished Valkyrie Profile 2 and it's not promising either. This is probably going to be the last Squaresoft game I'm paying my hard-earned money to buy.

The dynasty has faded.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/07