"It is a new twist on Final Fantasy, but is it fun and worth the heavy price tag?"

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings for the DS was a highly anticipated DS title (at least to me). The game is the sequel to the Playstation 2's Final Fantasy XII and was released a little more than a year after the original installment. The game play diverges severely from that of the original title in the aspect that this is more of a real time strategy game with little to no dungeon exploration.

The game takes place roughly a year after the events in Final Fantasy XII. Vaan has achieved his dream of becoming a sky pirate and even has his own air ship. While out treasure hunting with Penelo, Balthier, and Fran, he happens upon a treasure that opens up an entire new world to him. This world contains many mysteries about esper origins, treasure and even a new race of winged creatures.

Perhaps the best way to describe the game is Warcraft III meets Final Fantasy Tactics. The game is broken into chapters and the chapters are divided into missions. Each mission is on a set map that does not change. Across these maps are many enemies, as well as treasure chests, mineral deposits and food items. Naturally, the chests contain useful items like any other RPG, but the mineral deposits can be mined by a character who can discover more treasure within these deposits.

The individuals in your party can each be designated as party leaders and will command a force of several espers. You can send each party in a separate direction or have them all move across the map together. The units are controlled via the touch screen. You can drag a box around them or select them individually or by a character portrait at the top of the screen. The map can be scrolled by using the directional pad and with a touch of the stylus, the units will move in the desired direction.

Reminiscent to Final Fantasy X, this game has a sphere grid of sorts. However, rather than abilities, the grid is made up of espers that can be summoned and befriended once you have the proper amount or auracite. Auracite is gained by defeating enemies. The grid only shows roughly one quarter of it at any time and can be "spun" by pressing the buttons on the touch screen that correspond with clockwise and counterclockwise movement. Different elemental espers are on different sections of the grid, or ring as it is called. Once you use the auracite to befriend an esper, it will always be available to you before you go into battle.

When you go into battle, you can choose the espers you wish to fight along side of you. A total of up to five different espers can be chosen, and they will incarnate as many forms as you are allowed, depending on how far you have advanced in the game. Different espers cost different amounts of energy. Esper cost in battle is different than esper cost on the ring. The number of energy you have in battle is a constant, and once an esper dies, that energy is available to you again to use to summon a new esper. Espers are essential to winning battles. You can think of them as expendable units, much like Marines or Zerglings are in the game Starcraft.

Where this game holds onto the tradition of the Final Fantasy name is found greatly in the fact that your characters can level up and wear different equipment. Experience points are gained for defeating enemies and are awarded at the end of every mission. To help prevent you from getting to a point where you are too weak for the next mission, old missions can be replayed as "monster melee" where you enter the map just for the purpose of destroying enemies. This is also helpful to check for treasure and other items you may have missed your first time though.

The hardest aspect to get used to in this game are the controls. While they are very useful and responsive, the touch screen aspect of controlling your character combined with the directional pad aspect of doing the same, can lead to confusing times, especially for the beginning player. While on the deck of the air ship or on the world map, you can control Vaan simply by pressing the directional pad (you can also use the stylus). You do not have to select him or any other character to move. However, when on the map, it becomes almost a chore to move the characters, especially when you consider you need to select them each and every time you want them to perform an action. Since you are thrust directly into several missions before you get the chance to explore the map or airship deck, you can become disoriented when not having to select a character for movement first becomes required.

Movement, especially on the world map, is slow. Fortunately, there are items and abilities that help speed up the process during missions. Managing many separate groups of units can become tough when you use the D-pad to scroll the map, but by pressing one of the shoulder buttons, the screens flip and you can quickly touch the overview map to zip to that location. It may not be a perfect way of moving quickly from one location to another, but it is the best way available for the DS.

Revenant wings is slightly reminiscent of the original. One aspect where this holds true is that gambits are available in this game as well. However, they are in a much more limited capacity and are done in such a way that you have more control over the actions of your characters, even with the gambits on. Each character can only have one gambit at a time. Rather than having a value associated with them, such as ally hp < 30%, they have a time limit attached. By applying a gambit, the character will use that action first in battle, then attack normally, until a certain time has passed where he or she will then perform the action again. For instance, a magical ability can be attached to a gambit, such as firaga, where the character will use that spell first in battle, then either go in to attack, or perform other actions as you denote. Gambit spells and abilities have a time limit where they cannot be used, but they can be done manually as frequently as you want, should you wish.

While there are set magic users and sword fighters, the game does not denote them as such. Instead, the game breaks everything into three categories, melee, ranged, and flying. Each one of these has a weakness and a strength against the other two. The game aptly describes it as a version of rock, paper, scissors, where ranged is good against flying, melee is good against magic, and flying is good against melee. Elementals also play a roll in a similar fashion, except that not all enemies and espers have an element associated with him or her.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the game are the graphics. Square Enix is perhaps the only company, save for Nintendo, that can use the graphical capabilities of the Nintendo DS to the fullest. The cut scenes look just as amazing as they do on the Playstation 2. They are spread across both screens, sometimes being one camera angle, split in two and sometimes being two different camera angles of the same event, one on either screen. It sometimes becomes hard to follow when two different camera angles are used, but with graphics this beautiful, no one should complain.

In game graphics are just as amazing. While the third dimension is not used in favor of sprite based characters, there is no jaw-dropping amazement lost. The graphics will scale (zoom in and out) frequently with no blur or fuzziness experienced. Sprites from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance appear in this game in the form of other sky pirates, but the frequency in which you encounter them is minimal, so you do not feel as if you are fighting the same enemy thirty times in a row as you do in the aforementioned game. Everything on the maps are beautifully detailed with excellent backgrounds and colors. Nothing is left to questionable identity or vague appearance.

Perhaps the biggest downfall to this game would come to players who have not played the original Final Fantasy XII. While this game holds very little to any other Final Fantasy, the story is somewhat of a continuation to XII and without prior knowledge of that game, there will be references the unfamiliar player will not understand or comprehend. While this game is perfectly playable by a Final Fantasy babe, the full gamut of the story cannot be appreciated without playing the previous title.

The inevitable question of whether or not this game is a good purchase must be brought up. It all depends on whether or not this is a type of game you enjoy. Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings takes the series in a slightly new direction, borrowing from other spin-offs and fitting into the DS's hardware abilities. The real time strategy element is strong in this game, but is different than the typical RTS. Fans of the series should welcome this change in genera to the Final Fantasy name with the hope that the original style doesn't die with this incarnation. Those who never cared for the console style RPG elements of Final Fantasy may find refuge within this title as a new look at the series. Anyway you slice it, this game is a good twenty-thirty hours of RPG-esque entertainment for the Nintendo DS. Fans of the series or genera should buy this game immediately. Those who are on the fence should go ahead and give it a shot, as it is an all around solid game that will prove worth the high price tag.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/26/07, Updated 11/27/07

Game Release: Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (US, 11/20/07)