"Final Fantasy imitating Age of Empires."

FFXII: Revenant Wings is what I would call a real-time strategy game, but on a much lower scale than most popular RTS games (Starcraft, Command and Conquer, etc..), yet it is a great little game in it's own right.

Story: 8/10

The story takes place roughly one year after the events of FFXII. Vaan has become a full-fledged sky pirate now, with Penelo there to watch over him. After a raid on a temple with old allies Balthier and Fran, a particular stone will thrust him into a conspiracy that threatens to destroy Ivalice.

The story wasn't too bad, though I found it to be vastly inferior to the original FFXII story. Most of the story takes place in the sky of Ivalice, among some floating islands called Lemures. Here Vaan and company meet an emotionless race known as the Aegyl, who have only recently been exposed to the outside world, since they have been living in Lemures within the protection of a barrier. You'll spend a lot of time trying to defend the Aegyl from evil sky pirates, as well as trying to figure out why they don't show emotion.

In the true spirit of Final Fantasy (particularly FFXII), there were several moments in Revenant Wings that I felt were presented extremely well, giving the player the sense that a truly epic battle is about to unfold. The presentation of the game's story was done very well.

Game play: 8/10

The game play is quite fun, and easy to learn as you discover how to summon monsters to fight for you. The game uses a simple “paper-rock-scissors” approach to battle, similar to Fire Emblem, except here Flying Units are superior to Melee Units, which defeat Ranged Units, who destroy the Flying Units. They also have an elemental system, where certain monsters are weak to certain elements. Unlike most RTS games, you don't need to mine gold here. You won't be building any buildings either, instead you can keep summoning monsters for free as long as you haven't exceeded your summoning cap.

While all this makes the game sound fairly simple, which it is, there are a few more things you can do as you fight. For example, as you fight you gain little stone objects which you can use to level up your monsters. You can also gather items on the battlefield in order to make new weapons on your ship. In addition, you can also complete various side-quests and hunts (similar to FFXII) and receive various trophies for reaching certain milestones in the game (also similar to FFXII).

As you progress through the game, you will gain items that let you summon a greater variety of monsters, which are ranked from I – III, I being a lower level monster and III being the highest level monster. You can only have one rank III monster out at a time, so it is essential to choose wisely when you are picking which monsters you want on your team at any given time. Leading these monsters are your party leaders (such as Vaan). Your party leaders will also gain abilities as they level up, which you can use through a menu on the touch screen. You'll find some abilities are very necessary (such as Penelo's Curaga). Of course, having three to five party leaders out at a time can make using everyone's abilities a chore, so they let you assign one ability per leader as a gambit, so the leader will use it whenever they have the chance. Of course that still leaves the majority of your leaders abilities being unused, so choose your one gambit wisely.

The only real complaint I have about the game play is that controlling your army via the touch screen can be a little difficult at times. You'll find yourself trying to issue a command to a certain unit, which may not register, while your other units are dying without the support. I also found the computer AI to be rather dumb, as they will sometimes run into an object and become stuck there. Thankfully, there are a lot of one-button shortcuts (such as hitting the “X” button to select all of your units) which help a lot towards making the game more playable.

Graphics: 8/10

The graphics for the game are small and pixel-y, but they do their job well. You won't have any problem recognizing one unit from another, or your units from the enemy units. And with that many units running around the screen, this is actually fairly impressive. The character sprites are all well done, as are all of the monster units. They did a good job in making the reoccurring characters from FFXII, whether they are party members or espers, look similar to how they did in FFXII.

There are also a few cut scenes in the game as well, which look fairly good. The movies use both the bottom and top screen to display the cut scene, and they will sometimes use them to display two different points of view. In battle, the second screen is usually used to display the map you are fighting on.

Music/Sound effects: 8/10

As you would expect, the music in Revenant Wings is largely based off of FFXII's music, which isn't bad at all in my opinion. As such, you'll be hearing a lot of dramatic tunes as you play, which help give the player that epic feeling that I was talking about earlier.

The sound effects are all standard fare; you'll hear everything from arrows flying to swords clashing just as you would expect them to be heard.

Replayability: 7/10

As I mentioned before, there are numerous side quests in the game for you to complete. While most of these are fairly easy to do if you only level up your characters through the story fights, there are a few that will provide quite a challenge, including one that almost requires your characters to have their level maxed. Other than completing those side quests, and maybe obtaining all of the trophies and weapons, I don't really see much re-play potential.

Overall: 8/10

Overall, I found FFXII: Revenant Wings to be a fun and easy Final Fantasy title. You should really consider picking it up if you were a fan of the original FFXII. Fans of RTS games in general will probably be disappointed with the game play and the fact that you don't gather resources or build buildings at all. It is still a fun little game that would certainly entertain any Final Fantasy fan. Have fun and keep playing!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/11/07

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