"A major letdown."

I can remember hearing that Square was making a FFXII sequel back in the summer and I was looking forward to continuing the adventure with Vaan and his friends/companions. When this game was given to me as a gift I quickly opened it only to find disappointment. Gone was the serious political story, replaced with something I'd expect from a budget PSX game. This game just seemed too be yet another random hand held title Square used to get a quick buck, maybe they should put this time and effort and finally do a Final Fantasy 7 remake.

Story- 3/10
Vaan gets his own airship. Vaan looses it at the very start of the game, him Penelo, and his under street friends from Rabanastre find this airship from the lost sky continent and they soon find them selves protecting it from evil sky pirates. Come on Square you can do better than this, what happened to trying to stop a war? What happened to the conflict the resistance had to deal with along with the struggle Ashe made to restore Dalmasca. Now all we have is this kitty tale that I'd expect from a game made back in 1996. There are several side plots involving the winged residents of this continent but none of them were nearly interesting enough to catch my attention.

Graphics- 5/10
Sheer laziness on Squares part. All the characters in this game are portrayed as tiny chibi sprites that I'd expect from a GBA game. Hell I've seen GBA games with better looking sprites. This makes me think the entire game was rushed. A good deal of the enemy sprites are taken right from Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced just with a palette swap! The back grounds are standard DS graphics, nothing original. Funny thing I used to remember Final Fantasy games always having the best graphics for their time...

Sound- 5/10
No voices, bland uncreative battle sounds and music imported directly from FFXII. What prevents me from giving this a lower score is the fact that the music seems to fit this game better than the other.

Game play- 7/10
If you did not know this is a strategy game. Not a good one though because almost no strategy is needed. It plays much like a PC RTS but you use the stylus instead of the mouse. You drag it over units and command them to walk, attack or preform odd tasks across the field. Your mission objectives are usually kill all enemy leaders, to even the table the enemies out number you drastically but you are given *espers* to combat this. Espers aren't the massive beasts of destructions they were from other games but now your own foot soldiers. You are given a dozen or so at a time and can replace them easily with the help of summoning gates. You can customize your group of espers with a system called the ring of pacts which works a bit like the liecence board, there are lots of espers and many of them are preexisting FF monsters like cactuars, chocobo's, and various summons. What I said about the lack of strategy runs true, on almost any mission you can just lure each enemy one by one and pick them off then bum rush the leader and utterly destroy them. The boss battles are easy because you just target the boss and your troops will all focus on them and take them down almost instantly.

Final score- 5/10

Pros-
+Good customization options
Cons-
-Cheestastic story.
-No strategy.
-Awful graphics.

Rent or buy?
Just rent it for awhile if your interested in playing. Not worth spending lots of cash on.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/25/07

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