"Enjoyable from beginning to the end. :D"

Let me start off by saying Final Fantasy XII, despite having Fran(though not enough of her if you ask me), was a huge disappointment. Yes, disagree with me, I'm prepared for it. I'm as much of a die-hard Final Fantasy fan as the next guy(or girl!), but it made me cry. Not really, but you get the point.

I was reluctant to buy Revenant Wings for this reason. Partially because Vaan and Penelo were my two least favorite playable characters in XII and this game seemed to entirely revolve around them. Then when news was released that the entire XII gang would be joining in, as well as a few others, I started to think...hmm...maybe it won't be so bad after all. I'm very happy I decided to have a change of heart.

The game starts out in a dungeon-type area, and you have control of a very lonely Vaan. Your mission is to find Penelo, who's only a short distance away. There's a small tutorial on moving, battling, etc. After a quick fight, you reach your trusty sidekick, whom I had previously dubbed "useless skank". Once obtaining Penelo, you must now find Fran(I was very excited at this point) and Balthier. And so, the game progresses. I won't get into too much detail. Mainly because I don't really remember what happens next. Oh, well.

Battles are fast-paced and very fun. Before each battle, you're able to see the enemy party's abilities, weaknesses, etc., allowing you to strategically select your party. There are three types of enemies in the game: flying, melee, and ranged. Melee is strong against ranged, ranged is strong against flying, and flying is strong against melee. As many others have put it, it's much like a rock-paper-scissors relationship. You have five leaders, and each leader begins the battle by summoning their own espers. "Espers?!", you might say, thinking that each leader can have Zodiark, Mateus, Famfrit, etc. Not quite. There are three types of espers: Tier I, II, and III. You can have two Tier I, two Tier II, and one Tier III per battle. Tier III espers are obviously the super powered ones, like Shiva, Ultima, Shemzahai, and the list goes on. However, the Tier III espers aren't summoned automatically at the beginning of each fight like the Tier I and Tier II espers are; you must summon them manually from a friendly summoning gate. Your enemies can summon more espers as well through their own summoning gates. To stop this from happening, you can capture their gates. Espers are your soldiers, and each troupe leader is, well, a leader.

The leaders you may choose from are Vaan, Penelo, Kytes, Filo, Llyud, Balthier, Fran, Ashe, Basch, and for a short period of time, Ba'Gamnan. Vaan, Ba'Gamnan, and Basch are melee, Filo and Llyud are flying, and Kytes, Penelo, Balthier, Fran, and Ashe are ranged.

Vaan is a thief, very fast and somewhat strong. Penelo is your white mage, arguably the most useful character in the game. Kytes is your overpowered black mage, Filo is your useless...I don't even know what to call someone who attacks people with a flying surfboard, Llyud is your dragoon, Balthier is a gunner, Fran is an archer, Ashe is a cross between a time mage and an amazingly useful support character, and Basch is a paladin. It's not hard to have a well-balanced party, which makes the battling even more fun, since everybody works very well together.

The graphics are absolutely amazing, especially for a DS game. The cutscenes are beautiful, though the characters are oddly elongated. I assume this was done on purpose, but it just bugs me that even the humes have a non-human-y appearance about them. The regular gameplay graphics are very detailed, albeit slightly pixelated, but we can look past this. It is on a handheld, meaning the game engine won't be equal to that of a PS3, Wii, or Xbox360.

The music in each area is very fitting. You can tell that they really took the time to place each melody with the map you're in. Sound effects are nice...fire sounds like fire, ice sounds like you want to grab a blanket, poison sounds like bubbling goo...well, you get the point.

Finally, storyline. I've often felt like many handhelds are lacking in storyline, but more than make up for it in gameplay. Revenant Wings has both. The storyline starts out a bit cheesy(Vaan wants to be a skypirate! WHEEEEE!), and exactly what you would expect from a sequel of XII, but it becomes very enjoyable and actually really good. The main bad"guy" through most of the story is one of my favorite characters. I usually end up liking those with a tragic or sad past, and the game conveys this wonderfully.

The only negative note(s) I have about Revenant Wings would be lack of replayability, and annoyingly elongated characters. After playing it through, the only reason I would play it again would be to get anything I had missed in my first game. Since it's relatively easy to get everything, even to unlock the secret ending, there's almost no need for that. And about the elongated characters...well, that's my personal little pet peeve. Ignore it, unless you agree with me as well.

There is much more to the game, but this is a review, not a guide, amirite? After playing the game through and doing everything the game offers, I would recommend it to anybody, whether they're a Final Fantasy fan or not. A combination of insanely fun and easy-to-learn gameplay, great graphics, lurvely music, and enjoyable storyline make this game one for the record books, especially since it spawned from one of the biggest letdowns in, hell, VIDEO GAME HISTORY. *Dun dun dun*. Well, it was a letdown except for Fran. She lived up to everybody's expectations.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/06/08

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