Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

"A largely successful departure from the FF norm"

In recent months, Square Enix has released an unholy amount of content for the portable platforms, primarily the DS. Of all these projects, however, the most surprising to be announced was this game. It's only the second direct sequel to a mainline Final Fantasy game (the first being the obnoxiously hip Final Fantasy X-2), but even more interesting is that it ventures into the realm of the real-time strategy genre, previously uncharted territory for Square (not to mention the majority of Japanese game developers). The result of breeding the RTS with traditional RPG elements is FFXII Revenant Wings, a game with several flaws but a lot to like.

Being part RPG, story is a big deal, and on this point the game delivers. It picks up a few months after the conclusion of FFXII, as Vaan has bought himself an airship and is traveling the skies with his close friend and lightly implied romantic interest Penelo. They come across some ancient ruins, and run into fellow sky pirates Balthier and Fran as they come upon two mysterious jewels in the heart of the structure. The two teams split the bounty, but predictably the ruins collapse Indiana Jones style at this disturbance and Vaan's airship is lost, leaving all four to escape aboard Balthier's Strahl. Back in their home city of Rabanastre, Vaan, Penelo, and their friends Kytes and Filo ponder what to do. Right on cue, a mysterious unoccupied airship lands near the city, and the crew investigates. The airship reacts to the jewel from the ruins and takes them to the airborne lands of Lemure, where a new adventure awaits. While this game takes a decidedly more lighthearted approach to the plot than its predecessor, it is surprisingly well thought out for a portable game. Also different this time is that most of the cast actually matters: character development is present in droves throughout, most noticeably in Vaan, who gradually matures both as a sky pirate and as a leader. The overarching plot only occasionally proves epic, but it always provides plenty of motivation and purpose for the battles that are woven into it. The events of the game are also supplemented by the airship log, which give a closer look at how each character feels about what is going on. My only real gripe is that the mythos behind Lemure and its relationship with the Ivalice back-story established in FFXII aren't given nearly enough depth or prominence, which creates an odd sort of disconnect between the events that take place in the two lands. The player who hasn't paid close attention to rare historical interludes will likely wonder why exactly any of the game takes place on Ivalice in the first place.

The aspect of the game which has generated the most doubts is the combat system. One would think that the DS's touch screen abilities would make it a natural home for the RTS genre, but this game is far too conservative in its approach to make it really work. Most battles are preceded by selecting as many as five leaders and five summon monster types to use. As the battle begins, each leader is assigned a certain number of units, which can be increased by summoning more from designated spawn points on the battlefield. There are three types of units: melee, ranged, and flying, which exist on a rock-paper-scissors relationship. Your objective is to use your fighters to eliminate the enemy units and leaders and complete the mission (usually “defeat this guy” or “protect this guy”). The game can be controlled entirely through the DS's touch capabilities, though there are a couple of actions assigned to some of the buttons. In battle, units can be directed by selecting them in various ways: you can tap a unit to select individually, drag a box over a group of units, or tap the leader's icon at the top of the screen to select the leader and his/her squad units. The control setup actually works quite well, though I do wish more had been done with the button shortcuts. While the game eases you quite nicely into the setup, the problem is that it never stops being easy until very late in the game. Despite the strengths/weaknesses of characters, 95% of the time the best strategy is simply to amass as many units as you can and send them all to attack the individual enemy squads, capturing any of their spawn points you find along the way. When the game finally does get difficult, it does so in a hurry and fluctuates wildly between fairly easy and maddeningly difficult, sometimes all within the same mission. There is also an imbalance in the leaders who join your party: over half of them are ranged type, which is strange considering that the unit type they are strongest against, flying, is by far the least encountered in the game. The RPG elements that have been spliced in with the RTS core are fairly basic. The leaders get stronger and acquire new special moves by leveling up (summoned units level up with them, but don't gain new abilities). They can also increase their stats by equipping weapon, armor and accessories that are found, bought, or forged with raw materials. The “quickening” attacks make a return for this sequel, and work quite well for getting you out of the occasional jam. Gambits are also back, but have experienced a huge downgrade. Instead of being able to set up the kind of prioritized situational commands as before, you can assign ONE special attack for each leader to be used automatically whenever it becomes available (there is a recharge time of varying lengths for all of them), or when it's needed in the case of support and recovery techs. Considering that each character has at least 6 different abilities to use, this feels incredibly shallow. It's hard to tell if this is a product of the DS's limitations or laziness on Square's part. Still, despite all the gameplay's faults, it is very fast-paced, and there is just enough meat to the design to avoid utter mediocrity. It's also a fairly long game, too, coming in around 15-20 hours for the story sections alone, and twice that if you participate in the multitude of side missions.

While some RTS games are capable of zooming in on the action to see more detailed graphics and modeling, I would imagine that the DS simply isn't capable of that. As such, besides the occasional CG cinematic, this game relies entirely on its environmental design and art direction to look good. Not surprisingly for Square, they accomplish this with flying colors. Each of the 30 or so areas you encounter over the course of the game is unique and rich with detail. Despite not having any voice acting whatsoever, the musical arrangement is also very nice, doing an excellent job of providing whimsical beats during humorous scenes and dramatic overtures during the more intense battles. On the minus side of presentation, bonus content (concept art, music/movie player, etc) is nonexistent in this game, and having only two save slots is a little weak.

It has its ups and downs, but by and large this is a good installment and a fresh experience for the series. Try not to expect too much from it because it has the words “Final Fantasy” in its title. It's basically what it advertises itself to be: a smaller scale adventure with some untested gameplay ideas and the usual high quality production values that Square is so good at providing.

STORY – 9/10
GAMEPLAY – 6/10
VISUALS – 9/10
SOUND – 9/10
SWING – 7/10

OVERALL – 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/14/08

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