What are your thoughts on this game? I think it started out really slow, but builds up the pace later.. still have a long time to go til i beat it, but its definetely worth the money

Thoroughly enjoying it so far. I like the new battle system. Time will tell if I end up liking it better than Dragon Quest VIII. I loved that RPG.

Thorougly impressed.
The small touches and nuances that you find littered throughout the game are a hallmark to the perfection of the craft of RPG making Squenix has approached. I didn't expect to find the battle system as addicting as I do, and I've never felt so emersed in a virtual world. (I don't play MMO's)

It's very good. I love the Gambit system, and the License board is what the Sphere Grid should've been. The cast develops incredible well, and the story is one of the best. Surely the reinvention Final Fantasy needs. Very good. Lots of reviews have criticized the map system, and I have to say, I feel the same. That map is where you have to look to know where to go, and the map you get from the menu and the one onscreen are totally different. It makes things incredibly confusing and at times I'd have to look an extra 5 to 10 minutes to see where I was supposed to go.

Personally Final Fantasy 8 is way better. The best of the series for story line and its just awesome. Graphics are a bit crap and its REALLY hard at parts but thoroughly enjoyable

I really liked this game for the first 30 hours. I just got bored for some reason. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to play an entire game anymore. Too often I feel like I've seen it all before.

quote:

Graphics are a bit crap

the graphics are a bit crap on FF8? Not quite sure what to think about that comment. It was probably the best looking game on PS1 when it was released, and looks about as good as anything else that came out on the system. Now if you wanted to discuss the Final Fantasy graphics before FF8, then we're getting into some games where you'll have to look past the visuals for enjoyment.

This game started off ok for me but after a while I found this game painfully inappropriate like Square-Enix was literally playing a joke on me.

Graphics are awesome for PS2 no doubt, but here are some of my issues with this game.

1. The Characters
Does anyone else think Ashe should have been the main character? Vaans only motives for fighting were <<Spoiler Alert>> the death of his brother two years prior and his interest to escape and become a pirate, which I don’t really think he achieved. More or less it didn’t feel as though he was leading the group, it didn’t feel as though anything revolved around him at all. Vaans brother seemed like a more interesting character to me.

2. The “Treasure Chests”
Almost all the chests in the game contain random amounts of Gil that often vary between 1 – 300 Gil which I hardly found rewarding. The chests also regenerate which confused me as to whether or not I had already opened them and caused me to waste time. I can’t remember feeling excited about opening a chest in this game.

3. Random Traps Everywhere
Why were unexplained traps everywhere? Why do I need to worry about this while I’m trying to enjoy this game? I found myself wasting time avoiding traps that weren’t hard to work around but weren’t easy enough to ignore, I had to either have someone casting Libra all the time, or use up one of my characters only accessory slots just to be able to see them. Was this really necessary?

4. The Licence System and Equipment
I was never short on licence points, and it seemed like a waste of time having to open up my inventory and running around the Licence board activating each characters licence every time I bought new weapons and armour. Almost every time that I checked for new weapons at a merchant, I ended up buying axes or hammers for everyone since they were the overall best choice, so why would I not do that? Using arrows or a gun didn’t pose that much of a tactical advantage since magic seemed to inflict more damage from a distance, the daggers were always far too inferior, I found it simpler and more successful to equip everyone with the same superior weapons, armour and shields and set their gambits up and let them do all the bashing, in fact, after a certain point I didn’t have to do anything in battle since the gambit system would take over. Maybe the weapons would have been better made use of if only one character could activate each individual weapon permanently on the Licence board; this would have prevented every character from turning out the same making them each individually useful, and could have possibly made the battles more interesting, it would have also given the Licence board a reason to exist, since instead of just mindlessly checking off licences, you would of had to choose strategically which characters can use what weapons.

5. The Loot System
I really liked this system, it potentially could have been awesome if there had been a little bit more reference in the game as to what loot combinations to sell, or what loot to get and where to get it from. I could explain to you how relentless and time consuming it is trying to acquire the Tournesol (which was a sub par weapon at best) but I won’t, if you are curious then click the link bellow which will explain it all in a 16 page document, enough said.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/459841/47747

Don’t get me wrong, I love it when you have to work hard to acquire something, I just expect something damn good at the end of it all, for example in FFX, I went over the entire sphere grid and deleted all the +1,+2, and +3 attribute nodes for every attribute except Luck and replaced them with only +4’s so that I could max out every characters stats, unfortunately there wasn’t enough nodes on the grid to max out their luck stats, and luck spheres were a pain in the ass to get, but in the end, all my characters had 99999 HP and dealt 99999 attack damage which kinda made it all worth it, especially when you use Wakka’s limit break which could achieve somewhere around a whopping 1.3 million plus damage

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Miguel SánShed,

I'm still playing FFXII, and I realy don't like it that much, compared with FFX that is.
FFX had a wonderful story to tell, but in FFXII, I don't think it is that good.
I didn't like the new battle system either. I liked more the one from FFX.
FFXII is repetitive. Too much fighting and not so much cut scenes to tell the story. It feels more like a beat'em up title then a RPG.
Quite frankly, I'm getting tired of the game. I Don't know if I will end this 1.

I just finished the game. It's very good, but I think it has a weak point when it comes to the story. I think there wasn't enough of a bigger picture. Overall, I enjoyed it alot, it just needed the story to be more cohesive.

to be honest, story was what i aways loved about final fantasy, and the story in XII is plainly sh*te.

i still think FF7 is the best... but FF12 is really good to

The battle system in FFX was ok, but it doesn't come near the balance and customization of the battle mechanics in FFXII. I agree that the character development in FFXII was kind of weak, but the plot development was still excellent, and just because some people didn't like it's focus on political ramifications doesn't make it a bad story.

When I started playing FFXII I was really excited, the story started off really well, but it all went down hill as soon as Balthier and Fran joined the party.

The Gambit System was really well designed I’ll give it that, but it worked too well in my opinion, because after a while I didn’t need to do anything in battle. I also felt that casting attack magic and summoning Espers was often a useless tactic (unless my objective was to increase the time length of a battle). It was quicker and easier, thus overall more effective to simply bash the enemy with physical attacks, which is exactly what I did 90% of the time, without difficulty.

What was the purpose for the Licence Board? Seriously? You buy a weapon/magic and then you tick it off your Licence Board, that’s it. Can someone please enlighten me as to where the strategy is in simply ticking something off a list with no consequence? And please don’t say something like “you had to go out of your way to get licence points” because I barely had to, I generally had more then enough licence points. For me, the Licence Board was just a big waste of time. As I stated earlier, if the design only allowed every individual Weapon Licence to be bought once by one character (as was the design with Espers), it would have at least had some tactical purpose, and even better, it would have prevented all the characters from turning out the same.

As for the Story, what integral part did Vaan play as the protagonist? He wasn’t the leader of the party, he wasn’t even needed by the party, and the plot hardly revolved around him at all, nor was I even sure if the antagonist was aware of his existence. Even if he did accomplish his dreams or exact his revenge, there really wasn’t any closure on the matter.

I personally, just get frustrated when I think about FFXII, because it pissed me off so much. I just felt there was so many obvious things in this game that were poorly designed and could have easily been improved on. I expected much more from Squaresoft/Square-Enix, I would have thought that after decades of designing classic RPG’s, they would have got it down to a fine art by now.

Let me just finish off on a positive note by saying I don’t intend to come off aggressive. Everyone has the right to enjoy this game, and I’m not trying to shoot anyone down for that. I would agree this game is playable at least once for most FF fans. The graphics and Gambit System were really well done, and there are heaps of things in FF XII that have potential, like the loot system and marks hunting.