Post by Richard El Britannia on Aug 23, 2008 15:58:01 GMT
Gameplay:
The gameplay in Final Fantasy XII is a pretty new approach in Final Fantasy games. Using the Active Dimension Battle system, the gameplay is taken from the random turn-based battles and all fighting is done on-field against the enemies that are there. This is pretty fun, and a nice new style, but after a while it can get a little repetitive and I found myself wanting the old random encounters back. The new system works well, though, don't get me wrong. I just prefer the old turn-based style.
The License Board is another addition to Final Fantasy XII that allows your characters to learn skills and magick. This new system actually has no bounds, though. It's totally up to you how you develop your characters. Again, it's a nice system, but I preferred the old styles of gameplay where you have a Black Mage who casts Black Magic or a Warrior who fights with strength. On this, you could have a Warrior with every spell easily. Sure, with the Sphere Grid system on Final Fantasy X this was possible, too, but it was much harder and your characters pretty much stayed as they were meant to unless you played the game to death. In this, by the end, most of my characters had loads of spells, if not all of them. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not really, really bad and it works well, but if you're a picky fan who doesn't like much change like me, you might pick fault with it.
Now, since the game isn't turn-based, it makes sense that all of the characters are moving around at the same time. You can control up to 3 characters at once and a "guest" member will join the party at times, but this "guest" is controlled through the game's AI. Now, controlling 3 characters at once sounds tedious and difficult, right? Well, that's where the new Gambit system comes in. Basically, you can set commands for your characters to do automatically. For example, the main character which you're controlling could be attacking a monster, and with a gambit set for another character, that character could be set to attack whatever the party leader is attacking and so follows your lead. Another example is if your health drops below a set percentage, then a character can automatically cast a spell to cure. If you don't like the idea of gambits, there is the option to control manually, too, but this would be very tedious. I found a mixture of both Gambits and manual control worked well.
Many Final Fantasy games have special powers that become available in certain instances. For example, Final Fantasy VII had limit breaks and Final Fantasy X had overdrives. This game is no different. Final Fantasy XII has something called Quickenings. These can be acquired from the License Board and each character can get up to three each. Basically, the more you get, the more powerful they are. When you use Quickenings, you have to try and get a long chain of the attacks together. You can only use them when you have a correct amount of MP, though. For the first Quickening, you need to have a third of your full MP amount, the second, two thirds and the third, all of your MP. To perform them, you have to press the buttons that come up on screen and if none come up, you press 'R2' to shuffle the buttons and try to see if more options appear before the timer goes down. Depending on how long a chain you make, determines how strong the attack is. It can get pretty frantic at times and at times, can get pretty frustrating, but when you get a really good chain, the result is very pleasing.
In Final Fantasy, getting Gil - the currency in Final Fantasy games - is much harder than the previous games. Basically, enemies drop very little money and you have to sell whatever items - named Loot - the enemies drop. Now, this sounds easy, but at times, you can see yourself fighting enemies for ages to get lots of Loot to make good money. Killing the same monster over and over to get a really long chain of kills increases the chances of getting good Loot, but at times this can be rather hard because of how often new enemies spawn. To be honest, it would've been a lot better if the enemies dropped more Gil like the older games, then spells, armour and weapons wouldn't be so hard to buy.
Another frustrating factor about this game is how difficult some enemies and bosses could be. I found myself often having to spend a very long time leveling up to beat some bosses. In older Final Fantasy games, I rarely had to do this. Actually, in small amounts it's fine, but I found myself having to do it for quite a while.
Well, the gameplay is fun, but at times, it can just get plain annoying, which kinda saddened me.
Gameplay Score - 7/10
Graphics:
In the last section, you heard a lot of bad points. Not here. No way. The graphics in Final Fantasy XII are pushing the limits of what the PS2 is capable of. The graphics certainly are very beautiful. The character design is brilliant and the different areas in the game are just wonderfully detailed and good looking.
The cut-scenes were jaw-droppingly good. It seemed to me something that was made exclusively for the PS3. Without a doubt, this game had the best CGI out of an Final Fantasy games ... or any other game I've ever played, come to think of it.
Graphics Score - 10/10
Story:
The idea for the story of Final Fantasy XII is awesome. I love all of the ideas ... but the execution of these ideas wasn't so great. It's not been done very badly, but - here we go again - compared to the previous Final Fantasy games, it's pretty poor.
First of all, there's no great character development that we're used to in Final Fantasy games. I felt myself uncaring about what happened to any of them. Final Fantasy X brought me close to tears because of how emotional and brilliant the characters and story was. Not here. I couldn't ahve given a crap about what happened to the characters.
Second was the actual story. Lots of things were brought up and then just ... lost. Like that Bangaa who was after Balthier. What the hell happened to that guy? Also, many things weren't explained very well and things seemed a little rushed.
I seriously stand by my opinion that the idea was great, but the actual thing just wasn't done well. If someone else were to do this again with a more in-depth and explained story, we'd have a winner. That being said, if we don't compare it to another Final Fantasy game, it's actually not bad and I can't go and be biased with the scores.
Story Score - 7/10
Sound:
Again, this is only going to be compared with other Final Fantasy games. The music just wasn't very memorable like the older Final Fantasy games. Why, even today, I can hum the battle themes to nearly all of the older games. I don't remember any of the music from Final Fantasy XII, except for the classics that have been reused again, like the Chocobo Theme. That being said, the music quality isn't too bad and it sounds very nice, always suiting when it's needed and setting a good atmosphere.
The sound effects are all top notch. It'd be hard to screw that up. All of the spells still have those really cool noises to follow and all of the sword clangs and bow-string plucking noises sound great.
The voice acting ... Well, it's something I'm not sure about. Some of the characters had some really decent voice acting and some ... not. Nothing was really bad, mind. I also quite liked it that all of the accents weren't American like you get in a majority of games. There was a really nice variety of accents in the game and most pleasingly, the majority of accents were English or something very similar.
Overall, the sound quality is very nice, but some of the voices and the lack of memorable music lets it down.
Sound Score - 8/10
Overall:
Overall, a pretty good game, but there are a lot of things that just make it not half as good as the Final Fantasy games before it.
Overall Score (Average) - 8/10
The gameplay in Final Fantasy XII is a pretty new approach in Final Fantasy games. Using the Active Dimension Battle system, the gameplay is taken from the random turn-based battles and all fighting is done on-field against the enemies that are there. This is pretty fun, and a nice new style, but after a while it can get a little repetitive and I found myself wanting the old random encounters back. The new system works well, though, don't get me wrong. I just prefer the old turn-based style.
The License Board is another addition to Final Fantasy XII that allows your characters to learn skills and magick. This new system actually has no bounds, though. It's totally up to you how you develop your characters. Again, it's a nice system, but I preferred the old styles of gameplay where you have a Black Mage who casts Black Magic or a Warrior who fights with strength. On this, you could have a Warrior with every spell easily. Sure, with the Sphere Grid system on Final Fantasy X this was possible, too, but it was much harder and your characters pretty much stayed as they were meant to unless you played the game to death. In this, by the end, most of my characters had loads of spells, if not all of them. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not really, really bad and it works well, but if you're a picky fan who doesn't like much change like me, you might pick fault with it.
Now, since the game isn't turn-based, it makes sense that all of the characters are moving around at the same time. You can control up to 3 characters at once and a "guest" member will join the party at times, but this "guest" is controlled through the game's AI. Now, controlling 3 characters at once sounds tedious and difficult, right? Well, that's where the new Gambit system comes in. Basically, you can set commands for your characters to do automatically. For example, the main character which you're controlling could be attacking a monster, and with a gambit set for another character, that character could be set to attack whatever the party leader is attacking and so follows your lead. Another example is if your health drops below a set percentage, then a character can automatically cast a spell to cure. If you don't like the idea of gambits, there is the option to control manually, too, but this would be very tedious. I found a mixture of both Gambits and manual control worked well.
Many Final Fantasy games have special powers that become available in certain instances. For example, Final Fantasy VII had limit breaks and Final Fantasy X had overdrives. This game is no different. Final Fantasy XII has something called Quickenings. These can be acquired from the License Board and each character can get up to three each. Basically, the more you get, the more powerful they are. When you use Quickenings, you have to try and get a long chain of the attacks together. You can only use them when you have a correct amount of MP, though. For the first Quickening, you need to have a third of your full MP amount, the second, two thirds and the third, all of your MP. To perform them, you have to press the buttons that come up on screen and if none come up, you press 'R2' to shuffle the buttons and try to see if more options appear before the timer goes down. Depending on how long a chain you make, determines how strong the attack is. It can get pretty frantic at times and at times, can get pretty frustrating, but when you get a really good chain, the result is very pleasing.
In Final Fantasy, getting Gil - the currency in Final Fantasy games - is much harder than the previous games. Basically, enemies drop very little money and you have to sell whatever items - named Loot - the enemies drop. Now, this sounds easy, but at times, you can see yourself fighting enemies for ages to get lots of Loot to make good money. Killing the same monster over and over to get a really long chain of kills increases the chances of getting good Loot, but at times this can be rather hard because of how often new enemies spawn. To be honest, it would've been a lot better if the enemies dropped more Gil like the older games, then spells, armour and weapons wouldn't be so hard to buy.
Another frustrating factor about this game is how difficult some enemies and bosses could be. I found myself often having to spend a very long time leveling up to beat some bosses. In older Final Fantasy games, I rarely had to do this. Actually, in small amounts it's fine, but I found myself having to do it for quite a while.
Well, the gameplay is fun, but at times, it can just get plain annoying, which kinda saddened me.
Gameplay Score - 7/10
Graphics:
In the last section, you heard a lot of bad points. Not here. No way. The graphics in Final Fantasy XII are pushing the limits of what the PS2 is capable of. The graphics certainly are very beautiful. The character design is brilliant and the different areas in the game are just wonderfully detailed and good looking.
The cut-scenes were jaw-droppingly good. It seemed to me something that was made exclusively for the PS3. Without a doubt, this game had the best CGI out of an Final Fantasy games ... or any other game I've ever played, come to think of it.
Graphics Score - 10/10
Story:
The idea for the story of Final Fantasy XII is awesome. I love all of the ideas ... but the execution of these ideas wasn't so great. It's not been done very badly, but - here we go again - compared to the previous Final Fantasy games, it's pretty poor.
First of all, there's no great character development that we're used to in Final Fantasy games. I felt myself uncaring about what happened to any of them. Final Fantasy X brought me close to tears because of how emotional and brilliant the characters and story was. Not here. I couldn't ahve given a crap about what happened to the characters.
Second was the actual story. Lots of things were brought up and then just ... lost. Like that Bangaa who was after Balthier. What the hell happened to that guy? Also, many things weren't explained very well and things seemed a little rushed.
I seriously stand by my opinion that the idea was great, but the actual thing just wasn't done well. If someone else were to do this again with a more in-depth and explained story, we'd have a winner. That being said, if we don't compare it to another Final Fantasy game, it's actually not bad and I can't go and be biased with the scores.
Story Score - 7/10
Sound:
Again, this is only going to be compared with other Final Fantasy games. The music just wasn't very memorable like the older Final Fantasy games. Why, even today, I can hum the battle themes to nearly all of the older games. I don't remember any of the music from Final Fantasy XII, except for the classics that have been reused again, like the Chocobo Theme. That being said, the music quality isn't too bad and it sounds very nice, always suiting when it's needed and setting a good atmosphere.
The sound effects are all top notch. It'd be hard to screw that up. All of the spells still have those really cool noises to follow and all of the sword clangs and bow-string plucking noises sound great.
The voice acting ... Well, it's something I'm not sure about. Some of the characters had some really decent voice acting and some ... not. Nothing was really bad, mind. I also quite liked it that all of the accents weren't American like you get in a majority of games. There was a really nice variety of accents in the game and most pleasingly, the majority of accents were English or something very similar.
Overall, the sound quality is very nice, but some of the voices and the lack of memorable music lets it down.
Sound Score - 8/10
Overall:
Overall, a pretty good game, but there are a lot of things that just make it not half as good as the Final Fantasy games before it.
Overall Score (Average) - 8/10
