[PS2] Final Fantasy XII

[icycalm]

As someone that just finished FFXII.

The game is about 60 hours too long. Ignoring complaints about the battle system, the story is stretched horribly thin, and you can feel where Matsuno walked out and people were left with the scraps and just kept them.

The story for about 40 hours is go here > no? > go here > no? > how about here > no? > HOW ABOUT ALL THE WAY OVER HERE > no? >shit? what about here? > no? >here? > yeah I guess? > the end.

And let me see if I can remember my environment chart? sewer > desert > sewer > mine > desert > canyon > mine > desert > ancient temple > corridors of a ship > cave > desert > desert > forest > mine > canyon > old temple > canyon > forest > beach > plains > plains > cave > plains > plains > old temple > corridors of a ship.

None of the environments were really engaging. The story was nowhere near complete, and the first place you go IS A FREAKING SEWER.

Then at the end they try and throw a lot of friendship is important. The ending was a little more coherent than the ending of FF7.

The Gambit system was fantastic in theory, but I'd need to see a youtube video of you dudes playing and talking up what you like about it. I was monumentally bored with the game, and forced myself through it because I knew if I didn't I'd have lingering regret. There wasn't a battle in it that I thought was "pretty fun". I kept thinking about PSO and pressing a button to actually attack is awesome.

Completely determining my companions behaviors was pretty nice.

Another game where I press buttons to attack: Tales of Rebirth, and that game has an insane amount of systems I have no interest in solving, but it always feels fresh in a way Grandia fans wish Grandia did.

The game telling me "The final boss is not invunerable to all attacks" for about 10 minutes was REALLY cool. That's irony.

I mean the beginning 7 hours of FFXII were great, and then it flatlines completely. Another FF that does this is FFVII, which then just becomes a Final Fantasy for 20 more hours, not SEVENTY.

I like didn't even give a shit about those sidequests. Mostly because I'd try to do a hunt and be told "You don't have a GLORYHOLE key." I don't even know where to get a GLORYHOLE key.

Hell anytime I tried using Summons they almost were immediately MURDERED. The Misty abilities were even stranger and incoherent.

<b>Final:</b> I can safely say FFXII is not a good video game, and I'm genuinely interested (as I always am) for someone to show me WHY they thought it was fun instead of TRYING to prove me wrong. Sort of my whole opinion of this board.

http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopi ... 832#571832

Rudie knows what he's talking about sometimes. Perhaps this is one of those times.

[bunuelo]

The gambit system was fantastic neither in theory nor in practice. I would go so far as to say that if everything else about this game weren't terrible, the gambit system would have made the bad parts of combat worse and would have been of no use in any good parts.

The system is simple. Each character has a number of gambit slots which generally increases as the character levels up. Each slot is filled with two things: a condition and an action. At first, only a few conditions ("self: hp < 50%", "enemy: closest" or "ally: poisoned", etc.) and a few actions ("use potion", "attack", "use remedy", etc.) are available, but more of each become available as the game progresses.

The slots are ordered, and when a character is on auto-battle, he will check each condition (in order) and perform the action associated with the first satisfied condition. That is all.

The problem in practice is that combat is so easy that there are only a small handful of battles which cannot be won by picking appropriate gambits and just letting them win the fight for you. Once you have enough slots and options, there is rarely any need to even change the selections and order (except small changes for bosses, on occasion).

The more theoretical problem with gambits is that if combat were actually hard, they would be useless. By definition, gambits are only useful when optimal play can be determined by asking 5-10 yes/no questions and picking one of 5-10 appropriate responses.

In other words, gambits would only be useful during the parts of a game that are boring and simple, and they would make those parts even more boring and simple by turning them into cutscenes.

The only good thing about gambits is that they highlight the fact that the bulk of the combat portion of this game can be beaten by about 30 lines of C code.

[El Chaos]

Yeah, that's pretty much the same way I felt about the game.

Learning for the first few hours about the various quests and minor mechanics was the most fun I could get from it, once I realized the game wanted me to actually sit down and do nothing save for occasionally breaking the Gambit chain with a particular spell and engage in random, useless chatter with NPCs for several more hours, I knew I was in for working sessions, not gaming ones. Then I quit it.

It looks it's quite a lot like Final Fantasy XI in that regard. http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff11

[icycalm]

bunuelo, you almost have a full review of the game there. Care to expand on it a little bit (adding mention of the game's other aspects, etc.), so I can post it on the frontpage?

[bunuelo]

I'd be happy to, as time permits.

[icycalm]

Okay, just email it to me when it's ready (alex@insomnia.ac). A piece of advice: do not mess too much with the text you already have. People tend to produce their best writing in forum posts, and when you ask them to write a proper article they go all stiff and start writing like robots. So just keep that text, or at most make a few additons/adjustments here and there as necessary, and add an extra few paragraphs at the top and/or bottom to say whatever more it is you want to say.

[icycalm]

Tadaaa!

http://insomnia.ac/reviews/playstation2 ... antasyxii/

bunuelo managed to post a detailed examination of the game's system in a matter of minutes, but time "does not permit" him to add a couple extra paragraphs to it, so I thought what the hell and simply copy-pasted both his and rudie's posts and called it a review. I think one could make an entire website featuring reviews that are just copy-pasted forum posts -- if you were careful in your choice of them I am sure the site would become an instant success, not to mention it would be more readable than anything else out there.

So, if bunuelo and/or rudie decide at some point that they want to add or modify anything, just let me know. And hell, if anyone else has any comments to make, post them here and if I deem it worthwhile I'll add them to the page. Or people could try writing a full review and posting it in the review forum, and if it's better than the copy-pasted stuff then I'll replace them with it. Whatever. I wager that review is still the best FFXII review in the world right now.

[DeadAurum]

The decision to include the gambit system led the game into a vicious circle. The designers knew that if they were to throw any complicated battles at you you would have to compensate by changing gambits. Of course, doing so too often wouldn't work, because then you'd be better off not using the gambits at all. And the designers wouldn't want that, since the gambit system is one of the main aspects of XII.

So they kept the battles simple enough to allow almost the same set of gambits to be used throughout the entire game, which is why XII consistently remains a bore. The repetition of the same exact battles, which can be won be using the simple attack command ad infinitum, never stops. You have to go out of your way to find a better move than a straight attack for any given enemy, because it's always effective.

[bunuelo]

The time was not needed for writing, but rather to actually put the game in and play it. It's been so long that I don't remember the music, graphics, pacing and non-combat play (puzzles, quests, etc.). I remember the gambit system more clearly because it was new. The "Active Dimension Battle" system (fighting on the overworld map as opposed to in a special combat screen) is also new, but I don't recall how well it worked without actually using it again.

[icycalm]

Well, if you ever happen to play the game again, or at some point recall what that system was like, you know where to post your comments.

[bunuelo]

I sent you an email last night.

[El Chaos]

Perhaps it would be a good idea to add one or two paragraphs on the License Board and how absolutely pointless and cumbersome it is, to the point where your party members are a bunch of retards who can't use a big hammer even though they may know how to use a small one.

This entire "license" business produces the same results the ring "systems" (read: gimmicks) in Shadow Hearts' and Lost Odyssey's combat do: turn something relatively simple and hassle-free (e.g. shopping) into an absurd, time-consuming endeavor. Just to be absolutely sure, I searched for the game and its save file, fired it up and went to the nearest shop, and calculated just how much time it demanded from me to sell my loot and essentially memorize that particular shop's weapon and armor inventories, exit the shop, enter the license board, decide how to spend each character's LP so as to pull them from their retardation pit a little, re-enter the shop and finally buy what I guess may be useful for the upcoming dungeons (this is much more accurate some time into the game, since at the beginning there isn't much variety to choose from). The whole ordeal took me some good 15 to 20 minutes (may I be a little out of shape?).

Fifteen to twenty minutes. Just to buy some fucking weapons and armor... Man.

And Matt Zero actually thought the License Board was "massively more involved" than the ring gimmick? Please... they're two slightly different applications of the same raw product: pointless bullshit.

EDIT: Also, while maybe it should go to the lol thread, it's topical: http://www.edge-online.com/features/in- ... antasy-xii

[Bucky]

Highlights from that article(http://www.edge-online.com/features/in- ... antasy-xii):
Regarding Gambits, the author says

This is, essentially, what you would do in an RPG anyway. Yasumi Matsuno, Final Fantasy XII's producer, obviously realizes how superfluous all of this button-pressing is.
...
The dead simplicity of the AI programming scheme, however, rather violently lays bare the fact that RPGs are, generally, predictable and tedious.

followed a bit later by the punch line

They could have put big words on the back of the box: "This is what Final Fantasy always aspired to be." They would have been right, too.

all while keeping a positive spin.

Final Fantasy XII is an exercise in common sense; yet most people don't want common sense -- they want menus.

[Marcus]

...your party members are a bunch of retards who can't use a big hammer even though they may know how to use a small one.

D&D already figured out the way to deal with this, too. Weapon Proficiency:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080507a

When you weren’t proficient with a particular weapon, you took a penalty on attack rolls with it.

The same went for armor. Not proficient with shields? You won't be able to use one as well as somebody who is.

The License Board in Final Fantasy XII is designed to be more logical [than X's Sphere Grid].

No, sir, it is designed to HIDE THINGS. The Sphere Grid lays all of your linear progression out (in circles) and gets most confusing when paths share only portions of spheres, eventually opening up to let you make everyone the same.

The License Board is more "easy to grasp" because it's in a grid and everyone begins at the same place. The grid tells almost nothing about the abilities further than one space out from purchased skills, encouraging me to waste at least one character determining best paths while the others conserve LP, or use the map that IGN posted, for instance, which just makes me wonder why Square bothered hiding it in the first place.

Oh yeah, strategy guides!

[Marcus]

Bucky, you forgot this one:

The controller's vibration, for example, provides wonderful feedback.