"This Fantasy is far from Finalized"

Very rarely do gamers hear about the internal squabbles and corporate drama that occur behind the scenes of their beloved game franchises, but few RPG fans could ignore the turmoil that surrounded the latest installment in the Final Fantasy series. It seems like every E3 over the past few years has heralded bad news for the project, from doubt over the radically altered battle system to members of Square-Enix heading to Buddhist temples to pray over the fate of the game. Final Fantasy fans had every right to be worried, especially after the departure of game director Yasumi Matsuno, who previously helmed the critically acclaimed Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy Tactics. After five years in development and millions of dollars spent, FFXII belatedly hit US shores in late October and, unfortunately, the behind the scenes strife that plagued the game's development shows up in the finished product. Final Fantasy XII is a decent PS2 role-playing game with solid production values and a unique battle system – but “decent” is hardly a word you want to use to describe Final Fantasy, a series whose fans demand excellence.

GAMEPLAY
The first 8-10 hours of FFXII play out as you would expect: the player is carried along by an involving narrative, featuring copious voice-acted cut scenes and computer-generated FMVs, as they adjust to the new combat system. Then, suddenly – as though signifying the moment when creative visionary Yasumi Matsuno left the project – the story is pushed to the background and the focus is put on dungeon crawling. Shortly thereafter, a pattern develops; a pattern that the game rarely deviates from. The pattern is thus:

-shop/interact with NPCs in a hub town
-spend hours fighting the same 3 enemy types as you scour drab, bland-looking tombs, temples, and mines
-four cutscenes progress the plot

The key problem is that the long, tedious dungeons feel completely disconnected from the overall narrative. There is much political intrigue, war, and conflict in the story, but the dungeons find the characters miles away from this, traversing tombs and temples like Lara Croft, in search for weapons or relics that you are told will turn the tide of battle. Traveling down dull, maze-like corridors, slashing away at familiar enemy types, with no real motivation – this does not sound like Final Fantasy.

Gone are the days when dungeons were directly connected to the plot and advanced your party through the story. Also absent are bosses that are in any way relevant to the overall plot. Most of the creatures you face as bosses are only introduced to the player right before the actual fight begins! There is no anticipation or drama to the battle because all you're doing is facing a monster who is just slightly more imposing than the regular enemy types.

A new feature during battle is “Gambits,” which allows the player to essentially set the AI for their characters; for instance, you can set it so that whenever your character reaches 50% HP, they will cast Cure. This is a nice feature that covers the “grunt work” of battle and allows the player to focus on their overall strategy.

Character growth is tied to the new License Board system, which allows you to advance your characters along a chess-like board, unlocking spells and weapons as the player deems fit. It's a solid system in theory but in practice it only gives the illusion of depth, as the player really only chooses what weapon type the characters will use since around midpoint of the game most of your party members will have unlocked the same spells and attributes anyway.

The difficulty has been ramped up considerably as well, especially compared to FFX. While random battles may not give you much trouble, boss battles can be taxing. If a player isn't “over-leveled,” they may find themselves frustrated. One boss during the mid-point of the game produces identical duplicates of itself and causes multiple status effects, leading to a rather excruciating experience if you're not prepared. The difficulty is also raised due to a dearth in save points. Although these save points restore HP/MP, they are few and far between. FFXII feels particularly “old school” in this respect, as players may go an entire dungeon without being allowed to save. As a result, FFXII is definitely not a game you “pick up and play.” Don't turn on the console unless you have at least an hour to plant yourself on the couch and play this game.

Overall the battle system is a step in the right direction, but battles still seem limp when there's no motivation behind them. And FFXII's absent plot provides little.

STORY
This is a game about EVENTS, not about characters. Countries wage war, kings are assassinated, and dynasties crumble. Though many of the characters are simply archetypes – rogue princess, dashing pirate, loyal knight – and the scenario borrows heavily from the Star Wars saga, you can tell there was potential for a grand, sweeping epic. Sadly, the story becomes something of a non-issue after 10 hours into the game. Your characters are usually miles away from the drama, trudging through underground mine shafts, while the plot advances through brief cutscenes, many of which feature characters the player glimpses but once.

For example, much of the pre-release hype of FFXII revolved around the Judges, who are major villains in the game. However, I learned more about their characters from reading promotional material in magazines and online than I actually did while playing the game. Many of the Judges are featured in one or two cutscenes and then you never see them again. And yet their image serves as the logo for this game!

What's worse, the player will often question just why certain characters are even in their six-person party. We're given the briefest details about most of these characters and they don't even grow or interact much during the course of the game. Contrast this with FFVI, which had a cast more than double the size but managed to flesh out and develop most of them – without the aid of voice acting, CGI cutscenes, and modern graphics.

GRAPHICS
Speaking of those graphics, they're gorgeous. Square pulled out the spots in creating several eye-popping locations for your party to travel to, including a mountaintop religious temple, a scenic beach, and many bustling cities. Of course, for every colorful and visually stunning local, there are plenty of dull dungeons for you to spend hours inside. The last major dungeon of the game is particularly uninspired, with repeating corridors and a central chamber the party continually revisits. These dungeons feel out of place in Final Fantasy and are more like the “randomly-generated” maps you'd find in the Baulder's Gate series.

MUSIC
The Final Fantasy series has always been known for its wonderful music and this is another area in which FFXII disappoints. The score simply isn't memorable. I even caught at least one selection that seemed to be a riff on John Williams' score for the 1991 film “Hook.” That said, there isn't any particularly “bad” music in the game. Most of it is competent – but once again FF's illustrious history proves to be own worst enemy, as competency is a sin for this classic series.

CONCLUSION
I can't pretend to know exactly what happened at Square during the development of FFXII, but after completing this 40-45hr long game I feel entitled to speculate. In my opinion, it feels as though internal pressure forced Matsuno out, despite claims of a “mysterious illness” and Matsuno himself quietly resigning. Once Matsuno left, the game became directionless – but Square had put five years and millions of dollars into the project, and was in no position to cancel it or start over. Not to mention the fact that the Playstation 3 was looming on the horizon and soon a PS2 RPG would no longer be a hot prospect. If Square was to recoup any of the cash they put into the game, they had to release it – finished or unfinished. Thus, they assembled new team members to finish the game as soon as possible for a pre-2007 release. While I can't fault Square for not wanting to lose money on their investment, it's clear that the fans are the ones who truly suffer here. We're denied the full-breadth of Matsuno's vision and forced to pay $50 for what is most likely an only partially completed game.

Unfortunately, this seems to be an increasingly common incident in the industry, as a similar fate befell “Xenosaga: Episode II.” Key members of the development team at Monolith Soft – including those responsible for the story and concept of the series – departed midway though development, leading to a hastily concluded game that felt out of step with the first installment. As games become more and more expensive, with voice acting and big-budget graphics, it seems that the bottom line is the dollar sign, with little thought given to telling a complete story or offering a quality role-playing experience to the player.

If there were any other title but “Final Fantasy” on the box of FFXII it would be a competent dungeon crawler with some stellar art design and impressive graphics. But this is Final Fantasy. Any RPG fan knows that Final Fantasy's reputation precedes it and each installment in the series is judged against its predecessors. While on its own FFXII is a playable enough game, compared to the superb games that have come before it is sorely lacking.

Final score: 5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/01/06