"A review from someone who has played *every* Final Fantasy"

Let's start with a basic critique of the game.

Graphics: top notch. Throughout its history, Squaresoft (SquareEnix, Squeenix, whatever) has consistently delivered what seem to be the most cutting edge graphics whatever system they're programming for can produce. This game is no exception. Environments are beautiful, animation is smooth, and the cut scenes are works of art. Everything in the game is drawn with enough detail that it makes you wonder how a next-gen system could possibly improve upon the visuals.

Sound: top notch as well. As usual with the Final Fantasy franchise, the soundtrack from this game sounds like something one would hear in a symphony hall. The voice acting can't really be complained about, though some of the accents can begin to grate on one's nerves after hearing it for a few hours.

Playability: depends on what you like. If you're a Kingdom Hearts fan, you'll love the battle system. If you're in love with the traditional Final Fantasy games, not so much. The next section will go deeper into this, but basically in the battles you control the leader while the other characters run on auto pilot unless you do something to override their default actions, which can be set using the new Gambit system. So basically it's you and your computer controlled teammates fighting in real time, a la Kingdom Hearts. It's also interesting to note that instead of getting gil from the battles directly, you gain it from selling loot that drops of the enemies after you fight them. Most of these items are completely useless beyond being sold for money, so it seems that Square decided to borrow from World of Warcraft..

The leveling system is definitely of a ‘love it or hate it' variety. While your characters gain levels according to experience points, you also gain an entirely different set of points with each battle which you must spend on a grid system to gain new abilities for using weapons, armor, magic, etc. You can also spend them on stat bonuses. Personally I don't care for this. It makes purchasing new equipment and magics a longer endeavor than it should be, as you have to make sure your characters can equip the new items that you purchase. Also, the grid with which you purchase these abilities is mostly hidden so you have to spend a lot of your talent points just to uncover the talents which you wish to use. I wasn't a big fan of the Sphere Grid used in Final Fantasy X and this seems to take it to the next level of tediousness.

I give this game a three. Yes, a three. This is where experience comes into play. There are certain qualities I've come to expect from Final Fantasy, and this game really has none of them. I was in 5th grade when the first Final Fantasy was released on the NES and I've been hooked ever since. I've bought every subsequent game as soon as it was released, and have spent many years enjoying these episodes which seemed to be more of an art form than a mere video game. Final Fantasy XII is a sore disappointment to me in so many ways. For anyone who doesn't know, the main development people from Square have gone onto bigger and better things, most notably Hironobu Sakaguchi, the executive producer, and Nobuo Uematsu, the masterful music composer; both of whom have been with the series since its beginning. Their absence hits like a ton of bricks in this latest installment. Many of the elements that have made this series one of the greatest groups of games ever are gone. It just feels different. It simply isn't Final Fantasy.

First off, the story is flat and the character development is non-existent. Up until now, I've been able to describe any Final Fantasy game as ‘a game that plays like a good book'. This is no longer true. One of the hallmarks of the series has always been the fantastic depth of the characters. You could get to know them to the point of being able to predict how they'd react to situations. You could care about them, laugh and cry with them, feel a sense of urgency when one of them was in danger, and it would really draw you into the game. The stories would also be masterful plots, making you want to continue playing just to see what would happen next, hence the book metaphor. The ups, the downs, the twists, everything seemed to work together so perfectly and weave itself into a wonderful story. Historically, Final Fantasy games have had such great characters and plots that nothing ever felt tedious. This game seems to change all that. The plot was so shallow that I had to force myself to play it. I kept hoping that it would eventually get interesting but that turned out to be a futile desire. It is also impossible to get emotionally involved with the characters in this game as they are two-dimensional at best. They have little development and seem to fall squarely (no pun intended) into the stereotypes found in any dime-a-dozen RPG. Instead of the game drawing me in, it bored me greatly and I couldn't have cared less what happened to any of the characters in it.

The music is also greatly lacking. By itself, it's quite good, but like the plot it isn't worthy of the Final Fantasy name. Mr. Uematsu has always given the games beautiful music. They matched so perfectly with the plots that even if you weren't even looking at the display you could simply hear the music and be able to tell the emotion he was trying to portray. His songs are available on countless albums and even as sheet music because they're amazing compositions in their own right without having to be within the context of a game. The current developers obviously knew this because the game opens with the theme that he wrote for the very first Final Fantasy, and the data selection screen plays another song that he composed for the first game which has been in many of the later ones. Hearing two classic Final Fantasy songs before the gameplay even begins seems to indicate to me that the current incarnation of Square was trying very hard to sell players on the fact that this was indeed a Final Fantasy game. I have to admit, hearing those songs gave me hope for the game but that hope was dashed within minutes of actually playing it. I'm sure I speak for all the old Final Fantasy fans when I say “We miss you, Uematsu-san”. We truly do.

The battle system is another thorn in the side of this game. As I said earlier, it reminds me of Kingdom Hearts. This is fine for Kingdom Hearts, but Final Fantasy is a different game! I don't want my party members acting almost as if they're NPC's and following vague default commands. I want menus in my Final Fantasy! Make the battles real-time if you want but I still want direct control over everything. It has always given the franchise a strategic feeling that is definitely lacking in this game. I tend to feel like a spectator during the battles rather than the person who has ultimate control over the outcome. Even some of the longer boss battles will leave you with a feeling of “What just happened?” rather than a sense of accomplishment. I also don't care for the everyone-can-do-everything talent system. I really miss the older incarnations of the game where you had certain characters with certain abilities. It seemed to take a lot more strategy when you had one healer, one fighter, one black magic user, etc.. but now it doesn't really matter if my primary healer dies, my main fighter can cast healing magic. What's the point of having different characters if they can all have the same sets of abilities? One thing that has always been common among RPG's be they video games or pen-and-paper games is that different characters come with different abilities, and therefore different strengths and weaknesses. The current incarnation of Square has effectively removed this strategy from Final Fantasy XII. They've also gotten rid of the old random battle system, instead giving us the ability to see and run from enemies without having to engage them in battle. I'm sure that some players will prefer this but I believe it makes the game too easy. Getting from point A to point B seems to have little challenge when I can basically outrun any enemy I encounter along the way.

My main point is, this game should have been called something else. “Adventures of the Generic Scrappy Hero and Friends” or “Disneyless Kingdom Hearts” would have both been fine, but it doesn't deserve to be called Final Fantasy. The plot is shallow and never draws you in, the characters are flat and you never start to care about them, the battle system is too much of a departure from tradition, the orchestrated music rarely seems to fit the mood and has somewhat of a Star Wars vibe to it… the game just disappoints on too many levels. I realize that many of the younger fans of Final Fantasy who probably started playing the series with VII or later and went ga-ga over Kingdom Hearts will probably like it, but those of us from the old school won't.
More so than anything else, this game simply made me sad. Instead of simply adding to an already successful formula the developers decided to simply overhaul everything and recreate the game from scratch. It can be assumed that this move was made to attract younger audiences by making it more similar to games they've recently played but unfortunately many old fans that have played the series since the beginning will likely be put off by the countless changes. The old Final Fantasy games are gone, and the men who made them are no longer at the helm of Square. It seems that the many years we've spent enjoying this franchise are now drawing to a close. Square decided to fix something that already worked and the result is a game that breaks from the years of tradition we've come to know and love.

This game might have been decent enough as a stand alone RPG, but it simply isn't worthy of being called Final Fantasy.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/11/06