"A shame that it could have been better."

Over the course of history, especially gaming history, RPGs have evolved with a change in the market as well as a change in what consumers want. Derived from pen-and-paper D&D, RPGs were usually a staple of nerds and geeks who generally didn't have lives. When RPGs came to home consoles, though, many others saw the appeal of the games as well as why others liked them. This lead to many different genres of RPGs. You have your turn-based RPG, which allows you to sit and think about your next action before completing it. Next is the action-RPG, which is a combination of the action elements in a game like Devil May Cry with the statistics and storyline depth of an RPG. Another popular genre was the strategy RPG, both turn-based and real-time. These allowed players to have full-on wars between factions, races, what-have-you. Finally, we have the MMO. This stands for a massively multiplayer online game. With RPGs, these games have secured mass amounts of popularity, as seen by World of Warcraft.

However, somewhere along the line, the most popular(though sometimes undeservedly, as the games have been hit-or-miss) console RPG series had been retooled in this, the twelfth installment, into a mixture between a console RPG and a MMO. This proved to be a devastatingly horrid change. I'll explain why.

--Story--
The make-it or break-it feature of RPGs is the ability to immerse a character in a grand storyline where they have some control over the events, to total control, to no control at all. FFXII is much more the Point A to Point B for a cutscene type of RPG. While there are numerous places to explore, only a select few are relevant to the plot. But the plot isn't even worth trekking to these places! The beginning seems okay, but it seems to smack of Star Wars. An evil empire, a war between nations. A young boy eventually coming into his own, growing up, and facing off against the most evil of the evil. Many of the characters tag-along on this "massive" quest for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Fran may want to save her forest and her Viera sisters, but she doesn't have much involvement outside of that. Balthier, while being sort of interesting for his sarcastic remarks, is merely a treasure hunter without half the plot relevancy as Locke (from FFVI!). Penelo is the traditional best friend of the skimpy androgynous main character that we've seen in games such as Grandia. Did I mention the androgynous character designs? Over time, the characters have become increasingly of the opposite gender, and almost always it's the boys starting to look like the girls. This is a problem that has plagued anime, but it doesn't NEED to plague RPGs. It's even worse when the most popular series is adopting this strange and unnecessary design element. I can't relate to a main character in a story if he has nowhere near the features of the gender he is supposed to represent. Basch is sort of interesting, but he still fills in the "grizzled ex-soldier" role that we have also seen in previous RPGs. What I'm trying to say is that the story does not break any new ground we haven't seen before. It has half the charm that previous FFs have had, and nowhere near any potential for nostalgia. I'm not sure how one is supposed to out-and-out enjoy the plot, believing it has no flaws. They're there. There is zero character development outside of the extreme main characters, and many of the features we've come to expect from a Final Fantasy game are not present. Much like FFVII and FFVIII, the idea of a fantasy, an escapist world with everything a player could want, is lost once again. There is no feeling of suspense, and a lot of the characters could have been written out with no effect on the overarching plot. I don't *feel* anything for these characters, because they feel like such stock cliches. They're nothing new, nothing evolutionary in terms of videogame characters. I went from place to place more out of an escape from boredom and less out of any connection or emotional link to the storyline or characters.

5/10

--Graphics--
One thing that S-E did well with this title is it's graphics. They are fairly stunning. Environments are extremely detailed and filled with color and vibrancy. There are almost a hundred NPCs in each city you visit, all with equal amounts of detail. Shops have received an upgrade as well, and towns are very encompassing, not to mention large(like Rabanastre). However, the problem with the towns being large is the amount of time it takes to traverse them. Many times you have to walk through several screens, replete with agonizing load times, just to get to a Technick shop(ugh, just call it Technique, that's not witty) or Magic shop. Some of the more expansive dungeons and world maps are extremely huge, taking hours to explore. This is a nice feature, but doesn't mesh with the gameplay(which I'll cover later). Another problem I have with the graphics is the bad texture work. Vaan's abs are extremely disgusting and since he's the main character(debatable, I guess, but whatever) and you see him the most it is quite disturbing. Other character designs don't look well either, like Balthier's finger bands, which become strange splotches of color on his normal model. Maybe they could have been done away with, I don't know. I've actually found other RPGs that I thought looked better, but as usual Square-Enix provides some decent competition.

7/10

--Gameplay--
Here we come to the mechanic I hate the most. The Gambit system. An "innovative" new feature that allows a player to customize the AI to their hearts' content. What this means is that you can set up your characters to do what they want and you can sit back. Most battles you can even eat, or drink, between slaughterfests. This is not playing the game. This is watching the game. Many people will argue that the Gambit system doesn't need to be used, but it's tedious enough without it. Many Gambits don't work well with each other and many horrible combos can be created because of it. The system was not tooled to work with every possible combination, which makes no sense when trying to implement it. Without Gambits, the game reverts to being like the older Final Fantasies but having battles occur in real-time. The worst part about this is that you select an action, and then WAIT for your character to perform it. Instead of a bar filling up, and then you select the action. This kind of bass ackwards thinking is annoying and unnecessary. It makes no sense in the game and should not have been put in to irritate players. To be honest, if they had made the game an action-RPG I would have been more impressed. At least in an action-RPG, you control the action and your allies have decent AI. Think of a much, much better version of Kingdom Hearts II. That would have been a great Final Fantasy XII. What we get is a mixture between a strategy-RPG replete with making your characters complete and utter robots, and a turn-based RPG where your actions have to wait to be performed, instead of happening instantly. It just doesn't work at all.

2/10

--Sound--
Another nice feature of the game is the soundtrack. Many sweeping and epic orchestra pieces from the much-revered Hitoshi Sakimoto. However, because of the plot connections to Star Wars, we also have some strange musical connection as well. A lot of the epic pieces that happen at odd times(such as in a canyon valley....eh?) are reminiscent of the same music out of Star Wars. It's like Sakimoto studied the music present in that series and decided to literally copy it into a videogame. His past and present work has been much better overall, without seeming like a mimicry of much more popular work. The sound effects are nice, instead of sounding like stock sounds from other Final Fantasies. I really didn't have any favorite piece, which is a shame in and of itself. I've been much more impressed by Nobuo Uematsu's soundtracks (with the exception of VII, which wasn't spectacular at all) overall and hope for his grand return in XIII. It's alright, and almost to the level of serviceable, but nothing special. It's much like how I felt about the Dragon Quest VIII soundtrack: Blowing tons of hot air, but signifying nothing.

5/10

I think I've thoroughly expressed my opinion as well as I can about this game. I expected a lot more from the title, but was let down by the ridiculously boring battle system, stale soundtrack, and messy plot. Everything seems all over the place, and for an RPG series that seems to overshadow those of better quality, is not a good direction. There are much better RPGs to play out there, and there is no doubt you'll find one.

Better luck next time, Square-Enix.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/07