"I was hopeful, but maybe a bit too much."

I never really got into the Final Fantasy Series, but since I had my first experiences with Final Fantasy X, I tried many of them to see how it was done in the past. After playing a few of them, I got the feeling that they could only get better. I skipped Final Fantasy XI since my computer wasn't very geared for gaming. My eyes fell on XII. I heard great things about it, the fresh story, the new battle system and same nostalgic feel of a mystical world that has been present in all of the Final Fantasies. However, after many hours of gameplay and scrutiny, I have come up with one and only one outcome. MEH.

Story: 8/10

As expected from Final Fantasy and Square, the story has a depth beyond perception through most of the game and I usually was never disappointed. The story is full of backstabbing, murder, controversy, political strife, internal struggles and evil plots of world domination. This is a rather typical FF storyline, but this somehow felt like it made sense and was easy to fathom if you placed yourself in the shoes of the protagonists. Also, the reoccurrence of old magic, known as “Magicks” in the game, pops up everywhere, usually when you enter an old temple blocked by a large ancient foe. This magic is needed to thwart the evil plans of the nasty government that has taken over “Ivalice.” The main character, Vaan, is thrust into the problems of a long lost princess just because he wanted to steal from the royal palace for some money. He steals something of major importance and manages to anger just about every single official before running away with pirates. The story takes off from there.

Gameplay: 4/10

This is where the game lost me. They pushed their new battle system to be one of the best they have ever created in many people's eyes. It is a combination of the Time Bar, Real Time, and “Gambits.” Enemies are roaming around freely for your slaughtering pleasure. That's right, there are no random encounters here. Attack mode is engaged when the creature sees you and tries to attack or you see the creature first and you choose to attack. The game will then show you that you engaged with a “line” showing you who you are attacking. When the command is given, a time bar will start to fill. When this bar fills, the characters attempts to attack. Now, there are quite a few stats that go into play here, including accuracy, attack, defense and speed. These determine what you do, whether you hit for 100 or 0 or even miss. This seems rather simple and nice, but then they throw in the Gambit system.

A Gambit is a command that you can pre-set at any time. These can pretty much run the game for you. Say you want to attack an enemy automatically or designate a specific attack to a specific type of enemy, you can set an attack Gambit to command just that without you having to push a button. Say, if someone is poisoned, you can create a support Gambit that can command a character to cure anyone who is poisoned, assuming you have the items to do so or the spells. This seems nice and all, but if you have Gambits running the game for you, you are pretty much watching a game play itself, which isn't very fun. This can be helpful so you can focus on killing an enemy but you run into this little problem:

Items and money are hard to come by. If you set a Gambit to cure anyone who is poisoned and they get poisoned repeatedly, your items will sap themselves until there is nothing left, which makes the Gambit useless. Of course, you can simply buy items to replace the ones you used, but items are so expensive early on in the game when your money is at its lowest, you can pretty much count on not buying any items for a while, and when you do start buying them, your money will go away rather quickly.

Now here is something I did like with the battle system. Each time you defeat an enemy, you get experience and something called License Points. LP is used to gain abilities on the License Board, much like the Sphere Grid of FFX. The abilities from the board include many “magick” spells, ability to use weapons and wear armors and accessories, and something called “Quickenings.” Level has nothing to do with gaining abilities, you just need the points to purchase them on the board, as well as buying your way over to them. Like the Sphere Grid, you must get close enough to the ability to buy them.

“Quickenings” are the games versions of Limit Breaks or Overdrives. Each character can have up to three Quickenings, each one stronger than the other. They also each take their own amount of MP. The least powerful takes one third, second takes two thirds, and the last takes it all. Here is where it gets confusing. When using a Quickening, all of the characters have their chance to use their Quickenings. The characters are assigned buttons and you must press them within the time limit or the Quickening ends. Now, when they run out of MP, therefore Quickenings, you can shuffle the buttons to make a random “Charge” icon appear. This charges some of the MP so the Quickening can continue, however getting these takes luck and skill for you to find them and press the buttons quick enough. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes quite a large part of your arsenal.

Now another somewhat new tactic. Instead of summoning creatures, you can now gain the powers of “Espers.” These are ancient spirits said to guard many areas of the world and the only way to gain control of one is to defeat it in battle. This is somewhat the same as Aeons and Summons, but now you have a time limit for them to stay out and, if you get the right combination of attacking or even status effects, the Espers can do an amazingly powerful attack. These are far and few, so don't rely on those.

Here is where my major beef comes into play. All throughout the game, extremely powerful enemies are randomly placed in areas you would normally find level 5 creatures. These are crazy powerful elementals who cast magic that you have to earn via the License Board and dinosaurs that can be from level 10 to 99 where you JUST begin the game. Don't anger them, or they will crush you and all of your work is undone. This encourages powerlevelling, which isn't hard to do, but makes the game too easy and takes away the challenge that is necessary for these games to prevent them from getting boring. Having to powerlevel repeatedly gets old and boring very fast and almost makes it not worth it.

Music: 5/10

Very much the same as the other FF games. They all have their own different pieces, except for the victory song which has stuck with us for so many years. The music here is nice and not as noticeable as other games. I can remember specific songs from the previous FF games, but this one is absent from memory and that definitely says something.

Replay-Ability: 4/10

None, really. To tell you the truth, when I finished it, I was very happy, because I would never have to play it again since there didn't seem to be that much to do aside from the occasional sidequests and story missions.

Conclusion:

I played it and I didn't like it. I guess it's for the die hard FF fans, but I just couldn't get into it. The story is really all that kept me going, occasionally taking breaks from cutscenes to run around and get my butt kicked by badly placed super powered creatures. Just not for me.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/20/08

Game Release: Final Fantasy XII (US, 10/31/06)