Final Fantasy 12

[cactusmaac]

I'm about twenty hours in and I like it. Unsure where I'd rank it though. The graphics are well tasty and it feels like a huge amount of effort went on crafting the story and all the different personalities involved. Based on those alone I'd rank this (so far) as the best FF after 7.

However the game's really stingy with save points, gil, weapons and accessories such that you don't see anything like the continual improvement that you do in other RPGs. There hasn't been any other game where I've been stuck with the same equipment for so long. Most of the character improvement comes from tedious hours of levelling up your stats. The licensing system blows.

There's no specialisation to speak of and all the characters end up being capable of doing the same things. FF8 somewhat suffered from that but the different Limit Breaks partially made up for that. Most of the time I spend my license points on stuff like Black Magic 5 which I'm hours off from getting. Offensive magic really sucks. I'm still stuck using Fire, Thunder and Blizzard and I'm twenty bloody hours in! Apart from using Cure\Cura, sticking Protect on occasionally and removing status effects to save buying things like Eye Drops, I'm mostly just using melee attacks.

The lack of specialisation really hurts the fun you could get from the game. In FF6, Chrono Trigger and FF9 the specialised skills of each character made party selection quite strategic and allowed for a variety of different ways to take down bosses. FF10 had this and supplemented it by allowing you to switch members in and out, thus allowing you to bring in Auron to destroy enemy defences, drafting in Lulu to blitz it with magic and then Yuna to heal everyone. The materia system in FF7 allowed for hours of fine-tuning. Every new accessory, armour and weapon you got, allowed you to optimise your party for offensive damage, materia growth, healing etc. and got you to think strategically.

What really does piss me off is the lack of save points. I'm being forced to rely on faqs on boss battles because I'm not going to slog through a long and tedious set of dungeons for another two hours because I didn't buy any Hankerchiefs for fighting Belias.

All those elements I'd rank as being only a bit better than the woeful dress-sphere system of FF X-2. So right now I'd rank FF12 slightly below FF8. In part also because your summons are terribly weedy and quickenings suck ass. You have to go through some finicky chaining to do any appreciable damage and they reduce your MP to zero making them a bit useless for boss battles.

How I rank the FFs

FF7
FF6
FF10
FF8
FF12 (provisional)
FF9
FF X-2

[Xero Kaiser]

However the game's really stingy with save points, gil, weapons and accessories such that you don't see anything like the continual improvement that you do in other RPGs.

Gil, weapons and accessories grow on trees. Steal from every enemy you come across and just plow through the dungeons normally and you'll be rolling in money. Early on you can go through some of the beginning areas and easily rack up huge chains for easy money.

FF10 had this and supplemented it by allowing you to switch members in and out, thus allowing you to bring in Auron to destroy enemy defences, drafting in Lulu to blitz it with magic and then Yuna to heal everyone. The materia system in FF7 allowed for hours of fine-tuning. Every new accessory, armour and weapon you got, allowed you to optimise your party for offensive damage, materia growth, healing etc. and got you to think strategically.

Isn't that the same thing? In FF10 and FF7 the characters were whatever you made them. FF10 and FF7 have the same lack of specialization that FF12 does. They use spheres and materia instead of licenses but the idea is exactly the same. The characters are whatever you make them. You didn't take everyone down the same sphere grind in FF10 did you? You didn't give everyone the exact same materia setup in FF7 did you? Then why give everyone the exact same licenses/gambits in FF12 and then complain about the lack of diversity?

In part also because your summons are terribly weedy and quickenings suck ass.

Summons do suck tremendous amounts of ass, but quickenings are insane. I've blown through several bosses in one turn with quickenings. You sure you're using them right?

What really does piss me off is the lack of save points. I'm being forced to rely on faqs on boss battles because I'm not going to slog through a long and tedious set of dungeons for another two hours because I didn't buy any Hankerchiefs for fighting Belias.

That's pretty impossible. There's a save point before every boss fight in the game and in the middle of every dungeon

[Titan76]

However the game's really stingy with save points, gil, weapons and accessories such that you don't see anything like the continual improvement that you do in other RPGs.

Save points are pretty much everywhere so I don't know how you are having a problem there.

Once you get further into the game more powerful weapons, accessories, and armor will be popping up in every new city/place you go into. And the best way to get Gil is to go on Hunts and steal from the monsters you fight.

There hasn't been any other game where I've been stuck with the same equipment for so long.

That should change later on but make sure you have lots of gil because prices go up through the roof.

Most of the character improvement comes from tedious hours of levelling up your stats. The licensing system blows.

Get use to it, it stays that way through the entire game.

There's no specialisation to speak of and all the characters end up being capable of doing the same things.

Pretty much yes. You just have to decided what you want so and so to be. For me I used Vann's friend(forgot her name) and Fran as my healers because they have the most MP and gave them long range weapons. Then I found out the princess has more MP then Fran does later on but I just stuck with Fran anyway.

Most of the time I spend my license points on stuff like Black Magic 5 which I'm hours off from getting. Offensive magic really sucks.

Yes it does and don't waste your license points on it first. Black magic is really only good on fliers and certain boss who have weakness against it. Other then that its worthless.

I'm still stuck using Fire, Thunder and Blizzard and I'm twenty bloody hours in!

Don't worry you really won't use much black magic in this game.

Apart from using Cure\Cura, sticking Protect on occasionally and removing status effects to save buying things like Eye Drops, I'm mostly just using melee attacks.

That's pretty much how the game will go. I also recommend using shell as well to help against spell casts.

The lack of specialisation really hurts the fun you could get from the game. In FF6, Chrono Trigger and FF9 the specialised skills of each character made party selection quite strategic and allowed for a variety of different ways to take down bosses. FF10 had this and supplemented it by allowing you to switch members in and out, thus allowing you to bring in Auron to destroy enemy defences, drafting in Lulu to blitz it with magic and then Yuna to heal everyone. The materia system in FF7 allowed for hours of fine-tuning. Every new accessory, armour and weapon you got, allowed you to optimise your party for offensive damage, materia growth, healing etc. and got you to think strategically.

In this game though all the characters specialize in everything. There's not one character that you can say is stronger then the other character in someting. Unless you take in account MP.

What really does piss me off is the lack of save points. I'm being forced to rely on faqs on boss battles because I'm not going to slog through a long and tedious set of dungeons for another two hours because I didn't buy any Hankerchiefs for fighting Belias.

I highly recommend you take that extra time in fighting the lesser enemies because leveling-up is the most important part in the game, especially if you are doing the Hunts.

In part also because your summons are terribly weedy and quickenings suck ass. You have to go through some finicky chaining to do any appreciable damage and they reduce your MP to zero making them a bit useless for boss battles.

The summons do suck big time and I never bother to use them in the game.

As for the Quickenings they can sometimes suck and sometimes do heavy damage. It all depends on how many hits you get off and what level the mist attack is.

[The Fury]

Oh...forgot when i last posted in this thread but since then. I have the game. :D

But some real bad happenings recently. My PS2 will not read the disc.:( No scratches on it, the PS2 reads any other disc i put in fine (tried KH2, Twisted Metal:Black, FF8 and Ridge Racer Type 4). Pissed me off a tad as i can't work out why it doesn;t work as it worked not yesterday morning but since then, nothing....



...Anyway, my thoughts on the game as I have finished the story but not some extras.

First, graphics are amazing for a PS2 title. To prove this, a ex-housemate actually stopped walking through the room as i played and did like a double take and said how great they looked. (current scene was the close up of the old wise guy in the temple).

The battle system though is what i know would most concern me, lack of random battles i think took a certain aspect away from the game. Random battles i liked. It also takes a HUGE amount away from any strategy that was in the game. You can at times just leave your characters to hit away without telling them to do anything...this makes me think that I'm not actually playing the game. Also, when you are just doing nothing, you can boost yourself up before you even go into a battle, extra stay through to the next battle...

That said, it still works and flows nicely.

But my biggest probelm with the game. Leveling up...Like cactusmaac said, it drags on. In all the other FF games i can level up as the game goes and maybe, that will be enough to beat the next boss...if not, i'll struggle through. Of course by 50 hours I kinda caught on that you are meant to only level up 3 characters, pick 3 and stick with them. Before then I liked to rotate my team, get used to everyone....bad idea that was. I've been wearing the items that give you double EXP since I could buy then and I'm at level 63 in 80 hours.


Aside from all the complaints though...this game is still good and still addictive.

Ranking wise...story is odd, but good and game over all is good, but I do not think it is as good as FF6, 7 or 8.

[cactusmaac]

Gil, weapons and accessories grow on trees. Steal from every enemy you come across and just plow through the dungeons normally and you'll be rolling in money. Early on you can go through some of the beginning areas and easily rack up huge chains for easy money.

And you have to do a whole lot of it. Getting something like 7,000 gil isn't much use when a decent piece of kit costs upwards of 3,500.

I haven't done much stealing since I'd rather use the turn on an attack. Still I'll start doing more as you advise.

Isn't that the same thing? In FF10 and FF7 the characters were whatever you made them. FF10 and FF7 have the same lack of specialization that FF12 does. They use spheres and materia instead of licenses but the idea is exactly the same. The characters are whatever you make them. You didn't take everyone down the same sphere grind in FF10 did you? You didn't give everyone the exact same materia setup in FF7 did you? Then why give everyone the exact same licenses/gambits in FF12 and then complain about the lack of diversity?

I don't see the same scope for it over here. FF10 was hardly analagous. Auron's sphere grid was set up so you'd specialise in breaks, Lulu in black magic, Yuna in white magic, Tidus on speedy physical attacks etc. and the summons added a whole different dimension.

With FF7 you could use materia to provide the exact team balance you wanted with some characters being heavy hitters, others healers etc. Here I mostly seem to be giving them the same stuff because I don't seem much scope to specialise. Offensive magic is basically useless and the technicks aren't very helpful. Nobody's got any particular strengths which stick out.

Summons do suck tremendous amounts of ass, but quickenings are insane. I've blown through several bosses in one turn with quickenings. You sure you're using them right?

I'm chaining them OK but like I said, finicky and the burning of your MP is something I could live without.

That's pretty impossible. There's a save point before every boss fight in the game and in the middle of every dungeon

Didn't see one before Mimic Queen or Belias. Had to slog through a whole bunch of guards before getting to Ghis. There's like one save point between the huge expanse of the Tomb of Raithwell and the Dalamascan Entersand.

[The Fury]

And you have to do a whole lot of it. Getting something like 7,000 gil isn't much use when a decent piece of kit costs upwards of 3,500.

I haven't done much stealing since I'd rather use the turn on an attack. Still I'll start doing more as you advise.

You're selling the loot right? Because I at first didn't know you needed to do that.

I personally never steal, enemies are strong enough already without spending time stealing something from them.

[Xero Kaiser]

I haven't done much stealing since I'd rather use the turn on an attack. Still I'll start doing more as you advise.

Yeah, just set one person's gambits up so they'll start the battle with a steal. You won't miss that one attack much and it adds up

I don't see the same scope for it over here. FF10 was hardly analagous. Auron's sphere grid was set up so you'd specialise in breaks, Lulu in black magic, Yuna in white magic, Tidus on speedy physical attacks etc. and the summons added a whole different dimension.

Right, but you could take any character to any part of the sphere grid. If you wanted Yuna to be an physical attack character you could set her up that way. Everyone started off in a certain spot but they weren't restricted to it

With FF7 you could use materia to provide the exact team balance you wanted with some characters being heavy hitters, others healers etc. Here I mostly seem to be giving them the same stuff because I don't seem much scope to specialise.

I had one person as my melee/white mage/thief, another as my range/support/green mage and another as melee/black mage/tank. If you want your characters to specialize the options are there but you won't get them if you give them all the exact same licenses

[Titan76]

Right, but you could take any character to any part of the sphere grid. If you wanted Yuna to be an physical attack character you could set her up that way. Everyone started off in a certain spot but they weren't restricted to it

You could do that but the thing is though Yuna's physical attacks will be no where near Auron's or even Tidus and it would be dumb to make her like that when she has the most MP in the whole party and is the strongest magic user.

Also didn't each character in that game had weapons only they could use? Because I don't remember ever being able to put a sword in Yuna's hands if I wanted to.

[Lester C.]

My real problem with this game is with the pacing of the story. It's starts off running then after the prologue it moves very slowly and never picks up.

[LordKaos]

You could do that but the thing is though Yuna's physical attacks will be no where near Auron's or even Tidus and it would be dumb to make her like that when she has the most MP in the whole party and is the strongest magic user.

Also didn't each character in that game had weapons only they could use? Because I don't remember ever being able to put a sword in Yuna's hands if I wanted to.

Actually it's not dumb. Near the end the game my Yuna was hitting for 99999 damage.

In FFXII you specializes as much as you want to. Just like in FFVII, FFVIII, and FFX.

[Citizen V]

I would say that its average time to beat this game.But there is a extreme amount of extras and side quests.My characters are 77-78 and there is still things for me to find,but the fighting engine of this game is great.Very addicting game play.

[Titan76]

Actually it's not dumb. Near the end the game my Yuna was hitting for 99999 damage.

By just using your staff as a sword and no magic like Holy, black magic, etc?

[yeoman]

My real problem with this game is with the pacing of the story. It's starts off running then after the prologue it moves very slowly and never picks up.

Actually, I felt the pace started picking up a lot in the last two thirds to half of the game. That first part though is talky politcal drame hour, and only Balthier got me through that.

[cactusmaac]

Was going to post this a while back, but Benoit went mental and I've been putting it off since then.

FF 12 is an odd game to rate. The disparate parts i.e. the creature design, locations, cut-scenes, music, graphics, voice acting are excellent. Overall though, it's less than the sum of its' parts.

The major problem is the lack of plot development and character development of your party members. In most of the FFs to date, you gradually get to know more and more about your team members such that by the time you get to the final boss, you actively start caring about them. Here that's pretty much ignored and I only felt that Fran got any sort of development. That's a shame too because Ashe, Fran, Balthier, Vaan and Basch all had potential. I really don't understand why more wasn't done with the Basch\Grabanth backstory since it would have been easy enough to set a portion of the game in their old homeland. Instead you wade through dungeon after dungeon and you don't feel any real bonding.

That's what defines FF for me, the classic moments like the death of Aeris, Zidane's friends all coming to his rescue, Auron urging everyone to band together and fight Yunalesca, the slow (re)gathering of the forces before the final confrontation with Kefka. FF12 didn't have anything like that. That is disappointing especially since the early scenes with the Emperor and Senate gave hints of a plot that would be complex and mature, not featuring moustache-twirling villains out to conquer the world. The introduction of the alien, god-like overseers came somewhat out of left-field and felt unnecessary.

Another criticism is the difficulty curve is really out of whack. You have to do lots of levelling up early on to keep up with monsters and then when you approach the end, bosses become ridiculously easy to beat.

1. FF 7
2. FF 6
3. FF 10
4. FF 8
5. FF 12
6. FF 9
7. FF X-2

[The Fury]

Many of the things you say i can agree with, strongly.

The major problem is the lack of plot development and character development of your party members. In most of the FFs to date, you gradually get to know more and more about your team members such that by the time you get to the final boss, you actively start caring about them. Here that's pretty much ignored and I only felt that Fran got any sort of development. That's a shame too because Ashe, Fran, Balthier, Vaan and Basch all had potential. I really don't understand why more wasn't done with the Basch\Grabanth backstory since it would have been easy enough to set a portion of the game in their old homeland. Instead you wade through dungeon after dungeon and you don't feel any real bonding.

This was a major flaw, I thought. Plot and story, while good still didn't come anywhere near past games for me, all from 5 upwards that I have played have had in my view better stories.

Character development wise, alot was left to be desired. In previous games we even got to learn alot about not only our heroes but the villians as well, as well as side villains. The Turks and Rufus or Seifer and his crew got far more story then the Judges ever did. Although there was one scene that was good for the Judges, the main character involved had such little screen time before I cared little about what was happening.

Most FF games do have that extra feature exploring a characters past, I guess this was tried to do featuring into the game but lacked in as much substance as previous games.

I do feel personally, that more time was spent on the battle system then anything in this game, the extra bosses, hunting and summons and all manor of other tasks made the game, sadly not the story.

Another criticism is the difficulty curve is really out of whack. You have to do lots of levelling up early on to keep up with monsters and then when you approach the end, bosses become ridiculously easy to beat.

The flaw here is that you have to ignore 3 of your characters to be able to level up enough and then as soon as you can, attached that accessory that double EXP to all you party. My first play through I was at about 1 level per hour or more.

After being whooped numerous times by bosses, the last few bosses came as a surprise.

1. FF 7
2. FF 6
3. FF 10
4. FF 8
5. FF 12
6. FF 9
7. FF X-2

Ranking mine.

1. FF7
2. FF8
3. FF6
For the rest, it's too close to call, I love different aspects of each one.
If I had too it would go FF9, FF12, FF10, FFX-2.