Review: Final Fantasy XII

(Reposted from The Escapist Forums)

I am a Final Fantasy fan. I stayed up, missed school, skipped classes, disobeyed my parents and did many other slightly shameful things for these games. My "first" experience with Final Fantasy was having a sleepover at my best friends house and watching his brother play through Final Fantasy VI (it was 3 back then) and ever since then I have been hooked. The first Final Fantasy I had the chance to play for myself was Final Fantasy VII, which I begged, bothered, conned, pleaded, cajoled and bargained with my parents for. And lets make one thing clear, while experience has made me aware of FFVII's various displays of fuckwitery at the time, the tender age of 13, I fucking loved it like it was a combination of caffeine, sugar and sex. Since then I have dutifully pre-ordered every single Final Fantasy as soon as a release date has been announced and I have skipped school, gotten in trouble and taken unnecessary days off on their release dates in order to play them. Fortunately for me when FFXII came out, I was in University at that unimportant period between the end of midterms and final paper time, I was also just starting a new job and I conveniently set my start date for November 7, giving me almost a week straight of playing time and as I watched the stellar opening movie and played through the first several hours of the game I was entranced. I had been waiting for a very long time for this game, having pre-ordered it when it was first announced and dutifully keeping my pre-order slip in a special place so I wouldn't lose it I damn well felt like I was 13 again. Unfortunately for me this feeling wouldn't last.

The drama behind the FFXII delays is nothing secret, Yasumi Matsuno, the acclaimed designer/director behind Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story and FFT: Advance was helming the project and promised that it would move Final Fantasy away from turn based/ random encounter oriented combat and present the missing link between FFXI and previous entires in the series. Unfortunately this didn't stick as Yasumi Matsuno suffered from serious health concerns during the development of Final Fantasy XII and was forced to bow out. He was replaced by Hiroshi Minagawa, the artist behind the Tactics Series and Vagrant Story, and Hiroyuki Itô, a series vetran who worked on many previous titles and had his turn at the wheel with Final Fantasy IX. There is even a sidequest devoted to the switch in directors, the Yaizmat hunt (a play on Yasumi Matsuno). This switch in creative direction is unfortunately very obvious in gameplay and I will explain how I see it as I write the rest of the review.
I will start with what I see to be the bad points of the game the first and most prominent being the new battle and ability system. The new battle system discards the clever and interesting Continual Turn Based Battle (CTB) seen in Final Fantasy X with a new system known as Active Dimension Battle (ADB). I see this as a negative as the CTB system was so well received that almost EVERY turn based RPG system since Final Fantasy X has ripped it off, Xenosaga's 1 and 3 use it ( I never played 2), Shadow Hearts 2 and 3 use it, hell, even Lost Odyssey maintains the idea of different actions advancing your place in the turn order. This is made more apparent by the fact that the much lauded ADB system is pretty much exactly the same as the Active Time Battle system seen in Final Fantasies IV through IX. Don't believe me? Pay close attention to the ADB system, it has time bars for every action, only they activate after you choose the action, that's the only difference, hell it even has a goddamn WAIT mode. The only real difference is the fact that the ADB system is faster with the implimentation of the Gambit System, a cool take on programable party AI that I actually really enjoyed. The fact that the ADB system is actually a throwback isn't a game breaker though, what does REALLY hurt the battle system for me are the following points. 1: It is hard to determine the weaknesses of bosses, making spell choice during boss battles difficult and almost pointless when simple attacks and Mist Knacks work better. 2: Technics are nearly useless, I cannot recall any of the interesting Technics ever working for me.3: Boss Battles descend into Mist Knack blitzes, using as many of these as possible and hoping to chain them together well. Now I'm not such a wanker that I demand everything be turn based, I like the fact that random encounters are gone, I don't mind the shift to psuedo realtime, but this all has been implimented better (re: Bioware Titles and their Obsidian sequels) and clearly the FFXII battle system designers didn't do their homework.
I am also not a fan of the Liscence Board, which replaces the Sphere Grid from FFX. I wasn't a big fan of the Sphere Grid due to it's too linear approach to character building but I dislike the Liscence Board even more because it is effectively RANDOM in its execution. Often I found myself chewing through tons of random squares desperately hoping to find the ability to actually USE the new weapon I acquired. It was frustrating and by the end of the game I had the board filled up with every character, and I am NOT a fan of grinding, LP's just got handed out like candy if you played your cards correctly. On the positive side of the battle system I did enjoy hunting for the various summons and fighting them to gain their power. I also enjoyed how they were implimented and had a lot of fun with the few I bothered to collect.

Now that I have finished with the worst offenders I will move onto less overtly annoying bits. The most important aspect of any Final Fantasy game is that epic story that will pull you in like a giant vacuum cleaner and keep you glued to your television set until that last annoying 10 or so hours of the game where you need to do stupid sidequests and level in order to take on the Final Boss and see, what you hope will be, a truly awesome ending. Final Fantasy XII somewhat fails in this respect. The sidequests are there from the get go in the form of semi-optional Hunt Missions, some of which are cool and entertaining, others which are overly hard and annoying. This is an immense part of the game, as the development team allegedly spent much their downtime while the director drama was being sorted out building tons of these things. Overall it is not unwelcome, but this is the main form of sidequest, other styles being few in number. Final Fantasy XII is also a lot more devoted to Dungeon Crawling than previous titles in the series, you spend a lot of time wandering across VAST tracts of geography going from one place to another, few if any of them offering any contribution to the overall plot.
This does add a positive aspect to the game as the WORLD of FFXII is one of the largest and most well fleshed out of the entire series and leads me into my next point. FFXII's Ivalice postively reaks of history, from the depths Raithwalls tomb, to the ancient heights of Bur-Omicase, the ancient Giruvegan and the living cities of Rabanastre and Archades. These locations are broken up by vast tracts of wilderness each with their own flavor, character and implied history. I felt like this world had been lived in and used for thousands of years prior to the story we are currently involved in.

The story itself is best described as Final Fantasy does Suikoden does Starwars, trading an overt save the world plot for a smaller, more focused rebellion story about saving your country and fighting for freedom. This story is nothing we haven't seen before, a ragtag band of freedom fighters facing down a large and oppresive empire, but it is one that is always welcome as long as it is told well. The political turmoil of the conflict is well adressed, with shifting alliances, ulterior motives and even an ancient mystical conspiracy that hearkens deep into the worlds history and mythology. These are very different things for a Final Fantasy plot and this setup spawns some of the Series' most interesting villains, the fantastic main antagonist Vayne, the troubled and noble Judge Gabranth, Emperor Gramis Solidor, all of them are some of the deepest and most well motivated foes we've ever seen in this series. Unfortunately the heroes are not so well fleshed out. We are saddled with your typical boy hero, an annoying little prick named Vaan who serves as a sort of innocent observer to the epic events going on around him. He is easily the worst main character to ever grace a Final Fantasy title, young, stupid, pig headed, generic, girly looking and poorly voiced. On the positive side he does have his counter points, the primary one coming in the form of the games' "Second Main Character" Ashe, the princess of Dalmasca, a deep and emotional character fighting for the freedom of her country, one who makes many hard descisions as the story goes on. The rest of the supporting cast is equally good, the innocent Penelo is likable as a poor youth caught up in events beyond her understanding, the noble Basche, a presumed traitor attempting to make up for sins he never comitted, Fran, a mysterious and deadly vera who dresses like a dominatrix and fights like a demon and lastly Baltheir, a gentleman rogue of the highest order who is responsible for the greatest dialogue EVER heard in a Final Fantasy Game. I was disapointed that FFXII spends a lot less time on character building than previous titles and spends more time on implied relationships between these characters, which I didn't like. The plot is also hampered by the large gaps between actual story sequences, as you will occasionally spend up to 3 or 4 hours without a single story sequence, and for a Final Fantasy this is a big change.

Visually this game is a stunner, boasting some of the coolest airships ever seen in the series, some of the neatest environments and one of the first living worlds ever presented. This world is full of different races, all of which wander the streets of the worlds major cities and all of whom look very distinct, even when compared to others of their species. The character animation used in the FMV is a step down when one compares it to some of the stellar work seen in FFX-2 and Kingdom Hearts 2, but it is more than adequate. The regular in game engine pushes the PS2 to its limits and everything looks great under almost every circumstance, with detailed character models and excellent looking environments. Equally awesome are the myriad selection of monsters seen throughout the game, with most special Hunt Creatures being modified versions of normal monsters but still looking awesome (you feel like your fighting different species' of the same critter rather than palatte swapped, samey baddies).

In the audio sphere the game is equally if not more fantastic than the visuals. The sound track is epic, evocative, eclectic and exciting, very much bringing an excellent feeling to the world. The typical "battle" theme is gone, but this is a plus as you now here the often very interesting scene theme while you fight your normal battles. Bosses still have their own separate theme but it is exciting and pulsepounding in nature. The voice acting is, except for Vaan, truly excellent, as is the accompanying script. It sounds more natural and emotional than 10, and it seems as if the scripters made sure the dialogue would sound good in english before they wrote it.

Overall, I would say that despite my criticisms I had a good time with Final Fantasy XII, unfortunately, I had to look hard to find it. I would like to see the series continue to uphold the quality world design used in this one, but I would like to see more care and attention paid to the characters and a return to the more focused storylines of yesteryear. On the otherhand, writing this review has made me want to play the game again and relive some of the more interesting moments, so there you have it.