Thoughts for: Saturday 24th March 2007
Final Fantasy 12 :: [19:00:55]I haven't posted in ages again. Not my fault for once though. Well ok, it IS my fault, but it's just a fantastic game. Nine and a half bakewells out of ten. Doesn't get much better than that. If you like RPG games in any way shape or form you will love this. The only reason I don't give this game a full ten out of ten is because the game puts a small amount of limitation on what you can do and I don't like that. The main reason this game is better than any other Final Fantasy game is because of the immense freedom it gives you. That is why this is a winner beyond all belief. Right now I'm supposed to be going to a distance location across the map, a new place I haven't been before. Well that's all well and good but I don't want to just yet. Nope, I would rather go back to every other place I have visited to see what's new. Not only that I would like to talk to people everywhere and do a whole load of voluntary sidequests. I can. Not only that I can go to new places that I have never been before. Places in completely the wrong direction to where I'm supposed to be. It's that free, you go where you like and do what you like, whenever you want. That said I think we need a little bit of structure to this review. So away we go.
The characters are new and different to the standard models you may be used to from previous games. Yes the main character is still slightly wet (Vaan) but this character can be swopped out and replaced if you don't like him. In fact, you can do this with any of the characters you want. If you don't like one of the six characters in the game, then no problem. Just don't use them. I'm not saying this is an ideal solution but with a little hard work you could probably get through the game without them. Vaan is a young and dream filled individual (not to mention a pickpocket). He is accompanied by his friend Penelo, a young girl and for once one which is not annoying. Then you have Fran a Viera (rabbit person) and her partner Baltheir the Sky pirate. Baltheir is simply one of the coolest characters you will ever see in a game and he wars with Captain Jack for the title of coolest pirate ever. Fran isn't half bad either. Then on top of that you have Basch, a disgraced Captain who seeks to restore his homeland and Princess Ashe, who the people believe dead. Not a single one of these characters is annoying in any way shape or form. Novel I know. None of the characters have any specialisations like in previous games. Any character can literally use any weapon, armour, accessory, magic etc that you decide they should use. It's genius. You don't like guns? Fine, none of your characters need guns. You love Katanas? Ok, do that then. Bows and Arrows? Hand bombs? Staves? Swords? Shields? Take your pick. It's all here and more. You want magic? Again, take your pick. Green, Black, White, Time, Arcane. That's a whole lot of ass kicking you have there. Do you want your characters to specialise in a specific role or for everyone to be able to do everything? Choice is yours my friend. Do as you will. You have the power here. On top of this little lot you get Techniks. These are just bonus abilities you can learn and use. To be honest, I don't use them very often and from what I've heard no-one does. They do however add a nice bit of flair and I admit some of them are quite fun. The reason you can have any character do or learn any thing is because of the License Board system. This is how your character gets the ability to use everything, from magic to armour and weapons, techniks and even making your characters stat's increase. It's pretty damn good. You get License Points for everything you kill and you collect these points to buy things off your board. You control what you buy and where so you can make everyone do what you want. Almost top marks to the creators for this. I say almost because there is one small problem and it's my only problem with the entire game. If you want to, you can absolutely pick up every single ability on your License board in not a lot of time. I'm 50 hours into the game and I have picked up every augment for every character as well as the vast majority of the magicks, etc. The only downside is that some of these abilities are not available in the shops until you reach a certain point in the game. For example, one of my characters right now has some of the highest level spells unlocked. He doesn't however have the chance to use these powers yet as they are not available in shops to buy just yet. If you had the freedom to get this stuff whenever you wanted it, this game would be way better. It's not like it would unbalance anything either because they could have just been damn expensive instead. Would have worked. Ahh well.
The plotline is pretty much as we have all seen before. Two countries at war with another smaller one caught in the middle and some people that arn't too happy about it. Oh and of course they are harvesting some ancient power they shouldn't be. Yup, that kinda thing. Lame but pretty standard and to be honest they manage to pull it off in new and innovative ways that mean you don't get bored.
Gameplay. Couldn't be better. The new combat systems is brilliant. In previous incarnations with a timed battle system I have not been impressed but this new one is perfect. Everything flows smoothly and the days of being bored out of your face due to slow turned based stuff are sooooooo gone. Random encounters are out of the window too, now you can see your enemies on the map before you engage them and as such know what you are getting in for. This even allows you the luxury of running past waves of powerful enemies you arn't ready for yet, to get to new and undiscovered areas. A final major change to gameplay is the addition of Gambits. You buy these and then arrange them however you want them. They allow your party members to do what you want them to do in a specific situation. For example you can set up a Gambit so that if one of your characters is knocked out it will use a Phoenix Down for you to resurrect the character. You can do these for pretty much everything you could possibly want to. At times if you don't want to, you don't need to play the game, it will play itself for you! Very useful if you want to level up. Just put your characters in an enemy respawn area and leave them to thier own devices, if you set up your gambits right they will be able to handle anything.
The final major change to gameplay comes in the form of the Espers. These are the replacements of Aeons, GF's, etc. Only with one major difference. That being that they really arn't that important. You don't particularly need them. At all really. In the past your GF's etc were the most important form of warfare against boss characters. In this game however the Espers are novel and cute and all but not all that valuable. Perhaps in time the more powerful ones will be, but for the time being the ones I have encountered are pretty worthless for anything other than normal monsters. The general way one defeats bosses in this game (major ones) is through the use of Quickenings. These are the replacements for your Limit Breaks, etc. You buy them on your License Board, each character can learn up to 3. You need a full MP guage to use your Quickenings (just as you need a full guage to summon an Esper). Espers can be summoned by any character which you buy the esper for (each esper can only be bought once), when summoned the Esper replaces all characters except the summoner. You cannot control the Esper, it does it's own thing. Quickenings can be chained one after the other and if you chain enough you do more damage to your target as it adds an additional attack to the end.
Another welcome edition to the game comes in the form of Mark hunting. You become a bounty hunter early on and can hunt powerful and dangerous monsters to your hearts content, getting significant rewards should you win. This is a great way to spend your time. In addition to this, certain activities you undertake can activate certain rare monsters. These rare monsters tend to be way more powerful versions of existing monsters and are usually summoned when you kill lots of normal monsters or the like. It can make for a nice break to normality.
If you don't own this game, go and buy it. It's truly awesome.