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Final Fantasy XII sucks. Period. Fact.

Flash_Plasma said:
Not to derail the thread, but... am I the only one who actually liked FFVIII and FFIX?
Nope. I am a bit sketchy on the first three Final Fantasy games (sometimes old-school suffers from age), but I loved everything from FF4 through FF10.

I really liked the way FF8 did so much to experiment with the tropes of the series, but still stayed pretty true to the essence of Final Fantasy. The Sorceress/Time Compression plot was terrible, but the stories of Squall and Rinoa's love and the entire "visions of Laguna" subplot actually stand as some of my favorites. Also, the Gardens rock. I just wish the Junction system was a little less breakable, and that the final dungeon was a bit more reasonable. The only reason I never saw the ending of that game was because the final dungeon was so bad.

FF9 was a great game. The main game system was a bit boring, the ATB system broke down a bit, and the whole Zidane/Garnet romance was just a rehash of overdone plots by that point, but the game was a roller-coaster ride of fun adventures and references back to my favorite entries in the series. It was fun, and that is all that matters. Besides, Vivi goes down as one of the greatest FF characters in history, which makes up for some of the random plot hiccups. I also love this game for the random and hilarious "love-letter mix-up" scene alone.

I don't like either game quite as much as FF4-7, but they are truly great games.

It makes me all the more depressed that FF12 turned out so... dull.
 

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Grog said:
I didn't like FF8 much. Mainly because I really couldn't stand the main character. I don't have much patience for whiny-ass emo teenagers, and that translates to video games, too.
Huh... I can't agree that Squall was "emo" or "whiney". It is not like he mopes about his lot in life or even complains about anything.

Squall was quiet. In truth, he is just introverted and unsure on how to deal with other people. so he pushes them away and puts on an aloof facade. That is why his romance with Rinoa, who is so pushy and extroverted, works so well.

Squall's personality actually makes a lot of sense considering his background (orphaned from an early age and lost his memories of his few close friends), and that same background makes his rivalry with Seifer all the more interesting. Argh... FF8's plot would have been a lot better if it just focused on the Squall/Seifer rivalry instead of the forced Edea plot (and the even worse Ultimecia plot). Almost no villain could have followed right in the footsteps of Sephiroth, the third and possibly best of the three great FF villains, anyways.
 

I stopped dealing with Swquall when i realized he wsn't going to stop being emo and depressing and stop beating old girl. Everyon other cut scene he was pushing her or hitting her or shoving her. It felt like JOe Jackson the RPG
 

drothgery said:
Balthier was arguably the most interesting and best-written character in the game (much like Auron was cooler than Yuna, the central character of FFX, and Tidus, the main point-of-view character). But it's hard to make a case that anyone other than Ashe was the central character to the story.


Well, I think the distinction here is "main protagonist" vs. "hero." I agree that Ashe is the central character in that she's the one the main story is about, but I would say Balthier is the mover in the story -- without him nobody would've gotten very far, and it's his heroic (sometimes questionably so) actions throughout the plot that keep it moving forward. It's a sort of meaningless distinction, though... But yes, I do agree.
 

FFXII is to date. (FFT ties/runs close behind).

Warning: Raving ahead.

Specific and general things I loved about it:

The Characters: Balthier is just... awesome. As is most of the crew. And I really appreciated Vaan and Penelo as the role of the common people.

I really liked the interaction between Larsa and Vayne, and Vayne just clicked for me as a villain. I really liked being psyched out as to his intentions (his first speech is very pretty).

[sblock]The game so awesome it had not one but two Cids (and one of them's a bad guy!) [/sblock]

The music: oh dear lord the music blew me away, but admittedly I'm a game music junkie. "The Dalmasca Estersand" is an AWESOME "onward to adventure" music. [sblock]."Clash on the Big Bridge", 'nough said (and no points for guessing why it's there). [/sblock]"The Battle for Freedom" is my hands down favorite final boss music (beating out "Zeromus", "X-Death," and "The Limitless"). And "To the Place of the Gods"... very nice and soothing. The FFXII soundtrack feels like a very well put-together movie soundtrack.

the Voice acting is superb.

Other points: The swapping of the Summon pantheon was an interesting move IMHO. Moving the FFT/A Lucavi/Totema into the limelight was nice, as was making all the classic ones airship classes (and that's just the Empire's. More name cameos on the resistance side). [sblock]Finding out you could summon Zeromus, Ex-Death, and Chaos... WHEE! Dreadnought Leviathan. Light Cruiser Shiva. SKY FORTRESS BAHAMUT. :D :D[/sblock]
 
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I agree with the OP wholeheartedly. I am a big Final Fantasy fan, and I couldn't finish 12. I was just so bored. The battle system is either a pain in the butt (if I don't use gambits) or running in circles waiting for the enemies to die (if I do). The entire philosophy behind gambits is fundamentally flawed. If something in a game is so bad that you have to automate it, either fix it or remove it entirely. (And if they remove it, there's no game left.)

One of my coworkers (who claims to like most of the game) said the best thing about the FFXII was that he didn't actually have to play it.

As for the characters, I don't give a damn about any of them except Balthier, and I don't give much of a damn about him. Vaan and Penelo actively annoy me. On top of that, the voice acting sounds phoned in. (In some cases, literally; the compression makes it sound like it was recorded over the phone.)
 

I never got to play FFXII. Guess I am not missing much.

I am on and off again playing FFVI. The sheer amount of level grinding I have to do makes me abandon it for stretches of time though.

Huh? I mostly just followed the main plot most of the (many) times I played through FF6, and I had very little trouble, even the first time.
 

Eh, 6 didn't have that much level grinding, until the very end. I can cheat with the one 'no-encounters' item, but I just couldn't grind a second party to proficiency to finish the game. Shame, it was good otherwise.

As for XII, yeah, none of the characters gripped me in any way, and I just couldn't get into the game system. It's a real shame, too, as this game seemed to be at a confluence of awesome. In the same world as FFT (best story, (and for that matter, game), period), the previous game in the series being X (I don't count XI, and X has some of the best gameplay ever), and using a real-time system, when they were sitting on the Kingdom Hearts games for use as a base (and KHII has the rest of the best gameplay ever). I really don't know how they screwed it up.
 

As far as story/development, Matsuno's plots are always open-ended.

Tradition? you have the original five big bads. You have the Ivalician iconics. The new one is actually the one that best fits its respective sign. (centaur archer)

Abilitywise you actually don't have the abuses of V and VI (or even FFT's), much less the insane formulas of X. Nobody is gimped on stats or abilities for once.

Technicks have the goofy attacks and abilities you'd expect from Blue Magic and several other sets (like Gil Toss).

Mug would actually be counterproductive against a lot of the enemies you want to steal from. And the drop rates are downright generous compared to Vagrant Story or even the rare items in IV.

Counter is the best it's ever been due to Genji Armor.

It's already easy enough to ignore or halve damage via equipment.

Jump is a generic 60 attack Bangaa special. I have a 150 attack spear. Yeah, let's see which one does more damage.
 
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Well, I'm really starting to hate FFXII, but for completely different reasons than the OP and the other posters who didn't care for it.

I can't follow what the hell is going on in combat to save my life. Most of the time you can't find a camera angle where you can %^@$ing SEE anything, and if you waste time trying and the fight is challenging enough that you need that information, you're dead. Things come at you so fast you can't respond to them all, even with the game set to pause whenever you enter a menu. The gambit system helps, but in the more challenging fights you have to change or override them so often they might as well not be there. And it's missing some really basic, obvious things, like a way to reliably stick to the same target until it's dead or a command to steal only from enemies you haven't already stolen from.

The previous games in the series all gave you really good feedback and time to think through your actions. You could see everything relevant that was happening; there was no way to have something jump down from above and kill you before you knew what the hell was going on or for one of your characters to run off and get him/herself killed because you were concentrating on something else or to run into a situation where it was IMPOSSIBLE to see every character and monster simultaneously.

The level grinding also seems to be way up. No matter how many people have tried to tell me it was a necessity, I have never needed to level-grind to finish a Final Fantasy game before. In this one, if you just follow the plot, you're constantly broke and stuck with the second- or third-best available equipment, at least as far as I've gotten in the game, even if you steal from nearly every enemy as I've been doing. If I want to be constantly broke and unable to afford the nice toys I'd like, I have real life for that; in a fantasy game I want to at least occasionally get a break from it. My usual refusal to level-grind may, in this case, be tantamount to a refusal to play the game at all - which is fine, since I'm not having much fun with it anyway.

They had an interface that worked and that helped make their series one of the most beloved in the industry, and they threw it away and made some sort of imitation online game instead. I don't understand what could have possessed them to do that; if it's not broken, don't fix it. If they don't either go back to the old-style interface or at least find a way to give decent feedback within the new one, the Final Fantasy series is over for me.
 
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