ZarkSeven

Before you say “Why is he giving game impressions on a game that came out in 2006,” let me say (a) I don’t care, and (b) any decent game is worth playing at any time, not just within so many days of release.  I actually started playing Final Fantasy XII shortly after it was released.  Unfortunately, it was released on October 31, 2006 in North America, a mere 20 days before a little console called the Nintendo Wii came out.  I got distracted by the release of the Wii started playing Zelda Twilight Princess.  I tried to juggle both and ended up finishing neither.  But the lure of Final Fantasy XII persisted, and I picked it back up again in the Fall of ’08, finally finishing the main storyline in January 2009.  So was it worth a two year playthrough?

Introduction

Final Fantasy XII is the twelfth installment in the series from Square Enix (don’t get me started on US and Japanese numbering sequences) and it’s the first Final Fantasy game I played through from beginning to end.  I’ve never owned a Playstation and jumped right to the Playstation 2, so I never played Final Fantasy VII (gasp!).  Seems like by now I own practically every Final Fantasy game worth playing, and have dabbled in most of them at least a little.  I even played Final Fantasy XI on my PS2 for a few months (yes, I bought the PS2 version with the ill-fated hard drive).  I liked the look, feel, and sound of Final Fantasy XI, but hated the necessity of grouping in order to even level up past the introductory levels.  When I saw Final Fantasy XII, it reminded me a lot of the MMO, so I was eager to give it a try.

Final Fantasy XII was very well recieved.  It was the 4th highest selling game on the Playstation 2 console worldwide, and won numerous “Playstation Game of the Year” awards for 2006.  Where it lost out on full “Game of the Year” honors, it was usually to the original Gears of War, where it was in good company.  In 2007, it spawned a Nintendo DS spin-off called Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, set a year after the events of the original game.

Story

The game is set in the world of Ivalice.  Having conquered the Kingdom of Nabradia and the Republic of Landis in Valendia, the Empire of Arcadia is busy warring with the nation of Rozzaria.  Between Arcadia and Rozarria lies the Kingdom of Dalmasca, which had been subjugated by Arcadia two years prior to the heart of the story.  The marriage of Princess Ashe of Dalmasca to Prince Asler of Nabradia is interrupted by the invasion of Arcadia.  Prince Asler is killed, and the Dalmascan king is forced to sign a treaty with Arcadia and then is apparently slaughtered by Basch, one of his knights.  This is witnessed by another knight named Reks, who dies after revealing what had happened.  Basch is said to be executed and the Princess Ashe apparently commits suicide.

The main storyline revolves around Vaan, an orphan of Rabanastre in Dalmasca and younger brother of Reks.  While a ‘celebration’ is held in Rabanastre regarding the appointment of Vayne, the story’s protagonest, Vaan sneaks into the palace, to the displeasure of his friend Penelo.  There he meets with sky pirates Balthier and Fran.  They meet the leader of the resistance (who turns out to be Princess Ashe – surprise!), get caught, and are thrown in the Nabradia dungeons, where they team up with Basch (surprise surprise!).  The six of them – Vaan, Penelo, Fran, Balthier, Ashe, and Basch – form the crux of the story to stop the war, clear Basch’s name, and restore Ashe as Queen of Dalmasca.  Among other things.  Vayne Solidor has other plans, however. 

Gameplay

The gameplay is from a third person perspective, with the camera allowing 360 degree movement, unlike previous Final Fantasy titles.  Also unlike previous titles, the concept of random battles was dropped.  Enemies are seen directly on screen and can be fought or avoided (with the exception of boss battles).  Both of these aspects brought home to me the general feel of Final Fantasy XI.  When in cities and towns, you control only one character, Vaan, who represents the whole party, but out in the rest of the world, you control one character and two others follow, which form your “current” party, and the other 3 characters are standby.  Everything is done “at scale” with your characters.

The world itself is huge, with many zones that open up to you as you progress through the storyline.  You travel mainly by foot, although at certain times and locations you can travel manually by chocobo or automatically via airship or teleport crystal.  You can only save your game at save crystals, which I’m not a huge fan of.  I’d rather stop playing at any time and save wherever I want.  But most zones had multiple save crystals and it never became a huge deal.

Combat is controlled through a unique Gambit system.  By this method, you command your characters based on certain combinations of actions.  For instance, you could make one character your healer, who would first check to make sure no one was dead, then check to see if anyone had some status ailment against them (like slow, or stop, or disease), then check to see if anyone needed healing, then attack (if none of the previous conditions existed), and finally heal or cast protect after the battle is over.  Your main tanking character, on the other hand, might have gambits that get him straight into battle and not care what other party members were doing.  In this way, you could “program” your parties to behave a particular way in combat, and depending on how good you were at gambits, your battles could almost play out without you.

I say almost because there is an endless amount of tweaking you could do.  Gambits are definitely the strength and weakness of this game.  They are pretty daunting at first.  Although you slowly gain more and more gambit options as the story progresses, it still took a little while to get the hang of how to set them up most effectively.  I ended up reading some suggestions on some internet boards, and what I set up worked for the most part, but they sort of fell apart during boss battles and I ended up doing a lot of things manually during those battles.

Combat grants you both experience, which level up your character, and license points.  Each character has a license board, which is vaguely like a non-square chess board with tiles you unlock on every square.  Different tiles are worth different license points, and as you spend license points you reveal tiles that allow you to cast new spells, or wear different armor, or wield different weapons, or use a variety of technics.  So the more license points you spend, the stronger your character becomes.  License points and experience come hand in hand, so you level up and get XP at a pretty consistent rate.

Speaking of leveling, I thought that Square Enix did a decent job of progressing you through the story line, and leveling your character at the right times.  There were only a few times in my mid 20′s where I felt like I had done all the side questing I could do and still I was a little underpowered for the next main quest zone.  I ran around randomly killing things to raise me level a little.  Once I got the Embroidered Tippet accessory on each of my three “current” characters, which doubles XP, and the Golden Armlet on my “standby” characters, which doubles license points, things moved pretty fast.  (Only the three “current” characters get XP from battle, but all six get license points each battle.) 

The developers also did a decent job with gil (money) management.  I never felt the entire game like I was floating in money.  I usually had just about enough to upgrade most of my stuff, but not 100%, so I was always wishing for a little more.  You need to buy spells and technics too, which I usually upgraded first.  Even if you acquire the ability to use a spell through the License Board, you still have to acquire the spell, just like acquiring the ability to wield a certain sword does not automatically give you the actual sword.

Regarding spellcasting, the system is pretty deep, but I honestly didn’t use it much.  I generally tried to have my three “current” characters be a tank, a spellcaster/ranged, and a healer/ranged.  But I definitely didn’t get the most of of the casting system.  Each character has a regular mana (mist) pool to draw from.  You can also perform Quickenings, which are like Limit Breaks in previous Final Fantasy games.  Each character can learn 3 unique Quickenings from the License Board, and you can string them together during combat to do large combo attacks called Mist Chains.  The more you string together, the more damage you can do.  But they use a lot of mana, so I generally only did them during some boss battles, or to try to clear out a large group of mobs attacking me.  You can also acquire Espers by defeating them in battle, which you can then call to battle for you.   I got a bunch of Espers but rarely used them.

Extras

There are no extras, in the sense that if you play through the game on a certain difficulty, you unlock bonus things or whatnot.  But there is a ton of extra content.  I mean, a lot.  There are side quests, and there are hunts you can take that send you off to track down rare beasts.  There are “mini quests” like fishing.  I’d venture to guess you could spend as much time on the additional stuff as you do on the main quest line.  Maybe more.

Oddly, there are special weapons you can obtain in the game, but I only got one, and that was only by reading a guide.  When you get out to some of the “corners” of the license board, you’ll come across named weapons.  Buying its license will allow you to wield it.  Finding it in game, however, is another story.  In fact, the only one I ever got was the Zodiac Spear, which you could only get buy NOT opening certain treasure chests along the way.  And you would never know just by playing to do that.  Dumb design.  Is that so you’re forced to buy a guide book?  Luckily, you don’t really need such weapons to finish the game, but if you are going to include them in game, and players are going to spend a lot of time playing throughout you game, then give them a reward for doing so!  The Zodiac Spear was very powerful, once I acquired and was able to use it.

Conclusion

Final Fantasy XII is a long game.  It tracks your time played, and I was at 88 hours when I finished the main storyline.  I did some of the side quests and hunts that I could along the way, but there are still a ton I left unfinished.  My characters were all around level 50-51 when I finished the final boss battle, but according to some guides I’ve seen, there are side quests designed for characters in their 70′s, and I’m pretty sure you can level your character to level 99.  There are whole side quest zones I never even entered!

The storyline is rich, and the voice acting was very good.  There was a good balance of cut-scenes and gameplay, and I was amazed at how much content was there, and how good it looked, for a game that fit entirely on one PS2 disc.  Some developers can’t get a 10th of that on one disc!  The musical score is very good as well.  I listen to the 4-disc soundtrack set on my iPod frequently.

I transferred the save game from my PS2 to my PS3, and played 90% of the game on the PS3 with no issues.  I do have the original 60GB fully hardware backward compatible PS3 though.  You may have a different experience with a different PS3.

You know a game is good when you “finish” it and you still feel compelled to continue playing.  There are so many games out there I want to complete (e.g. I never finished the Zelda game mentioned earlier), and with no other clear end goal other than to finish up all the extra hunts and side quests, I doubt I’ll play it any more.  But even after 88 hours, the gameplay is still compelling.  If you only played one or two games a year, and wanted something to last you a long while that you’d really enjoy and get your money’s worth, Final Fantasy XII would be an excellent choice.  If you want a deep, full fledged Japanese RPG, the Final Fantasy series is considered top-of-the-line, and in my opinion, Final Fantasy XII ranks up there with the best of the best.

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