Final Fantasy XII
By Tokyo Rude and bunuelo / July 5, 2009
Note that FFXII is not an RPG -- it is a turn-based tactics game with a mild exploration aspect, and will therefore be reviewed as such. If this statement sounds weird to you, it'd be a good idea to read this and this.
Tokyo Rude: As someone who just finished FFXII.
The game is about 60 hours too long. Ignoring complaints about the battle system, the story is stretched horribly thin, and you can feel where Matsuno walked out and people were left with the scraps and just kept them.
The story for about 40 hours is go here > no? > go here > no? > how about here > no? > HOW ABOUT ALL THE WAY OVER HERE > no? > shit? what about here? > no? > here? > yeah I guess? > the end.
And let me see if I can remember my environment chart: sewer > desert > sewer > mine > desert > canyon > mine > desert > ancient temple > corridors of a ship > cave > desert > desert > forest > mine > canyon > old temple > canyon > forest > beach > plains > plains > cave > plains > plains > old temple > corridors of a ship.
None of the environments were really engaging. The story was nowhere near complete, and the first place you go to IS A FREAKING SEWER.
Then at the end they try and throw around a lot of "friendship is important". I guess that must have been the message. At least the ending was a little more coherent than that of FFVII.
The Gambit system was perhaps fantastic in theory, but I'd need to see a youtube video of people playing and talking up what they like about it. I was monumentally bored with the game, and forced myself through it because I knew if I didn't I'd have lingering regret. There wasn't a single battle in it that I thought was "pretty fun". I kept thinking about PSO and that pressing a button to actually attack is awesome.
Another game where I press buttons to attack: Tales of Rebirth, and that game has an insane amount of systems I have no interest in exploring, but it always feels fresh in a way Grandia fans wish Grandia did.
The game telling me "The final boss is not invunerable to all attacks" for about 10 minutes was also REALLY cool. (That's sarcasm.)
I mean the first seven hours were great, and then it flatlines completely. Another FF that does this is FFVII, which then just becomes a Final Fantasy for 20 more hours, not SEVENTY.
I like didn't even give a shit about those sidequests. Mostly because I'd try to do a hunt and be told "You don't have a GLORYHOLE key". I don't even know where to get a GLORYHOLE key.
Hell anytime I tried using Summons they were almost immediately MURDERED. The Misty abilities were even stranger and more incoherent.
Finally: I can safely say FFXII is not a good video game, and I'm genuinely interested (as I always am) in someone showing me WHY they thought it was fun instead of TRYING to prove me wrong.
bunuelo: The gambit system was "fantastic" neither in theory nor in practice. I would go so far as to say that if everything else about this game weren't terrible, the gambit system would have made the bad parts of combat worse and would have been of no use in any good parts.
The system is simple. Each character has a number of gambit slots which generally increases as the character levels up. Each slot is filled with two things: a condition and an action. At first, only a few conditions ("self: hp < 50%", "enemy: closest" or "ally: poisoned", etc.) and a few actions ("use potion", "attack", "use remedy", etc.) are available, but more of each become available as the game progresses.
The slots are ordered, and when a character is on auto-battle he will check each condition (in order) and perform the action associated with the first satisfied condition. That is all.
The problem in practice is that combat is so easy that there are only a small handful of battles which cannot be won by picking appropriate gambits and just letting them win the fight for you. Once you have enough slots and options, there is rarely any need to even change the selections and order (except for the occasional minor changes for boss fights).
The more theoretical problem with gambits is that if combat were actually hard, they would be useless. By definition, gambits are only useful when optimal play can be determined by asking 5-10 yes/no questions and picking one of 5-10 appropriate responses.
In other words, gambits would only be useful during the parts of a game that are boring and simple, and they would make those parts even more boring and simple by turning them into cutscenes.
The only good thing about gambits is that they highlight the fact that the bulk of the combat portion of this game can be beaten by about 30 lines of C code.