The official (belated) "Final Fantasy XII is dissapointing" thread.

[DeathsHand]

Originally Posted by BLueFire

That game is boring.

Very boring.

Pretty much...

I mean don't get me wrong... There was a point a couple hours into the game where I got a bit excited and nostalgic about the Final Fantasy experience, I suppose around the time their journey really began to start...

But as time went on and nothing much happened, I began to lose interest, and with the loss of interest I started forgetting some of the minor characters' names and previous events (which caused some plot threads to fly over my head until I stumbled upon them again)... So the whole experience just kind of snowballed...

Vaan went from being an annoying little "I wanna be a sky-pirate!" punk to delivering his "Now I get the real meaning of life and human nature" speech in the period of like 10 minutes of gameplay time...
I don't think they even had a cutscene for it, I just remember hearing him spout it out during some random battle.

I literally can't remember a single gripping or otherwise interesting event having happened... I remember the areas I ran through (There was the snowy place, there was the deserty place, there were a couple grasslands) and my mind can recall images from some of the various cutscenes, but I can't piece together the events of the game to the pictures...

From what I can gather, the plot revolves around a princess meeting indigenous tribesfolk, plundering their nearby ancient ruins, and having people doubt her subconscious intentions and/or ability to do whatever...

Dynast-king, sun-cryst, etc...

[bobcat]

Started playing it for a while.......never got into it unlike VII/VIII/IX/X/XI/XI-2......I finished all of these, but didn't finish FFXII...I sold it actually.

I thought it was overrated......it's good they tried something different but in the end I found the characters to be uninteresting and their relationships formed way too quickly.

The battle system, to be honest I don't like it. It's good they broke away to try something different, but I found it more repetitive than turn based somehow

[Typhoid]

Personally, I like the things you don't like.

The soundtrack I find is actually really good.

I like the fact there is no "leader" in the party. That adds to the "control who you want" aspect. You start out as Vaan, but later on in the plotline Balthier makes constant mention to how he's the "leading man."

I read it somewhere, and I can't remember where it was, but for the mostpart the loot system is far from luck, and has more to do on your skill, who killed it, and where it died.

The Bazaar goods system is easy.
You sell a certain number of loot (say 4 of A, 2 of B, and 6 of C) and the Bazaar gives you item D. However if you sell 5 of A, 2 of B, and 6 of C, you may get item E.

I'm still not entirely through the game, because I'm doing sidequests, and hunts as they come along. Which I find completely fantastic. The game is so magnificently large, that you can stick to just the story-line and that only, or actually do side-quests, which a lot of the time reveal more about your characters and their stories.

I can imagine if you just stick on the linear line, then yes - the game probably is fantastically boring. But that's like watching Die Hard, and skipping through all the talking sequences to miss the snappy one-liners.


Also, if you don't like the combat system, don't use gambits. That's why you can turn them off. If you turn off Gambits, nobody will do anything unless you tell them to. They'll just stand there and die until you tell them to "not die."

(Why is it that 3 of the 4 jungle/woods areas take place on elevated walkways?)

Because their world is abundand with jungle walkways, obviously.
Why not ask "Why is there so much fucking sand in this game? How unoriginal."

[DeathsHand]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

I like the fact there is no "leader" in the party. That adds to the "control who you want" aspect. You start out as Vaan, but later on in the plotline Balthier makes constant mention to how he's the "leading man."

And Balthier actually happens to be the one I have lead the party! Zah!
I suppose not having a "leading man" wouldn't have been as important (to me) if the party, as a whole, was interesting... But as each cutscene comes along, Ashe and Basche are standing in one corner discussing serious matters, Penelo and Vaan are over in another corner goofing off, Fran is having seizures, and Balthier is looking at himself in any reflective surface he can find.

Originally Posted by Typhoid

I read it somewhere, and I can't remember where it was, but for the mostpart the loot system is far from luck, and has more to do on your skill, who killed it, and where it died.

Well, obviously certain enemies drop certain items, and there are at least hints about those items in the bestiary... So it's not quite blind luck when it comes to the actual dropping of items...
However, receiving items from chests is fairly random...
For example, the chest containing the most powerful gun in the game has a 60% chance to appear, and when it appears it has a 50% chance to contain the gun (and that's a chest with better odds than most)... But there's one more catch, the chest doesn't contain the gun if you have the diamond armlet equipped (so much for "allows the looting of more valuable items from chests and the like" description)...

The most ridiculous example of chance has to do with the Zodiac Spear (the most powerful weapon in the game)...
You can get it in one of two places:

First is a chest somewhere that gives you basically a 1/1000 chance to obtain it...

And second is a chest in which IT ALWAYS APPEARS... So long as you don't open any of 4 specific chests (none of which give you any indication that you might not want to open them, 3 of which are practically shoved in your face)...
Which basically means that unless a friend or a walk-through had told you about it earlier, you're not getting it from that 'guaranteed' chest...

Originally Posted by Typhoid

The Bazaar goods system is easy.
You sell a certain number of loot (say 4 of A, 2 of B, and 6 of C) and the Bazaar gives you item D. However if you sell 5 of A, 2 of B, and 6 of C, you may get item E.

I know HOW it works, there's just no indication as to what items to sell to receive what...
And while it has produced a few welcome surprises for me throughout the game, creating the highest-quality items towards the end are, once again, basically left up to chance... Some of the items required are so rare that it's very very unlikely that you'd simply stumble upon them during the course of the game... And since you don't know what items you need to make what (unless, once again, you have the help of a friend or a walk-through), you wouldn't know to look for them...

Originally Posted by Typhoid

I'm still not entirely through the game, because I'm doing sidequests, and hunts as they come along. Which I find completely fantastic. The game is so magnificently large, that you can stick to just the story-line and that only, or actually do side-quests, which a lot of the time reveal more about your characters and their stories.

I can imagine if you just stick on the linear line, then yes - the game probably is fantastically boring. But that's like watching Die Hard, and skipping through all the talking sequences to miss the snappy one-liners.

As I got bored with the main quest, the side-questing completist in me DID kick-in and I did a bunch of the hunts and what-not... But that simply added to the time spent between story progression, which added to my forgetting what exactly was going on and who is who and what is what, which just added to the whole snowballing effect driving my waning interest in the game...

Originally Posted by Typhoid

Also, if you don't like the combat system, don't use gambits.

I don't... Well, aside from the basic attack gambits and one character with a healing gambit... But simple attacks seem to go a long way...
During boss battles or hunts and whatnot I'm constantly having to open the command windows to keep my folks alive...

Overall, my thoughts on the combat system itself might not be as negative as I original made them out to be... It's not "broken", it's fun at times, and I definitely didn't miss the random monster encounters...
The main problem is, even if the combat system was amazingly engaging, strategic and fun, it's still the mechanism driving me through a dull story taking place in a bland world involving characters I don't have an ounce of emotion or whatnot invested in...

But eh...