NLU Weekly #10 (November 2, 2006) - Final Fantasy XII Impressions |
 Final Fantasy XII Impressions Final Fantasy XII's can be summed up as Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings. It draws so many themes and even similar scenes from Star Wars it's almost unbelievable. Themes like a small "rebel" force goes against giant empire, "rogue" pirate and his animal-ish companion, a Princess of a lost kingdom with attitude and even a young boy who dreams of doing bigger things (like becoming a pilot of his own airship). Scenes: One of the Judges (who even has a evil and faceless mask) talks to a bounty hunter about getting Balthier in a scene right out of "The Empire Strikes Back" and after you escape the prison you meet Balthier and Fran in a bar and he tells you to meet him in the aerodome (which is essentially an airport or docking bay). And the launch sequence even has that Docking Bay 94 feeling. There are even more that I noticed but I won't spoil any more for you, in fact I haven't played enough to talk about the story all that much so I'm going to talk about the new battle system and the License Board. No random fights. Happy now? Actually, even though I don't mind and even border on liking random fights, it's refreshing not to have to deal with getting into a fight every minute or so. Of course unless you hold down the "Fleeing Button" (I only call it that because it prints "Fleeing" on the screen when you hold it) you are pretty much going to have to fight most of the time anyway. But you won't want to avoid fighting anyway (unless you need to) because you need to fight a lot to get three things, License Points (LP), Experience Points (EXP) and loot. I'll get to LP in a moment and EXP is pretty obvious, but loot... Loot is new. Loot is different. And you need loot to get money (Gil). When you defeat an enemy sometimes it drops an icon, this is an item of some sort. Sometimes they are usable items like potions or gear for your character's use, but most the time they are items that your party can't use, but can sell to stores for Gil. That's right monsters no longer carry money, makes sense really. This system even rewards you for killing the same type of monster in chains, so if you keep killing wolves the more in a row you take down (without killing a different type of enemy) the bigger the loot drop is (sometimes multiple items or rare gear). I actually like this system it was the logical way to fix one of the most glaring RPG cleches. The other new feature of the battle system is the Gambit system, it is a command system for your characters. At first and at least in my first 10 hours with the game it may seem rather useless. You just don't have the abilities or the list of actions to use the feature effectively. It feels as if they should have maybe given you a few more "free" commands. In fact and I will tread on the same territory with the license board, but I think they hold too much back at the start to have these features make you go: "Hey that's really awesome, I can program my characters to fight for me in great detail" but instead they make you buy most of the action gambits (at least they are pretty inexpensive) and you struggle to understand why you would want to use the feature. Final Fantasy XII is not noob friendly. During the fights most actions play out on their own, you can even program your character (the leader) to attack the nearest character and you don't have to do anything during most normal encounters. Boss fights are different because they are much stronger they can change the tide of battle quickly and you need to change up your tactics on the fly. In fact you can reprogram Gambits at anytime (even during combat) and basically out think and out plan your enemy. Of course you can just tell everyone what to do and your issued commands have priority over gambit commands. You see in Final Fantasy XII you are the commander, you create a battle plan (gambits) and give orders on the fly if things don't go to plan or when quick thinking is needed. It's pretty fun, but sometimes takes a lot of thinking on your part before the battle even starts. I've complained before about how I thought Final Fantasy X's sphere grid was complicated, but the License Board takes the cake. In fact I have a new found respect for how easy to use the Sphere Grid is after this. Okay, it's not really that the LB is hard to use, it's just that it suffers from the same problem as the Gambit System. It has a tremendous learning curve and doesn't prove itself early on in the game. But before I get to the problems I have found with the License Board lets talk about how it works. Basically it's a checkered board and each one of the tiles has an ability, effect or enhancement on it. There are two parts to the board the upper section contains Magick (I hate that it's called Magick and plural Magicks) Spells, Augments (which are bonuses to characters stats and skills, like +100 HP or Magick costs 10% less, additional Gambit slots and such), Technicks (ugh) (which are skills like stealing and stuff) and Accessories (bangles, guantlets and bracers and such). The lower part of the board is the weapons and armor section. You see other than the augments section of tiles on the board, which have an immediate effect on your characters when you unlock them using your License Points (LP) the others aren't effective to unlock unless you have that weapon, armor, spell, accessory or Technik in your inventory. Of course it works the other way as well you might have found an awesome sword, but if you haven't unlocked the license you can't use it. Basically, the idea is the LB is a clean slate to start building your characters they way you want. Want Basch to be a white mage, go ahead. Want Penelo to just beat the crap out of everyone, go ahead. Every character starts about the same in FF XII and it's up to you to decide what they specialize in. That's all great and everything, it's really nice to be able to use any character in the game and make them what you want... if it weren't for one thing. If they want me to build a character to my liking, why do they hide the information on unopened tiles? If I want to make a specialty character I have to guess what direction to open tiles, even the sphere grid told you what each sphere contained. But "Armor 3 ???" doesn't really help me figure out where I need to go to find the tile that allows me to use the armor I just found. In short it's convoluted. It is a good system, but it could have been a really fun character sculptor, but as it is, it's hard to use and you'll find yourself stuck early on waiting to get the weapon or armor or spell or technick to have a reason to advance on the board, like I said about the only place that is instantly gratifying is the Augments section of the board. Another thing: it's a good thing the battles are so fun because most enemies only give you ONE LP (though bosses might give 2, 7 or 20), you're going to have fight a lot of battles to get the LP you need to even just make specialty characters. Not mention the LB takes the place of the "excitement" of leveling up, in fact, all "Level Up" does is give you a little boost to max HP and MP, which is quite boring really. Other stats like Defense and attack, etc are raised via weapons and armor. Both the Gambit and LB systems are in depth but in the 10 hours I have played haven't come in to play all that much and just kind of have me staring at the screen wondering what to do with them or thinking about how I'm going to use them in the future. It's different, which is how would describe my initial feelings about this new FF. Even though I have issues and complaints about the new systems this game is spectacular so far. I just finished a tricky battle that I just won by a hair, just before I sat down to write this a couple of hours a go, which I enjoyed quite a bit. The story is interesting and just getting started the characters are interesting and the voice acting is great as well. The battles are also really fun and I'm sure the Gambits and LB will come around as I get deeper in to the game. I'll have more Final Fantasy XII updates during the next little while. Closing Out This was probably more intense and in-depth than you probably expected, hopefully you got to read the whole thing. Like I said I will have more FF XII coverage over the next little while. Before I go, I checked out the two new free maps for Perfect Dark Zero. Remakes of two of my favorite levels from Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark on the N64: Facility and Ruins they are enhanced with a few new obstacles here and there but they play the same... I got really excited to try these maps, but then got quickly reminded why I stopped playing PD Zero a mere three days after I got it and my 360 and haven't played since. It sucks... A six year old N64 game (PD 1) is more fun to play than this garbage... Kill-Crapic. When airships plied the skies. Loading Complete! |
POSTED ON NOVEMBER 2, 2006 |
