Last night I finished Final Fantasy XII with a playtime around 180 hours. (A lot of these were dedicated to auto-leveling at the end, but it's not that important.) As I decided last, week, this means I will be doing a post to review the game and talk about my general appreciation.
This post will contain spoilers because I want to do an analysis about the whole game. I will try to evaluate the good and the bad about each category, but there will also be some discussion about certain of the games' elements.
Story : 8/10
As expected of any Final Fantasy, the game comes with a pretty solid story. A tale about a princess in a conquered country fighting back against the mean empire. I have heard a lot of people comparing this to Star Wars, and I have to admit that the end game battle scene with airships and lasers feels a lot like Star Wars. However, Star Wars was not the first thing that came to my mind when playing through this story. To me, the story in Final Fantasy XII is about the atom bomb at the end of WWII. The Empire won the war by completely destroying Nabudis with Nethicite, and the main party has the choice of using the power of Nethicite to fight back the Empire, or destroy it completely. If I recall correctly, I think this is the first time in Final Fantasy that the party has been confronted with an ethic question such as this one.
The main downside of the story is that it is actually short. During my playthrough I explored almost every aspect of the game, but I am not sure how long the game would have lasted if I had only concentrated on the main storyline. I think the story was good, but it could have been exploited into something a bit longer.
I noticed something at the end of the story, when Vayne apologizes to Venat. Venat states that his goal has been accomplished, and that people are now free from the Undying, since the sun cryst is destroyed. This suggests that Venat was actually on the good side the whole time. His goal was to manipulate people into destroying Nethicite and freeing them from the "gods". Since we saw that these gods were not really friendly, my interpretation is that Venat was actually a good guy.
Characters : 9/10
The best way to start this section would be to say that I generally do not think that characters are very well designed in Final Fantasy. I usually feel like some of them are added to the party for no particular reason, and that while they have very cool designs, they feel empty, as though they lack the realism a character should show from his actions and personality.
Final Fantasy XII was a very good improvement in this aspect. When I first saw the character concept art back when the first previews were released, I have to say that I was very skeptical. Now that I have completed the game, I honestly think that these were the deepest characters I have seen in any Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy VI.
I would not go as far as say this was perfect though. There are still some characters' with a stronger purpose than others. Fran is mainly here to follow Balthier, and Penelo is mainly here to look after Vaan. And while some characters are really original, like Fran and Balthier, others fit more into a very common stereotype, like Ashe or Basch.
The thing that I really liked about the characters was that they felt real. In the first hours of the game, Vaan is being bullied by imperial guards. As a player, I felt angry towards them, and that is exactly how Vaan reacted. That is only an example, but this happened a lot during the game. The actions and thoughts displayed by the characters in the game felt very intuitive, as if that is what I would have expected if that had happened in real life. It feels as though this should be a given, but that is not something I have observed a lot from Final Fantasy before.
Gameplay : 10/10
I have seen a lot of negative reactions about Final Fantasy XII's gameplay. About how the game plays itself and you actually have nothing to do as a player. I completely disagree with those statements, and I think that the gameplay in Final Fantasy XII is probably one of the best I have had the opportunity to enjoy up to now.
The first major difference with previous games in the series is the fact that there are no random encounters and that enemies are visibly roaming in each areas. I think this is a very good step forward, as random encounters were only a fabrication of hardware limitations. Seeing enemies really makes more sense than their appearing out of thin air. Now that enemies are visible, it is easier to avoid fighting them, and it also made it possible to have enemies of various levels in each area, along with enemies with various aggressiveness.
In my opinion, the best feature in the game is the gambit system. At first it seemed a bit weird, as it is very different from the way RPGs are usually played, but I got used to it really quickly. I then proceeded to play the whole game relying solely on gambits and never playing manually. I really enjoyed trying out different strategies, and building a different "job" based on the gambits for each character. By the end of the game, each of my character had a very unique gambit setup, each setup being a very cool strategy. I do not think gambits play the game instead of the player, it's simply a way of doing what I would have done anyways by pressing the buttons. By the end of the game, gambit setup played a very important role in boss battles, and I enjoyed changing my gambits on the fly to adjust to the pattern of the boss.
The main drawback to the gambit system is that the player needs to find the gambits, and at the beginning of the game the player is left with very limited options to setup strategies for the characters. The game can be very difficult in the first hours, but after a while it becomes easier.
Content : 10/10
I stated in the Story section that the game felt quite short when it came to the storyline. This is really compensated by all the side quests available to the player. From hunts to side-quests to secret Espers, there are really a lot of areas to explore and secret bosses to defeat.
This is not something new for the Final Fantasy series. I think the level of content was comparable to Final Fantasy VII, another game where I spent a lot of time trying to complete every side-quest in the game.
I think hunts made up a very cool asset to the game. I like being in a clan and going out to defeat marks, then come back and feel like I earned fame and glory.
Apart from quests and bosses, there are also a lot of different equipment the player can use. I think it was cool that it is open to the player to choose from any type of weapon to equip their characters. It allows for a lot of customization, which is added content in my opinion.
Presentation : 8/10
The game has good presentation for a PS2 title. The characters, environments and textures were beautiful. The design for the cities and ships were very cool.
This may be a drawback of the story not being that long, but I had the impression that for a Final Fantasy title, the game did not feature that much FMVs. I guess all the efforts for this went on the ending FMV with Penelo, which I enjoyed a lot.
The music in the game is good, and I think Hitoshi Sakimoto did a great job. However, it lacked the punch one could normally hope for a Final Fantasy, as were the ones where Nobuo Uematsu was the composer.
The game had a very good presentation overall, without being really overwhelming.
Polish : 8/10
As any Final Fantasy game, it is normal to expect a high polish level from this game. There is a lot of content in this game, and it really feels as though everything has been thoroughly tested. I did not encounter any bug in the game, nor did I notice any typo. I did not notice any design flaw either. I think it can be safely said that this game did not suffer a lack of work.
The only thing I could criticize would be about enemy models being reused a lot during the game. At the beginning we would be fighting wolves. Later in the game the same enemy would show up with a different color scheme, and it would be a different enemy. One would generally expect different models for different enemies. I can very well understand that using a lot of resources is a technical issue, but I still think it would have been a better product if the variety of enemies had been greater.
Overall : 9/10
As a closing comment, I would say that Final Fantasy XII is one of my favorite games in the Final Fantasy series. I liked how the characters felt real, and I definitely liked the huge amount of content and the gambit system.
It might not be the best story, nor the best way to show feelings in a game. For all the reasons stated above I think that this was an excellent game with only a few flaws preventing it from being perfect.
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