Final Fantasy XII
A few thoughts on the game as a whole so far. I'm 40 hours in at the moment. I've played every other Final Fantasy in the series although I am no crazy fan girl. In my opinoin, Final Fantasy is not the best RPG ever made but they tend to be darn good games as a whole.
I wasn't very excited about 12 to be honest. I didn't much like the demo from Dragon Quest 8. But the battle system grew on me as I played more and more, as did the characters/story. However, my few gripes are as follows:
1) The license board. I like that you can get the augmentations and even the techniks. But it seems to make buying weapons and armor way more difficult than it needs to be. Especially because they dont tell you in shops if the armor you are purchasing is light, heavy or mystic armour and to get to the licenses on the board you have to purchase those you dont want (i.e you have to have Light Armour 6 to get Heavy armour 5). I really wish that had taken the Sphere Grid from 10 and transferred that over to the license board. That way you could upgrade your stats for each character and really have complete control over their development.
2) Vaan should not be the main character IMO. He has very little to do with the story line up to the point that I'm at anyway. He doesnt really do much of anything. I think either Ashe or Balthier or Basch would have suited better.
3) Couldnt they have changed the character models around just a little bit??? Couldnt they make Vaan and/or Ashe have brown hair thats a tad longer to seperate them more from Tidus/Yuna? And Vaan stands the same way that Tidus did with his hands behind his head. Vaan practically is Tidus, personality and all (although not nearly as whiny).
4) I miss the old summons. Like Shiva and Bahamut. I was so excited to hear they renamed them Espers after 6 but none of my old favorites are back :(:( And there's no Weapons! :'(
All in all, I do like the game very much. Its a great step forward for the series as a whole. The battle system is intuitive, fast and challenging. The story is rather intriguing - its kept me glued to the couch practically every night after work.
I wasn't very excited about 12 to be honest. I didn't much like the demo from Dragon Quest 8. But the battle system grew on me as I played more and more, as did the characters/story. However, my few gripes are as follows:
1) The license board. I like that you can get the augmentations and even the techniks. But it seems to make buying weapons and armor way more difficult than it needs to be. Especially because they dont tell you in shops if the armor you are purchasing is light, heavy or mystic armour and to get to the licenses on the board you have to purchase those you dont want (i.e you have to have Light Armour 6 to get Heavy armour 5). I really wish that had taken the Sphere Grid from 10 and transferred that over to the license board. That way you could upgrade your stats for each character and really have complete control over their development.
2) Vaan should not be the main character IMO. He has very little to do with the story line up to the point that I'm at anyway. He doesnt really do much of anything. I think either Ashe or Balthier or Basch would have suited better.
3) Couldnt they have changed the character models around just a little bit??? Couldnt they make Vaan and/or Ashe have brown hair thats a tad longer to seperate them more from Tidus/Yuna? And Vaan stands the same way that Tidus did with his hands behind his head. Vaan practically is Tidus, personality and all (although not nearly as whiny).
4) I miss the old summons. Like Shiva and Bahamut. I was so excited to hear they renamed them Espers after 6 but none of my old favorites are back :(:( And there's no Weapons! :'(
All in all, I do like the game very much. Its a great step forward for the series as a whole. The battle system is intuitive, fast and challenging. The story is rather intriguing - its kept me glued to the couch practically every night after work.