Final Fantasy XII (US PS2)
THESE IMPRESSIONS ARE SPOILER-FREE!
I've been playing this all night (I'm about ten hours into the game) and it's time to get some impressions down.
I wont make any direct comment on anything plot-related but I will say that it starts pretty slowly. I don't mean that nothing happens in the game for the first few hours... it's that you're thrust into the shoes of the main character, given a little back-story and then off you go "adventuring", seemingly for the sake of it. There has been a fair bit of setting the scene so far, but things don't really go anywhere in particular. It just seems to be one errand/task becoming another. I've been playing for ten hours and don't really have a clue what the theme of the game is. It's a lot more political than your usual uninspired FF plot, at least.
However, this hasn't really dampened my enjoyment of the game so far, because A) I can see there's a lot of potential, and B) not having to concentrate on the story all the time means you can put a lot of thought into learning the gameplay systems. I love the way they've set this game up... normally in RPGs you'll have most of the status screen features available from the beginning of the game, and then you're left to figure out which sub-menu does what and how it all works in your own time. FFXII does things differently. At the start of the game you have access to your basic Status/Inventory/Map menus, the ones that you can't really fail to understand. Then, as the game progresses, more features are introduced gradually, and only after they've been thoroughly explained by an in-game tutorial. And they aren't all thrust upon you together, in the first hour or two... they're nicely spread out so you can get to grips with one thing before the next one is brought in.
I'll explain a couple of these features so you might need to spend less time thinking about them when you start playing the game yourself.
The method of advancing your characters' abilities is pretty cool. It's called "Licenses". In essence it's similar to FFX's sphere grid, but a lot more truly customisable. Each character has a checkerboard-style board, and each square contains a handful of abilities. Let's say you start with the Steal ability. The four squares on each side of the Steal square also contain abilities, with their own EXP price values. You spend the EXP you gain from killing monsters to unlock new abilities adjacent to ones you already have. The board is a pretty large area, and bearing in mind each time you unlock a square of abilities the squares adjacent to it are now able to be unlocked means you can properly branch off in any direction, making each character specialise in a different thing. For example, using your first character you might go Steal -> Scan -> Charge -> First Aid, while, using your second character, you might venture off in the other direction on the board to go, say, Steal -> Accessories 1 -> White Magic 1 (Cure, Blindna) -> Black Magic 1 (Fire, Thunder, Blizzard).
Yeah, that's right... you have to unlock weapons, armour and accessories in the same way you do spells and abilities. However, using the board is only halfway to acquiring new stuff... you also have to actually buy them from shops too to use them. You'll only need one spell scroll thing to unlock the spell for all characters (as long as each individual character has unlocked it on the board) but you need one individual weapon/armour/accessory for each character. I think it's a pretty decent system because, as I said before, it's really possible to customise characters straight away, whether you choose to have everyone learning all the basic stuff and become well-rounded, or to have different characters specialise in higher-power abilities and weapons from the word "go" is up to you. As long as you have the EXP points you can do what you want.
If you didn't already know, battles are done in a more similar way to FFXI than any other FF. That is, you don't warp to a separate battle screen for the battles... the monsters roam the world and you can choose to engage them or avoid them (unless they chase and catch up with you). To make this style of battle work, in a multiple-character party you will control the "party leader" (who you can choose), and the other characters in the party will follow you around, attacking when you attack. A few hours into the game the "Gambit" system will be unlocked, and now you can properly start customising things. The Gambit system allows you to program things (specifically) for the non-party leaders (although party leader can also be instructed) to do in battle. For example, in my game my first rule is to have my backup characters use a Cure spell if the HP of anyone in the party goes below 70% of their total. The second rule is to attack the enemy currently being targeted by the party leader. This ensures that most of the time all characters in the party will attack the same enemy, except when anyone gets low on HP, someone will top it up for them by using Cure.
I love the customisability of this... each Gambit rule is made up of two parts: you could call them the "IF" and "THEN" parts. eg. For the 70% HP Cure rule, the "IF" part is "If any ally's HP < 70%" and the "THEN" part is "use Cure on them". But you can easily switch that Cure part for anything else. You could set it to cast Protect on them or even any destructive spell; in other words if you're not thinking straight you can mess things up. And that's where the challenge of the battle system lies... not in pressing X continuously and occasionally choosing Cure like in all the other FF games... but in programming your Gambits to react to every eventuality that will occur in a battle.
Martin was asking me about the Gambit system and saying that he would probably turn it off and do battles manually because he didn't like the idea of the game playing itself, and I had similar concerns before I actually played the game. But now I see it works really well because there are so many battles that it would be incredibly tedious to do everything yourself. It's a different kind of satisfaction... running through a dungeon and having your characters react automatically according to predetermined rules you've set them. Of course you CAN turn Gambits off if you really want to. New "IF" Gambit rules can be found or purchased, and any spell or ability you currently have unlocked can be used as a "THEN". Extra Gambit slots can be unlocked via the Licenses checkerboard thing. I really like these features in the game, I think they're really inventive and huge fun to mess around with. Excellenté!
Speaking more generally about the game, all the usual FF stuff seems to be there... chocobos and moogles show up in the first hour. Familiar themes are present in the music, etc.
Oh yeah, the English voice acting... it's a lot better than I thought it would be. Think more Metal Gear Solid quality than FFX. Some of the accents are a bit dubious but all speech flows naturally and there are no awkward, forced laughs, disc-accessing pauses or anything else that will make you cringe. No problems at all with that aspect of the game so far.
If you aren't hyped about this game yet then I think you should be! I've got a long way to go yet obviously, but everything so far has been very promising. This could be the best FF since FFVII. And I don't make stupid statements like that lightly. ;-)
If anyone has any questions about anything I'll try my best to answer them.
I've been playing this all night (I'm about ten hours into the game) and it's time to get some impressions down.
I wont make any direct comment on anything plot-related but I will say that it starts pretty slowly. I don't mean that nothing happens in the game for the first few hours... it's that you're thrust into the shoes of the main character, given a little back-story and then off you go "adventuring", seemingly for the sake of it. There has been a fair bit of setting the scene so far, but things don't really go anywhere in particular. It just seems to be one errand/task becoming another. I've been playing for ten hours and don't really have a clue what the theme of the game is. It's a lot more political than your usual uninspired FF plot, at least.
However, this hasn't really dampened my enjoyment of the game so far, because A) I can see there's a lot of potential, and B) not having to concentrate on the story all the time means you can put a lot of thought into learning the gameplay systems. I love the way they've set this game up... normally in RPGs you'll have most of the status screen features available from the beginning of the game, and then you're left to figure out which sub-menu does what and how it all works in your own time. FFXII does things differently. At the start of the game you have access to your basic Status/Inventory/Map menus, the ones that you can't really fail to understand. Then, as the game progresses, more features are introduced gradually, and only after they've been thoroughly explained by an in-game tutorial. And they aren't all thrust upon you together, in the first hour or two... they're nicely spread out so you can get to grips with one thing before the next one is brought in.
I'll explain a couple of these features so you might need to spend less time thinking about them when you start playing the game yourself.
The method of advancing your characters' abilities is pretty cool. It's called "Licenses". In essence it's similar to FFX's sphere grid, but a lot more truly customisable. Each character has a checkerboard-style board, and each square contains a handful of abilities. Let's say you start with the Steal ability. The four squares on each side of the Steal square also contain abilities, with their own EXP price values. You spend the EXP you gain from killing monsters to unlock new abilities adjacent to ones you already have. The board is a pretty large area, and bearing in mind each time you unlock a square of abilities the squares adjacent to it are now able to be unlocked means you can properly branch off in any direction, making each character specialise in a different thing. For example, using your first character you might go Steal -> Scan -> Charge -> First Aid, while, using your second character, you might venture off in the other direction on the board to go, say, Steal -> Accessories 1 -> White Magic 1 (Cure, Blindna) -> Black Magic 1 (Fire, Thunder, Blizzard).
Yeah, that's right... you have to unlock weapons, armour and accessories in the same way you do spells and abilities. However, using the board is only halfway to acquiring new stuff... you also have to actually buy them from shops too to use them. You'll only need one spell scroll thing to unlock the spell for all characters (as long as each individual character has unlocked it on the board) but you need one individual weapon/armour/accessory for each character. I think it's a pretty decent system because, as I said before, it's really possible to customise characters straight away, whether you choose to have everyone learning all the basic stuff and become well-rounded, or to have different characters specialise in higher-power abilities and weapons from the word "go" is up to you. As long as you have the EXP points you can do what you want.
If you didn't already know, battles are done in a more similar way to FFXI than any other FF. That is, you don't warp to a separate battle screen for the battles... the monsters roam the world and you can choose to engage them or avoid them (unless they chase and catch up with you). To make this style of battle work, in a multiple-character party you will control the "party leader" (who you can choose), and the other characters in the party will follow you around, attacking when you attack. A few hours into the game the "Gambit" system will be unlocked, and now you can properly start customising things. The Gambit system allows you to program things (specifically) for the non-party leaders (although party leader can also be instructed) to do in battle. For example, in my game my first rule is to have my backup characters use a Cure spell if the HP of anyone in the party goes below 70% of their total. The second rule is to attack the enemy currently being targeted by the party leader. This ensures that most of the time all characters in the party will attack the same enemy, except when anyone gets low on HP, someone will top it up for them by using Cure.
I love the customisability of this... each Gambit rule is made up of two parts: you could call them the "IF" and "THEN" parts. eg. For the 70% HP Cure rule, the "IF" part is "If any ally's HP < 70%" and the "THEN" part is "use Cure on them". But you can easily switch that Cure part for anything else. You could set it to cast Protect on them or even any destructive spell; in other words if you're not thinking straight you can mess things up. And that's where the challenge of the battle system lies... not in pressing X continuously and occasionally choosing Cure like in all the other FF games... but in programming your Gambits to react to every eventuality that will occur in a battle.
Martin was asking me about the Gambit system and saying that he would probably turn it off and do battles manually because he didn't like the idea of the game playing itself, and I had similar concerns before I actually played the game. But now I see it works really well because there are so many battles that it would be incredibly tedious to do everything yourself. It's a different kind of satisfaction... running through a dungeon and having your characters react automatically according to predetermined rules you've set them. Of course you CAN turn Gambits off if you really want to. New "IF" Gambit rules can be found or purchased, and any spell or ability you currently have unlocked can be used as a "THEN". Extra Gambit slots can be unlocked via the Licenses checkerboard thing. I really like these features in the game, I think they're really inventive and huge fun to mess around with. Excellenté!
Speaking more generally about the game, all the usual FF stuff seems to be there... chocobos and moogles show up in the first hour. Familiar themes are present in the music, etc.
Oh yeah, the English voice acting... it's a lot better than I thought it would be. Think more Metal Gear Solid quality than FFX. Some of the accents are a bit dubious but all speech flows naturally and there are no awkward, forced laughs, disc-accessing pauses or anything else that will make you cringe. No problems at all with that aspect of the game so far.
If you aren't hyped about this game yet then I think you should be! I've got a long way to go yet obviously, but everything so far has been very promising. This could be the best FF since FFVII. And I don't make stupid statements like that lightly. ;-)
If anyone has any questions about anything I'll try my best to answer them.