Nope don't like it. Characters are mostly generic. Story is not appealing. Combat is not to my liking. Dropped
Combate desse aqui é incrivelmente muito bom
Set up your dudes' brains so you can just turn on 4x and walk into idiots.
idk i'm not crazy about it
My feelings towards this game have changed many times over the years. It was one of the first Final Fantasy games I experimented with, and it gave me a good first impression, but going back as an adult really soured me on the gameplay. Eventually, I found an appreciation for the story, but having now finished it, I’m deeply lukewarm on that element of the game as well. Disappointed as I am to say it, Final Fantasy XII has landed amongst my least favorite games in the entire series.
Let’s start with the gameplay, which has always been a huge point of contention. Lots of people love the gambit system, and in theory, I can see why - the idea of finally being able to manually program those stupid AI companions that are always acting like idiots seems so appealing on the surface, but in practice, it creates far more problems than it fixes.
I’m just going to get this out of the way: for 99% of its runtime, Final Fantasy XII is a game that plays itself. I may be somewhat biased against this style of game, because I write code for a living, but the gambit setups required to breeze through the main story while almost never issuing a single command in battle were laughably rudimentary. At the start of the game, watching the party execute their gambits was vaguely satisfying in a sort of Rube Goldberg-esque sense, but the novelty quickly wore off as it became clear that I would almost never have to touch those gambits again. Almost every single encounter in this entire game boiled down to “walk at the enemies and either press fast forward or put down the controller”. With how massive some of the explorable dungeon-type zones were, this resulted in an utterly astounding amount of dead time where absolutely nothing interesting was happening for literal hours on end.
The most egregious consequence of the battle system is that it completely deflates the tension at key moments in the story. The fast forward function in the Zodiac Age remaster exacerbates this issue, but it’s a problem regardless; there were multiple story-critical boss battles that had huge amounts of buildup and epic cutscenes leading into their fight, but which could be defeated with literally no input whatsoever. Even walking forward was unnecessary; the boss was close enough that the party would immediately aggro on the boss, and the gambit system would cause them to kill the boss without any effort at all. For as threatening as some of these antagonists were built up to be, having their battles end with so little fanfare absolutely ruined the moment.
Most games in the Final Fantasy series have pretty shallow battle systems in practice, and rarely require you to switch up your strategy. Generally, they make up for this with thoroughly engaging stories, or by making the RPG elements deeper and offering more customization. Unfortunately, though an admirable attempt is made, neither of those things happen here.
The License Board has a critical flaw that made it really underwhelming after the first few hours of the game: it is simply far too open-ended. Most upgrades of the same “category” are placed in sequence, and this becomes a problem because there is a very clear hierarchy of which category of upgrades are the most important. As a result, the player is heavily incentivized to rush down the strongest upgrade categories as quickly as possible, which is satisfying for the first third or so of the game, but results in the License Board unlocks becoming much less satisfying to acquire as the game progresses. By the last third of the game, I stopped caring about the License Board altogether, which is not a good look for a game leaning so heavily on its RPG systems.
Many defenders of Final Fantasy XII’s gameplay cite its optional content, and in particular the experience of challenging it as early as possible, as the “fun way” to play FFXII. While I did not challenge it as early as I possibly could have, I did go out of my way to complete all of the content possible before the guest character Larsa permanently left the party. What I discovered during this experience was indeed the strongest content in the game mechanically, but still ultimately disappointing.
I do appreciate the structure of FFXII’s world. On principle, I like that you can access very threatening areas early on, and on occasion exploring them was even somewhat interesting. Unfortunately, because the core of what you do while exploring these areas is so banal and tedious, it is difficult to truly appreciate in the context of the wider game.
Here’s the thing: when tackling difficult content in FFXII, you are forced to adapt your gambits somewhat. Several strategies, like using the green magick spell Decoy to ensure all enemies attack your tank, become practically necessary in order to succeed. The problem is that any requisite tactics beyond the universally applicable ones are typically blindingly obvious as soon as you begin an encounter, and there is still an extreme lack of dynamism in how these encounters need to be approached. Once you have set up the right gambits, you will most likely never need to manually input anything again. In addition, you are heavily incentivized to make use of the Quickening system, which is easily among the worst designed game mechanics I have ever encountered.
Quickenings are this game’s equivalent to Limit Breaks in FFVII or VIII, or Trances and Overdrives in FFIX and X respectively. Each character has access to them, and in this game, activating one begins a chain wherein each active party member has the opportunity to use a Quickening of their own in sequence. Upon the start of a Quickening animation, options for the next Quickening to use appear along the bottom of the screen, and the player has a set window of time in which to choose which one to continue the chain with - this window becomes smaller as the chain grows longer.
If no Quickenings are available, the player can “shuffle” the options, which has a random chance of enabling a party member to use a Quickening, but it’s possible to roll terrible RNG repeatedly on the shuffles and have a chain end after only three hits with nothing you could have possibly done about it. This loses out on a potentially enormous amount of damage, as there is a damage multiplier which grows as the chain continues.
The biggest problem with this system, though, is the Quickening animations themselves. Each one takes an absolutely ungodly amount of time, and they are entirely unskippable. Even the fast forward function does not speed them up in any capacity. For longer chains, this can result in the entire process taking UPWARDS OF TWO MINUTES. As a reminder, the game heavily incentivizes the use of these, because they are essentially free damage, as during the animations no enemies are able to move at all. I cannot begin to describe the degree to which this obliterates any sense of pacing in harder fights. Certain hunts, like the Antilion and White Flan, which would have otherwise been fairly decent encounters, became an absolute slog as a direct result of this system. It is truly abhorrent.
While I did not tackle any of the endgame hunts after Larsa permanently left, I honestly cannot see how they could possibly be any better than this, because the system simply isn’t deep enough. The dominant strategies are so astronomically more powerful than anything else that a battle capable of beating them could only possibly come down to luck.
I’m not even convinced that forcing manual input would be an outright improvement, because this game is not designed around manually inputting commands. The menu system, and the relative frequency at which actions occur in FFXII, make it so that manually controlling any party member for any length of time quickly becomes astoundingly fiddly and tedious. On a couple of my attempted playthroughs, I tried manually inputting everything towards the start, but quickly switched to using gambits because of how awful it was. I legitimately chose to have the game play itself rather than play it manually. I can’t think of a more damning criticism of a game’s mechanics.
For a while, I thought that Final Fantasy XII was really elevated by its story. Towards the start of the game, I still feel this to be the case. Its protagonists are introduced in a compelling way, and for a time are very well characterized and given interesting conflicts to overcome. To an extent, this continues to be the case with regards to Balthier and Ashe, but just about every other major character stagnates considerably by the midpoint of the game. Certain side characters like Larsa have compelling stories, but there are issues there as well.
The biggest problems with the game’s story are ultimately its plot and themes. Simply put, the most interesting parts of the plot don’t get the focus they deserve, and the story on the whole has very little to say.
Plot-wise, there is a thoroughly fascinating political story happening with Vayne, Larsa, and the rest of the Archadian empire with what are, on paper, interesting twists and turns built off of complex character dynamics. In practice, we get glimpses of this story periodically throughout the game, but the story that makes up the overwhelming majority of what we actually see almost never intersects with it. The world of Ivalice is excellent, but it’s introduced in a very unnatural way through the eyes of the protagonists as they carry out a series of what I can only describe as MacGuffin hunts that takes them to various regions and locales. The sense of adventure is there, but the momentum of the plot feels artificial and forced, and by the end of the game wholly unrelated to the political games happening in Archades.
Thematically, the game does attempt a “revenge is bad” plot in its final act, but it’s such a shallow exploration of the consequences thanks to the black-and-white situation it lays out that I found it difficult to get invested in the moral “dilemma” in any capacity. Beyond that, the theme of the game is a very basic “security vs freedom” story where the villain’s cruelty and desire for world domination annihilates any moral ambiguity that could otherwise have been possible.
I will say that Final Fantasy XII is reasonably strong in terms of presentation. The visuals, especially in the Zodiac Age remaster, are fantastic thanks to the distinctive and unique art style, and the soundtrack is fairly strong on the whole, even if it’s not my favorite. As previously stated, the world of Ivalice is excellent - it’s just a shame the experience of exploring it is not.
Where the game really fell apart for me was in its ending. The penultimate dungeon was a complete slog that introduced nothing new except for some annoying trial-and-error “puzzle” mechanics and was visually repetitive throughout, and the final dungeon was extremely short and uninteresting. The final boss, while probably the most interesting encounter in the main story, was still extremely simple and made for an underwhelming fight just like all the others.
I did not enjoy Final Fantasy XII. I tried - I really tried - but in the end I had to conclude that this game is just a failure on almost every level. While flashy and fun on the surface, any attempt to explore deeper just reveals nothing of substance. If you enjoy this game, I’m genuinely glad that you got more out of it than I did. For me, it’s easily one of the worst games I’ve ever completed, which is a shame for an entry in a series that I love as much as I love Final Fantasy.
Let’s start with the gameplay, which has always been a huge point of contention. Lots of people love the gambit system, and in theory, I can see why - the idea of finally being able to manually program those stupid AI companions that are always acting like idiots seems so appealing on the surface, but in practice, it creates far more problems than it fixes.
I’m just going to get this out of the way: for 99% of its runtime, Final Fantasy XII is a game that plays itself. I may be somewhat biased against this style of game, because I write code for a living, but the gambit setups required to breeze through the main story while almost never issuing a single command in battle were laughably rudimentary. At the start of the game, watching the party execute their gambits was vaguely satisfying in a sort of Rube Goldberg-esque sense, but the novelty quickly wore off as it became clear that I would almost never have to touch those gambits again. Almost every single encounter in this entire game boiled down to “walk at the enemies and either press fast forward or put down the controller”. With how massive some of the explorable dungeon-type zones were, this resulted in an utterly astounding amount of dead time where absolutely nothing interesting was happening for literal hours on end.
The most egregious consequence of the battle system is that it completely deflates the tension at key moments in the story. The fast forward function in the Zodiac Age remaster exacerbates this issue, but it’s a problem regardless; there were multiple story-critical boss battles that had huge amounts of buildup and epic cutscenes leading into their fight, but which could be defeated with literally no input whatsoever. Even walking forward was unnecessary; the boss was close enough that the party would immediately aggro on the boss, and the gambit system would cause them to kill the boss without any effort at all. For as threatening as some of these antagonists were built up to be, having their battles end with so little fanfare absolutely ruined the moment.
Most games in the Final Fantasy series have pretty shallow battle systems in practice, and rarely require you to switch up your strategy. Generally, they make up for this with thoroughly engaging stories, or by making the RPG elements deeper and offering more customization. Unfortunately, though an admirable attempt is made, neither of those things happen here.
The License Board has a critical flaw that made it really underwhelming after the first few hours of the game: it is simply far too open-ended. Most upgrades of the same “category” are placed in sequence, and this becomes a problem because there is a very clear hierarchy of which category of upgrades are the most important. As a result, the player is heavily incentivized to rush down the strongest upgrade categories as quickly as possible, which is satisfying for the first third or so of the game, but results in the License Board unlocks becoming much less satisfying to acquire as the game progresses. By the last third of the game, I stopped caring about the License Board altogether, which is not a good look for a game leaning so heavily on its RPG systems.
Many defenders of Final Fantasy XII’s gameplay cite its optional content, and in particular the experience of challenging it as early as possible, as the “fun way” to play FFXII. While I did not challenge it as early as I possibly could have, I did go out of my way to complete all of the content possible before the guest character Larsa permanently left the party. What I discovered during this experience was indeed the strongest content in the game mechanically, but still ultimately disappointing.
I do appreciate the structure of FFXII’s world. On principle, I like that you can access very threatening areas early on, and on occasion exploring them was even somewhat interesting. Unfortunately, because the core of what you do while exploring these areas is so banal and tedious, it is difficult to truly appreciate in the context of the wider game.
Here’s the thing: when tackling difficult content in FFXII, you are forced to adapt your gambits somewhat. Several strategies, like using the green magick spell Decoy to ensure all enemies attack your tank, become practically necessary in order to succeed. The problem is that any requisite tactics beyond the universally applicable ones are typically blindingly obvious as soon as you begin an encounter, and there is still an extreme lack of dynamism in how these encounters need to be approached. Once you have set up the right gambits, you will most likely never need to manually input anything again. In addition, you are heavily incentivized to make use of the Quickening system, which is easily among the worst designed game mechanics I have ever encountered.
Quickenings are this game’s equivalent to Limit Breaks in FFVII or VIII, or Trances and Overdrives in FFIX and X respectively. Each character has access to them, and in this game, activating one begins a chain wherein each active party member has the opportunity to use a Quickening of their own in sequence. Upon the start of a Quickening animation, options for the next Quickening to use appear along the bottom of the screen, and the player has a set window of time in which to choose which one to continue the chain with - this window becomes smaller as the chain grows longer.
If no Quickenings are available, the player can “shuffle” the options, which has a random chance of enabling a party member to use a Quickening, but it’s possible to roll terrible RNG repeatedly on the shuffles and have a chain end after only three hits with nothing you could have possibly done about it. This loses out on a potentially enormous amount of damage, as there is a damage multiplier which grows as the chain continues.
The biggest problem with this system, though, is the Quickening animations themselves. Each one takes an absolutely ungodly amount of time, and they are entirely unskippable. Even the fast forward function does not speed them up in any capacity. For longer chains, this can result in the entire process taking UPWARDS OF TWO MINUTES. As a reminder, the game heavily incentivizes the use of these, because they are essentially free damage, as during the animations no enemies are able to move at all. I cannot begin to describe the degree to which this obliterates any sense of pacing in harder fights. Certain hunts, like the Antilion and White Flan, which would have otherwise been fairly decent encounters, became an absolute slog as a direct result of this system. It is truly abhorrent.
While I did not tackle any of the endgame hunts after Larsa permanently left, I honestly cannot see how they could possibly be any better than this, because the system simply isn’t deep enough. The dominant strategies are so astronomically more powerful than anything else that a battle capable of beating them could only possibly come down to luck.
I’m not even convinced that forcing manual input would be an outright improvement, because this game is not designed around manually inputting commands. The menu system, and the relative frequency at which actions occur in FFXII, make it so that manually controlling any party member for any length of time quickly becomes astoundingly fiddly and tedious. On a couple of my attempted playthroughs, I tried manually inputting everything towards the start, but quickly switched to using gambits because of how awful it was. I legitimately chose to have the game play itself rather than play it manually. I can’t think of a more damning criticism of a game’s mechanics.
For a while, I thought that Final Fantasy XII was really elevated by its story. Towards the start of the game, I still feel this to be the case. Its protagonists are introduced in a compelling way, and for a time are very well characterized and given interesting conflicts to overcome. To an extent, this continues to be the case with regards to Balthier and Ashe, but just about every other major character stagnates considerably by the midpoint of the game. Certain side characters like Larsa have compelling stories, but there are issues there as well.
The biggest problems with the game’s story are ultimately its plot and themes. Simply put, the most interesting parts of the plot don’t get the focus they deserve, and the story on the whole has very little to say.
Plot-wise, there is a thoroughly fascinating political story happening with Vayne, Larsa, and the rest of the Archadian empire with what are, on paper, interesting twists and turns built off of complex character dynamics. In practice, we get glimpses of this story periodically throughout the game, but the story that makes up the overwhelming majority of what we actually see almost never intersects with it. The world of Ivalice is excellent, but it’s introduced in a very unnatural way through the eyes of the protagonists as they carry out a series of what I can only describe as MacGuffin hunts that takes them to various regions and locales. The sense of adventure is there, but the momentum of the plot feels artificial and forced, and by the end of the game wholly unrelated to the political games happening in Archades.
Thematically, the game does attempt a “revenge is bad” plot in its final act, but it’s such a shallow exploration of the consequences thanks to the black-and-white situation it lays out that I found it difficult to get invested in the moral “dilemma” in any capacity. Beyond that, the theme of the game is a very basic “security vs freedom” story where the villain’s cruelty and desire for world domination annihilates any moral ambiguity that could otherwise have been possible.
I will say that Final Fantasy XII is reasonably strong in terms of presentation. The visuals, especially in the Zodiac Age remaster, are fantastic thanks to the distinctive and unique art style, and the soundtrack is fairly strong on the whole, even if it’s not my favorite. As previously stated, the world of Ivalice is excellent - it’s just a shame the experience of exploring it is not.
Where the game really fell apart for me was in its ending. The penultimate dungeon was a complete slog that introduced nothing new except for some annoying trial-and-error “puzzle” mechanics and was visually repetitive throughout, and the final dungeon was extremely short and uninteresting. The final boss, while probably the most interesting encounter in the main story, was still extremely simple and made for an underwhelming fight just like all the others.
I did not enjoy Final Fantasy XII. I tried - I really tried - but in the end I had to conclude that this game is just a failure on almost every level. While flashy and fun on the surface, any attempt to explore deeper just reveals nothing of substance. If you enjoy this game, I’m genuinely glad that you got more out of it than I did. For me, it’s easily one of the worst games I’ve ever completed, which is a shame for an entry in a series that I love as much as I love Final Fantasy.
Cool story and great characters but I just simply couldn’t get into the gameplay. Maybe one day I’ll try it again though
Balthier best girlie
Finished fy first Final Fantasy, XII. Don’t regret playing it, but kinda regret not playing IX, XIII, VIII, X, VI, or even VII first.
What I liked:
+ Characters (none of them are that interesting by themselves but they fit in the story very well)
+ Story
+ Story writing (also the English VA is superior (with the exception of Vaan))
+ Cinematography and cinematics
+ Most locations (nothing mind-blowing tho)
+ Gambit system (cool idea)
+ Speedmode (saved me dozens of hours)
+ Moogles
What I disliked:
- NPCs 😴
- Side quests 😴
- Gambit system (flawed, irritating realization)
- ”Crafting” system
- Espers and quickenings (obscure, boring, and useless)
- Dungeons
- Lack of QoL (maps, quests, and inventory are atrocious)
- Speedmode (is very fiddly because the original wasn’t designed to be played this way y’know)
- MAPS
Everything else is whatever.
P.S. Vaan is cool and not “useless” or “boring”.
What I liked:
+ Characters (none of them are that interesting by themselves but they fit in the story very well)
+ Story
+ Story writing (also the English VA is superior (with the exception of Vaan))
+ Cinematography and cinematics
+ Most locations (nothing mind-blowing tho)
+ Gambit system (cool idea)
+ Speedmode (saved me dozens of hours)
+ Moogles
What I disliked:
- NPCs 😴
- Side quests 😴
- Gambit system (flawed, irritating realization)
- ”Crafting” system
- Espers and quickenings (obscure, boring, and useless)
- Dungeons
- Lack of QoL (maps, quests, and inventory are atrocious)
- Speedmode (is very fiddly because the original wasn’t designed to be played this way y’know)
- MAPS
Everything else is whatever.
P.S. Vaan is cool and not “useless” or “boring”.
oui
Depois de me martelarem muito que esse jogo era extremamente focado em política e que isso destacava (e deixava ele melhor) ele dos outros, qual a minha surpresa ao ver que Final Fantasy XII é exatamente Final Fantasy como sempre gostei e diria até em uma de suas melhores formas.
Acho que o descontentamento e a consequente constatação de mentiras sobre o quão cedo ou tarde o Vaan foi considerado a ser o protagonista do jogo vem justamente do fato de ser difícil de digerir que nem sempre somos o protagonista de toda história. Certamente somos o protagonista da NOSSA, mas nem sempre do que acontece a nossa volta.
Para o Vaan, salvar seu país e assegurar seu futuro é uma jornada de conhecimento ao lado de pessoas mais fortes, mais experientes e maduras que ele. Não tem o mesmo peso que tem para Ashe, e tá tudo bem. Balthier tenta nos lembrar toda vez que nós sempre somos protagonistas, mesmo que os outros não vejam assim.
Não me importaria se esse jogo focasse muito mais na parte politica que ele apresenta, mas eu gosto de como ele é familiar e confortável pra quem já está inserido no paradigma da série.
No mais, achei que esse ia ser o único Final Fantasy que não ia chorar no final e desabei igual então eu acho que sou uma tonta completa.
Acho que o descontentamento e a consequente constatação de mentiras sobre o quão cedo ou tarde o Vaan foi considerado a ser o protagonista do jogo vem justamente do fato de ser difícil de digerir que nem sempre somos o protagonista de toda história. Certamente somos o protagonista da NOSSA, mas nem sempre do que acontece a nossa volta.
Para o Vaan, salvar seu país e assegurar seu futuro é uma jornada de conhecimento ao lado de pessoas mais fortes, mais experientes e maduras que ele. Não tem o mesmo peso que tem para Ashe, e tá tudo bem. Balthier tenta nos lembrar toda vez que nós sempre somos protagonistas, mesmo que os outros não vejam assim.
Não me importaria se esse jogo focasse muito mais na parte politica que ele apresenta, mas eu gosto de como ele é familiar e confortável pra quem já está inserido no paradigma da série.
No mais, achei que esse ia ser o único Final Fantasy que não ia chorar no final e desabei igual então eu acho que sou uma tonta completa.
A mecânica de combate é diferente de tudo que já vi, além de possui uma história que é boa, mas conta com alguns personagens irritantes.
I wish someone told me Final Fantasy XII was actually a Xenoblade in disguise, because I would have played this shit years ago. Adding to that are some of the clear inspirations taken from Star Wars (despite some apparent insistence to the contrary) and you have an RPG experience that's hitting all the right buttons for me. I genuinely thought people were memeing about the Star Wars thing but some of the scenes and characterizations are so on the nose you can't help but laugh. Yes, I know a sizeable part of that likely comes instead from The Hidden Fortress (itself one of the biggest inspirations for George Lucas's epic) but when your story culminates with you attacking a Death Star, you lose a bit of plausible deniability.
In terms of the actual game, while Final Fantasy XII obviously existed before Xenoblade, my previous experience with that series more than prepared me to enjoy the more automated style of combat employed here. I can understand how this might have put people off back in 2006 but I can't help but think of Marty McFly going "Guess you guys aren't ready for that yet, but your kids are going to love it." It's aged remarkably well, with a fast, free-flowing combat system and a ton of flexibility and customization available to build your party to your liking. And while the gambit system has largely been superseded in later years by developers simply becoming more proficient at designing better AI companions, I can appreciate how wild it is that a game from this era gave you so much specific control over how your party operates. Seriously, this came out the same year as Persona 3, a game with notoriously awful automated party members. Ahead of its time.
If I could point to any major criticisms of this game, it would be:
1) The license system goes a bit overboard in terms of things you need to unlock; would have preferred they scaled back some of the armor and accessory slots because you don't need 30 of those.
2) Later story beats felt a bit too spaced out or lacking the impact I think they were intended to have, as the game gets a little too bogged down with chasing one MacGuffin after another.
3) I hate to echo complaints people have been making for almost two decades now but Vaan was a pretty weak main protagonist and it didn't surprise me at all to learn he wasn't originally intended to be one. I loved the party overall and thought they had great chemistry together but it is held back when certain characters feel more like they're along for the ride than possessing agency in the story's events.
Beyond that, I truly enjoyed my time with Final Fantasy XII. There likely would have been more quibbles with a few gameplay design choices but this remaster does a fantastic job at mitigating many of those, making for an overall smooth experience. Great game and I wish more people would have sung its praises because it probably deserves a bigger seat at the Final Fantasy table than it's been given over the years.
In terms of the actual game, while Final Fantasy XII obviously existed before Xenoblade, my previous experience with that series more than prepared me to enjoy the more automated style of combat employed here. I can understand how this might have put people off back in 2006 but I can't help but think of Marty McFly going "Guess you guys aren't ready for that yet, but your kids are going to love it." It's aged remarkably well, with a fast, free-flowing combat system and a ton of flexibility and customization available to build your party to your liking. And while the gambit system has largely been superseded in later years by developers simply becoming more proficient at designing better AI companions, I can appreciate how wild it is that a game from this era gave you so much specific control over how your party operates. Seriously, this came out the same year as Persona 3, a game with notoriously awful automated party members. Ahead of its time.
If I could point to any major criticisms of this game, it would be:
1) The license system goes a bit overboard in terms of things you need to unlock; would have preferred they scaled back some of the armor and accessory slots because you don't need 30 of those.
2) Later story beats felt a bit too spaced out or lacking the impact I think they were intended to have, as the game gets a little too bogged down with chasing one MacGuffin after another.
3) I hate to echo complaints people have been making for almost two decades now but Vaan was a pretty weak main protagonist and it didn't surprise me at all to learn he wasn't originally intended to be one. I loved the party overall and thought they had great chemistry together but it is held back when certain characters feel more like they're along for the ride than possessing agency in the story's events.
Beyond that, I truly enjoyed my time with Final Fantasy XII. There likely would have been more quibbles with a few gameplay design choices but this remaster does a fantastic job at mitigating many of those, making for an overall smooth experience. Great game and I wish more people would have sung its praises because it probably deserves a bigger seat at the Final Fantasy table than it's been given over the years.
Just an abysmal game, I’m a big fan of this series in general, always heard good things about 12, I got the zodiac edition on PS5 and I’ve never been more angry about a game, played it with a friend otherwise I’d have dropped it 5 hours in. The story is like The Phantom Menace but worse (imagine that) the main character is basically an npc in his own game, has little impact on the plot, the gameplay seems interesting at first but then becomes auto battle the game. I hate virtually everything about it. Will never play again.
O jogo envelheceu extremamente bem, é de se surpreender que o jogo original foi lançado em 2006, a historia é basicamente um Star Wars. Senti que a progressão do meio pro fim do jogo da uma desandada, em algumas áreas os inimigos são muito difíceis e em outras muito fáceis, o sistema de batalha baseada em gambits é bem diferente e infelizmente esqueceram desse sistema nos jogos posteriores, seria bem legal ver esse sistema de uma forma melhorada. A cutscene final fecha o jogo com chave de ouro, eda o toque que precisava pra você ter a certeza que toda a jornada valeu a pena.
actually gorgeous game, plays itself which is arguably better than the usual jrpg bullshit. more honest in a way, you weren't playing the game anyway.
FF XII is the first mainline entry that takes a departure from turn-based combat and instead introduces the "Gambit system", which really allows you to du crazy stuff and is fun to play around.
The story this time is rather complex and political, and may not be for everyone, but I personally like it. And besides the main plot, hunting all bounties and rare monsters was a lot of fun.
The story this time is rather complex and political, and may not be for everyone, but I personally like it. And besides the main plot, hunting all bounties and rare monsters was a lot of fun.
I had a really good time with this game. I liked the gameplay a lot and thought the different locations were really cool. The characters were neat too.
Easily one of the best Final Fantasy games of all time!
The combat system can be tailored to suit a large variety of play styles and difficulties.
I managed to sink over 100 hours in just one playthrough due to the amount of content bundled together in one awesome journey!
The combat system can be tailored to suit a large variety of play styles and difficulties.
I managed to sink over 100 hours in just one playthrough due to the amount of content bundled together in one awesome journey!
I love this game! the artdirection is amazing, from the enviornments to the characters and especially the bosses and espers. the battle system, gambit system and character customization via the diffrent jobs and licens boards offer so many diffrent ways to build your perfect party for every situation, its incredible and so much fun. So far this is my favorite final fantasy game i played.
Es raro de narices. Los sistemas (gambits y licencias) complican en exceso el juego si no lo entiendes bien, el combate no me ha convencido, prefiero turnos o acción pero no un híbrido, la historia es interesante al principio pero luego decae mucho y al final ya te da igual y los personajes son muy irregulares, a destacar los protagonistas que son los peores que yo recuerdo en un videojuego. Bastante decepcionado después de venir del XVI. [6/10]
A versão definitiva desse título. A única coisa que me incomodava era a progressão dos personagens, que não tinha distinção. Com o Zodiac Job System, tudo melhorou. Talvez o melhor remaster já feito, ao lado de Metroid Prime (não confundir com remake).
Ivalice is so beautiful and interesting that it really does carry this game to greatness because the story is a total snoozefest. Amazing OST too.
Great-but-badly-told story and underwhelming cast aside, this is pretty great. It's wild to me that a PS2 game still has some of the best presentation in the series (and I say this not as a knock against everything that came after, but to praise just how impressive this game truly is). Gameplay-wise, I mean...the Gambit system has had its praises (rightfully) sung, so I don't have much to add there. If there's one huge issue with this game, it's that it's needlessly large. Thankfully the speed-up options in this remaster help alleviate some of the issues that come with that, but it shouldn't be a necessity.
This game isn't bad, but I really did not enjoy playing it.
Melhor FF junto com o IX! Mitada suprema!
Probably one of the best combat systems in a JRPG I’ve played!
Took me 17 years but I finally finished FFXII!
Took me 17 years but I finally finished FFXII!
This is on my top 3 FF games, the story is serious and complex, the worldbuilding is great, the music is very good (but you have to manually set BSO to have the most tonally apropiate music) and the gameplay is probably the best amalgamation of an active and paused battle system in the series
Sky pirates are sick as fuck. Kitase needs to write Matsuno a blank check to get him back on at SE.
Embora a narrativa seja pouco cativante, com uma progressão que te deixa apatíco e se questionando se o jogo esta mesmo avançando em algo por falta de um melhor direcionamento narrativo e o jogo careça de um(a) protagonista mais presente e que englobe os temas e coloque seu arco na frente da narrativa de forma mais tematica e acessivel, mas ainda assim as coisas ainda são estranhamente bem escritas e bem dirigidas com picos onde voce ve bastante alma naquela historia, e principalmente nesse mundo que exala personalidade, me fazendo ficar até emotivo no final, apesar de eu não chorar como eu esperaria de um Final Fantasy. entretanto, tudo em relação a sistemas do jogo é divino, tornando o combate em basicamente um jogo de estrategia em tempo real com uma profundidade de possibilidade que eu nem me atrevo a tentar destrinchar, em questões sistemicas de um RPG ele deve ser o mais profundo que eu joguei, e sem falar de outras partes do jogo que fazem voce se questionar se isso era realmente possivel no ps2, e em um final fantasy singleplayer ele tem de longe as melhores dungeons em um nivel que eu nunca esperei que a franquia tivesse, ele ao seu proprio modo é um dos jogos mais unicos e especiais que eu já joguei, apesar de sim faltar a alma que eu esperaria de um dos melhores Final Fantasy, mas é sem duvidas o melhor Star Wars.
Final Fantasy XII is a game I slept on for far too long and am so glad I finally got around to knocking it out. It really shook up the formula once again and almost every thing was a hit with only a few misses.
The main strength of this game is the world of Ivalice. The world is beautifully crafted with different races, beautiful cities, rich history, power hungry empires, many wars, and political intrigue. Like every other Final Fantasy game for me, the story had me excited and engaged from beginning to end. While still fantasy and over the top, this one felt more grounded than most of the series due to much of the plot being about war and politics. I loved the cast of characters in this game with Ashe and Balthier being the obvious stand outs. I also loved Larsa. Larsa is far and away my favorite Final Fantasy character of all time that wasn’t either a main villian or main party character.
I’ve said this in pretty much ever Final Fantasy review and this game is no different, the music is sublime and the art was outstanding for the time of release.
I wanted to rate this game as a five star and wouldn’t question anyone who does but there were two obvious flaws for me. First is this game is painfully easy. Once you get enough levels and gambits the game can quite literally play itself even being able to defeat almost every boss by itself. I only had a game over once and it’s because I fought the T Rex in the first level thinking I could kill it being as it was in the first level. Other than that I breezed through everything. My only other problem and admittedly this isn’t a huge deal to me but the job classes felt to similar and I was hoping for more of a variety than there actually was.
Another absolute home run in the series that I would recommend to any RPG fan.
The main strength of this game is the world of Ivalice. The world is beautifully crafted with different races, beautiful cities, rich history, power hungry empires, many wars, and political intrigue. Like every other Final Fantasy game for me, the story had me excited and engaged from beginning to end. While still fantasy and over the top, this one felt more grounded than most of the series due to much of the plot being about war and politics. I loved the cast of characters in this game with Ashe and Balthier being the obvious stand outs. I also loved Larsa. Larsa is far and away my favorite Final Fantasy character of all time that wasn’t either a main villian or main party character.
I’ve said this in pretty much ever Final Fantasy review and this game is no different, the music is sublime and the art was outstanding for the time of release.
I wanted to rate this game as a five star and wouldn’t question anyone who does but there were two obvious flaws for me. First is this game is painfully easy. Once you get enough levels and gambits the game can quite literally play itself even being able to defeat almost every boss by itself. I only had a game over once and it’s because I fought the T Rex in the first level thinking I could kill it being as it was in the first level. Other than that I breezed through everything. My only other problem and admittedly this isn’t a huge deal to me but the job classes felt to similar and I was hoping for more of a variety than there actually was.
Another absolute home run in the series that I would recommend to any RPG fan.