Ok, I was thinking yesterday of the things that make X better than XII, and I think one of those is that there are clear roles in X where you feel the need to keep switching characters in and out, yet ultimately they can all do everything, just like in XII. Just got me thinking, why not do X roles in XII? You get to the same place at the end and its more challenging on the way there. As you can tell, I was really bored when I did this and I'm starting to get bored with XII, so hopefully this should make it more interesting.

So, you hear people trying NoLicenceBoard games and VaanOnly games etc, so I'm going to dub this a Spira game (yea it is kinda sad but it's easier than saying an X/XII game).

Here are the rules:

Each player in XII must play the part of a character in X
There are 7 characters in X and only 6 in XII, so you have to nominate a character from X which you can't use
Each character can only get the licences that correspond with their character, UNTIL they have acquired all of those licences, when they can start to acquire the rest of the licences on the board.
All characters can use restorative items (potion, antidote etc), but only Rikku can use offensive items (red fang, knot of rust etc)
Only Yuna can use summons.
All characters can use Libra
All characters can acquire the quickenings for the MP boost but they can't be used.
When the weapons allowed aren't available, the player must go unarmed.
When there is no clear way through to a set of licences allowed, other licences may be acquired to gain access to the licences allowed (eg time magicks can only be obtained by going through either some black, white or green magick licences. These can be obtained so that the time licences can be obtained).


For the purposes of this example, I will choose a character that I think fits best and that I will use when I try this, although you can choose any combination of characters in X to characters in XII. My choice of XII character will be in brackets next to each X character.

All characters can use shields as they all have shields in X, but as you'll see some won't be able to wield them until they completed their X licences as they can only wield 2 handed weapons.

I'm not going to use Kimahri, because personally I think he sucks ass and he's the one that least fits any of the XII characters. This means I won't be able to use spears until someone has completed their X licences, but I've gotten used to not being able to use the zodiac spear.

I know some of these won't fit perfectly but I've tried to make them as equal as possible whilst sticking to their character, so if it's a little out then tough. I've made sure that every weapon, armour, magick and technick is covered by at least one person.



Tidus (Vaan)

Weapons: 1-handed swords, katana's.
Armour: All shields, light armour.
Magicks: None.
Technicks: Libra, Steal.
Accessories: All accessories.
Augments: All gambit slots, swiftness, +HP, headsman, martyr, inquisitor, shield block, battle lores, brawler, item lores, focus.
Espers: None.



Wakka (Balthier)

Weapons: All ranged weapons.
Armour: All shields, light armour.
Magicks: None.
Technicks: Libra.
Accessories: All accessories.
Augments: All gambit slots, swiftness, +HP, headsman, martyr, inquisitor, shield block, battle lores, brawler, item lores, focus.
Espers: None.



Lulu (Fran)

Weapons: Maces, measures.
Armour: All shields, mystic armour.
Magicks: Black, arcane.
Technicks: Libra, charge.
Accessories: All accessories.
Augments: All gambit slots, spellbound, headsman, martyr, inquisitor, shield block, brawler, channelling, magick lores, warmage, item lores, spellbreaker, serenity.
Espers: None.



Yuna (Penelo)

Weapons: Rods, staves.
Armour: All shields, mystic armour.
Magicks: White, green.
Technicks: Libra, charge.
Accessories: All accessories.
Augments: All gambit slots, spellbound, headsman, martyr, inquisitor, shield block, brawler, channelling, magick lores, warmage, item lores, spellbreaker, serenity.
Espers: All espers.



Kimahri (None)

Weapons: Spears, poles.
Armour: All shields, heavy armour.
Magicks: None.
Technicks: Libra.
Accessories: All accessories.
Augments: All gambit slots, +HP, headsman, martyr, inquisitor, shield block, battle lores, brawler, item lores, adrenaline, last stand, focus.
Espers: None.



Auron (Basch)

Weapons: 2-handed swords, axes & hammers.
Armour: All shields, heavy armour
Magicks: None.
Technicks: Libra.
Accessories: All accessories.
Augments: All gambit slots, +HP, headsman, martyr, inquisitor, shield block, battle lores, brawler, item lores, adrenaline, last stand, focus.
Espers: None.



Rikku (Ashe)

Weapons: Daggers, ninja swords
Armour: All shields, light armour.
Magicks: Time.
Technicks: All technicks.
Accessories: All accessories.
Augments: All gambit slots, swiftness, spellbound, +HP, headsman, martyr, inquisitor, shield block, brawler, channelling, item lores, focus.
Espers: None.


Comments or questions, anyone?

I really appreciate and applaud the effort. Forgive me for just making comments.


Ok, I was thinking yesterday of the things that make X better than XII

Heresy. :p I cannot think of a single thing that makes X better than XII, outside of the fact that it focused much more on emotions as opposed to politics. The endgame was nice but beyond that Spira holds very little favor from me. Perhaps this is evidenced in my love of Wakka and Blitzball over just about everything in the game. To each his own.


there are clear roles in X where you feel the need to keep switching characters in and out

That irked me to no end. One of my biggest complaints about X. I want to use 3 characters and I did as soon as I was able. I'd much rather be able to have everyone do everything so I can choose based on aesthetics and emotion. VI probably handled the "opposite" situation the best. Yes, every character had very specific abilities, but if you taught your party of 4 EVERY spell, they'd be juuuuust fine ;)

That being said, this is an interesting way to approach the game and I thank you for sharing it.

Thanks for the comments. I know that those parts of X may annoy some people, but X is seen as a better game than XII than many, and personally I agree. Don't get me wrong, I love XII, but I just prefer X, apart from the stop-start battle gameplay.

I've also played XII twice through now, and I'm looking into ways to make it more challenging and interesting. I was going to do a roles game next anyway, and I love X, so I just combined the two, and I know other people will want to try this out as well.

The fact that everyone can do everything is ok, like I said I've played like this twice now and I've enjoyed it. Again, I feel like making it more challenging and the fact that everyone will be able to do everything at the end anyway means you're not sacrificing anything. I'd feel so much better at that stage knowing that I'd gotten through the majority of the game whilst being 'disadvantaged' as such.

Playing this way will actually make me discover parts of the game that I've never tried before. I've never used maces, measures, poles, staves or rods. I've never really used items before, albeit the occasional echo herb and remedy. Playing the game like this forces me to use these different resources, and hopefully will make me realise that XII is an even better game than I thought.

All excellent points. I've never been a 'hardcore' gamer. When I replay games it is usually just to memorize the story and dialogue. Exactly the same thing I do with movies and music. I certainly respect people who are willing to go the extra mile and make games more challenging. Except when they want to get 99 of every item, I've yet to have THAT explained to me.

Replay challanges like yours and all the brilliant options you have in making the original more difficult (remember the poster here called FinalFantasy1withalltheives?) are things that I can actually respect as opposed to "I've got all this free time on my hands, I'm going to stock up on stuff I don't really need"

So, tons of respect, as I said. I get enough satisfaction from stuff like the getting Sun Sigil, and completing poster duty in 30 seconds. Those are hard enough for me :p

I've been playing Final Fantasy since I was able to grab a controller, and of them all Final Fantasy XII is THE most refreshing game of the franchise. Where most Final Fantasy games are built on a foundation of emotions Final Fantasy XII is built on the emotional impact, and political aspect of governing bodies. Final Fantasy X holds little meaning in my heart for just the opposite.

I'll accept your challenge though.

All excellent points. I've never been a 'hardcore' gamer. When I replay games it is usually just to memorize the story and dialogue. Exactly the same thing I do with movies and music. I certainly respect people who are willing to go the extra mile and make games more challenging. Except when they want to get 99 of every item, I've yet to have THAT explained to me.

Replay challanges like yours and all the brilliant options you have in making the original more difficult (remember the poster here called FinalFantasy1withalltheives?) are things that I can actually respect as opposed to "I've got all this free time on my hands, I'm going to stock up on stuff I don't really need"

So, tons of respect, as I said. I get enough satisfaction from stuff like the getting Sun Sigil, and completing poster duty in 30 seconds. Those are hard enough for me :p

Hence why I love my version of X. Those dark aeons and penance, thats a challenge. Fighting Yiazmat just isnt going to be the same for me I don't think.

Thanks for compliments. I'm definately not one of those who wants 99 of every item or anything. 1, yea. 99, no. I happen to have a life, you see :D

I'm gonna try a NSG game in X now, otherwise I really will be bored of XII after playing it 3 times straight. I'll try this after though.



I'll accept your challenge though.
Excellent. Nice to see people are gonna try this.

I think I'm going to try this as well, once I finish my current playthrough.

That really is a good idea--I've been pretty bored with XII lately, so maybe I'll restart the game and try than instead. (either that I'll just replay X xD)

Penelo = Yuna
Ashe = Rikku
?

Erm. why not the reverse? You know, Ashe is like Yuna all over again.

Hmm, I suppose. I never really saw Ashe as much of a magick user, even though shes got one of the higher stats. Either way works, and you can choose any way you want really. Ashe = Kimahri if you really wanted to.

Hm well in my opinion she is the same character as Yuna. The classes are all optional in ffxii as we all know.

It's a nice idea you've got there. But I wont go through with it. I'm 70 hours or so into the game (battle on the bahamut is the only main plot-thing left) and I won't play this game a second time... it's so freaking long.

And yeah Kimahri sucks XD

I probably won't be playing this any time soon either, if at all. But I too give my props for a well thought-out and interestingly conceived challenge.

I agree completely that FFX is a much better game than FFXII, but the fact remains that FFXII has received extremely good ratings. Personally, FFXII felt like a step back in the series to me rather than a step forward. In my mind, FFX capitalized on many different things that have made the series great prior to its release - FFXII, in contrast, glossed over most of them and did its own thing with more flaws as a result than I can fill a page with.

While I disliked FFXII for many reasons, many people clearly liked it. Though, i've never yet seen a response truly justifiable to me as to why...

Maybe it has something to do with this. I play FF and dsimilar games more or less for the story - when there is less "grinding" (mindless leveling up) in the game, the better in my opinion. I will never understand how people can find killing the same monster 100 different times exciting and fun. To me, it is agonizing. FFXII was very lacking in the story, characterization, and plot departments, and being forced to spend hours and hours going back and forth in dungeon XYZ just to progress the story drove me absolutely nuts by the end of the game. In comparison, leveling *never* felt like a grind at all in FFX through the entire game, and I even had an engrossing story to add to the experience. FFX is what I would consider a true RPG, a roleplaying experience. FFXII was more of an action adventure or hack and slash game in my mind.

While I disliked FFXII for many reasons, many people clearly liked it. Though, i've never yet seen a response truly justifiable to me as to why...

Liking a more political plot is a personal preference. I said myself that I prefer emotionally driven stories (I'm an VIII fanboy, hello?), but XII still has plenty of emotion without having to have the characters say outright "Oh I love him!" If you can't find the emotion behind XII's plot you just aren't looking. Every action taken by the characters is driven by their emotions, you just have to read them from their actions as opposed to having them slapped in your face.


I play FF and dsimilar games more or less for the story - when there is less "grinding" (mindless leveling up) in the game, the better in my opinion.

Me too, look for my posts about how I hate the job games for this very reason. In XII leveling requires that you basically "steer" your characters around the environment. You can go hours using nothing but the analog sticks. That is my kind of grinding.


FFXII was more of an action adventure or hack and slash game in my mind.

I wouldn't have been opposed if they had gone "fully" action/hack&slash, but it would of course change my above "steering" argument. That's fine, though, I would have loved to see some Kingdom Hearts style action out of Penelo :D

To each his own.

Me too, look for my posts about how I hate the job games for this very reason. In XII leveling requires that you basically "steer" your characters around the environment. You can go hours using nothing but the analog sticks. That is my kind of grinding.

With decent gambits you can grind like that with job systems. Sure, not at the start, but you can't just use the analog sticks at the start either. By the time gambits are activated, you can set it up so you only use the analog sticks.

Yeah, exactly. I said for grinding. People usually do that later in the game. I mean, yeah, I was in the Estersand for 20 hours with Penelo and Vaan. But we already know I'm crazy.

If you can't find the emotion behind XII's plot you just aren't looking. Every action taken by the characters is driven by their emotions, you just have to read them from their actions as opposed to having them slapped in your face.

Can you give some examples? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't remember seeing much of that at all. I liked the last FMV of the game fairly well.. I only wish they had stuck a lot more of those scenes into the game. The predictability took a lot of the wow factor out of that particular scene though. When Balthier told Vaan halfway through the game that he might have to "(sic) do something heroic and that he would teach Vaan how to fly the ship", it pretty much spoiled part of the ending for me. I actually see it as sort of a blooper since there was no way Balthier could know what events would lead up to the ending. Heh, worse yet, I was actually expecting and looking forward to flying the ship (via controller) after all of the hype about it in the sky pirate storyline, so I was let down even more when I found out that wasn't going to happen.

From the character perspectives, there were so few cutscenes that to me, the game was basically: 'Character A has somewhere he/she needs to go. Everyone else follows. End of game ensues.' The main characters rarely interacted with one another ala FFX or even FFVIII aside from some awkward cutscenes with poor voice acting.

From a story point, I think the developers did quite well for the first 1/4th of the game. It slowly fell apart after that though. It felt as if they started on an amazing and engrossing story and then decided to rush the end of it. For me, what little story there was after that point was drowned in all of the laborious dungeon crawling and level grinding. What annoyed me the most was whenever i'd start heading deep into dungeon XYZ killing everything in my path for a good hour in order to gain some levels, and then on the way back to the save point at the entrance I would end up dying and have to start all over. That would be fine with me if I was dying in a part of the story, like a boss battle, but when it's mindless level grinding it simply made me want to rip my hair out knowing it was a complete waste of time. I eventually just stuck around the dungeon entrances, frequently saving in order to gain levels, and that was even more of a borefest to me. After playing Everquest for two years, i've had my lifetime's worth of level grinding and FFXII was just too similar to that for my tastes I suppose.

Well pretty much everything.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS




Ashe
*Desire to reclaim her kingdom
*Desire for power
*Feelings over Rosler's death
*Feelings towards Baltheir
*Decision she had to make regarding the Occuria

Balthier
*Mixed feelings over fighting his father
*Feelings for Ashe
*Feelings for Fran
*Mentor to Vaan
*Relationship with Basch

Basch
*Feelings about defending his home country
*Feelings about defending Dalmasca
*Relationship with his brother
*Feelings about Ashe

Fran
*Feelings towards Balthier (and consequently Ashe)
*Feeling of being outcast from Viera society
*Feelings about the presence of Mist in the world and how that affected her and the actions taken by all.

Vaan
*Desire for revenge against the empire
*Empathetic relationship with Ashe
*Relationship with Penelo
*Desire to be a sky pirate
*Protege relationship with Balthier

Penelo
*Feelings for Vaan
*Feelings for Larsa
*Idealistic desire for peace as contrasted with Vaan's desire for revenge

All of those involve emotions as well as presented and implied relationships. There is plenty that I am leaving out, but I think you get the idea. Just because the plot revolved around the actions they took politically does not mean it wasn't all held together by their emotions.

As far as grinding, I just don't feel like XII involved that much grinding at all. If you work on all the side-quests as they arise levels are never a problem. When I think of mindless grinding I think of III and V. With XII the levels flew by for me because I was gaining them as I was working towards sub-goals. If you have to grind to complete the main plot and the main plot alone, perhaps I am wrong. I didn't have that experience, and will have to respect yours.

Personally, I thought the voice acting was superb. I respect your opinions, I just have a hard time believing that you cannot see emotion exuding from the game.

We have other threads to talk about this, don't we? I don't mind this going a bit off-topic, given some of the stuff covered in the initial post. But this is really supposed to be about a challenge.

Cool idea... but you should switch Ashe and Penelo's roles, Ashe is more suited to Yuna, and nothing like Rikku. Penelo is spunky and childish; like Rikku.

Still on my first run-through, so I'm not gonna do this til i'm ultra-bored.