I've been kept quite busy between work and all the other stuff, I know I'm a bit behind but I'd like to know if FFXII is any good or not. So far I've only heard mixed opinions but then again these people didn't play all the way through.

Perhaps you should take into consideration that there's bound to be a good reason for so many people not finishing it. I know I gave it every chance in the world and couldn't stand it enough to go more than halfway.

There's also reasons why some people absolutely adore it. I played all the way through and loved it.

I'd say it is worth a rental to see if you like it, especially because the opinions are so mixed.

I've been kept quite busy between work and all the other stuff, I know I'm a bit behind but I'd like to know if FFXII is any good or not. So far I've only heard mixed opinions but then again these people didn't play all the way through.

These people didn't play all the way through because it takes a lot of time (120hrs+).

Whilst the plot is pretty good it can get broken up a bit by the gameplay and some of the latter dungeons can take at least an evening to complete, sometimes stretching over two evenings, depending on how experienced you are. This is probably what frustrates most players. There are other flaws though.

If you have problems with impatience, I wouldn't buy it. I would probably recommend renting it, but really if you aren't prepared to commit over a long period of time, I'd leave it on the shelf.

That said I think FFXII's length is also one of its strengths, if you like that sort of thing. I just wish there were more optional areas to explore and more sidequests that didn't involve a battle with an optional Esper.

Hail to the Bus Driver! :)

I apologize in advance for the length of my post. I am proud to take any opportunity to defend this spectacular game. ;)

The Bad:
If you are usually drawn to the following: anime; manga; romantic subplots; "save the world" scenarios; simple good-vs-evil plots involving some sort of mystical "life force energy"; eastern philosophy or religion; predictable plot twists; one-dimensional character archetypes (the "old" and wise battle-hardened warrior, the chipper young girl, the carefree teenaged boy, etc); other heavily-Japanese-influenced story elements that are part of the canon of recent Final Fantasies; then there's a good chance you won't get into FF12.

The (very) Good:
Conversely, if you enjoy: a complex, multi-dimensional story; very subtle, yet very rich character development (no voice-over narration or mental dialog--instead, much exposition is in the forms of the characters' facial expressions, vocal tone, and body language); top-notch voice acting; themes involving diplomacy and political power struggles; character "programming" via the Gambit battle system; then I think you will very much enjoy this game. (To say nothing of the visuals!)

The Obvious
An unlikely group of people banding together; Sexy rabbit-eared women; dashing sky-pirates in skin-tight leather pants; women with rockin' curves; teenaged femme-boys; megalomaniacal villains; sidequests and other extras that can often feel like pulling teeth (but you'll do them anyway (Thread 42743)); ridiculously hard optional bosses that give you virtually no reward for defeating them; running around killing stuff; and just plain leveling up your characters to the point where they can one-shot any normal enemy with their bare hands.

The Warning
Story can be very difficult to follow on your first play-through. The names can be difficult (though nowhere near as bad as reading The Lord of the Rings ^_^). I suggest playing straight through sans-grinding until you have no clue what's going on, then starting over. It will make so much more sense the second time around, and you will notice little details that really breathe life into the characters. As stated in other posts, there's also a tedious dungeon. Treasure chests are a headache, as is obtaining the "ultimate weapons," though said weapons are completely unnecessary for the normal storyline game.

Have you ever read/seen Dune? FF12 is very much like that, and has a tad bit of Star Wars to it, too. The complex story is definitely, IMO, more "grown up" than previous FF installments. Essentially, it is not a Final Fantasy made for a stereotypical anime-afficianado--it's more for a Star Wars geek. :)

And just to keep in mind, it has also gotten more or less consistently superb ratings from the professional critics.

I admit, I'm very strongly biased. FF12 has been my favorite Final Fantasy game EVER. (Before that, I loved FF7 and FF8, and I have a guilty pleasure in FFX-2. FF9 I was indifferent about, and my feelings on the "Great Big Blown Opportunity" known as FFX shall be saved for a different conversation.)

Anyway, I hope my opining about this amazing game has helped inform you.

Wow!!!! That must have taken a looooooooong time to right..... I agree totally.... I think if you have found in previous ff's that the gameplay was too fragmented by random encounters, then you will thouroghly enjoy it.

A post like that simply requires a drawn-out post to oppose it.


I apologize in advance for the length of my post. I am proud to take any opportunity to defend this spectacular game. ;)

And just as you are proud to defend it, I feel it is my obligation to speak against this abomination of game design.


The Bad:
If you are usually drawn to the following: anime; manga; romantic subplots; "save the world" scenarios; simple good-vs-evil plots involving some sort of mystical "life force energy"; eastern philosophy or religion; predictable plot twists; one-dimensional character archetypes (the "old" and wise battle-hardened warrior, the chipper young girl, the carefree teenaged boy, etc); other heavily-Japanese-influenced story elements that are part of the canon of recent Final Fantasies; then there's a good chance you won't get into FF12.

In a nutshell, you're attempting to claim that it's a Final Fantasy game that wasn't made for Final Fantasy fans. Interesting position. This segment of your post, however, is extremely poorly realized and honestly isn't worth a reply. Discounting the idea that people could like the things you named and not like other things is pretty silly, although I understand this post would count as the initial challenge and really has nothing to prove. However, if you want to make a real effort to make a point with it, I'll be happy to reply at that time.


The (very) Good:
Conversely, if you enjoy: a complex, multi-dimensional story; very subtle, yet very rich character development (no voice-over narration or mental dialog--instead, much exposition is in the forms of the characters' facial expressions, vocal tone, and body language); top-notch voice acting; themes involving diplomacy and political power struggles; character "programming" via the Gambit battle system; then I think you will very much enjoy this game. (To say nothing of the visuals!)

I did not find the story to be complex at all. I understood every minute of it as it went, although I must admit that might have been a rather extraordinary feat due to the game's wildly uneven pacing.

Your point about the game's approach to character development is a notion I find completely appalling. Frankly, I look at that as the completely apologist perspective of someone so desperate to justify their love of the game that they will throw aside the accepted rules of storytelling and make up new ones to fit their needs.

Political themes are nothing new to gaming and certainly don't make a game better. It's just a break from the norm for the series and certainly cannot be counted as a merit for the game by any reasonable standards.

The gambit system is one of my biggest problems with the game. I fail to see how anyone can say the system is even interesting, much less revolutionary as some would claim. After all, it is basically a less advanced version of the AI in PC games from a decade ago. Baldur's Gate featured a very similar form of AI, yet that game's AI settings were more streamlined, didn't require massive amounts of time and effort to make it usable, and was entirely available to the player at the start. It just goes to show that the Japanese are lagging years behind westerners in game design.


The Obvious
An unlikely group of people banding together; Sexy rabbit-eared women; dashing sky-pirates in skin-tight leather pants; women with rockin' curves; teenaged femme-boys; megalomaniacal villains; sidequests and other extras that can often feel like pulling teeth (but you'll do them anyway (Thread 42743)); ridiculously hard optional bosses that give you virtually no reward for defeating them; running around killing stuff; and just plain leveling up your characters to the point where they can one-shot any normal enemy with their bare hands.

Not a single bit of that can be regarded as a merit for the game, and a good deal of it is further evidence that Square-Enix is leagues behind western developers.


The Warning
Story can be very difficult to follow on your first play-through. The names can be difficult (though nowhere near as bad as reading The Lord of the Rings ^_^). I suggest playing straight through sans-grinding until you have no clue what's going on, then starting over. It will make so much more sense the second time around, and you will notice little details that really breathe life into the characters. As stated in other posts, there's also a tedious dungeon. Treasure chests are a headache, as is obtaining the "ultimate weapons," though said weapons are completely unnecessary for the normal storyline game.

Have you ever read/seen Dune? FF12 is very much like that, and has a tad bit of Star Wars to it, too. The complex story is definitely, IMO, more "grown up" than previous FF installments. Essentially, it is not a Final Fantasy made for a stereotypical anime-afficianado--it's more for a Star Wars geek. :)

I am a star Wars geek. I hate FFXII. I denounce your claim as nonsense.

There is nothing more "grown-up" about FFXII's approach to storytelling. It is just a half-assed attempt to emulate western storytelling styles.


And just to keep in mind, it has also gotten more or less consistently superb ratings from the professional critics.

Critics will naturally rate the game highly considering how much money Square-Enix threw at their publications for advertising. Most highly advertised games are rated far more highly than they deserve for that reason. The reviewers are actually under pressure in many cases to give favorable reviews to games that have been advertised heavily in their publications because it makes the game's publisher more likely to advertise with them heavily again.

If you want accurate views, look for people who aren't paid for it.


I admit, I'm very strongly biased. FF12 has been my favorite Final Fantasy game EVER. (Before that, I loved FF7 and FF8, and I have a guilty pleasure in FFX-2. FF9 I was indifferent about, and my feelings on the "Great Big Blown Opportunity" known as FFX shall be saved for a different conversation.)

Anyway, I hope my opining about this amazing game has helped inform you.

I have noticed that FFXII seems most popular with fans of FFVII and FFVIII. Those of us who have always stood opposed to those games and the damage they did to game design paradigms largely dislike the game.

Terabyte, I hope I haven't come off as particularly harsh toward you. I really don't have anything against you, even though I do think you have lousy taste in games.

The Bad:
If you are usually drawn to the following: anime; manga; romantic subplots; "save the world" scenarios; simple good-vs-evil plots involving some sort of mystical "life force energy"; eastern philosophy or religion; predictable plot twists; one-dimensional character archetypes (the "old" and wise battle-hardened warrior, the chipper young girl, the carefree teenaged boy, etc); other heavily-Japanese-influenced story elements that are part of the canon of recent Final Fantasies; then there's a good chance you won't get into FF12.

Sorry terabyte, but I have to disagree about the characters here. I just find it unbelieveable that you fail to see the parallels between the apparent archetypes of other Final Fantasies that you criticise and the characters in FFXII.

"old" and wise battle hardened warrior-read Basch, or failing that, Vossler;

Carefree teenage boy-read Vaan;

Chipper young girl-read Penelo.

If you're trying to suggest that the characters in FFXII are in any way superior to those of other Final Fantasies, please elaborate, as whatever your reason for thinking this is, it's definitely passed me by.

Of course, that's not to say that FFXII is a poor game, but seriously, if you're going to praise/defend FFXII, stick to its strong points.

I bought FF XII completely on the strength that it was a Final Fantasy game. I completed it after about 80 hours as well as doing a fair amount of subquests and although i generally did enjoy it i will probably never play it through again. It's hard to describe but both the gameplay,plot and character development seemed kind of hollow to me. All i could think of at the end of the game was "Is that it?", as if i'd been promised much more than i got.

Of course it's really a matter of opinion in the end. I'd say rent first, it's the safest option. You may end up liking it as much as terabyte or hating it as much as Prak.

Final Fantasy XII is a great game! It competes with three other rpg's from 2006 for the title of best rpg of the year...

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Kingdom Hearts 2
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess(rpg status debatable)

I prefer FF XII to Oblivion. I haven't played KH 2 since I don't have an interest in it that much. I haven't played Zelda but I want to play it. I'm playing FF XII and Oblivion now, will play Lost Odyssey later this year.

terabyte, try reading "The Silmarillion" and then tell me that the names in LOTR were hard ;) .

Regarding XII....

In my honest opinion, I wished that the storyline was stronger. You lose the story in all of the gameplay and sidequests. Yeah, the sidequests don't have anything to contribute to the storyline so that kind of pissed me off as well.

The characters were rich. You can tell which characters were greatly developed and the others who weren't as developed. In the not-so-developed characters I would list Vaan, Penelo (sorry P. Fans but she hardly had lines), and maybe Ashe (too much of a take-off from Yuna... I found that the plot solely depended on her and ignored the rest, just my opinion though). As for the more developed characters I would list Fran (my all-time favourite character from XII), Basch, and Balthier (another all-time favourite).

The plot. If you do sidequests periodically during some 'free-time' during the main plotline, then the sidequests might not take you away, so much, from the story (but I highly doubt that *cough* All Espers plus Yiazmat *cough*).
The plot is a good outline for a game that could have turned out great. It would've been better if they included some storyline information during sidequests so that you don't forget half the plot. I mean, I did a shit load of sidequests and when I was at Bahamut (hope I didn't spoil it for anybody..) I was struggling to remember what the hell the story was all about.

But the gameplay is good....

But the gameplay is good....

Spot On!!

Terabyte, I hope I haven't come off as particularly harsh toward you. I really don't have anything against you, even though I do think you have lousy taste in games.

I'll be honest, outside of final fantasy and the occasional GTA, DDR, Katamari, or WWE Smackdown V Raw, I'm not much of a gamer. Really, I don't have time for games anymore. No, I'm not offended, nor am I interested in a debate on the merits of this game. I still consider FF12 the greatest FF I've ever played.


Sorry terabyte, but I have to disagree about the characters here. I just find it unbelieveable that you fail to see the parallels between the apparent archetypes of other Final Fantasies that you criticise and the characters in FFXII.

"old" and wise battle hardened warrior-read Basch, or failing that, Vossler;

Carefree teenage boy-read Vaan;

Chipper young girl-read Penelo.

If you're trying to suggest that the characters in FFXII are in any way superior to those of other Final Fantasies, please elaborate, as whatever your reason for thinking this is, it's definitely passed me by.

Of course, that's not to say that FFXII is a poor game, but seriously, if you're going to praise/defend FFXII, stick to its strong points.

I'm suggesting that the characters are not ho-hum formulaic replicas of an archetypal recipe. Penelo plays the chipper young girl, but she does so in a much more subdued, serious vein, contrasting to Rikku, Selphie, or Yuffie. Sorry that I wasn't more clear with that thought. :)

To be honest, meh. Simply meh.

I played it a long time ago for the first time and was actually quite excited, having been a fan of the series for years (I started with VII, I admit, but have redeemed myself since then) but it soon became apparent it was not to be, due to one factor alone: the license system.

Having a board that enables your characters to learn all of the same abilities killed any shred of uniqueness the characters might have. Running around with a party in which every character was the same really bothered me.

I could've made the party I wanted, sure, with a White Mage, a Warrior and all that, but why bother when it's so much easier to just have everyone learn the more useful abilities? I left the game sitting there.

The second time I picked it up, I was surprised at how much I played (I was about to face the Raithwall Tomb boss) but then I just left it.

The story for me wasn't terribly exciting but it kept me mildly interested and that's all I ask from a game nowadays. Didn't care much for the battle system but I was working with it.

Like I said, the license system blew it for me and that's why I don't even recommend it for a rental, so if you have the same reservations as me, you'll heed my advice.

Lost of people enjoyed it though, so it's really up to you.

Its all a matter of opinion really....
I love it because its very easy to play and dosent require a lot of concentration due to the automated battle system.
But because of this increased playability it lacks the depth and storyline of some of the others.
The shallow storyline and weak character development doesnt bother me at all though because the gambit system was brilliant. And as for the story, even if there wasnt a story at all I still would have enjoyed it...

This is because ff 12, for me, was about the super bosses, the super weapons, and most of all the super long life of the game if you want to do everything!!!!!!!!!

I'm suggesting that the characters are not ho-hum formulaic replicas of an archetypal recipe. Penelo plays the chipper young girl, but she does so in a much more subdued, serious vein, contrasting to Rikku, Selphie, or Yuffie. Sorry that I wasn't more clear with that thought. :)

The fact that she's more serious doesn't make her a better character. And it's not like she hasn't also been done several times on other RPGs also. Off the top of my head, think Sophia from Star Ocean 3 and Shana from Legend of Dragoon. Very similar characters. Penelo doesn't display any greater merit than those two, in my humble opinion. She barely interacts with any character other than Vaan, doesn't really develop much and although I do like some of her quotes I'm afraid she's little more than a side attraction for most of the game.

And what about Vaan and Basch, also? Vaan is very similar to Tidus, Basch is very similar to Auron. I know you don't like FFX, so I'll challenge you to explain to me how Vaan and Basch are better characters than those two. If you can't, then maybe you should reconsider your opinion on FFX. Linear it may be, but it had better characters, and Tidus and Auron aren't even the best ones, not by a long shot.

Again, like Prak, nothing at all against you, but I disagree with your views here.

Well i just started playing it, i think i am up to the part where they save Basch, then i stopped playing; its not that i dont like it, its just ( it might be embrassing to say:P) but i hadn't finish FFX yet so i am planning to finish it first before playing FFXII.

Well my impression on FFXII so far is that i like the battle system, that means no random encounters; which too much random encounters can make me frustrated sometimes. But the few things i dont like are the gambits, and licence board. And regarding about the plot, well i just started playing it, so i cant really comment on it. But overall on so far i have played, FFXII is pretty good but not that good

I dont see how anyone can criticize the new battle system. Gambits are a godsend, and no random encounters!!!!!!!!!!!

Then try reading. Plenty of people have made their reasons very clear.

I dont care what anyone thinks, in the end its all a matter of opinion. Me and terabyte arent suddenly about to go "one second, ff 12 really is shit, we should've listened to Prak" Sorry, just not gonna happen, but your entitled to your opinion.

And your point is? If you want to try to discredit or disprove anything I've said, just saying "It's all opinion" doesn't cut it. You're bringing nothing of merit to the conversation and should either make a decent point or shut the fuck up.

It's a good time waster I'll tell you that other than that it's just another FF, just w/o battle loading.

And your point is? If you want to try to discredit or disprove anything I've said, just saying "It's all opinion" doesn't cut it.

I don't think he was trying to directly discredit you; it was more like he was stating his own feelings. It really is a matter of opinion whether a game is good or not, just like it is with all forms of art.

I don't think he was trying to directly discredit you; it was more like he was stating his own feelings. It really is a matter of opinion whether a game is good or not, just like it is with all forms of art.
Thanks Cpt. Thunder

fuck sake prak, do you really think I would take on a ffshrine super power (YOU)!!!! I want to keep my account thank you. And i wasnt trying to discredit you at all!! Sorry if I came off like that.

FFXII=Chrono Cross=Resident Evil 4

fuck sake prak, do you really think I would take on a ffshrine super power (YOU)!!!!

hahaha you what?

Oh, Mississippian, I do believe this is the best retort you will receive in your petty and hate-filled life, ever.

I've played every (numbered) FF game since FF VII and I can say XII is...again...the best yet. Gameplay-wise it's heaven. Mostly thanks to the new battle system finally without any random battles which is probably the best thing a new FF could come up with. I remember them being so frustrating in FFX, for example, that if it hadn't been for the wonderful story I would have been on the edge of quitting at some stages. In case Square decides to return to the battle arenas in the future, say with FFXIII, the best solution would be the Chrono Cross style, with seems to be the ideal cross between both systems and should please both camps of fans.

But back to the 12th installment. I feel the story is sorely underrated by most players and reviewers. OK, you don't get an emotion-packed cutscene or FMV after every five minutes like before, but the plot is nothing short of spectacular, there's a great war going on, the future is in the hands of a few main heroes, even the Gods enter the story... c'mon, it's trademark Final Fantasy! Even the characters are not as weak as some critics claim. It's true that Vaan and Penelo, who *should* be main characters were obviously added to the game last-minute and don't lead the story the way they should. On the other hand Basch, Ashe and perhaps Balthier and Larsa are very well developed characters you will surely adore and care about (even more so towards the end of the game, believe me).

And in case you'll ever find a particular part of the game weak story-wise, the gameplay itself will make up for that (actually just like the previous installments but the other way round).

As for music, it's a pity Nobou Uematsu has largely retired from writing for the series. Not that Hitoshi Sakimoto's music is bad, it actually fits the emotion, drama and action on-screen very well and has a great and very different symphonic touch to it, but there are no really memorable tunes we all know well from Uematsu-san. My favorite tunes are the Rabanastre Lowtown theme and of course the ending song Kiss me Good-bye sung by the wonderful, the beautiful, the invincible Angela Aki (and written by no one else than Uematsu).

So despite any criticism you might hear, it's a no-brainer. Unless you couldn't care less about Final Fantasy, you must play this game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_uematsu
Nobuo Uematsu made music for FF X, with some other composers having a little assistance. Then for FF XI he and two other composers shared duty and he did not compose for FF X-2 of FF VII: DoG, and only one song or two from FF XII. After FF XI his main projects are Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and Cry On. He doesn't compose for ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat(Hitoshi Sakimoto will). He'll probably compose for Blue Dragon 2, Mistwalkers 5th game. Mistwalkerss 6th game is a Mmorpg I think, not sure if he'll compose for it.

I heard that Mistwalker now owns the rights to Chrono series?! I wonder if Nobuo will compose for it or if another game will come out. :)

I think I understand the people who enjoyed this game. I...wish I could have, too--but...something about it really just didn't make it for me.

The gameplay is nice and everything, but usually, for me to enjoy a game, I have to feel "engaged" in it. FFXII doesn't seem to do that for me. I usually need to feel connected to the characters, or involved in the storyline, or something like that, to feel motivated to continue....
The characters are very well designed, too--the storyline is also. The designs are complex and beautiful and everything. But...maybe, it's overdone so much that it's hard to relate to any longer. It was fantasy, alright--...but maybe it was so much 'fantasy' that there was nothing real for me to hold onto.

It's always felt like...they're up there, I'm out here. I never was able to feel "I'm in there, and I'm experiencing it".

NorseFTX: I see where you're coming from. The problem that people complain the most about is the lack of any emotional impact the story gives to the players.

All is pretty linear and there's hardly any major plot twists in it. And there's not much emotions going on between the major characters of the game. Unlike the other FFs where the main aspect of the game were the emotions of the characters to which it is much easier to relate to than some fallen princess in her quest to reclaim her throne. FFXII is a story about war and the place of the people in between. A nice setting, but poorly executed when it comes to emotional impact.

It seems like S-E wanted to upgrade/improve/change the pace of their battle system and put all their energy in that part of the game. They ended up forgetting what blends all the aspect of what we call an "RPG", which is the story and the emotions that are transmited to the gamer.

Does this make you guys long for the days of Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII, which basically everybody loved the story? :)

There are a lot of people who hate FFVII's story. It is also my observation that the people who like FFXII's story tend to be the same people who liked FFVII's. Since I'm not exactly looking for an argument, I won't make my usual aside about how that proves bad taste is incurable.

There are a lot of people who hate FFVII's story. It is also my observation that the people who like FFXII's story tend to be the same people who liked FFVII's. Since I'm not exactly looking for an argument, I won't make my usual aside about how that proves bad taste is incurable.

That's what I call a diplomatic answer, hehe... Since I don't think taste is measurable AND any Final Fantasy has a story much better than vast majority of that beat 'em up stuff or whatever crap most people play, I'm not in a position to agree with you... :-D But yeah, I don't wanna start an argument, either. Or have I just... nah, forget it. :-D

There are a lot of people who hate FFVII's story. It is also my observation that the people who like FFXII's story tend to be the same people who liked FFVII's. Since I'm not exactly looking for an argument, I won't make my usual aside about how that proves bad taste is incurable.

I disagree, actually-I think FFVII fans tend to dislike it-most of the comments I've read here from FFVII fans have been to that effect. Just reading back over this discussion for example, there have been two people who obviously like FFVII in this thread and both have implied they didn't like XII. terabyte may well be an exceptional case.

Then perhaps we should consider gathering evidence to support our positions.

Of course, I'm far too lazy to actually do that and I hope you are too, as I would certainly be forced to follow your lead by my overwhelming stubbornness.

Yeah, me too. Laziness ftw.

If it counts for anything, I liked FFVII, but didn't really like FFXII....

And anyway--! I think there isn't really anything such as real "bad taste". As long as there are others who share the same taste as you, and you can enjoy things together--'bad taste' or not, it wouldn't...it shouldn't matter, right?

one person doesn't stand for a populace, you may be an outlier for all we know.

Well, I absolutely loved the FFVII story. As for FFXII, as I state in my mini-review above, I find the story very good, maybe not as good as previous games (say FFVII, for that matter) but great nonetheless. Now go figure! :)

FF VII is my 4th fav game and I enjoyed the story a lot. FF XII doesn't make my "perfect list", which only has 6 games on it: FF VI, Chrono Trigger, Zelda 3, FF VII, FF X, FF Tactics. FF XII is still a great game though, I think it's main weakness is the story, which I thought is just alright, nothing too interesting. That's where I consider both games.

What does everybody think of the story of Final Fantasy VI? I think that's by far for me my favorite game and favorite story and favorite characters and favorite music out of all music I've ever heard. I love it! :)

I loved ff VII so much so that I bought it again for the PC 10 years after the original. Loved it just as much. I also loved ff 12. The story wasnt the best but the game overall was brilliant in my honest opinion!

Word, Sam. ;)

Yea, FF VII was so legendary when it came out! FF XII is extremely popular of course, but does it compare to the Legendary status of some earlier Final Fantasy games, in general probably not. FF VII was revolutionary. I think 1, 4, 6, and 10 were legendary popular and relatively more popular(for their times) than FF XII(which is a great game!)

FF XII is a super high quality game but I think the story and character need a little bit of improvement. Hitoshi Sakimoto's music is great but Nobuo Uematsu I think had better music and people liked his a lot. I'm really happy with Final Fantasy XII dont' get me wrong. :D

FF VII was revolutionary.

I really hate it when people say that because it's completely wrong.

FF VII was revolutionary the first FF to come out on a PS one cd.

ff12 sucks and is gay

You suck and are gay :):):):):):):D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Vive La FF12

Vive La FF12

haha I say that shows FFXII is a game for girls and sissies.

Samonasuke, you sissy.

^^ It's Vive FFXII anyways, if you want perfect grammar. :P

^^ It's Vive FFXII anyways, if you want perfect grammar. :P

Depends on the language.

Otherwise it would be Viva (spanish or italian), not Vive (french).

So nope... it doesn't depends on the language. Or it does, but you just can't spell it right.

Samonasuke, is your name an intentional typo, or is there an alternative spelling of Akechi's name I'm not aware of?

Because it pisses me off to no ends reading your name.

Samonasuke, is your name an intentional typo, or is there an alternative spelling of Akechi's name I'm not aware of?

Because it pisses me off to no ends reading your name.

If my name pisses you off then tough shit, its only a name.


And yes it is an intentional typo

Take it easy, you big girl. I don't want to catch sissy from you.

You are really slow. For two reasons.

1. Youve been a member for over 3 years and your still less then 900 posts.

2. You think I take offence to petty comebacks more commmonly associated with 5 year olds.

If your five i'll forgive you!!!!!!! Please let me know if you are five (give or take a year). If you are Im sorry. If not go do something worthwhile instead of contaminating these forums

Youve been a member for over 3 years and your still less then 900 posts.

hahaha

samonasuke is making a fool of himself.

Short fuse temper I say.

That's kinda sad.

It is important to note that although a member might have been around for a long time, it is not the amount of comments he has posted that counts, but the quality of them.

It would be wise to remember that, samonasuke.

man hynad how slow are you lololol

since 02 your less then 1000 posts lolz

That's because I registered in 2002 to take part in a debate here. Then left for some years, and I came back last year. ^^

If your five i'll forgive you!!!!!!! Please let me know if you are five (give or take a year). If you are Im sorry. If not go do something worthwhile instead of contaminating these forums

I am 6, samonasuke.

You are really slow. For two reasons.

1. Youve been a member for over 3 years and your still less then 900 posts.

2. You think I take offence to petty comebacks more commmonly associated with 5 year olds.

If your five i'll forgive you!!!!!!! Please let me know if you are five (give or take a year). If you are Im sorry. If not go do something worthwhile instead of contaminating these forums

Lamest comeback ever. You lose the thread.

It became the lamest thread ever when they started name-calling. Neither of them were adding anything of use to the discussion, frankly.

Common around ffshrine, imo.

As much as I'd love to say it was a great game, I got bored after about forty eight hours, and I had to put a lot of effort into finding the inspiration to complete it.

Technically, it's a "better" game, but it doesn't come close to some of the earlier titles (think FFVI, DON'T think FFVII), and with Oblivion on the market, I know which I'd rather play.

I like FFXII alright, but it's not my favorite Final Fantasy. It's worth playing, but as of yet, I haven't finished it. I'm close, but I kind of lost interest (the same thing happened in FFX; there was just a staggering amount of other stuff that distracted you from the plot, and attempting to get through all that wore me out). There is a lot of stuff that's easy to miss completely; unless you've got a guide and a lot of patience, you'll miss the bulk of the game. The best part of a game shouldn't be in supplements, as I feel it is in FFXII.

The game fails to satisfy me as far as plot and character development. There's a lot to be said about subtlety, but I felt in this case it was more of an absence. I think the game would have been pretty much the same if Vaan and Penelo weren't even included, which is pretty sad. Even Balthier and Fran seemed to just be along for the ride.

I get a Star Wars vibe that fails to live up to the grandeur and scope of Star Wars...something I find very disappointing, as even the music is similar but still inferior. There's a sense of urgency I feel Square failed to capture; Dalmasca is small, and while most people are quite willing to root for the underdog, I never really found Ashe that compelling a person to root for. She made it hard to sympathize with and I never found her character accessible. She's well-developed for a character in FFXII but that doesn't mean she's developed enough. Most of the characters were a little too stock for my tastes. I feel like Larsa is an exception, though.

Don't even get me started on how the pacing of this game totally turned a lot of people off from ever playing. I was almost one of them. You should never have to play a game for twenty hours and think, "Why am I still doing this?" The game took ages to finally engage my interest somewhat...but after spending fifty bucks, I was going to be engaged, damn it.

I kind of get the impression that Square was really trying to move forward and make something different (I'm not sure how hard they tried, delay-after-delay later). I think they did make something different from other Final Fantasy games; some will view it as a success and others, as a failure. Similar to FFVIII's junctioning, I spent a rather lengthy amount of time fiddling with Gambits (just so I could sleepwalk through my battles). I miss my Tonberries, Cactaurs, and Blue Magic. It's hard to view it in terms of a Final Fantasy game, and I fear I'll feel the same about FFXIII when it finally comes out.

I'm sure after reading this people will think I didn't like the game, which isn't true at all, but I don't feel it's a masterpiece. I enjoyed several characters, some of the music, and many of the locations (though as someone very interested in a game's production, I found many of the character designs to be underwhelming). I very much love the artwork (the illustrations, not the CG works), but a lot of the content just didn't live up to my expectations.

The only part of that I'd really disagree with is your thoughts on Balthier. He was certainly a worthwhile character and not just there for the ride (even though he says he is!). He develops really well towards the end of the game. I do agree with your thoughts on Penelo and Vaan though. I'd have liked to have seen a really worthwhile plot involving Vaan. The Vaan/Balthier relationship wasn't done well enough.

Other than that, I largely agree, especially on the game's pacing. There are large parts of the game that simply lead you from one area to another. If Square had put some dialogue in the interludes between these areas (Mosphoran Highwaste to the Salikawood, Salikawood to the Phon Coast would be examples of wasted oppurtunities, but there are more) the game could have been excellent. As it is, it just won't stack up compared to the very best FF games.

Also, I feel Ashe becomes more interesting the more times you play it. I found her utterly dull the first time, but she does grow on you.

SPOILERS GALORE!!!!!! DONT READ THIS HERE POST IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED FFXII TILL THE PHON COAST!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!


It's pretty obvious why Balthier is in the party once you understand his past connection with the Empire.

And there IS a cut scene in Phon Coast. That's when you learn that Balthier was once a Judge (if I remember right).

I believe he is conversing with Ashe in that part.

It's pretty obvious why Balthier is in the party once you understand his past connection with the BLANK.

And there IS a cut scene in Phon Coast. That's when you learn that Balthier was once a BLANK (if I remember right).

I believe he is conversing with Ashe in that part.

I know there is a cutscene on the Phon Coast, but there is nothing in between Nalbina, Mosphora, the Salikawood and the beginning of the PC, or at least nothing that does anything to even remotely develop the characters.

By the way, spoilers galore there. May want to edit your post.

You're right - Balthier IS important, it just takes a long time to get to the point where you figure that out. He's one of my favorite characters, though, along with Fran, Drace, and Larsa.

Final Fanasy XII just didn't have a great story. The main character Vaan was like a sewer rat and he didn't have the leadership capabilities to fit as the main character. Ashe was a complete witch to other characters most of the game and honestly I kind of felt like "Give me a break, I don't want to waste my time helping you take back your kingdom." Balflear on the other hand had so much flare and charisma that you wish he was the main character of the game but they didn't delve a whole lot into his background...bummer. The game play was less than mediocre as well. Even the special moves a lot of the time were just pre-rendered movie scenes where the enemies or characters didn't even show up on the battle screen. The music was less than spectacular although there were a few tracks that I was fond of like the Phon Coast. The level of detail on this game is phenomenal but they left out some nice features like life-size human shadows, the characters and enemies reflection in the water, etc.
Final Fantasy XII is the most graphically impressive game I have seen to date (even though the PS2 is incapable of using bump mapping like next-generation systems like the Xbox 360 and PS3) but it lacks a strong storyline, has literally a ragtag resistance group, and the side quests were nearly all the same in concept and left me tacking on tons of extra hours while being bored out of my mind hoping that they would get better but they didn't. I even maxed out the license boards for which you get absolutely nothing special. My opinion is that if you are the type of person who wants to beat every Final Fantasy and spinoff, then by all means play it. However, if you are looking for a solid title that will leave you with a feeling of accomplishment and have significant replay value, please look somewhere else.

Final Fanasy XII just didn't have a great story. The main character Vaan was like a sewer rat and he didn't have the leadership capabilities to fit as the main character. Ashe was a complete witch to other characters most of the game and honestly I kind of felt like "Give me a break, I don't want to waste my time helping you take back your kingdom." Balflear on the other hand had so much flare and charisma that you wish he was the main character of the game but they didn't delve a whole lot into his background...bummer. The game play was less than mediocre as well. Even the special moves a lot of the time were just pre-rendered movie scenes where the enemies or characters didn't even show up on the battle screen. The music was less than spectacular although there were a few tracks that I was fond of like the Phon Coast. The level of detail on this game is phenomenal but they left out some nice features like life-size human shadows, the characters and enemies reflection in the water, etc.
Final Fantasy XII is the most graphically impressive game I have seen to date (even though the PS2 is incapable of using bump mapping like next-generation systems like the Xbox 360 and PS3) but it lacks a strong storyline, has literally a ragtag resistance group, and the side quests were nearly all the same in concept and left me tacking on tons of extra hours while being bored out of my mind hoping that they would get better but they didn't. I even maxed out the license boards for which you get absolutely nothing special. My opinion is that if you are the type of person who wants to beat every Final Fantasy and spinoff, then by all means play it. However, if you are looking for a solid title that will leave you with a feeling of accomplishment and have significant replay value, please look somewhere else.

Final Fanasy XII just didn't have a great story. The main character Vaan was like a sewer rat and he didn't have the leadership capabilities to fit as the main character. Ashe was a complete witch to other characters most of the game and honestly I kind of felt like "Give me a break, I don't want to waste my time helping you take back your kingdom." Balflear on the other hand had so much flare and charisma that you wish he was the main character of the game but they didn't delve a whole lot into his background...bummer. The game play was less than mediocre as well. Even the special moves a lot of the time were just pre-rendered movie scenes where the enemies or characters didn't even show up on the battle screen. The music was less than spectacular although there were a few tracks that I was fond of like the Phon Coast. The level of detail on this game is phenomenal but they left out some nice features like life-size human shadows, the characters and enemies reflection in the water, etc.
Final Fantasy XII is the most graphically impressive game I have seen to date (even though the PS2 is incapable of using bump mapping like next-generation systems like the Xbox 360 and PS3) but it lacks a strong storyline, has literally a ragtag resistance group, and the side quests were nearly all the same in concept and left me tacking on tons of extra hours while being bored out of my mind hoping that they would get better but they didn't. I even maxed out the license boards for which you get absolutely nothing special. My opinion is that if you are the type of person who wants to beat every Final Fantasy and spinoff, then by all means play it. However, if you are looking for a solid title that will leave you with a feeling of accomplishment and have significant replay value, please look somewhere else.

I'll overlook the horrendous spelling and grammar in that post but the ignorance of it is still astounding.

Firstly, Spoilers galore coming up here, so don't read if you haven't finished FFXII.

Firstly, Ashe had good reasons to be 'like a witch' to those characters. For nearly all of them, there were good reasons she couldn't trust them. Vaan-he stole from the palace treasury. Balthier and Fran-they're sky pirates, so who would trust them? Basch-he was branded as a traitor and was widely believed to have killed King Raminas, Ashe's father. Larsa-he's a citizen of the Empire and member of the Archadian 'royal family' if you will.

Secondly 'Balflear' as you call him, got a lot of focus on his background towards the end of the game. Sure, initially, he says he's only there for what he can get in material wealth, or just 'there for the ride'. However, he develops extremely well later on. You find out about Balthier's history with the Empire, his being a Judge, and the fact he is Cid's son. He became a sky pirate to escape from all that responsibility, but he realises he needs to face up to it and stop his father, esecially when he realises Venat is real and Cid wasn't just talking to a figment of his imagination. That need to get closure and face up to his past gradually takes over from mere material wealth as his incentive to continue journeying with the ragtag group.

As for your complaints about gameplay. The Quickening complaint is a minor one. I'm not going to pretend it's not a flaw, but it's so superficial that you should be able to overlook it. And with the gambits, again, there are one or two flaws, such as not being able to get all the targets from the start, but I still think those are small flaws that you should be able to get over fairly easily, and I also assert that gambits are a good thing, at least in concept, as they eliminate the need for mindlessly entering the same commands every time and allow battles to flow, much better than previous attempts at real time battles on console RPGs (such as Star Ocean 3).

You are also wrong on the side quests. If you think they are all the same in concept (ie just killing supremely powerful beasts) you haven't played the game enough. I encourage you to buy the Piggyback guide to the game as you'll discover so much stuff you never even knew existed in the game. Hunting marks is the main sidequest, but there's other stuff to do as well. And with that counter-argument your argument regarding replayability is also obsolete. I still haven't done everything there is to do on it despite playing over 500 hours on it.

Ceidwad_yr_Arfau,

You have got to give me a break about the gambits comment. The gambits really take the game play factor out of the game so you might as well just watch the game play itself. I have seen games with macros before but the gambits in this game take it to an all new extreme and suck the fun of "playing a game" right out of Final Fantasy XII.

Although your argument about Ashe could be considered correct, she just doesn't have any excuse to treat others that way and expect a princess' welcome. Another outlook is that Vaan stole from a treasury that no longer belonged to her since her family was already overthrown by the Empire. There was also no physical evidence that proved Basch killed King Raminas. What did Balflear and Fran do to Ashe that was deserving of her witch attitude? Even Larsa was polite to her. Ashe has little class to put her anywhere in the realm that other characters have in the series. Honestly, tell me that you would hang around with, date, or even marry a girl who treated you like that.

In any case the party being led by Vaan is a complete joke. Are you seriously telling me that as an adult, the same Age as someone like Basch, Balflear, or Fran, you would follow some ragtag kid at that age and listen to him as if anything coming out of his mouth had real value?

Although, Final Fantasy XII sports some stunning movie sequences, the characters are way under developed and lack a certain appeal. Balflear is the exception though. He has an appeal that makes you wish that he was the main character although you don't see a whole lot of background story. You are right about Balflear and his background but a couple of movie sequences where they talk about it and a crappy boss battle with Cid just doesn't fill the void like other RPGs with great content. How about where does Balflear live? Where did he grow up? Who is his mother? Can you retrace the steps of what he was doing before he became a Sky Pirate and where that was? What has he been doing exactly since he became a Sky Pirate and where has he been? These simple questions cannot be answered very clearly if at all with the limited information you get from the game about Balflear. You can answer these types of questions quite easily about characters with the content you are given in other games like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII.

By the way, maybe you need to visit the Square-Enix website for Japan. Balflear's name is not spelled "Balthier" originally. Some moron who translated the game into English can't translate a name correctly even though it was written in English letters for them to begin with. Check the Final Fantasy XII website for Japan at: http://www.ff12.com/, any of the Ultimania guide books, and other media in Japan which is straight from the developers and you will find out this is the case. In the future, when you say "horrendous spelling" make sure that you have the correct spelling for a character's name first before you make comments like "Secondly 'Balflear' as you call him..."

I am telling you again that the side quests were really repetitive and just plain boring. I don't care if you got another little snippet of information about the world here and there by doing them. I found myself just roaming for hours talking to people here, getting a little information there, fighting boss upon boss for no apparent reason except in some cases to kill them and get some item not really worth my time. In all honesty, if you make a game, the bosses should be there for a good reason and Final Fantasy XII just went the opposite direction from that and overkilled a bad thing.

On top of that when you go into some of the massive cities, you can't hardly explore anything since you can't even go in most of the doors and many of the people don't even interact with you. I found the game pretty small and empty as far as content goes because of this.

Lastly, I don't know how you spent over 500 hours on Final Fantasy XII without finishing everything since I did basically everything there is to do in less than 200. Even with that kind of time, I still wasted a lot of time just wandering around and enjoying the scenery and how they textured many of the characters and environmental models as well.

You are entitled to your opinion about whatever game you want but I have seen a multitude of much better developed games than Final Fantasy XII that didn't cost even close to the 50 million dollar range. By the way how many games have you actually finished? I'll be happy to introduce some awesome RPGs that you may have missed. You might have to learn Japanese to play them if you don't already know it.

Sophiris, seriously, did you even play FFXII? All those "points" you made are totally misinformed, or showing you didn't understand much from the game.

Beat it several times, actually. How about yourself?

Hynad,

Please enlighten me on "all those points" in detail.

Although your argument about Ashe could be considered correct, she just doesn't have any excuse to treat others that way and expect a princess' welcome. Another outlook is that Vaan stole from a treasury that no longer belonged to her since her family was already overthrown by the Empire. There was also no physical evidence that proved Basch killed King Raminas. What did Balflear and Fran do to Ashe that was deserving of her witch attitude? Even Larsa was polite to her. Ashe has little class to put her anywhere in the realm that other characters have in the series. Honestly, tell me that you would hang around with, date, or even marry a girl who treated you like that.

She had no excuse? What is it in Ceidwad_yr_Arfau's reply that you weren't able to process? He stated all the reasons why she acted the way she did towards Vaan and Balthier. You just didn't read his post or what? This whole paragraph of yours is where you completely showed your lack of understanding. Put things into context a bit, re-read Ceidwad_yr_Arfau's comments, then maybe you'll understand some bits you completely overlooked.



In any case the party being led by Vaan is a complete joke. Are you seriously telling me that as an adult, the same Age as someone like Basch, Balflear, or Fran, you would follow some ragtag kid at that age and listen to him as if anything coming out of his mouth had real value?

Led by Vaan? When exactly is it mentioned that it is led by Vaan? NOWHERE. Just because S-E had to choose which one the player was to control during the whole game doesn't mean he's the leader. If anything, Ashe and Balthier would be a lot more quialified to be called by that, yet the game is kinda clear about the fact that there is no such real MAIN character in it. Their roles are all equal to some extent.


Although, Final Fantasy XII sports some stunning movie sequences, the characters are way under developed and lack a certain appeal. Balflear is the exception though. He has an appeal that makes you wish that he was the main character although you don't see a whole lot of background story. You are right about Balflear and his background but a couple of movie sequences where they talk about it and a crappy boss battle with Cid just doesn't fill the void like other RPGs with great content. How about where does Balflear live? Where did he grow up? Who is his mother? Can you retrace the steps of what he was doing before he became a Sky Pirate and where that was? What has he been doing exactly since he became a Sky Pirate and where has he been? These simple questions cannot be answered very clearly if at all with the limited information you get from the game about Balflear. You can answer these types of questions quite easily about characters with the content you are given in other games like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII.

Tell me, where does Irvine lives? What was he doing before joining the Garden? And what about Red XIII? Who is his mom? How did he manage to have kids? It was clearly stated that he was the last of his race! What about Edea? What did she do before opening her orphanage? Did she hesitate before marrying Cid? And how much exactly does Cid owe to the evil Shumi Norg?

I let you guess the amount of ridiculous I found in all those questions of yours.


By the way, maybe you need to visit the Square-Enix website for Japan. Balflear's name is not spelled "Balthier" originally. Some moron who translated the game into English can't translate a name correctly even though it was written in English letters for them to begin with. Check the Final Fantasy XII website for Japan at: http://www.ff12.com/, any of the Ultimania guide books, and other media in Japan which is straight from the developers and you will find out this is the case. In the future, when you say "horrendous spelling" make sure that you have the correct spelling for a character's name first before you make comments like "Secondly 'Balflear' as you call him..."

Why do you get so worked out over a name that is part of game you dislike so much?


I am telling you again that the side quests were really repetitive and just plain boring. I don't care if you got another little snippet of information about the world here and there by doing them. I found myself just roaming for hours talking to people here, getting a little information there, fighting boss upon boss for no apparent reason except in some cases to kill them and get some item not really worth my time. In all honesty, if you make a game, the bosses should be there for a good reason and Final Fantasy XII just went the opposite direction from that and overkilled a bad thing.

LOL, these bosses are optional, and are in no way worse than having to fight countless of random monsters scattered around the world of Ivalice during the regular run through the game.


On top of that when you go into some of the massive cities, you can't hardly explore anything since you can't even go in most of the doors and many of the people don't even interact with you. I found the game pretty small and empty as far as content goes because of this.

Actually, S-E got it right for once. Not every person in the world or sociable. And you probably know that most people don't let anyone enter their house like that. Especially if you're a total stranger.


Lastly, I don't know how you spent over 500 hours on Final Fantasy XII without finishing everything since I did basically everything there is to do in less than 200. Even with that kind of time, I still wasted a lot of time just wandering around and enjoying the scenery and how they textured many of the characters and environmental models as well.


Yeah, that time count is if you use a guide (don't even try to deny it). Not if you discover things on your own, where anything under 200 is probably an impossibility.


You are entitled to your opinion about whatever game you want but I have seen a multitude of much better developed games than Final Fantasy XII that didn't cost even close to the 50 million dollar range. By the way how many games have you actually finished? I'll be happy to introduce some awesome RPGs that you may have missed. You might have to learn Japanese to play them if you don't already know it.

That last part made me laugh out loud for some reasons.

Ceidwad_yr_Arfau,

You have got to give me a break about the gambits comment. The gambits really take the game play factor out of the game so you might as well just watch the game play itself. I have seen games with macros before but the gambits in this game take it to an all new extreme and suck the fun of "playing a game" right out of Final Fantasy XII.

What's so great about entering the same commands over and over again? All Gambits do is basically take the repetivity out of the gameplay so you don't have to continually stop to select the most basic commands, something that would completely ruin the flow of FFXII's battle system.

The gameplay is still interesting and challenging, since Gambits don't actually set themselves up or prioritise themselves, like you seem to be suggesting, and you do actually have to use your brain to get them to work effectively. And of course, you do actually have to stop to enter specific commands outside your gambits if the situation requires it. Gambits just cut through the grind of continually selecting 'Attack', 'White magick X' or 'Item Y' which is basically all you do for 90% of the battles.



Although your argument about Ashe could be considered correct, she just doesn't have any excuse to treat others that way and expect a princess' welcome. Another outlook is that Vaan stole from a treasury that no longer belonged to her since her family was already overthrown by the Empire. There was also no physical evidence that proved Basch killed King Raminas. What did Balflear and Fran do to Ashe that was deserving of her witch attitude? Even Larsa was polite to her. Ashe has little class to put her anywhere in the realm that other characters have in the series. Honestly, tell me that you would hang around with, date, or even marry a girl who treated you like that.

The other characters didn't hang around with Ashe because they liked her, or wanted to protect her, at least not for most of the game. They hung around with her because they all had similar goals and it made sense to work together, even though Ashe had little love lost for most of them. There are maybe exceptions such as Vaan and Penelo, but they are basically avatars for the gamer and were obviously added late in the game's development.

Basch killing Raminas was never physically proven, but it was what was announced by Marquis Ondore and the Empire, and since Ashe was not present in Nalbina and pretty much everyone who was was executed, what else could she possibly believe? Of course, later in the game when you free Basch from Nalbina Dungeons Ashe (as well as Vaan) realises that Basch was in fact innocent. Ashe had every reason to mistrust Basch given what she knew.

Finally, Ashe's attitude towards Vaan, Balthier and Fran is again completely understandable. She's royalty after all, and is hardly going to trust thieves and Sky Pirates she just met in the sewers. The fact that the Goddess's Magicite that Vaan stole technically belongs to the Empire is entirely irrelevant.


In any case the party being led by Vaan is a complete joke. Are you seriously telling me that as an adult, the same Age as someone like Basch, Balflear, or Fran, you would follow some ragtag kid at that age and listen to him as if anything coming out of his mouth had real value?

*sigh*

See my above reply and that of Hynad's. Vaan is by no means the leader. The team just work together because they have similar goals. You may not like the fact that they aren't all lovey-dovey with each other, but it's a hell of a lot more interesting than FFVII or FFVIII (VIII is the worst offender, VII is slightly better but there are still some cases) where they basically follow each other round without really having any motivations other than an undying love for each other, which is often completely irrational based on what the gamer knows about those individuals.


Although, Final Fantasy XII sports some stunning movie sequences, the characters are way under developed and lack a certain appeal. Balflear is the exception though. He has an appeal that makes you wish that he was the main character although you don't see a whole lot of background story. You are right about Balflear and his background but a couple of movie sequences where they talk about it and a crappy boss battle with Cid just doesn't fill the void like other RPGs with great content. How about where does Balflear live? Where did he grow up? Who is his mother? Can you retrace the steps of what he was doing before he became a Sky Pirate and where that was? What has he been doing exactly since he became a Sky Pirate and where has he been? These simple questions cannot be answered very clearly if at all with the limited information you get from the game about Balflear. You can answer these types of questions quite easily about characters with the content you are given in other games like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII.

There are some underdeveloped characters in FFXII. However, Balthier is not one of them.

To answer your queries, although you don't know who Balthier's mother is, that is largely irrelevant. We don't know who Cloud's father is, and his mother is only briefly mentioned; we don't know who Squall's mother is; Tidus' mother is rarely mentioned, etc. If someone's not of any importance to the plot, they don't need to talked about at length.

I think it's pretty safe to assume Balthier grew up in Archades and enjoyed a fairly privileged upbringing because he was Cid's son. We know Cid looked out for him and made him a Judge. After that he ran from his former life, and it's written in one of the Bestiary sections (can't remember which one) that he saved the Strahl from being tossed onto a scrapheap and upgraded it, and since then has had a bounty on his head by order of Cid and the Imperials, which is why Ba'Gamnan was chasing him around for the first part of the game.

True, it would have been interesting to know a little more about how he met Fran, for example. But for a fan of FFVII or FFVIII to moan about loose ends in a game is rather blatant hypocrisy.


By the way, maybe you need to visit the Square-Enix website for Japan. Balflear's name is not spelled "Balthier" originally. Some moron who translated the game into English can't translate a name correctly even though it was written in English letters for them to begin with. Check the Final Fantasy XII website for Japan at: http://www.ff12.com/, any of the Ultimania guide books, and other media in Japan which is straight from the developers and you will find out this is the case. In the future, when you say "horrendous spelling" make sure that you have the correct spelling for a character's name first before you make comments like "Secondly 'Balflear' as you call him..."

The 'horrendous spelling' wasn't referring to 'Balflear'. It was referring to the numerous spelling errors in the rest of your post. As for Balthier's name, for those of us who don't know that someone mistranslated it, it is easy to jump to conclusions and think that some is taking the piss and being childish when they say 'Balflear'. I'm sure I don't need to tell you why.


I am telling you again that the side quests were really repetitive and just plain boring. I don't care if you got another little snippet of information about the world here and there by doing them. I found myself just roaming for hours talking to people here, getting a little information there, fighting boss upon boss for no apparent reason except in some cases to kill them and get some item not really worth my time. In all honesty, if you make a game, the bosses should be there for a good reason and Final Fantasy XII just went the opposite direction from that and overkilled a bad thing.

Well, which FF sidequests would you say are less repetitive or boring? The sidequests in any game don't usually involve more than just getting little snippets of information about the world or picking up items. You aren't really being specific enough about what it is about them you don't like. All your criticisms for FFXII's sidequests could just as easily be applied by me to the sidequests in other FF games.


On top of that when you go into some of the massive cities, you can't hardly explore anything since you can't even go in most of the doors and many of the people don't even interact with you. I found the game pretty small and empty as far as content goes because of this.

Your first point is something I would agree on. However, Square have done it throughout the series. Think back to Bevelle on FFX, for example, or large parts of Midgar City on FFVII. It's frustrating, but it's certainly not unique to FFXII.

Your second point is just completely moot. The people you can talk to almost always have something useful to say. In other games in the series you got a lot of mindless generic backchat which didn't really give you anything useful or entertaining. If anything, FFXII was a step-up in that regard.


Lastly, I don't know how you spent over 500 hours on Final Fantasy XII without finishing everything since I did basically everything there is to do in less than 200. Even with that kind of time, I still wasted a lot of time just wandering around and enjoying the scenery and how they textured many of the characters and environmental models as well.

You probably haven't finished everything. I haven't time to list them all, but there are over 15 sidequests and optional areas in FFXII, not to mention Rare Game, Elite Marks and the optional Espers.

If you check the official walkthrough and can honestly say you did everything in there in under 200 hours, more power to you, because it took me a hell of a lot longer.


You are entitled to your opinion about whatever game you want but I have seen a multitude of much better developed games than Final Fantasy XII that didn't cost even close to the 50 million dollar range. By the way how many games have you actually finished? I'll be happy to introduce some awesome RPGs that you may have missed. You might have to learn Japanese to play them if you don't already know it.

I've played every FF game from 6-12, except 11. I've also played the Star Ocean series and the Legend of Dragoon, plus Wild Arms 1 and 2 and have played around with RPG Maker.

That said, I really don't see why that's relevant. I'm not going to get involved in a 'woohoo I'vwe played more games than you' argument, as it proves nothing. If you want to prove your point, you should do it in a debate. Playing loads of games doesn't give you more credibility.

What's so great about entering the same commands over and over again? All Gambits do is basically take the repetivity out of the gameplay so you don't have to continually stop to select the most basic commands, something that would completely ruin the flow of FFXII's battle system.

The gameplay is still interesting and challenging, since Gambits don't actually set themselves up or prioritise themselves, like you seem to be suggesting, and you do actually have to use your brain to get them to work effectively. And of course, you do actually have to stop to enter specific commands outside your gambits if the situation requires it. Gambits just cut through the grind of continually selecting 'Attack', 'White magick X' or 'Item Y' which is basically all you do for 90% of the battles.

When I played Final Fantasy XII, I wanted to play the game first of all, not have the game play itself. The gambits don't take that much brain power to figure out. Honestly, they are just basically "if" statements like in the most simple computer programming or Microsoft Excel. Actually, I used plenty of other commands besides just White Magic and Items however I used the regular Attack the most frequently.



The other characters didn't hang around with Ashe because they liked her, or wanted to protect her, at least not for most of the game. They hung around with her because they all had similar goals and it made sense to work together, even though Ashe had little love lost for most of them. There are maybe exceptions such as Vaan and Penelo, but they are basically avatars for the gamer and were obviously added late in the game's development.

I honestly hope that Vaan and Penelo were added late in the game's development because they sure weren't great characters. Although I don't find any evidence about that in the interviews from the developers in the Final Fantasy XII Ultimania books which suggest that.



Basch killing Raminas was never physically proven, but it was what was announced by Marquis Ondore and the Empire, and since Ashe was not present in Nalbina and pretty much everyone who was was executed, what else could she possibly believe? Of course, later in the game when you free Basch from Nalbina Dungeons Ashe (as well as Vaan) realises that Basch was in fact innocent. Ashe had every reason to mistrust Basch given what she knew.

True, but she obviously wasn't very well informed as to the affairs of the kingdom either so given what she knew I would hardly give her any ground for her treatment of the other characters.



Finally, Ashe's attitude towards Vaan, Balthier and Fran is again completely understandable. She's royalty after all, and is hardly going to trust thieves and Sky Pirates she just met in the sewers. The fact that the Goddess's Magicite that Vaan stole technically belongs to the Empire is entirely irrelevant.

I don't care what anybody's position is whether they are the Queen of England, the President of the United States, or the Prime Minister of Japan. They don't get any extra special treatment from me because of their position. If they want to have an attitude with me they are going to get a piece of my mind. On your portfolio information, it says you are from Wales. Honestly, do you really give mindless respect to someone who is in the royal family like Prince Harry who spends his time groping women's breasts on his nights out?



See my above reply and that of Hynad's. Vaan is by no means the leader. The team just work together because they have similar goals. You may not like the fact that they aren't all lovey-dovey with each other, but it's a hell of a lot more interesting than FFVII or FFVIII (VIII is the worst offender, VII is slightly better but there are still some cases) where they basically follow each other round without really having any motivations other than an undying love for each other, which is often completely irrational based on what the gamer knows about those individuals.

I actually find that the characters don't work that well together in general as a party. Balflear seems to be the smartest of the bunch in general and for him to be wasting his time with other characters besides his partner Fran kind of blows my mind.



There are some underdeveloped characters in FFXII. However, Balthier is not one of them.

To answer your queries, although you don't know who Balthier's mother is, that is largely irrelevant. We don't know who Cloud's father is, and his mother is only briefly mentioned; we don't know who Squall's mother is; Tidus' mother is rarely mentioned, etc. If someone's not of any importance to the plot, they don't need to talked about at length.

The point I was trying to make is that you can actually go to physical places and see different events that fill the void of content in the other games through a series of cut scenes and flashbacks, not just be told about them.



I think it's pretty safe to assume Balthier grew up in Archades and enjoyed a fairly privileged upbringing because he was Cid's son. We know Cid looked out for him and made him a Judge. After that he ran from his former life, and it's written in one of the Bestiary sections (can't remember which one) that he saved the Strahl from being tossed onto a scrapheap and upgraded it, and since then has had a bounty on his head by order of Cid and the Imperials, which is why Ba'Gamnan was chasing him around for the first part of the game.

When we assume we make and *ss out of you and me. "Ass-u-me" However, it would have been nice to see some background story cut scenes for the characters instead of just have cut scenes like where Balflear tells that he was a judge. It was nice to see on Final Fantasy X where Auron actually gets killed and he gets the mark on his face. That would have sucked to just hear about it. The same goes for Squall and Seifer. Could you imagine just having some crap dialogue saying that "We were training and cut each other on the forehead?" There are some real important facts that make Balflear a pivotal character that were just glazed over.



True, it would have been interesting to know a little more about how he met Fran, for example. But for a fan of FFVII or FFVIII to moan about loose ends in a game is rather blatant hypocrisy.

Final Fantasy VIII actually tied up most loose ends as far as I can see between all the side quests and the ending. What's the definiton of hypocrisy anyway? I don't see how an opinion is relevant to hypocrisy.



The 'horrendous spelling' wasn't referring to 'Balflear'. It was referring to the numerous spelling errors in the rest of your post. As for Balthier's name, for those of us who don't know that someone mistranslated it, it is easy to jump to conclusions and think that some is taking the piss and being childish when they say 'Balflear'. I'm sure I don't need to tell you why.

What spelling errors were those? There is a difference between English in the United States and the United Kingdom and Australia and New Zealand. For example we don't spell "realize" in the U.S. as "realise" etc.


Well, which FF sidequests would you say are less repetitive or boring? The sidequests in any game don't usually involve more than just getting little snippets of information about the world or picking up items. You aren't really being specific enough about what it is about them you don't like. All your criticisms for FFXII's sidequests could just as easily be applied by me to the sidequests in other FF games.[/QUOTE]

Final Fantasy VII and VIII's side quests were actually quite fun and the content was varied. Final Fantasy X was a little to linear for me and there wasn't much exploration value since many of the key items were hidden with the use of the controlled camera angle. Some side quests were a little repetitive on VII and but don't tell me that you didn't have fun racing chocobos in VII and beating the other competitors in comparison to wasting large amounts of time roaming massive areas looking for some enemy or item based on a few bits of vague information like in Final Fantasy XII.



Your first point is something I would agree on. However, Square have done it throughout the series. Think back to Bevelle on FFX, for example, or large parts of Midgar City on FFVII. It's frustrating, but it's certainly not unique to FFXII.

I felt that for the scale of the cities in XII, countless delays, and money that was spent on the game, I could have got more exploration worth for my money.



Your second point is just completely moot. The people you can talk to almost always have something useful to say. In other games in the series you got a lot of mindless generic backchat which didn't really give you anything useful or entertaining. If anything, FFXII was a step-up in that regard.

In some instances that was the case as you suggest but not always.



You probably haven't finished everything. I haven't time to list them all, but there are over 15 sidequests and optional areas in FFXII, not to mention Rare Game, Elite Marks and the optional Espers. If you check the official walkthrough and can honestly say you did everything in there in under 200 hours, more power to you, because it took me a hell of a lot longer.

Get a copy of the Final Fantasy XII Ultimania Books and check them out for yourself. They are actually much more organized than any walkthrough I have seen to date. Even the "so-called" official strategy guide by Brady Games and such lacks a ton of material that is in the Ultimania Books. There is 592 pages in the Final Fantasy XII Battle Ultimania, 528 pages in the Final Fantasy XII Scenario Ultimania, and 672 pages in the Final Fantasy XII Ultimania Omega. Combined, there is almost 1800 pages of information, maps, interviews from the developers, and everything else you could possibly want as far as content goes for the game. Square-Enix even stated before the release in Japan that the game could be completely finished in about 120 hours which puts me about 70 or so hours above their estimate.



I've played every FF game from 6-12, except 11. I've also played the Star Ocean series and the Legend of Dragoon, plus Wild Arms 1 and 2 and have played around with RPG Maker.

That said, I really don't see why that's relevant. I'm not going to get involved in a 'woohoo I'vwe played more games than you' argument, as it proves nothing. If you want to prove your point, you should do it in a debate. Playing loads of games doesn't give you more credibility.

I am not trying to have an argument about who has played more games. I just think that there are a lot of great ones out there.

I have finished all the Final Fantasy games except for XI since it is ongoing but IV and VIII seem to stand out a lot. Give IV a chance, I liked the Super Famicom/SNES version a lot but you might be better off playing the Advance version of the gameboy since there was some horrible translation errors on the original English version.

Wild Arms Advanced 3rd is probably the best one in that series although Wild ARMs: The Vth Vanguard gives it a run for its money. Give them a try if you get some time.

I have beaten all the Star Ocean games including the original for the Super Famicom although I never found any of them that appealing. The Firewall area in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time was kind of fun though.

The Legend of Dragoon had great music although the battle system was a little stiff. I kind of wish that Sony would have done a little more with it as a series and worked out some of the bugs as it did with Legaia.

From the games you listed it looks like your favorite genre is RPG. I would like to suggest that you try some of these to start with. These titles are fun to play since you get to play as well as have good content that fits together well with the overall gaming experience.

Atlier Iris: Eternal Mana 2
Dragon Quest II, III, VI, and VIII
Full Metal Alchemist 2
Legaia: Duel Saga
Lunar: Silver Star Story
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium
Popful Mail (Sega CD Version)
Popolocrois: Hajimari no Bouken
Summon Night 2 and 3
Tales of Phantasia
Tales of Rebirth
Vagrant Story (The Developers of Final Fantasy XII made this title)
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth
Ys I, II, and III
Zwei!!

(I have tried to pick the best games out of the various series above. The Grandia and Kingdom Hearts series were OK. Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria is a pretty game but the content is a little weak in comparison to its predecessor.)

Other Non-RPGs:
Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War
Another Mind
Devil May Cry 3
Dual Hearts
Fatal Frame I, II, and III
Onimusha 3
Shadow of the Colossus

What's so great about entering the same commands over and over again? All Gambits do is basically take the repetivity out of the gameplay so you don't have to continually stop to select the most basic commands, something that would completely ruin the flow of FFXII's battle system.

The gameplay is still interesting and challenging, since Gambits don't actually set themselves up or prioritise themselves, like you seem to be suggesting, and you do actually have to use your brain to get them to work effectively. And of course, you do actually have to stop to enter specific commands outside your gambits if the situation requires it. Gambits just cut through the grind of continually selecting 'Attack', 'White magick X' or 'Item Y' which is basically all you do for 90% of the battles.

When I played Final Fantasy XII, I wanted to play the game first of all, not have the game play itself. The gambits don't take that much brain power to figure out. Honestly, they are just basically "if" statements like in the most simple computer programming or Microsoft Excel. Actually, I used plenty of other commands besides just White Magic and Items however I used the regular Attack the most frequently.



The other characters didn't hang around with Ashe because they liked her, or wanted to protect her, at least not for most of the game. They hung around with her because they all had similar goals and it made sense to work together, even though Ashe had little love lost for most of them. There are maybe exceptions such as Vaan and Penelo, but they are basically avatars for the gamer and were obviously added late in the game's development.

I honestly hope that Vaan and Penelo were added late in the game's development because they sure weren't great characters. Although I don't find any evidence about that in the interviews from the developers in the Final Fantasy XII Ultimania books which suggest that.



Basch killing Raminas was never physically proven, but it was what was announced by Marquis Ondore and the Empire, and since Ashe was not present in Nalbina and pretty much everyone who was was executed, what else could she possibly believe? Of course, later in the game when you free Basch from Nalbina Dungeons Ashe (as well as Vaan) realises that Basch was in fact innocent. Ashe had every reason to mistrust Basch given what she knew.

True, but she obviously wasn't very well informed as to the affairs of the kingdom either so given what she knew I would hardly give her any ground for her treatment of the other characters.



Finally, Ashe's attitude towards Vaan, Balthier and Fran is again completely understandable. She's royalty after all, and is hardly going to trust thieves and Sky Pirates she just met in the sewers. The fact that the Goddess's Magicite that Vaan stole technically belongs to the Empire is entirely irrelevant.

I don't care what anybody's position is whether they are the Queen of England, the President of the United States, or the Prime Minister of Japan. They don't get any extra special treatment from me because of their position. If they want to have an attitude with me they are going to get a piece of my mind. On your portfolio information, it says you are from Wales. Honestly, do you really give mindless respect to someone who is in the royal family like Prince Harry who spends his time groping women's breasts on his nights out?



See my above reply and that of Hynad's. Vaan is by no means the leader. The team just work together because they have similar goals. You may not like the fact that they aren't all lovey-dovey with each other, but it's a hell of a lot more interesting than FFVII or FFVIII (VIII is the worst offender, VII is slightly better but there are still some cases) where they basically follow each other round without really having any motivations other than an undying love for each other, which is often completely irrational based on what the gamer knows about those individuals.

I actually find that the characters don't work that well together in general as a party. Balflear seems to be the smartest of the bunch in general and for him to be wasting his time with other characters besides his partner Fran kind of blows my mind.



There are some underdeveloped characters in FFXII. However, Balthier is not one of them.

To answer your queries, although you don't know who Balthier's mother is, that is largely irrelevant. We don't know who Cloud's father is, and his mother is only briefly mentioned; we don't know who Squall's mother is; Tidus' mother is rarely mentioned, etc. If someone's not of any importance to the plot, they don't need to talked about at length.

The point I was trying to make is that you can actually go to physical places and see different events that fill the void of content in the other games through a series of cut scenes and flashbacks, not just be told about them.



I think it's pretty safe to assume Balthier grew up in Archades and enjoyed a fairly privileged upbringing because he was Cid's son. We know Cid looked out for him and made him a Judge. After that he ran from his former life, and it's written in one of the Bestiary sections (can't remember which one) that he saved the Strahl from being tossed onto a scrapheap and upgraded it, and since then has had a bounty on his head by order of Cid and the Imperials, which is why Ba'Gamnan was chasing him around for the first part of the game.

When we assume we make and *ss out of you and me. "Ass-u-me" However, it would have been nice to see some background story cut scenes for the characters instead of just have cut scenes like where Balflear tells that he was a judge. It was nice to see on Final Fantasy X where Auron actually gets killed and he gets the mark on his face. That would have sucked to just hear about it. The same goes for Squall and Seifer. Could you imagine just having some crap dialogue saying that "We were training and cut each other on the forehead?" There are some real important facts that make Balflear a pivotal character that were just glazed over.



True, it would have been interesting to know a little more about how he met Fran, for example. But for a fan of FFVII or FFVIII to moan about loose ends in a game is rather blatant hypocrisy.

Final Fantasy VIII actually tied up most loose ends as far as I can see between all the side quests and the ending. What's the definiton of hypocrisy anyway? I don't see how an opinion is relevant to hypocrisy.



The 'horrendous spelling' wasn't referring to 'Balflear'. It was referring to the numerous spelling errors in the rest of your post. As for Balthier's name, for those of us who don't know that someone mistranslated it, it is easy to jump to conclusions and think that some is taking the piss and being childish when they say 'Balflear'. I'm sure I don't need to tell you why.

What spelling errors were those? There is a difference between English in the United States and the United Kingdom and Australia and New Zealand. For example we don't spell "realize" in the U.S. as "realise" etc.


Well, which FF sidequests would you say are less repetitive or boring? The sidequests in any game don't usually involve more than just getting little snippets of information about the world or picking up items. You aren't really being specific enough about what it is about them you don't like. All your criticisms for FFXII's sidequests could just as easily be applied by me to the sidequests in other FF games.[/QUOTE]

Final Fantasy VII and VIII's side quests were actually quite fun and the content was varied. Final Fantasy X was a little to linear for me and there wasn't much exploration value since many of the key items were hidden with the use of the controlled camera angle. Some side quests were a little repetitive on VII and but don't tell me that you didn't have fun racing chocobos in VII and beating the other competitors in comparison to wasting large amounts of time roaming massive areas looking for some enemy or item based on a few bits of vague information like in Final Fantasy XII.



Your first point is something I would agree on. However, Square have done it throughout the series. Think back to Bevelle on FFX, for example, or large parts of Midgar City on FFVII. It's frustrating, but it's certainly not unique to FFXII.

I felt that for the scale of the cities in XII, countless delays, and money that was spent on the game, I could have got more exploration worth for my money.



Your second point is just completely moot. The people you can talk to almost always have something useful to say. In other games in the series you got a lot of mindless generic backchat which didn't really give you anything useful or entertaining. If anything, FFXII was a step-up in that regard.

In some instances that was the case as you suggest but not always.



You probably haven't finished everything. I haven't time to list them all, but there are over 15 sidequests and optional areas in FFXII, not to mention Rare Game, Elite Marks and the optional Espers. If you check the official walkthrough and can honestly say you did everything in there in under 200 hours, more power to you, because it took me a hell of a lot longer.

Get a copy of the Final Fantasy XII Ultimania Books and check them out for yourself. They are actually much more organized than any walkthrough I have seen to date. Even the "so-called" official strategy guide by Brady Games and such lacks a ton of material that is in the Ultimania Books. There is 592 pages in the Final Fantasy XII Battle Ultimania, 528 pages in the Final Fantasy XII Scenario Ultimania, and 672 pages in the Final Fantasy XII Ultimania Omega. Combined, there is almost 1800 pages of information, maps, interviews from the developers, and everything else you could possibly want as far as content goes for the game. Square-Enix even stated before the release in Japan that the game could be completely finished in about 120 hours which puts me about 70 or so hours above their estimate.



I've played every FF game from 6-12, except 11. I've also played the Star Ocean series and the Legend of Dragoon, plus Wild Arms 1 and 2 and have played around with RPG Maker.

That said, I really don't see why that's relevant. I'm not going to get involved in a 'woohoo I'vwe played more games than you' argument, as it proves nothing. If you want to prove your point, you should do it in a debate. Playing loads of games doesn't give you more credibility.

I am not trying to have an argument about who has played more games. I just think that there are a lot of great ones out there.

I have finished all the Final Fantasy games except for XI since it is ongoing but IV and VIII seem to stand out a lot. Give IV a chance, I liked the Super Famicom/SNES version a lot but you might be better off playing the Advance version of the gameboy since there was some horrible translation errors on the original English version.

Wild Arms Advanced 3rd is probably the best one in that series.

I have beaten all the Star Ocean games including the original for the Super Famicom although I never found any of them that appealing. The Firewall area in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time was kind of fun though.

The Legend of Dragoon had great music although the battle system was a little stiff. I kind of wish that Sony would have done a little more with it as a series and worked out some of the bugs as it did with Legaia.

I haven't the time to go into a lengthy reply right now, but rest assured that I will respond to this eventually. It might be a few days, though.

Also, you've double posted twice in this thread. Please don't do that again, as it is a logistical nightmare.

Those double postings were pretty obviously accidental. But they do take up a lot of space, so Sophiris, when that happens in the future, please edit out the text in one of the posts.

Sorry about the double postings. For some reason when I write a post the forum logs me out and then when I enter my login name and password to post a message it double posts. Got any suggestions on how to get around this?

When you log in, check the box to remember you. As long as you don't have any problem with having a cookie for the site, it's the best way.

Thanks.

Here goes, apologies for delay etc.


When I played Final Fantasy XII, I wanted to play the game first of all, not have the game play itself. The gambits don't take that much brain power to figure out. Honestly, they are just basically "if" statements like in the most simple computer programming or Microsoft Excel. Actually, I used plenty of other commands besides just White Magic and Items however I used the regular Attack the most frequently.

Right. Well firstly, I never said the gambits required a huge amount of brain power to get them to work in the most basic sense. However, you still have to set them, and usually need to adapt them every so often to cope with a greater array of enemy abilities. Thus, the game doesn't play itself by any means. Also, gambits are potentially complicated enough to keep even the most tactical of FF gamers interested. You just need to be experimental.

Furthermore, you still haven't said why being able to select 'attack' consecutively makes a game better. And, should that be your thing, you can turn the gambits off and play it manually. As I've said, they are there to take the repetitivity out of the gameplay, not to make it idiot-proof like you're suggesting. I'd say it's nearly impossible to win the game using just gambits.


I honestly hope that Vaan and Penelo were added late in the game's development because they sure weren't great characters. Although I don't find any evidence about that in the interviews from the developers in the Final Fantasy XII Ultimania books which suggest that.

In the main Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XII) it is clearly suggested that Vaan and Penelo were created later in development. Basch was originally intended to be the main/player controlled character, but Square changed to Vaan because they felt this would enable younger gamers to relate better to their avatar.


True, but she obviously wasn't very well informed as to the affairs of the kingdom either so given what she knew I would hardly give her any ground for her treatment of the other characters.

The whole point was that she wasn't well informed. She believed what was told to her by the Empire's puppet (well, basically) Marquis Ondore, just like nearly everyone else you control (Vaan and Vossler, for example). Much of FFXII's character development was based on the predjudice of Basch being discarded as the characters gradually realise the truth.

As for Vaan, Balthier and Fran. The same essential principle I outlined in my last post applies to Ashe's treatment of them-the ignorance of royalty and upper classes in general. Square clearly intended to reflect the elitest society of medieval and early modern Europe in FFXII's characters.


I don't care what anybody's position is whether they are the Queen of England, the President of the United States, or the Prime Minister of Japan. They don't get any extra special treatment from me because of their position. If they want to have an attitude with me they are going to get a piece of my mind. On your portfolio information, it says you are from Wales. Honestly, do you really give mindless respect to someone who is in the royal family like Prince Harry who spends his time groping women's breasts on his nights out?

I don't honestly see how that is relevant to this debate. Taking the current British royal family and comparing them to characters in a computer game is ridiculous.

Also, another point. I've probably said this in my previous posts, but just because you didn't like the way the Ashe conflicted with other members of the party, it doesn't make it a negative for the game. I've shown that Ashe had her reasons for mistrusting the characters that she did. She did trust Vossler, ironically really since he eventually fights your party and goes against Ashe's wishes. But that shows that she is not just a heartless cunt. She just has her reasons for initially mistrusting Vaan, Balthier, Fran and certainly Basch.


I actually find that the characters don't work that well together in general as a party. Balflear seems to be the smartest of the bunch in general and for him to be wasting his time with other characters besides his partner Fran kind of blows my mind.

I've really dealt with this already, but I'll reiterate. Balthier was travelling with the crew initially for the material wealth he thought he could get if he helped Ashe regain Dalmasca's sovreignty, but later his motivations were to stop his father and gain closure to his past

I basically said that in previous posts and you haven't done anything to really cast doubt on that. As such, if you're going to drag this particular part of the debate on without coming up with a new argument, I'm going to be more blunt in my next response.


The point I was trying to make is that you can actually go to physical places and see different events that fill the void of content in the other games through a series of cut scenes and flashbacks, not just be told about them.

Granted, but if you have an imagination that shouldn't be a problem. Cutscenes would have been nice to add a little more 'wow' factor, but the fact that they aren't in there is only a minor flaw and is not proof of any plot hole.


When we assume we make and ass out of you and me. "Ass-u-me" However, it would have been nice to see some background story cut scenes for the characters instead of just have cut scenes like where Balflear tells that he was a judge. It was nice to see on Final Fantasy X where Auron actually gets killed and he gets the mark on his face. That would have sucked to just hear about it. The same goes for Squall and Seifer. Could you imagine just having some crap dialogue saying that "We were training and cut each other on the forehead?" There are some real important facts that make Balflear a pivotal character that were just glazed over.

See above.


Final Fantasy VIII actually tied up most loose ends as far as I can see between all the side quests and the ending. What's the definiton of hypocrisy anyway? I don't see how an opinion is relevant to hypocrisy.

In terms of FFVIII when I said 'loose ends' I was referring to the way the background of most of the characters was handled. It was like, they couldn't be bothered to think up original backgrounds to all of them so they just lumped them all with the same corny one. That showed a total lack of imagination. Technically not a plot hole, but still an example of a poor plot and background.

As for the definition of hypocrisy, look it up for yourself. Unless you're an idiot, you'll see why it's relevant when you know what it means.


Final Fantasy VII and VIII's side quests were actually quite fun and the content was varied. Final Fantasy X was a little to linear for me and there wasn't much exploration value since many of the key items were hidden with the use of the controlled camera angle. Some side quests were a little repetitive on VII and but don't tell me that you didn't have fun racing chocobos in VII and beating the other competitors in comparison to wasting large amounts of time roaming massive areas looking for some enemy or item based on a few bits of vague information like in Final Fantasy XII.

On FFVII you are right. The sidequests were generally interesting and varied. But Chocobo racing was basically the same thing over and over. Not horrendous, but nothing special, even though I enjoyed it.

On FFVIII, maybe you are not so right. There was Triple Triad, which bar a few different rules was basically the same thing over and over, the UFO sidequest and the Chocobo sidequest (which I could never really get into). That is not really varied, and I personally did not find them interesting.

On FFXII you couldn't be more wrong. There are 21 sidequests in the Piggyback walkthrough (I checked last night). True, some of them simply involve fighting progressively more powerful beasts, but around 16 do not, and they are all varied. These include the Dalmascan Patient sidequest, the fishing sidequest, the Pirate Olympics, the Nabudis medallion hunt, and the Bhujerban Madhu Madness (one of my favourites). I can't list them all since I don't have the walkthrough to hand, but someone who owns the walkthrough can confirm this for me. Or you can buy the piggyback guide yourself if you don't believe me.

Also, unless you have the guide you will more than likely not do everything there is to do in the game in your first playthrough, or even your second or third. I still assert that the game offers more lifespan than any other FF game.


I felt that for the scale of the cities in XII, countless delays, and money that was spent on the game, I could have got more exploration worth for my money.

And I felt I could have got the same from FFX, FFIX, FFVIII and FFVII. Let's face it, it's something Square always get wrong in their games. I'm not really disagreeing with you on this, but you have to admit that if you're going to attack FFXII for this flaw, you'd also have to attack the other FF games for the same flaw, as it is prevalent throught the series.


In some instances that was the case as you suggest but not always.

The majority of NPC discussion either contained some relevant information about a mark, or an optional esper, or just your garden-variety monsters that you'd find anywhere. As such, it was genuinel useful and you'd find out some stuff that wasn't immediately obvious just through playing the game.

The stuff that didn't I found to be interesting and focused on issues that we face in our world, such as GM crops (there's an imperial mentioning lousy 'magicked greens' he bought in Archades).





I am not trying to have an argument about who has played more games. I just think that there are a lot of great ones out there.

I have finished all the Final Fantasy games except for XI since it is ongoing but IV and VIII seem to stand out a lot. Give IV a chance, I liked the Super Famicom/SNES version a lot but you might be better off playing the Advance version of the gameboy since there was some horrible translation errors on the original English version.

Wild Arms Advanced 3rd is probably the best one in that series although Wild ARMs: The Vth Vanguard gives it a run for its money. Give them a try if you get some time.

I have beaten all the Star Ocean games including the original for the Super Famicom although I never found any of them that appealing. The Firewall area in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time was kind of fun though.

The Legend of Dragoon had great music although the battle system was a little stiff. I kind of wish that Sony would have done a little more with it as a series and worked out some of the bugs as it did with Legaia.

From the games you listed it looks like your favorite genre is RPG. I would like to suggest that you try some of these to start with. These titles are fun to play since you get to play as well as have good content that fits together well with the overall gaming experience.

Atlier Iris: Eternal Mana 2
Dragon Quest II, III, VI, and VIII
Full Metal Alchemist 2
Legaia: Duel Saga
Lunar: Silver Star Story
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium
Popful Mail (Sega CD Version)
Popolocrois: Hajimari no Bouken
Summon Night 2 and 3
Tales of Phantasia
Tales of Rebirth
Vagrant Story (The Developers of Final Fantasy XII made this title)
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth
Ys I, II, and III
Zwei!!

(I have tried to pick the best games out of the various series above. The Grandia and Kingdom Hearts series were OK. Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria is a pretty game but the content is a little weak in comparison to its predecessor.)

Other Non-RPGs:
Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War
Another Mind
Devil May Cry 3
Dual Hearts
Fatal Frame I, II, and III
Onimusha 3
Shadow of the Colossus

I honestly can't promise I'll play all, or even very many, of those. I mentioned in another thread that I usually only play series I know and love. I'm willing to try new stuff if it's in a genre I like, but in general I stick to the tried and tested. Maybe I'll rent a few.

Well, it seems I'm hardly practicing what I preach, since I've just double posted, probably having the same problem as Sophiris. Oh well, just a quick edit.

I think we should all take a moment to laugh at the irony of Ceidwad chiding Sophiris for the accidental double posts, then making one himself on the same page.

I think we should all take a moment to laugh at the irony of Ceidwad chiding Sophiris for the accidental double posts, then making one himself on the same page.

Well, I was probably having the same problem, which is that the site automatically logs out your session after a certain time. Still, at least I edited my post.

And yeah, I would probably be laughing right now, if it were someone other than me. Oh well.

Here goes, apologies for delay etc.



Right. Well firstly, I never said the gambits required a huge amount of brain power to get them to work in the most basic sense. However, you still have to set them, and usually need to adapt them every so often to cope with a greater array of enemy abilities. Thus, the game doesn't play itself by any means. Also, gambits are potentially complicated enough to keep even the most tactical of FF gamers interested. You just need to be experimental.

Furthermore, you still haven't said why being able to select 'attack' consecutively makes a game better. And, should that be your thing, you can turn the gambits off and play it manually. As I've said, they are there to take the repetitivity out of the gameplay, not to make it idiot-proof like you're suggesting. I'd say it's nearly impossible to win the game using just gambits.

I am positively sure that it is possible to beat Final Fantasy XII with the gambits alone. However, I don't mean from the start of the game since you haven't unlocked all the slots from the license board or got all the types to work with at first. However, as far as the last several areas that shouldn't be an issue since you can set your magics, attacks, etc. to react with your stats as well as the enimies.

Attacking consecutively keeps you involved in the game. However, allowing a variation in the attack strategy would keep a player more involved since the same attack wouldn't be effective on every kind of enemy. When I play a game, I want to play---not watch a game play itself.


In the main Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XII) it is clearly suggested that Vaan and Penelo were created later in development. Basch was originally intended to be the main/player controlled character, but Square changed to Vaan because they felt this would enable younger gamers to relate better to their avatar.[/QUOTE]

I checked the reference and it was from a French site. I couldn't locate where they got the information from. A little strange since the information chain of command from Square-Enix usually goes Japan, U.S., Europe, and then everyone else and I couldn't find any other results for the same information in Japan or the U.S. Although, I do know Vagrant Story very well but I think the poor reception in Japan had to do a lot more with the fact that the Playstation 2 had already come out prior to the release of the game which was subsequently for the original Playstation so I strongly believe it was just passed over and it didn't have so much to do with demographics considering the impressive sales of games like Devil May Cry, Shadow of the Colossus, and many others where the main character may be in his late twenties etc.



The whole point was that she wasn't well informed. She believed what was told to her by the Empire's puppet (well, basically) Marquis Ondore, just like nearly everyone else you control (Vaan and Vossler, for example). Much of FFXII's character development was based on the predjudice of Basch being discarded as the characters gradually realise the truth.

As for Vaan, Balthier and Fran. The same essential principle I outlined in my last post applies to Ashe's treatment of them-the ignorance of royalty and upper classes in general. Square clearly intended to reflect the elitest society of medieval and early modern Europe in FFXII's characters.

I don't honestly see how that is relevant to this debate. Taking the current British royal family and comparing them to characters in a computer game is ridiculous.

You compare the real world with a computer game here: "The stuff that didn't I found to be interesting and focused on issues that we face in our world, such as GM crops (there's an imperial mentioning lousy 'magicked greens' he bought in Archades)."

All I am trying to say is that people are smart and that when developers make a game they should really think about making a party that has some better cohesion.



Also, another point. I've probably said this in my previous posts, but just because you didn't like the way the Ashe conflicted with other members of the party, it doesn't make it a negative for the game. I've shown that Ashe had her reasons for mistrusting the characters that she did. She did trust Vossler, ironically really since he eventually fights your party and goes against Ashe's wishes. But that shows that she is not just a heartless cunt. She just has her reasons for initially mistrusting Vaan, Balthier, Fran and certainly Basch.

I've really dealt with this already, but I'll reiterate. Balthier was travelling with the crew initially for the material wealth he thought he could get if he helped Ashe regain Dalmasca's sovreignty, but later his motivations were to stop his father and gain closure to his past

I basically said that in previous posts and you haven't done anything to really cast doubt on that. As such, if you're going to drag this particular part of the debate on without coming up with a new argument, I'm going to be more blunt in my next response.

Balflear honestly seems like the smartest character in the game. Don't you think that there would be much higher payouts for him to do other jobs than following around some snot-nosed-princess? Turning her over to the empire for money would have definitely been worth more I am sure. Anyway, I see you are pretty adamant about your point so I'll just leave it at that.



Granted, but if you have an imagination that shouldn't be a problem. Cutscenes would have been nice to add a little more 'wow' factor, but the fact that they aren't in there is only a minor flaw and is not proof of any plot hole.

If we don't want a visual representation then we should read a book instead.



In terms of FFVIII when I said 'loose ends' I was referring to the way the background of most of the characters was handled. It was like, they couldn't be bothered to think up original backgrounds to all of them so they just lumped them all with the same corny one. That showed a total lack of imagination. Technically not a plot hole, but still an example of a poor plot and background.

That's true that it could have been handled a little better but it does make sense that they basically grew up in an orphanage together since their many of their parents were fighting in the war or died during it. The kids being raised by Garden since Cid's wife was Edea does give it a little merit as well. Although the instance about forgetting due to the use of G.F.s was pretty weakly linked into the story since the characters as far as I can find didn't have exposure to them during their childhood.



As for the definition of hypocrisy, look it up for yourself. Unless you're an idiot, you'll see why it's relevant when you know what it means.

It was a joke. I know the definition of hypocrisy. I am just asking why an opinion and hypocrisy are considered the same in your book.



On FFVII you are right. The sidequests were generally interesting and varied. But Chocobo racing was basically the same thing over and over. Not horrendous, but nothing special, even though I enjoyed it.

It's the variation and fun that keeps players interested when it comes to side quests. I had a really hard time with the "fun factor" in Final Fantasy XII.



On FFVIII, maybe you are not so right. There was Triple Triad, which bar a few different rules was basically the same thing over and over, the UFO sidequest and the Chocobo sidequest (which I could never really get into). That is not really varied, and I personally did not find them interesting.

I respect your opinion on that.



On FFXII you couldn't be more wrong. There are 21 sidequests in the Piggyback walkthrough (I checked last night). True, some of them simply involve fighting progressively more powerful beasts, but around 16 do not, and they are all varied. These include the Dalmascan Patient sidequest, the fishing sidequest, the Pirate Olympics, the Nabudis medallion hunt, and the Bhujerban Madhu Madness (one of my favourites). I can't list them all since I don't have the walkthrough to hand, but someone who owns the walkthrough can confirm this for me. Or you can buy the piggyback guide yourself if you don't believe me.

This is from my prior post:

"I am telling you again that the side quests were really repetitive and just plain boring. I don't care if you got another little snippet of information about the world here and there by doing them. I found myself just roaming for hours talking to people here, getting a little information there, fighting boss upon boss for no apparent reason except in some cases to kill them and get some item not really worth my time. In all honesty, if you make a game, the bosses should be there for a good reason and Final Fantasy XII just went the opposite direction from that and overkilled a bad thing."

I hope you didn't get the impression from my prior post that there were only bosses. However, the bosses that I did have to deal with just weren't fun to fight. Try Shadow of the Colossus and compare. Boss battles shouldn't just be about taking down billions of hit points off some monster with mega stats. They should be about strategy and "fun." Roaming around the areas searching stupid cactus-like plants in the desert, talking from person to person to countless person, and stuff like that just bored the fun right out of the game. If these places were new areas to explore, they might have been more fun but the same places with much of the same music I didn't care for just made these side quests all the worse. On top of that many of these items and stuff really didn't make much of a difference in the long run in fighting Vayne since my characters were already almost maxed levels to begin with. I just coundn't find the light at the end of the tunnel for the side quests.

I think my favorite part of the game would have to be when Balflear jumps into the caged-off arena area with Vaan and you punch the crap out of those dudes. Unfortunately, that was at the start of the game...



Also, unless you have the guide you will more than likely not do everything there is to do in the game in your first playthrough, or even your second or third. I still assert that the game offers more lifespan than any other FF game.

Two times completely through this game and a time run to see how fast I could beat it are definitely enough for me.



And I felt I could have got the same from FFX, FFIX, FFVIII and FFVII. Let's face it, it's something Square always get wrong in their games. I'm not really disagreeing with you on this, but you have to admit that if you're going to attack FFXII for this flaw, you'd also have to attack the other FF games for the same flaw, as it is prevalent throught the series.

What I am saying here is that if Square-Enix had spent the same amount of money on all their games equal to Final Fantasy XII we would have gotten a lot more. The $50 million spent on Final Fantasy XII compared to the $30 million spent on Final Fantasy X and the $20 million spent on Final Fantasy VIII should have given players a tremendous difference in gameplay experience. One of the biggest disappointments for me in Final Fantasy XII was that you couldn't even fly an airship when literally the whole game was filled with several different types of airships and two characters were "sky" pirates and one was a wanna-be "sky" pirate. They could have easily sandboxed it like they did on Shadow of the Colossus so you could cover the whole world by sky.



The majority of NPC discussion either contained some relevant information about a mark, or an optional esper, or just your garden-variety monsters that you'd find anywhere. As such, it was genuinel useful and you'd find out some stuff that wasn't immediately obvious just through playing the game.

I noticed this as well. I just wished that they had handled the distribution of information a little more realistically.



The stuff that didn't I found to be interesting and focused on issues that we face in our world, such as GM crops (there's an imperial mentioning lousy 'magicked greens' he bought in Archades).

Other examples as you mention here, I found matched the layout of the game better although there was a scarcity of them.



I honestly can't promise I'll play all, or even very many, of those. I mentioned in another thread that I usually only play series I know and love. I'm willing to try new stuff if it's in a genre I like, but in general I stick to the tried and tested. Maybe I'll rent a few.

At least try Shadow of the Colossus and tell me later how much fun you had trying to figure out how to kill the bosses. After realizing the strategy involved as well as the feeling of accomplishment you get knowing that you took out something that massive with only the elements of the environment, a sword and bow, Final Fantasy XII's boss battles will look nothing more than dry in comparison. Trust me.

I am positively sure that it is possible to beat Final Fantasy XII with the gambits alone. However, I don't mean from the start of the game since you haven't unlocked all the slots from the license board or got all the types to work with at first. However, as far as the last several areas that shouldn't be an issue since you can set your magics, attacks, etc. to react with your stats as well as the enimies.

Attacking consecutively keeps you involved in the game. However, allowing a variation in the attack strategy would keep a player more involved since the same attack wouldn't be effective on every kind of enemy. When I play a game, I want to play---not watch a game play itself.


FFVII and VIII had the same problem. Every fight could be handle with the fight command, and using the many spell were done every so often for eye candy sakes only. Almost never do you need to have any kind of strategies to win a fight. All you need to do is unleash your strongest attacks on the monsters and voila! This only leads you to smash the "action/confirmation" button over and over again. And the games get ridiculously easy (as if they weren't easy enough to begin with) when you get the higher level Limit Breaks. This argument you have against FFXII's battle system is completely moot.



Balflear honestly seems like the smartest character in the game. Don't you think that there would be much higher payouts for him to do other jobs than following around some snot-nosed-princess? Turning her over to the empire for money would have definitely been worth more I am sure. Anyway, I see you are pretty adamant about your point so I'll just leave it at that.

It is pretty clear that Balthier is playing a role during the first half of the game to hide his true motives. When you meet him at first, it is clear he is after the Deifacted Nethicite that Vaan founf in the Rabanastre Royal Vaults. Further in the game, you learn that Balthier's facination for this stone comes from his knowledge that his days among the Empire's rank (He was a Judge) and from the experiments his father was doing on these special "stones". He knew how powerful these stones were and he wanted to make sure it wouldn't fall in the hands of his twisted father.




If we don't want a visual representation then we should read a book instead.

If you don't want a game and want to be told a story, you read a book. And if you want cut-scenes that much and don't wan't to use much of you brain, you watch an epic movie.



It's the variation and fun that keeps players interested when it comes to side quests. I had a really hard time with the "fun factor" in Final Fantasy XII.

Having fun or not doing something is quite subjective, so I'm not going to bother addressing this. It's not a valid argument.




What I am saying here is that if Square-Enix had spent the same amount of money on all their games equal to Final Fantasy XII we would have gotten a lot more. The $50 million spent on Final Fantasy XII compared to the $30 million spent on Final Fantasy X and the $20 million spent on Final Fantasy VIII should have given players a tremendous difference in gameplay experience. One of the biggest disappointments for me in Final Fantasy XII was that you couldn't even fly an airship when literally the whole game was filled with several different types of airships and two characters were "sky" pirates and one was a wanna-be "sky" pirate. They could have easily sandboxed it like they did on Shadow of the Colossus so you could cover the whole world by sky.

Except for your fascination for the garbage of a game (and how overly overated) that is Shadow of the Collossus, I agree on your point about the airships. It has been completely and sadly missing since Final Fantasy X.


I noticed this as well. I just wished that they had handled the distribution of information a little more realistically.

I really don't understand that point. What exacly would have made it more "realistic"?



At least try Shadow of the Colossus and tell me later how much fun you had trying to figure out how to kill the bosses. After realizing the strategy involved as well as the feeling of accomplishment you get knowing that you took out something that massive with only the elements of the environment, a sword and bow, Final Fantasy XII's boss battles will look nothing more than dry in comparison. Trust me.

Try to beat Omega Mark XII, The Hell Wyrm, Zodiark and Yiazmat without a noob guide, then you'll get to speak about a winning strategies.

Shadow of the Collossus is an overated boring game that is basically a Zelda game without any significant action in-between the many bosses.

It was a huge step back from ICO, their prior project. And was overated mainly due to it's technical achievements.

Because we're just going in circles on a lot of stuff here, I'll leave the repetitive stuff alone and concentrate on the points where you have actually said something genuinely new in response to my rebuttals. I don't agree with you, but I'll let those who are impartial be the judge of who has presented their argument the better. Balthier's motives and Ashe's behaviour are two things we clearly aren't going to agree on, so I'll leave it at what I've already said.

Also, Hynad makes some good points regarding some of your arguments. I'd only be repeating what he said, really.



I checked the reference and it was from a French site. I couldn't locate where they got the information from. A little strange since the information chain of command from Square-Enix usually goes Japan, U.S., Europe, and then everyone else and I couldn't find any other results for the same information in Japan or the U.S. Although, I do know Vagrant Story very well but I think the poor reception in Japan had to do a lot more with the fact that the Playstation 2 had already come out prior to the release of the game which was subsequently for the original Playstation so I strongly believe it was just passed over and it didn't have so much to do with demographics considering the impressive sales of games like Devil May Cry, Shadow of the Colossus, and many others where the main character may be in his late twenties etc.


The information may just be little-known. True, France is hardly a gaming superpower, but it's entirely plausible that the information was simply overlooked by the US and Japanese gaming communities. Square haven't issued any statements to deny that Vaan and Penelo were put in late in the game's development, to my knowledge.


You compare the real world with a computer game here: "The stuff that didn't I found to be interesting and focused on issues that we face in our world, such as GM crops (there's an imperial mentioning lousy 'magicked greens' he bought in Archades)."

The point I was trying to make is that there are no paralells between the current British royal family and Princess Ashe, except for the fact they both happen to be monarchy. So comparing the behaviour of the two parties is ridiculous.

There is, on the other hand, clearly a paralell between GM crops and the 'magicked greens' mentioned in Archades.


All I am trying to say is that people are smart and that when developers make a game they should really think about making a party that has some better cohesion.

Well I'd only agree with you in terms of Vaan and Penelo there. In my opinion, they were rather pointless characters. However, there is a clear reason for every other character to join your party, including your guests.


If we don't want a visual representation then we should read a book instead.

I am merely arguing that visual representation of every detail about the characters was not essential to tie up the loose ends. Having loads more cut-scenes would have added something to the game, but the fact that they aren't always there doesn't make the game bad. It's not like there are no cut-scenes at all. The ones that are there are pretty impressive.


That's true that it could have been handled a little better but it does make sense that they basically grew up in an orphanage together since their many of their parents were fighting in the war or died during it. The kids being raised by Garden since Cid's wife was Edea does give it a little merit as well. Although the instance about forgetting due to the use of G.F.s was pretty weakly linked into the story since the characters as far as I can find didn't have exposure to them during their childhood.

Sure, it made sense that some of them may have grown up in an orphanage, but the fact that all of them did and that most of their pasts are unexplained and undetailed (Squall excepted) is just down to lazy game design. I don't see how the fact that they all then went on to Gardens due to Edea's influence changes that fact. The developers showed a total lack of imagination, basically.


It was a joke. I know the definition of hypocrisy. I am just asking why an opinion and hypocrisy are considered the same in your book.

An opinion and hypocrisy aren't considered the same by me. I just find it ironic that you criticise games you don't like (FFXII) for having certain flaws, while overlooking those certain flaws when they are present in games you do like (FFVII and FFVIII).


It's the variation and fun that keeps players interested when it comes to side quests. I had a really hard time with the "fun factor" in Final Fantasy XII.

Well I didn't have a hard time with the 'fun factor' in FFXII! Look, I really don't know what more I can do to try and prove my point here. I've already shown that FFXII had a wide range of varied sidequests and optional stuff and cited bibliography to back up those claims. In my opinion there should be something for everyone amongst the 20+ sidequests in FFXII. If you don't like them, that's fine, but you can't base your arguments on an opinion without providing reasons for that opinion.



This is from my prior post:

"I am telling you again that the side quests were really repetitive and just plain boring. I don't care if you got another little snippet of information about the world here and there by doing them. I found myself just roaming for hours talking to people here, getting a little information there, fighting boss upon boss for no apparent reason except in some cases to kill them and get some item not really worth my time. In all honesty, if you make a game, the bosses should be there for a good reason and Final Fantasy XII just went the opposite direction from that and overkilled a bad thing."

I hope you didn't get the impression from my prior post that there were only bosses. However, the bosses that I did have to deal with just weren't fun to fight. Try Shadow of the Colossus and compare. Boss battles shouldn't just be about taking down billions of hit points off some monster with mega stats. They should be about strategy and "fun." Roaming around the areas searching stupid cactus-like plants in the desert, talking from person to person to countless person, and stuff like that just bored the fun right out of the game. If these places were new areas to explore, they might have been more fun but the same places with much of the same music I didn't care for just made these side quests all the worse. On top of that many of these items and stuff really didn't make much of a difference in the long run in fighting Vayne since my characters were already almost maxed levels to begin with. I just coundn't find the light at the end of the tunnel for the side quests.

Boss battles aren't always about a slug-fest with some uber-monster, whereby you're either strong enough to win or you aren't and thus have to spend time grinding. I thought that initially, but that is actually a popular misconception about FFXII.

If you set defined roles for your characters (eg having a tank, damage dealer, etc.) bosses do become much easier and teamwork is of the essence against the toughest Marks and Rare Game. You can have all characters at Level 99 with excellent equipment and you still won't beat them without a good strategy.

Also, status effects actually work on bosses in FFXII. On certain bosses you can cast Silence/Blind/Sleep/Slow etc and they become harmless and you can take them down at much lower levels. Then there's others that you can combine Oil+Firaga against to beat them at much lower levels than normal.

Basically, nearly every boss has a weakness, elemental or otherwise, it's just about finding it.

As for your other points.

There are new areas to explore in a lot of the sidequests. Think Nabudis Deadlands and the Necrohol for the medallion hunt, or the Pharos Subterra, or the optional areas of the Henne Mines, Garamsythe Waterway, Great Crystal etc, plus the Zertinan Caverns.

The point about the music is maybe valid, though. I think the range of music was rather disappointing and didn't like that a lot of the tunes got regurgitated into multiple areas. However, some people positively love the music in FFXII (I'm not one of them) and that is about personal opinion rather than cold facts.


I think my favorite part of the game would have to be when Balflear jumps into the caged-off arena area with Vaan and you punch the crap out of those dudes. Unfortunately, that was at the start of the game...

I would totally disagree, naturally. I much preferred the later parts of the game as the politics unfolded. I particularly enjoyed Ashe's and Larsa's development, plus that of Basch, Gabranth etc. I suppose that is a difference in tastes. You prefer action, I prefer drama.



Two times completely through this game and a time run to see how fast I could beat it are definitely enough for me.

Ok, but my point still stands that there's optional stuff that you will miss on your first couple of playthroughs, and thus the game has good lifespan. Even if you don't want to go through the game a third time you may well find yourself coming back to your old save files for more of the optional stuff, and it's worth noting that there's only one of the 21 which has to be completed within a certain time frame-the others you can come back to do later as you please.


What I am saying here is that if Square-Enix had spent the same amount of money on all their games equal to Final Fantasy XII we would have gotten a lot more. The $50 million spent on Final Fantasy XII compared to the $30 million spent on Final Fantasy X and the $20 million spent on Final Fantasy VIII should have given players a tremendous difference in gameplay experience. One of the biggest disappointments for me in Final Fantasy XII was that you couldn't even fly an airship when literally the whole game was filled with several different types of airships and two characters were "sky" pirates and one was a wanna-be "sky" pirate. They could have easily sandboxed it like they did on Shadow of the Colossus so you could cover the whole world by sky.

FFXII did introduce a tremendous difference in gameplay, and many of us liked that difference. You may not, but you've not given an adequate reason for not liking it, since your 'I need to mindlessly select Attack every two seconds to feel like I'm playing the game' desire can actually be accomodated for in FFXII by simply turning the gambits off.

Oh, but I agree on the airships, though. The Skyferries were cool, but it would have been nice to explore the Strahl properly and travel around freely.


I noticed this as well. I just wished that they had handled the distribution of information a little more realistically.

As Hynad said, can you elaborate here? I haven't a clue what you mean by more 'realistically'.


At least try Shadow of the Colossus and tell me later how much fun you had trying to figure out how to kill the bosses. After realizing the strategy involved as well as the feeling of accomplishment you get knowing that you took out something that massive with only the elements of the environment, a sword and bow, Final Fantasy XII's boss battles will look nothing more than dry in comparison. Trust me.

OK! I hereby solemnly swear I will try that game. However, should it fail to live up to the high expectations that I have thanks to your talking it up, I shall surely post a lengthy rant on here and will expect you to answer it. :p

Quick edit: I know I said I'd leave the stuff about Ashe/Balthier alone. But I just had one point to make.


Balflear honestly seems like the smartest character in the game. Don't you think that there would be much higher payouts for him to do other jobs than following around some snot-nosed-princess? Turning her over to the empire for money would have definitely been worth more I am sure. Anyway, I see you are pretty adamant about your point so I'll just leave it at that.

Ashe didn't have proof of her lineage and was therefore not worth more than any random street-girl. Without the Dawn Shard, she couldn't reclaim her throne and as such the Empire could claim her to be an impostor, should she have tried. So Balthier may as well have helped Ashe. Of course, by doing this, he comes face to face with his past, so that takes over as his main motivation.

I'll leave our FFXII debate at what it is. I think that there are enough good points on both sides. Actually, believe it or not, I'm not a real big fan of Final Fantasy VII although I see some interesting things done in the game. I have my complaints about Final Fantasy VIII as well. I have actually been playing the series since the first title released on the Famicom so there has been many things I have and haven't liked in the series over the last 20 years. I did for one however, like the fact that you hit the trigger button for the gunblade on Final Fantasy VIII and I wish more RPGs had similar action elements, just not sucky ones like Shadow Hearts.

Hynad makes a point about Shadow of the Colossus being "...an overated boring game that is basically a Zelda game without any significant action in-between the many bosses." There is not supposed to be anyhing between the bosses since it is a forbidden land and nobody is supposed to be there in the first place. I am just warning you in advance about this fact but I don't want to spoil exactly what each of the bosses are a part of in the grand scheme of things. I didn't like all the bosses but the way you have to use the environment to beat the bosses is well thought out. In beating somewhere in the range of about 1500+ games in my lifetime, I would have to say that I have never had so much fun and difficulty taking down a boss and using my brain to do it. Some bosses on Shadow of the Colossus actually took me several hours to beat even though the voice of ****** (don't want to spoil the game) kept echoing in the sky telling me these vague hints from time to time.

The other thing that I liked about Shadow of the Colossus was that the environmental transition from place to place was more realistic than in any other game I have seen. In other games you go through a loading screen and instantly you are in a desert, ice area, fire area, etc. The transition between terrain is very subtle in this game an mimics reality better than anything I have seen to date. On top of that, even though the game is sandboxed, it loads everything on the fly so you don't have to deal with loading screens when travelling from area to area. The practice of sandboxing is no longer necessary with the Playstation 3 hardware so I hope Square-Enix gets the rid of the loading screen crap with Final Fantasy XIII.

The bosses that Hynad talks about in Final Fantasy XII that he thinks were hard may possibly be difficult if you haven't played that many games and don't understand the game setup but I haven't found much of anything in the Final Fantasy series to give me a run for my money in a long time. Possibly, the last time was on Final Fantasy Tactics because I was just plain lazy and failed to learn new skills that were effective on later enemies. This put me in a bad position later on and I just had to start the game over from scratch. Other than that, it seems to me, that if you are familiar with the game system and have a solid understanding how the various skills and magic can be combined to deal out damage then there isn't that big of an issue.

In terms of the difficulty level, (and I know you said you wanted to let this lie, but this is a new argument and I think we should discuss it too) I would disagree (big surprise). I just think that for the most powerful optional beasts there's no way a simply adequate knowledge of the game will suffice, you have to really prepare well for the battles, as well as having a high-level party.

Also, if you do the bare minimum in terms of just doing the main game and not really doing any grinding, the storyline bosses are surprisingly hard, not least because you generally need lots of items to beat them and there is a staggering dearth of gil available in FFXII. That's one of my favourite aspects of FFXII. You have to think about what you spend money on, and you can't just buy everything, like in some other games.

In terms of the difficulty level, (and I know you said you wanted to let this lie, but this is a new argument and I think we should discuss it too) I would disagree (big surprise). I just think that for the most powerful optional beasts there's no way a simply adequate knowledge of the game will suffice, you have to really prepare well for the battles, as well as having a high-level party.

Arguing against that would be showing a huge lot of hypocrisy. Sophirith, I know for sure that you used a guide to complete FFXII, so you arguing that these bosses I mentioned in my past post are not tough, and that you didn't have difficulty to find an adequate and well thought cambit strategy to beat them is utter crap. You mentioned you managed to beat the whole game in under 200 hours. That is everywhere on the net, known as the average time to beat the game with the use of a guide (150-200 hours).

People completing the games on their own and find the many side-quest and loots to get the ultimate weapons will do so in a lot more than 200 hours.

Don't be the hypocrite there, please.

Sorry, but I didn't need the guide to beat any of the bosses. I am probably one of the biggest level grinders out there so I never have money issues on RPGs either. I usually gain 5-10 levels per area on any given RPG so I usually have maxed levels and many times money as well way before I get to the end of the game. Legend of Dragoon was a little different since they gave you jack and crap for money in the battles so I was saving money forever to get the best armor the second time around. That game is a perfect example of what you shouldn't do as a developer when setting prices for stuff as well as the money you get from battles. I did use help to find a few of the items because I didn't want to waste a lot of time with the game because I had several others on my "to-beat-list" that I was more interested in at the time. However, I was really interested in the technical aspect of how the game was built from the ground up and which new programs were used in the development of the game so as far as I am concerned, that is where the Ultimania guides have their real value. Other than that, if you had that big of a problem with the bosses Hynad, I would venture to say that you probably suck as a game player. I am not trying to be super-offensive here but in my honest opinion that has got to be the fact if you are not able to take down the bosses that easily and you are equipped with all the best stuff available up to that point and have your license board and levels maxed.

Sorry, but I didn't need the guide to beat any of the bosses. I am probably one of the biggest level grinders out there so I never have money issues on RPGs either. I usually gain 5-10 levels per area on any given RPG so I usually have maxed levels and many times money as well way before I get to the end of the game. Legend of Dragoon was a little different since they gave you jack and crap for money in the battles so I was saving money forever to get the best armor the second time around. That game is a perfect example of what you shouldn't do as a developer when setting prices for stuff as well as the money you get from battles. I did use help to find a few of the items because I didn't want to waste a lot of time with the game because I had several others on my "to-beat-list" that I was more interested in at the time. However, I was really interested in the technical aspect of how the game was built from the ground up and which new programs were used in the development of the game so as far as I am concerned, that is where the Ultimania guides have their real value. Other than that, if you had that big of a problem with the bosses Hynad, I would venture to say that you probably suck as a game player. I am not trying to be super-offensive here but in my honest opinion that has got to be the fact if you are not able to take down the bosses that easily and you are equipped with all the best stuff available up to that point and have your license board and levels maxed.

If you grind a lot, it's obviously going to be easier. Particularly with the money aspect. I can't emphasise enough how important having extra cash is. If you have a lot of gil, you can buy equipment that suits your current needs and have a large stock of items, something which is really important against a lot of bosses. If you don't grind much and don't have the gil, you basically have to make do with low grade equipment as the game doesn't give you much cash for a 'normal' amount of grinding.

As for the optional bosses, we'll have to agree to differ. The general opinion of gamers worldwide as well as those on this forum is that the game's optional bosses were exceptionally difficult by FF standards. So, if you call Hynad a rubbish game player, you call everyone else who has struggled with the optional stuff rubbish.

I suspect that your low estimation of FFXII is more down to your supremely high levels of grinding and maxing stuff out. Ironic really, since if that is the case you should actually like FFXII.

Ceidwad_yr_Arfau,

I don't really know what everyone else does regarding grinding out levels but when I play just about any game and especially RPGs, I try to max out everything and get everything so that I get the full gaming experience so I can see the pros and cons in a broader perspective.

Obviously, maxing out levels, skills, etc. on a game makes the battles much easier. To be completely frank, I hate dying on games because many times there is not a save point close by and you lose time, experience, items, money, and have to do it all over again. I like to be prepared to just level any boss to the ground that crosses my path so I have a bad habit of spending the majority of game time saving up.

If gamers are having trouble with bosses due to their lack of preparation and that is their reason for complaining the bosses are hard, then that is actually their fault and not the game system itself as far as I am concerned. To put it into perspective, in real life you couldn't complain that you didn't win in a competition with a concert pianist if you didn't put in the necessary time to practice and increase your skill level to be a a viable competitor, right? This goes with anything else in life and when it comes to RPGs where most things are based on your stats vs. the enemies/bosses stats, you can never be underprepared.

To be honest, I don't think that Final Fantasy XII is the worst game I have played by any means and it is not even close to "my top 20 most hated games" but I do try to view things on the same scale that I rate any game.

Actually, one of the worst RPGs I have played on the Playstation 2 was the Phantasy Star II remake. That game was just awful like the original Sega Genesis/Mega Drive version and the remake still had pretty much no redeeming values. It has got to be one of the worst games as far as party formation. All the characters just show up at your front door and give you some crap verbage and join your party.

Another horrible game that was actually made for the Playstation 2 originally was Tales of Legendia. The electric guitar theme never matched with the "touching scenes" and was overplayed. The dialogue in the game in general was just a load of crap. The battle system focused more on button mashing then actual skill like some of the previous titles in the "Tales" series.

Galerians: Ash for the Playstation 2 was probably the worst game I have ever played on the system although Seven Samurai 20XX was a close runner up, both sporting some of the worst gameplay I have seen on the platform.

I don't want to get off track here since we are talking about Final Fantasy XII but I do want to make it known that I have given the game a fair chance. I think that this thread has been very interesting and I think that you have argued some valid points which I have enjoyed reading as you have answered as far as I can see with a lot of thought. I noticed that you had posted something about Final Fantasy VIII as I browsed through some other threads and I would be interested in hearing some more of your thoughts on this game but we can continue that discussion on the proper thread.

Sorry, but I didn't need the guide to beat any of the bosses. I am probably one of the biggest level grinders out there so I never have money issues on RPGs either. I usually gain 5-10 levels per area on any given RPG so I usually have maxed levels and many times money as well way before I get to the end of the game. Legend of Dragoon was a little different since they gave you jack and crap for money in the battles so I was saving money forever to get the best armor the second time around. That game is a perfect example of what you shouldn't do as a developer when setting prices for stuff as well as the money you get from battles. I did use help to find a few of the items because I didn't want to waste a lot of time with the game because I had several others on my "to-beat-list" that I was more interested in at the time. However, I was really interested in the technical aspect of how the game was built from the ground up and which new programs were used in the development of the game so as far as I am concerned, that is where the Ultimania guides have their real value. Other than that, if you had that big of a problem with the bosses Hynad, I would venture to say that you probably suck as a game player. I am not trying to be super-offensive here but in my honest opinion that has got to be the fact if you are not able to take down the bosses that easily and you are equipped with all the best stuff available up to that point and have your license board and levels maxed.

LMAO!!! What a fucking hypocrite you are Sophirith.

You can clearly see that I didn't mention any regular boss. Now you just proved my point. Tell me what was your strategy when you fought Omega Mark XII.

Having maxed out the levels of your characters doesn't make the fight that much easier against these bosses I mentioned.



If gamers are having trouble with bosses due to their lack of preparation and that is their reason for complaining the bosses are hard, then that is actually their fault and not the game system itself as far as I am concerned. To put it into perspective, in real life you couldn't complain that you didn't win in a competition with a concert pianist if you didn't put in the necessary time to practice and increase your skill level to be a a viable competitor, right? This goes with anything else in life and when it comes to RPGs where most things are based on your stats vs. the enemies/bosses stats, you can never be underprepared.

OMFG, since when did anyone here complain about the difficulty of the game?

Again Sophirith, I can spot a liar miles around, and you just happen to be one.


Just so you know, you're not making yourself look better than anyone here by pretending to never have had difficulties finding the way to beat Omega Mark XIII or Yiazmat. It is completely possible to beat them without the use of a guide, but in no way do you know the proper Gambit settings to beat them before you're battled with them 2 pr 3 times.

Hynad,

Have you beat the bosses yourself?

Since you seem like you're dying to talk to anybody and have someone respond to your post, I guess I will appease you this one time about the Omega Mark XII strategy.

Try using these effects on the main attacking character with the other two characters. “Reverse” since this restores damage as H.P., “Decoy” since this lures the enemy to the character, “Haste” since this increases the the action turnover rate, and “Protect” since this raises defense. You might want to equip a “Bubble Chain” as well since the effect lasts forever. Whatever you do, don't use the other two characters to attack and keep them just far enough away from the action. Reverse seems to wear off real quickly so you should keep casting it as often as possible. Deviations of this strategy work well with a few other bosses as well like the Hell Wyrm. This boss isn’t about pummeling it into the ground with 3 characters. It is all about suporting one character who slowly but surely takes it down. The “Saikyou no Hoko” is the best weapon as well to stick on the attacking character if you have it. I used some hints to find this weapon. You would be stupid to miss this weapon since it packs a load of damage. I am not sure what they call this weapon on the English Version but literally translated, it means the “Most Powerful Halberd/Pike.” It costs 235 LP to unlock on the license board so I am sure you can look at your own game and figure out which one this is since there is only one weapon which costs that amount to unlock.

I am sure that there are probably other strategies that gamers can use to beat Omega Mark XII that I haven't thought of since there is often more than one answer to a boss strategy, but here you go for peace of mind. My advice to you in the future when you play a RPG is to get to know the functionality of the stuff you have and quit getting heated and jealous when someone can figure out what you can’t. Honestly, "Reverse" is the obvious no-brainer solution to those types of bosses on Final Fantasy XII that deal out heaps of damage if you even thought 10 seconds about it after you got it. It's not about just having everything on a game so you can brag about it to your buddies and show off your massive menu of crap you got, its about knowing how to use everything on a game that's important.

Hynad,

Have you beat the bosses yourself?

Since you seem like you're dying to talk to anybody and have someone respond to your post, I guess I will appease you this one time about the Omega Mark XII strategy.

Try using these effects on the main attacking character with the other two characters. �Reverse� since this restores damage as H.P., �Decoy� since this lures the enemy to the character, �Haste� since this increases the the action turnover rate, and �Protect� since this raises defense. You might want to equip a �Bubble Chain� as well since the effect lasts forever. Whatever you do, don't use the other two characters to attack and keep them just far enough away from the action. Reverse seems to wear off real quickly so you should keep casting it as often as possible. Deviations of this strategy work well with a few other bosses as well like the Hell Wyrm. This boss isn�t about pummeling it into the ground with 3 characters. It is all about suporting one character who slowly but surely takes it down. The �Saikyou no Hoko� is the best weapon as well to stick on the attacking character if you have it. I used some hints to find this weapon. You would be stupid to miss this weapon since it packs a load of damage. I am not sure what they call this weapon on the English Version but literally translated, it means the �Most Powerful Halberd/Pike.� It costs 235 LP to unlock on the license board so I am sure you can look at your own game and figure out which one this is since there is only one weapon which costs that amount to unlock.

I am sure that there are probably other strategies that gamers can use to beat Omega Mark XII that I haven't thought of since there is often more than one answer to a boss strategy, but here you go for peace of mind. My advice to you in the future when you play a RPG is to get to know the functionality of the stuff you have and quit getting heated and jealous when someone can figure out what you can�t. Honestly, "Reverse" is the obvious no-brainer solution to those types of bosses on Final Fantasy XII that deal out heaps of damage if you even thought 10 seconds about it after you got it. It's not about just having everything on a game so you can brag about it to your buddies and show off your massive menu of crap you got, its about knowing how to use everything on a game that's important.

LOL, Sophiris, I beat them on my own. Don't worry about that, and I found them difficult (especially Zodiark). The point isn't about if I was able to beat them or not. The point is that you used a guide, and that's how you were able to find everything and beat every bosses within 200 hours. There is just no way you can beat the game in less than 200 hours if you do it on your own with no outside help whatsoever, but since you're a sucky gamer who use guides and try to brag about how great he is even if he's"cheating", then you'll probably never understand that.

And since you used a guide, you're one shit gamer who shouldn't be allowed to talk about a game's difficulty.


Talking about jealousy? LMAO, how can you do so when you admitted you have the Ultimania guide. You're trying to tell me you got the guide, but didn't use it for the parts where you're trying to brag about?



Try using these effects on the main attacking character with the other two characters. �Reverse� since this restores damage as H.P., �Decoy� since this lures the enemy to the character, �Haste� since this increases the the action turnover rate, and �Protect� since this raises defense. You might want to equip a �Bubble Chain� as well since the effect lasts forever. Whatever you do, don't use the other two characters to attack and keep them just far enough away from the action. Reverse seems to wear off real quickly so you should keep casting it as often as possible. Deviations of this strategy work well with a few other bosses as well like the Hell Wyrm. This boss isn�t about pummeling it into the ground with 3 characters. It is all about suporting one character who slowly but surely takes it down. The �Saikyou no Hoko� is the best weapon as well to stick on the attacking character if you have it. I used some hints to find this weapon. You would be stupid to miss this weapon since it packs a load of damage. I am not sure what they call this weapon on the English Version but literally translated, it means the �Most Powerful Halberd/Pike.� It costs 235 LP to unlock on the license board so I am sure you can look at your own game and figure out which one this is since there is only one weapon which costs that amount to unlock.


You give yourself away right there.


For your own sake, STFU.

Hynad,

If you realized how much time you waste just arguing nothing when you could be playing a good game it would blow your own mind. You seem bitter like you missed some good equipment or something which I suspect is the case.

Honestly, are you telling me that you could have found the most powerful weapon in the game on your own? If you are, then you are more full of crap than a sewage treatment plant. Since the aquisition rates on some of these good items are really low like in the 1/1000 range and I would actually like to know that in advance, before committing countless hours of searching the world for an item that I am never going to get because of something I did prior in the game as the case may be.

If you have spent over 500 hours on Final Fantasy XII like you have claimed then in the extra 300 hours you spend muddling away for nothing, at least I got to play a bunch of other great titles.

Nobody needs to use a strategy guide to beat any of the bosses on Final Fantasy XII if they really use their brain and they have the right equipment, magic, etc. going into the battle to begin with. This includes myself.

Hynad,
If you realized how much time you waste just arguing nothing when you could be playing a good game it would blow your own mind.
How ironic that you would say that, don't you think?


You seem bitter like you missed some good equipment or something which I suspect is the case.

Oh hell no. That's not it at all. I just so happen to have figured you out, and I hate hypocrites.


Honestly, are you telling me that you could have found the most powerful weapon in the game on your own? If you are, then you are more full of crap than a sewage treatment plant. Since the aquisition rates on some of these good items are really low like in the 1/1000 range and I would actually like to know that in advance, before committing countless hours of searching the world for an item that I am never going to get because of something I did prior in the game as the case may be.

Nobody needs to use a strategy guide to beat any of the bosses on Final Fantasy XII if they really use their brain and they have the right equipment, magic, etc. going into the battle to begin with. This includes myself.


It's funny to see how you didn't reply to anything I posted. Most of the things you implied in that post of yours have never been said by me. So you really have some reading comprehension issues. I never stated that I got that ZODIAK spear you mentioned. Nor did I mention that I collected every single pieces of equipment. You are the one stating the game is easy, yet you admit yourself that you use a "Final Fantasy XII for Dummies" guide. Don't try to say you're good at games if you rely on these kind of guides.

Your excuse for using such guides is pretty laughable. If you don't have the guts to figure things on your own (I'll repeat myself here) then you have no fucking place in an argument about FFXII's difficulty.



If you have spent over 500 hours on Final Fantasy XII like you have claimed then in the extra 300 hours you spend muddling away for nothing, at least I got to play a bunch of other great titles.

This comment is ridiculous. I could play tons of games for sure. But if I enjoy that game a lot, and that I don't use any shortcuts (like using that Dummies guide of yours", I'm the one getting the most out of his money.

It's funny to see how you didn't reply to anything I posted. Most of the things you implied in that post of yours have never been said by me. So you really have some reading comprehension issues...you have no fucking place in an argument about FFXII's difficulty.

Speaking of reading comprehension issues. I never joined this thread to debate about the difficulty of the game. We were debating various pros and cons of the game and what we liked and disliked about the game in a fairly constructive manner so that "Bus Driver" who was interested in possibly purchasing the game could make an informed purchase.

Let me know your address so I can send you a "Reading Comprehension for Dummies" book.

Speaking of reading comprehension issues. I never joined this thread to debate about the difficulty of the game. We were debating various pros and cons of the game and what we liked and disliked about the game in a fairly constructive manner so that "Bus Driver" who was interested in possibly purchasing the game could make an informed purchase.

Let me know your address so I can send you a "Reading Comprehension for Dummies" book.

What's that? An attempt at making a valid point?

Seriously, you fail.

Ceidwald addressed your first comment made in this topic and the debate started from there. And talking about the game's difficulty is part of the topic since it's one of the aspects that can make the game worth it or not.

Now, if you brag about something in public, you have to accept to be taken down in public. And that's what's happening.

You say the difficulty of the game isn't great, stating in some subsequent posts that you are using guides to play games. So my argument about your complaints are legitimate, and totally in topic.

The fact is that you've never even seen the inside of an Ultimania book anyway so for you to even talk like you know something about the content of any of the books is utter nonsense since they are a heck of a lot more than what you are trying to point to.

Do you even have an education to claim anything or just a mouth that never shuts up? I feel sorry for "Bus Driver" and everyone else who has had to wade through all your crap.

If you want to open another thread for all your nonsense then do so but I won't be found there appeasing your ego.

Later.

The fact is that you've never even seen the inside of an Ultimania book anyway so for you to even talk like you know something about the content of any of the books is utter nonsense since they are a heck of a lot more than what you are trying to point to.

How can you possibly assume that, without looking like a complete self-centered moron?



Do you even have an education to claim anything or just a mouth that never shuts up? I feel sorry for "Bus Driver" and everyone else who has had to wade through all your crap.

What a nice way to counter argue. All my points were valid, even if they came out harshly, yet the only way you could find to address them was with insults, and only that? I guess it won't be difficult for the members to figure out who's putting all the crap around here.


If you want to open another thread for all your nonsense then do so but I won't be found there appeasing your ego.

Later.

Pointing at your lies and pretentions is hardly nonsenses.

Heh... that made for interesting reading (and gave me a good chuckle too, thanks Hynad :D).

I'm not going to enter the above debate, but personally in regards to FFXII. On it's own, FFXII is a good game. It has it's faults, no game is 100% perfect. My own personal feeling about FFXII (and about any game really), you can read review upon review about a game (either in a magazine or on a forum), listen to what people have to say about it (Either the clerks in the game store (Even though a lot of them are biased towards selling games to meet a daily total), your own friends or even on forums like this one.), or go and rent a copy of it out from your local video store and try it yourself.

I recommend the latter, as that has worked for me quite well.

Hynad, just for the record, I think your style was overly harsh in the last half-page or so. I've no problem with being 'straightforward' in debates, since they are, by nature, rather blunt encounters, but out-and-out insulting without addressing points just lowers your credibility and makes people question your bias. And you were guilty of it on occasions in the latter part of this debate.


How can you possibly assume that, without looking like a complete self-centered moron?

That's an example of somewhere you could have phrased yourself differently.

Obviously I largely agree with you on FFXII, but Sophiris is not just an idiotic 13-year-old cunt. There's a time and a place, is what I'm trying to say.

If you don't like my style, just ignore me.

Because you're not going to move the discussion forward one bit either with a post like that.

My point is that there is no discussion now since you basically just flamed Sophiris into going away. On the other hand, if you'd have made an effort to discuss FFXII in a manner that was civil, I would think you would have been able to convince Sophiris. I basically managed to win most of the arguments without resorting to flaming, despite my 'double post' gaffe a couple of pages back.

Here then, take a cookie.

You don't seem to have anything more to add to the debate, and are only here to point fingers. I have a sarcastic writting style when it comes to debating and when Sophiris tried to look better by assuming I didn't know something he did (like that Ultimania book) then I'm wasn't going to let it pass politely. He was rude to assume something that was false about me in such manners. And although I may appear to be easily offended, his tone was arrogant and annoying, so I acted accordingly.

I also made my point clear about the use of guide and the difficulty of a game and Sophiris pretty much proved me right (even if he tried to run around it).


Now if all you are willing to do is pointing fingers, then you are a complete waste of bandwidth.

I'm not trying to point fingers for fuck's sake. I'm just trying to show that it's possible to reason with Sophiris; therefore you shouldn't have to resort to flaming.

But hey, each to his own, I suppose.

Sophiris and I will probably get to work things out on our own.

Don't worry about it.

This is unbelievably...........pathetic.

This is unbelievably...........pathetic.

Not nearly as much as your contribution to the topic.

I've completed pretty much every Square-Enix game ever released in North America and Europe, and I can tell you that this is an amazing game. The story is awesome, and it has every major element needed to make the perfect game stretched to its max point, and then a little more. Buy it. Now.