@CaptainCody said:

@Irvandus said:

I enjoyed it. Wish Vaan was a better character though. I always thought he was a really weak main character surrounded by a fantastic supporting cast.

Honestly the fact that 12 didn't have a true protagonist is the reason I did not enjoy the game. Vaan blows dick, game should've followed Basch or Balthier out of the fucking gate.

Dude yes. I never got too far for this reason. Balthier was such a better character.

Shame so many RPGs just give you the dry, wide eyed type character to play as when there are often much better supporting characters.

@Hunter5024 said:

@believer258 said:

So flat angsty pretty boys are to the Japanese market what balding gravel-voiced 30-somethings are to the American market?

Just an observation.

That's amazing.

Hey sometimes they have full heads of brown or black hair!

I have all the FF games, but I haven't beaten any of them. The farthest I've played into any one of them is 30 hours, so about half way at least. I'm not as into FF as other game series, although I do like them quite a bit, and I think 12 to me is great, but I don't think it's considered to be one of the best, I think once 12 hit, and then 13, people were kind of disappointed in them. As for me, I like them all to a certain extent. I really do like 12 though, I like the music, I like to setting, I think the characters are alright if you compare them to other game characters in general, and the game's pretty fun. I guess I don't really leave room to be disappointed in any of them because I haven't gone through them, but still. While I can understand why some people dislike one or the other, that's simply not the way I think about them. I guess I'm in the minority on this, but I would definitely love to see FFXII put out in HD on PS3. Those visuals were fantastic.

Finished it back in the day. It was alright, this was a fairly long final fantasy compared to the previous ones. I had to take a long break (around 6 months) before coming back into this one to complete it. It was okay for most part, i just thought it was too long. Definitely not the best final fantasy game out there. The gambit system was interesting and I also liked the judges in this game although it did have an Empire vibe in Star Wars for me.

XII is a great game, but not a high point of the series and not a "pinnacle of storytelling ..." It had some really cool combat stuff (which is part of why I think most FF fans didn't like it. It was a big departure), but it didn't resonate with a lot of people the way other games in the series did.

That said, I do remember liking it, myself.

I appreciate what XII set off to do. It was definitely the last time it felt like a JRPG was trying to take a step forward. I loved Final Fantasy Tactics and this sounded to me like it was going to very much be a non strategy RPG set in that universe which sounded pretty sweet. It wasn't quite like that but that's OK. It's not my favorite, it's not my least favorite. I guess I'm one of the rare few who doesn't hate or love Final Fantasy XII.

I thought that XII had a better overall story than most other FF, I could do without Vaan though. As others have said Vaan is not the strongest main character, it could've easily been Ashe or Balthier and probably should have been.

The combat I really enjoyed since there was never a need to load the battle and the ability to manually move the character. Although I liked the combat I got bored of it just like the other Final Fantasy other than 13. I wish 13 and 12 combined the fast pace of 13 with the way 12 controlled. I also like that you could just run away from the enemies if you really wanted to.

It was also the most distinct FF after VII; I really liked the look of the game and how I actually felt like I was exploring the world.

@Remedy25: How far into the game did you get? My GF had a lot of trouble early on and didn't think it was very good until maybe 20 or 30 hours in. I think one of the best parts of the game is exploring the different environments. Once you've got some levels and gear you can wander off the beaten path and just discover the world. Early on that isn't really viable since you don't have all the characters or much experience so wiping is easy. I found the combat system great since I liked the idea of automating my actions so that I wouldn't have to constantly navigate menus in every fight. The final mark for hunting took me 3 days to defeat (since I wiped when he had under 100k HP left and on my second try the PS3 froze). The optional boss that becomes available after that has 1/5 the HP but can 1 hit almost all the characters at lvl 99 with double HP. I was able to defeat him in 5 minutes without touching a button once I was set up properly and doing that feels great. It's like I outsmarted the game by using the games systems. They are the two hardest enemies in the game and the play style required to defeat them is incredibly different.

I see a lot of people in this thread complaining that killing stuff is all there is to do in the game. Trying to figure out how to make rare game appear, hunting down marks and searching for optional bosses & espers is pretty much all there is to do but it all requires exploring and figuring out how to handle the different enemies, which is pretty fun.

@Animasta said:

@Bakumatsu said:

XII was not well accepted because the combat system was so different from the other FF's. That is the common reason. The main reason for me was basically this: Vaan sucks.

Vaan barely matters once you get Ashe, Basch, and Balthier (who is the real main character, he says so)

No he doesn't; he says he is the leading man. Ashe is the real main character.

It's better than VIII or II. Those are by far the worst.

Part of what I appreciate about battle transitions and active battle systems is that they create a sense of activity on the screen. Unless your world is packed with amazing things to behold, a long and uninterrupted trudge through different environments is seldom very interesting. Which is one of the two biggest reasons I loathed Final Fantasy 12. At first I appreciated how different it seemed, but it wasn't that it was different that made me hate it, it's that it was different in all the wrong ways, and corporate meddling held back the game from going higher. Without battle transitions and any sense of active control in said battles, 90% of the time I felt like I was walking around on autopilot because that's.. kind of what it was. You were never really doing  anything, the combat was micromanagement outside of battles and simple observation while in  them.   
 
I don't remember a lot of outright offensiveness in what the game was, I just remember a sense of complete and utter boredom to the point that cutting myself sounded like an objectively more interesting and varied experience than playing FFXII. Toward the end I was forcing myself to play it because I had promised myself I could finish it and then would always have an answer whenever someone asked me what one of my least favorite games was. I don't understand this weird ideal some people have that, removing battle transitions is always, inherently, desirable, even if it creates a categorically less active and engaging experience. Random encounters are not the problem,  bad  random encounters are, and removing them is just a cop-out.   
 
Perversely I think FFXIII and XIII-2 had battle transitions right (enemies appear on screen, randomly, and you can outrun them if you want, but engaging them leads to a battle transition), it's just a shame the combat systems of those two games were so shallow and broken.  
 
Perhaps I should try playing it again, but one of my least favorite things in a video game is to feel like I'm in a huge wide open world that is big just for the sake of being big and that there is very little to do in. FFXIV reminded me a lot of XII in that way. The story itself was actually pretty good but it was hampered by the game itself being pulled in too many different directions. Outside factors brought the game down from being so much more. I don't hate the game, on some sort of academic level I realize it's not that bad, but the way I feel toward FF12 is the way I feel toward unfinished portraits. Man, it could've really been something, if it had been finished the right way. 
 
TL;DR: this basically sums up my divided opinion on FF12: http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff12 It should've been better.

VIII and XII are the low points in the series.

Other than Vaan being an extremely weak character (and Penelo too) every part of FF XII rank among my favorite of the series.

It's got my favorite world to explore, no random encounter, a battle system that is all about management without having to repeatedly do the same actions again and again yourself, a fantastic cast of characters (heroes, villains and support) very traditional story but well written and well acted (a first for the series!), a leveling system that gives you complete freedom to develop your characters anyway you want and a great soundtrack. I was a bit weary at first when i heard Nobuo Uematsu was not returning but it turned out great and truly different from previous games.

When it comes to Vaan, he is literally useless all the way through. I've always seen him the same way other games have a silent protagonist. Simply a shell of a character and you're supposed to be that guy. It's the only Final Fantasy game where it would have made sense for them to let you create your character.

international zodiac job system makes ff12 godlike .. nuff said

XII was great and comes closer to being one of my favorite games ever with every year that passes. I'm fairly sure that the people who hate it are the ones who played it for ten minutes, went, "THIS IS MMO COMBAT SYSTEM, HUR." and then shat all over it for not being exactly like every other FF game out there.

Which is why FFXIII came to be and was subsequently awful. You can thank those people.

Xll > Xlll  
 
That is all.

With Final Fantasy XII, Square Enix developed Ivalice into one of the biggest and most detailed game worlds I’ve played through; introduced me to well-developed characters who did not seem like the played out caricatures I’m used to in role-playing games; showcased an interesting story, one that harkened back to the roots of Final Fantasy, with crystal-powered life, all the while, weaving an interesting mature tale of corruption and complex relationships. Lastly, I experienced gameplay systems that brought new elements to a genre I spend so much time with. For these things, and many smaller elements, Final Fantasy XII will be a game I gauge all others by.

http://mybrainongames.com/2011/04/06/review-final-fantasy-xii/

12 is so awesome it might be my favourite. Love, it.

@Solh0und said:

Xll > Xlll That is all.

Hell, I'd even pick both 5 and 8 over 13. At least those games, for all their faults, doesn't lock you out of leveling for the first 20 hours.

I liked XII. The Gambit system was really cool, allowing you just the level of control you wanted over the characters. Seamless transitions between combat and exploration.

And I liked most of the characters. Except for Fran/the Viera. Which was all kinds of silly.