Final Fantasy XII

I bought this game lsat week and its good. It has a solid story and some nice features new to the series. Okay firstly the camera angles/view is not fixed as it was in other games. Secondly the battle system is completely new to the series, and lastly the character advancement system is I suppose a hybrid of previous systems.

Starting with the camera angle it takes a while to get used to. But it does give the game more of an adventure feel to it, the new battle system also adds to this as you can see most of the enemies displayed on the map. This is a first for the series and at the moment I'm in limbo over whether its a good or bad thing. I'll get into that later though. Personally given that the enemies are marked on the mini map in the corner of the screen, i'd prefer a fixed camera that pans, more or less what was in X. But its not a major complaint and I'm sure some people like it. It might grow on me as I get further into the game.

The battle system is completely new. Gone are the random battles. For those not familiar with the series the previous systems all revolved around random battles. That was you were in some part of the game world and the screen would flash or warp and you would be in a turn based battle against one or more enemies. With XII SquareEnix made a big fuss about the random baatels being gone. And its true the screen doesn't warp into a battle with enemies. They appear on the screen in real time. But from reading press releases and reviews I presumed that all the enemies bar the bosses would be displayed on the mini map. However while wandering down a train track in som epart of the map....all these f*&cking skeletons keep appearing out of the ground. So thats really a random battle as they just appear and fair enough theres no transition into a battle sequence. The skeletons appearin out of the ground kinda piss me off as it leads me to believe that there will be more parts of the map like that.

The advancement system is different as well. At the moment if seemd like a mix between the materia system from VII and the sphere grid from X....haven't gotten any espers/summons/gfs yet but they might be interesting....very few of the "old reliables" make an appearence. The system isn't bad but still the materia system from VII was the most user friendly and allowed more time to enjoy the story and events taking place.

At the moment I'm liking the story and characters seems to be a good mix. With the almost naive Vaan, the wordly Balthier and the "patriotic" Basch (at the moment anyway). The story itself seems good. However I do have some reservations about Vayne, he seems to be the same type of character as Seymour from X. A character who has good pr guys for want of a better phrase. But still shady with some diabolical plan to conquer/destroy the world. Till the reluctant Hero steps in and takes care of business. The game is enjoyable though. Seems a good farewell to the PS2. Already teaser trailers are surfacing for XIII and XIII-Versus for the PS3. Which look amazing by the way.


Still though FFVII will remain my favourite. Everything with that game just worked. The story, graphics everything. It also introduced the cut scene to the RPG world. Having just recently replayed the game it has lost none of its appeal or enjoyable since I first played it 10 years ago.

Just last weekend I happened to be reading an article on some website about VII, the author said

"Steven Spielberg once said that Video games will never replace movies as entertainment until someone can say I cried at level 17, Steven Spielberg never played Final Fantasy VII"