FF12 Itemized Review
*The good bits*
+Opening scenes set tone, explains the situation, and sets up the plot. Looks brilliant and epic.
+Stellar Musical Score, one of the best since FFT
+Open-ended movement and combat that felt like an improvement on the original concept of Secret of Mana
+Expansive environments
+Fun hunts. It was addicting to try to fill out the monsters list, which in turn unlocked lore about the world.
*The Bad Stuff*
-Just about everything after the opening scenes is a bait-and-switch. Now that you've piqued the player's interest, the next obvious choice is to take all of that cool setup and completely stomp it out of the game.
-Vaan and Peneno - worthless characters that failed to serve their intended purpose and ultimately ended up side-tracking the game. However, I could have forgiven their inclusion entirely if the story went somewhere interesting.
-A plot that was meant to be built around intrigue and politics, but just ends up being boring, cliche', and completely predictable. If intrigue was the intention, then I shouldn't be able to identify the end boss within 30 minutes of the game starting. (less than 5 if we discount the intro sequences)
-The game plays like a single player MMORPG, (the creators allegedly admitted this was the intent, but I can't read Japanese so I have no idea what was said in the article that confirms this) and that means GRIND. Mother fucking BIBLICAL amounts of grind.
You want items? You want to do hunts? GRIND.
Look up "Danjuro" if you want to see the worst of this madness in action. Thank goodness it's strictly optional.
-License Board. Better known as the Sphere Grid Mk 2. No characters have individual traits or abilities (outside of some slight attack speed adjustments, which makes Vaan, Basch, and Ashe the best characters in the game) which means we're back to the same old "Tabula Rosa" that has plagued most of Final Fantasy since 7.
I cruised through much of the game just by making everyone the same, meaning that much of the game was balanced with the notion of any party being able to beat it so long as your equipment was up to snuff. This has the effect of eliminating ROLE entirely since every team ends up the same in the end.
The one thing that made me want to keep playing FF9 (besides Freya kicking ass, and having an actual fucking personality that wasn't comic relief or emo) was the skill system. Every character had a unique skill set, and every character was very useful for some part of the game. You could bludgeon your way through the game, but it also rewarding players who were observant (such as Quina being able to insta-kill all the enemies in an otherwise nasty part of the game with Level 5 Death).
I dedicate so much text to this notion because it's the primary reason I haven't bothered picking up these Final Fantasy titles (until their price falls out). It's NOT good game design, yet Squeenix insists on pursuing this model til doomsday cometh.
