I had pretty much the same horrible realisation playing this that Yahtzee did with the Witcher: "Hang on, this is a MUMORPUGER! A single player Mumorpuger but a Mumorpuger nonetheless"
SquareEnix tried something new, I'll give them that. Unfortunately, they didn't try enough that was new. The battle system was effectively the same as the dire FFX-2 (aka Final Fantasy: Dress-Up) with a little more roaming into it, and even that was just patently ripped from MMORPGs. It still, however, suffered from the same "stand around waiting for your turn" which I thought they'd shown signs of growing out of with FFX-2. The license system was interesting but when you got hold of the Amber Amulet item (or whichever one it was that allowed you to double your earnings), I actually got to the point where everyone had almost every license, thus nicely buggering most "class" distinction.
The story I didn't like. It was painfully obvious that Basch was written as the main character but Vaan was shoved in because Basch wasn't sufficiently good yaoi material. Stories from the perspective of someone who clearly ISNT the main character in the events of the day CAN be good - read Monstrous Regiment for a good example - but this is one of the examples where it just doesn't work. Penelo and Vaan stand out of their group like a sore thumb as "people who have no reason to be here".
Final Fantasy as a franchise as far as I can see is a bit over rated. Everyone rants about seven being a masterpeice and I was bored stiff by it, to the point that I never even got to the point where Aeris pops her clogs. Eight was offensively bad and needed burning. Nine was wonderful but under-rated. Ten was the only one I could agree with the hype on, it was actually a damn good game, as evidenced with it being the first to garner a direct sequel and probably being the first item of any kind in the fantasy genre to be ripped off by Lord of the Rings instead of vice versa.
SquareEnix tried something new, I'll give them that. Unfortunately, they didn't try enough that was new. The battle system was effectively the same as the dire FFX-2 (aka Final Fantasy: Dress-Up) with a little more roaming into it, and even that was just patently ripped from MMORPGs. It still, however, suffered from the same "stand around waiting for your turn" which I thought they'd shown signs of growing out of with FFX-2. The license system was interesting but when you got hold of the Amber Amulet item (or whichever one it was that allowed you to double your earnings), I actually got to the point where everyone had almost every license, thus nicely buggering most "class" distinction.
The story I didn't like. It was painfully obvious that Basch was written as the main character but Vaan was shoved in because Basch wasn't sufficiently good yaoi material. Stories from the perspective of someone who clearly ISNT the main character in the events of the day CAN be good - read Monstrous Regiment for a good example - but this is one of the examples where it just doesn't work. Penelo and Vaan stand out of their group like a sore thumb as "people who have no reason to be here".
Final Fantasy as a franchise as far as I can see is a bit over rated. Everyone rants about seven being a masterpeice and I was bored stiff by it, to the point that I never even got to the point where Aeris pops her clogs. Eight was offensively bad and needed burning. Nine was wonderful but under-rated. Ten was the only one I could agree with the hype on, it was actually a damn good game, as evidenced with it being the first to garner a direct sequel and probably being the first item of any kind in the fantasy genre to be ripped off by Lord of the Rings instead of vice versa.
