Post edited to stop cashing in on MGG=REVIEW'S notoriety- I think he's had enough bad vibes for one day. Some typos have also been removed, and I've changed Balthier's name to 'Lord Fenton-Smythe McWaistcoat, because it amused me...
Anyway, here's a review of FFXII by...me. It seems like there's enough reviews of Mass Effect/Crysis/Cod4/Uncharted/Assassin's Creed to drown a mountain of elephants (not that I'm wholly blameless in said review deluge), so I thought I'd go with something a bit older.
Anyway, let me know what you think. Check out my other things if you like it, there's various bits of my brain floating around the forum. Say mean things if you don't like it, nice things if you do. It's long but hopefully you'll think it's worth it.
Enjoy!
Gamers are a strange bunch (I know I am). When I see a sloped roof, I think 'Damn, bet I'd get a good stunt bonus if I drove a motorbike off that baby.' When I imagine the crash that would no doubt ensue I imagine it in slow motion from several angles. I imagine my body flying off the vehicle and crumpling to the floor with the most squint-inducingly realistic ragdoll effects. Likewise, when I see a crate I feel it both a duty and a right to smash it to pieces with a crowbar, to get at the loot within.
In short, we view the world in certain ways which videogames are responsible for. It seems fair, then, to expect a certain kind of consistency from games. A recent Escapist article lamented the unattainability of the Zodiac Spear in Final Fantasy XII. The article did not, though, fully capture just what an absolute shitter it is to discover that, 25 hours into a game, you can never get the best weapon because you had the bare-faced cheek to open crates when you found them. Imagine if you got home one day to find that you'd been evicted because you'd nipped down to the shops to buy some cheese:
'But I only bought some bloody cheddar!' you would plead.
'Ah, but you should have bought some edam: now you must pay the price with your domicile and possessions!' your coldhearted landlord would reply, twirling his Dickensian villain black moustache and pouring gravy into your 360's disc drive (and thus dramatically increasing it's overall reliability). It sucks to be punished for something you couldn't have known not to do. Fair enough if, early on in the game, you were given the choice of robbing from some starving orphans, or receiving a particularly effective piece of armour if you'll kill 25 helpless puppies, and this was used to determine eligibility for the Spear.Be kind of karma, fair cop, that sort of thing.
The only way to know about the Zodiac Spear is from game guides and word of mouth. Actually the only way people would ever know about it is from game guides- it's as though the game were made with GameFAQ's in mind, with the players as a secondary consideration. FFXII has some stunning FAQ's- lists of enemies, statistics, locations, spawn percentages, loot drops, bazaar items, barely scratch the surface. It is, as disturbingly as the following phrase could be misconstrued, an anal dream. Whether or not it wants to it does a fine job of being a single-player MMORPG, thus confounding the oxymoron police completely. You can go 10 hours and not progress the plot a jot, just leveling up and finding shiny bits of sharp metal ('swords') or flat, circular pieces of shiny metal ('shields', excuse the technical terminology).
So far so not so good then. A game with an object everyone wants but most people will be arbitrarily denied based around a framework of endless grinding. And those are only the beginnings of our problems. It's something about Japanese RPG's that I've never understood, but which Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect seem to have nailed. Leveling, in the Final Fantasy games, is balls. Let us say we have a group of 6 characters, but are only ever allowed 3 people in the party at once. Chances are we'll go with three favourites (Vaan, Basch and Ashe anyone?) who stride forth and save the world whilst the other 3 (angry rabbit lady, Lord Fenton-Smythe McWaistcoat and the cheerleader from Heroes) sit about back home, playing Uno and eating chocolate digestives. You end up with 3 level 90 powerhouses and 3 helpless weaklings. And you just know that, since it's a Final Fantasy game, there'll be a point in the game when you have to split into two parties, maybe to flick two sets of switches to open a big door. Who knows? The point is, the game forces to use these characters who you have no wish of using, and who the mechanics of the game are mostly responsible for for being painfully underdeveloped. In a Bioware game the whole party levels up to keep pace with the player- Final Fantasy stubbornly does not. Friends of mine keep their levels even across the board through constant and judicious switching in and out of characters. In doing so they have discovered one of the few things that can make hours of tedious grinding even more boring. Score.
Clearly I hate the game. Curse the blue shiny disc and all the data within it.
Score 4/10
Well hardly. For a game that makes me want to kick passers-by in the shins at times, I must've poured at least 150 hours into the shitting thing (I hate it when loading screens show you how many hours you've been playing for- why would I want to know that I spent 64 non-refundable days of my life playing Morrowind? Couldn't it just lie and say 8 minutes?). The plot is great. I mean, I didn't really understand it, at least in terms of what was going on and...who people were. Technicalities like that. But I liked what I understood, and clearly some effort had gone into it. Political wranglings are often under-represented in games, but FFXII acts like annexations of provinces and the moral implications of primogeniture are better than sex.
Which they are, of course.
It's certainly a lot prettier than you have any right to expect from the system. My housemates PS2 sounds like it's going to implode when I play it. Poor old thing practically needs a sensual massage to even boot up (the PS2, that is, not the housemate). At no point during playing it did I think 'sure, it looks fine. If only it were in a higher definition, though.' I guess I've not quite come to terms with the next-gen mindset yet. So, it's a looker then (relatively speaking, of course). Much has been said in praise of the combat system, apparently 'new' and 'improved'. Now before we all drop on our knees and give Square Enix a massive collective fellating, lets consider the system it's improved from consisted of three people (or four, you FFIX pedants**) standing in a line, taking it in turns to hit each other. It was silly, really- you'd see Cloud Omnislash some unlucky fucker, and think 'why can't he just do that all the time? Keep hitting him! No use taking turns, you're not getting a medal for good manners!' FFXII provided a rather more real time system, although in truth it wasn't so much about the timing as about being able to see enemies coming. Suddenly enemies had a presence on the map screen, and it was...nice. No more T-Rex's leaping out at you from behind small rocks and trees as you wander the field.
What really caught people's attention, though, was the Gambit system. Minimise micro managing by semi-automating combat- how kind of them. It also speaks volumes about how much grinding Square Enix were expecting people to do in the game, so really it seems the least they could do. Get a good set of gambits in place and one could practically play one handed, one hand wiggling an analogue stick and the other...well, you can do whatever you like with it, as long as I don't have to watch. Hopefully these improvements will be carried to future installments, culminating in FFXV being entirely automated. Just turn the PS3 on, stick the disc in, and leave the game to get on with itself. What a bright future for computer gaming.
Ultimately I'm going to have to give the game a score of 1/10. Not because I hate the game, but I've resolved to knock off 8 points from the mark of any game that features a section where the player's character is captured by the law, imprisoned, then makes their escape, happily finding a treasure chest containing all their confiscated possessions. Since this happens in every Final Fantasy game I can remember playing- well, it's just getting old, is all. Now I come to think about it I think one of the Zodiac Spear chests is actually found among those containing your possessions as you leave the prison. Talk about a low blow.
**I don't really know that much about the numbers of party members in FF I-VI. By odd coincidence I also don't much care.
Anyway, here's a review of FFXII by...me. It seems like there's enough reviews of Mass Effect/Crysis/Cod4/Uncharted/Assassin's Creed to drown a mountain of elephants (not that I'm wholly blameless in said review deluge), so I thought I'd go with something a bit older.
Anyway, let me know what you think. Check out my other things if you like it, there's various bits of my brain floating around the forum. Say mean things if you don't like it, nice things if you do. It's long but hopefully you'll think it's worth it.
Enjoy!
Gamers are a strange bunch (I know I am). When I see a sloped roof, I think 'Damn, bet I'd get a good stunt bonus if I drove a motorbike off that baby.' When I imagine the crash that would no doubt ensue I imagine it in slow motion from several angles. I imagine my body flying off the vehicle and crumpling to the floor with the most squint-inducingly realistic ragdoll effects. Likewise, when I see a crate I feel it both a duty and a right to smash it to pieces with a crowbar, to get at the loot within.
In short, we view the world in certain ways which videogames are responsible for. It seems fair, then, to expect a certain kind of consistency from games. A recent Escapist article lamented the unattainability of the Zodiac Spear in Final Fantasy XII. The article did not, though, fully capture just what an absolute shitter it is to discover that, 25 hours into a game, you can never get the best weapon because you had the bare-faced cheek to open crates when you found them. Imagine if you got home one day to find that you'd been evicted because you'd nipped down to the shops to buy some cheese:
'But I only bought some bloody cheddar!' you would plead.
'Ah, but you should have bought some edam: now you must pay the price with your domicile and possessions!' your coldhearted landlord would reply, twirling his Dickensian villain black moustache and pouring gravy into your 360's disc drive (and thus dramatically increasing it's overall reliability). It sucks to be punished for something you couldn't have known not to do. Fair enough if, early on in the game, you were given the choice of robbing from some starving orphans, or receiving a particularly effective piece of armour if you'll kill 25 helpless puppies, and this was used to determine eligibility for the Spear.Be kind of karma, fair cop, that sort of thing.
The only way to know about the Zodiac Spear is from game guides and word of mouth. Actually the only way people would ever know about it is from game guides- it's as though the game were made with GameFAQ's in mind, with the players as a secondary consideration. FFXII has some stunning FAQ's- lists of enemies, statistics, locations, spawn percentages, loot drops, bazaar items, barely scratch the surface. It is, as disturbingly as the following phrase could be misconstrued, an anal dream. Whether or not it wants to it does a fine job of being a single-player MMORPG, thus confounding the oxymoron police completely. You can go 10 hours and not progress the plot a jot, just leveling up and finding shiny bits of sharp metal ('swords') or flat, circular pieces of shiny metal ('shields', excuse the technical terminology).
So far so not so good then. A game with an object everyone wants but most people will be arbitrarily denied based around a framework of endless grinding. And those are only the beginnings of our problems. It's something about Japanese RPG's that I've never understood, but which Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect seem to have nailed. Leveling, in the Final Fantasy games, is balls. Let us say we have a group of 6 characters, but are only ever allowed 3 people in the party at once. Chances are we'll go with three favourites (Vaan, Basch and Ashe anyone?) who stride forth and save the world whilst the other 3 (angry rabbit lady, Lord Fenton-Smythe McWaistcoat and the cheerleader from Heroes) sit about back home, playing Uno and eating chocolate digestives. You end up with 3 level 90 powerhouses and 3 helpless weaklings. And you just know that, since it's a Final Fantasy game, there'll be a point in the game when you have to split into two parties, maybe to flick two sets of switches to open a big door. Who knows? The point is, the game forces to use these characters who you have no wish of using, and who the mechanics of the game are mostly responsible for for being painfully underdeveloped. In a Bioware game the whole party levels up to keep pace with the player- Final Fantasy stubbornly does not. Friends of mine keep their levels even across the board through constant and judicious switching in and out of characters. In doing so they have discovered one of the few things that can make hours of tedious grinding even more boring. Score.
Clearly I hate the game. Curse the blue shiny disc and all the data within it.
Score 4/10
Well hardly. For a game that makes me want to kick passers-by in the shins at times, I must've poured at least 150 hours into the shitting thing (I hate it when loading screens show you how many hours you've been playing for- why would I want to know that I spent 64 non-refundable days of my life playing Morrowind? Couldn't it just lie and say 8 minutes?). The plot is great. I mean, I didn't really understand it, at least in terms of what was going on and...who people were. Technicalities like that. But I liked what I understood, and clearly some effort had gone into it. Political wranglings are often under-represented in games, but FFXII acts like annexations of provinces and the moral implications of primogeniture are better than sex.
Which they are, of course.
It's certainly a lot prettier than you have any right to expect from the system. My housemates PS2 sounds like it's going to implode when I play it. Poor old thing practically needs a sensual massage to even boot up (the PS2, that is, not the housemate). At no point during playing it did I think 'sure, it looks fine. If only it were in a higher definition, though.' I guess I've not quite come to terms with the next-gen mindset yet. So, it's a looker then (relatively speaking, of course). Much has been said in praise of the combat system, apparently 'new' and 'improved'. Now before we all drop on our knees and give Square Enix a massive collective fellating, lets consider the system it's improved from consisted of three people (or four, you FFIX pedants**) standing in a line, taking it in turns to hit each other. It was silly, really- you'd see Cloud Omnislash some unlucky fucker, and think 'why can't he just do that all the time? Keep hitting him! No use taking turns, you're not getting a medal for good manners!' FFXII provided a rather more real time system, although in truth it wasn't so much about the timing as about being able to see enemies coming. Suddenly enemies had a presence on the map screen, and it was...nice. No more T-Rex's leaping out at you from behind small rocks and trees as you wander the field.
What really caught people's attention, though, was the Gambit system. Minimise micro managing by semi-automating combat- how kind of them. It also speaks volumes about how much grinding Square Enix were expecting people to do in the game, so really it seems the least they could do. Get a good set of gambits in place and one could practically play one handed, one hand wiggling an analogue stick and the other...well, you can do whatever you like with it, as long as I don't have to watch. Hopefully these improvements will be carried to future installments, culminating in FFXV being entirely automated. Just turn the PS3 on, stick the disc in, and leave the game to get on with itself. What a bright future for computer gaming.
Ultimately I'm going to have to give the game a score of 1/10. Not because I hate the game, but I've resolved to knock off 8 points from the mark of any game that features a section where the player's character is captured by the law, imprisoned, then makes their escape, happily finding a treasure chest containing all their confiscated possessions. Since this happens in every Final Fantasy game I can remember playing- well, it's just getting old, is all. Now I come to think about it I think one of the Zodiac Spear chests is actually found among those containing your possessions as you leave the prison. Talk about a low blow.
**I don't really know that much about the numbers of party members in FF I-VI. By odd coincidence I also don't much care.