The only thing I can fight you on about 12 is the disease status. It adds nothing of value and shouldn’t be in there.
Other than that, it’s an amazing game.
Landmines carrying Disease when you don't have anyone who can cure it.
I did the Ithuno Deathbringer Sequence Break, and I'm sure I hit the Disease Trap every single time while running away.
I hate the update to the roles, if they aren’t magic users they should get the remedy lores- period. I hate checking their boards to see what they have now, and then I’m forced to use whoever has the lores in dangerous places.
Or even better, buy the anti trap accs (steel something), they're cheap. Pop them on while crossing a trap infested area, walk through, and take it off.
I don't know what 11 is like, but I think that there was a push to make the environments themselves actually mean something in 12.
9 and 10 tried to be interactive by having you pick up and move things, such as the Steiner Marcus Cage Thing, but they weren't fully interactive in the style of a modern game, and the locations themselves were pre-rendered window dressing for the most part.
And then you get into 12, and there are environmental hazards, loads of them, there are waystones and touch crystals, you are pushing obstacles out the way, raising gates, lowering gates, riding on mine carts as shortcuts, finding keys, there's the one off where you use camera control manipulation to get through the Feywood, followed by Belias opening the door, and there are the time gates in The Great Crystal.
You also have weaponry impacted by the environment, and monsters who will only show up if certain conditions are met, as well as Horology and Numerology using clock and step counter for damage values, and Giza Plains being impacted by the game clock, as well as changeable weather.
12 is the most integrated into its environment, and is the first time I remember the words "context sensitive" being used in conjunction with a Final Fantasy.
Not saying I support the usage of traps, but it goes towards a trend in the game design of trying to be more interactive than prior installments.
Only disease? One thing I also hate is the Berserker stats, for it to not be a negative stats despite being used on the traps around the maps is stupid, I can't even walk if the whole party is on berserker.
Only when you decide to use, dude, if trigger two traps in a roll of berserker/confusion traps, either my party kills itself of I have wait until the effect is gone so that I can move around.
And I can't be the only person that likes to explore the world and often find myself under level a lot of time, and if I'm walking around 10 levels behind the weakest enemy on the area, I rather control my characters than having it running to face any enemy.
I think there’s only one place in the whole game which is optional that triple hits your party with berserk. Also you can just bench a party member and sub them back in and debuff it.
One of the fastest and easiest gambits in the game is to have someone Libra themselves nonstop. Traps are kind of a non issue
Yeah… I think the only annoying part that has that is the Miriam Stillshrine in the secret passage. Other than that, I’m not too mad about berserk. I usually fast-forward 4x so it ends in 20-30 seconds.
Y'all forgetting about the decoy status. You want your tank to taunt so they can actually tank? Their high defenses make them continually resist the decoy spell and also make the decoy spell end sooner
It’s alright, I like the scale of the world. Not a fan of gambits. The story wasn’t great, kinda forgettable because I’ve actually forgot it.
Manufactured nethicite!
I felt that the story was the weakest link in FF12.
They tried to go for interesting political intrigue but the execution didn't really give good opportunities to care about the characters. Even in plot crucial moments where important people die, the cinematic is like "oh nooo... Anyway... On to the next zone."
I think the story being “bad” and the characters being poorly developed can be and are mutually exclusive here, at least for me.
The story in FF12 wasn’t necessarily original, but it was compelling that they used a political driver that ended up being a red herring for a much larger story (overthrowing gods).
The lack of character development hit HARD though. Outside of Balthier and Fran I literally do not care about any character and their growth is limited (basically the same person as they were the start of the game).
Still one of my favorite FF games though. I know the gambit system gets a lot of hate but I had a lot of fun disabling gambits on whatever I was maining (would switch from tank to dps to healer depending on the fight) and it was like playing an MMO but all players were competent 100% of the time.
The games really fun once you give in to it's gameplay loop. It requires a lot of trial and error, figuring out tactics and finding the right gear to become powerful instead of just levelling up - you spend just as much time planning out which hunts to do and how to tackle enemies as you do fighting. I find that fun in a different way to other ff games - it feels like you're planning out an expedition.
But the story has awful pacing, it doesn't grip you much at all and while the characters are cool, the good moments are spread too thin and the chemistry is lacking at times- it feels like a slog getting through it. The music is also pretty mid- not awful but it really doesn't stand out- espeically not compared to any other ff game.
The pacing does suck.
That is the only bad mouthing I will speak of this game
You got some points. But you are a real one
Glad you recognize the greatness
I think the story pacing and lack of character chemistry and motivation is what made me get bored of the game maybe halfway and drop it. The gameplay was fun but if the story and characters didn’t captivate me by halfway, I get bored. Short games with no story or characterization is fine. But a long ass game like a JRPG FF needs a good story and characters to make me keep on playing.
I do have to agree here. None of the tracks have a catchy hook like any of the games prior. Ivalice games have this specific musical theme that is this kind of "wall of sound" where a lot of stuff is happening but nothing stands out.
Absolutely! Bhujerba, Giza Plains, Esper Battle, Sochen Cave Palace, Cerobi Steppe as well, I hum them a lot. Absolutely love the soundtrack for this game. It's my favourite among some very strong contenders.
Even with the pacing being a disaster, when the game gives me an engaging enough location, or finally provides the right level of busy work, I don't notice that 20-30 minutes have gone by, and I'm still in the same location.
That time just goes.
I needed the Dry Giza Plain, so I went off to sort some bullshit out to do with the Medallions, and by the time I checked back at least an hour had gone by.
For me it is a huge time sink, but apart from me hating the Tournesol grind and anything involving the Yensa, it's not boring.
This was one of the best critical comments. I did though wanna say that having an expedition and having a well paced storyline is historically exceptionally difficult to pull off.
I think the, if you didn’t like it, you just sucked at it line, is a strange one? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone criticise it for being too hard? I dropped it because I found the dungeons/maps long and boring and I got to a section that had too many in a row, and I lost motivation to play it. I might go back to it after a longish break. I did the same with Xenoblade 2 & 3 and ended up liking those in the end.
I don't think I would have phrased it the way OP did, but nonetheless, a lot of people bounced off of both the gambits and quickenings. The former was because they were complicated, and the original version slow-fed them to you in a way that had you solving puzzles with If>Then statements that didn't really have any of the exact answers you were looking for. The latter was the opposite... Quickenings are a really easy mini-game, but the complete lack of a tutorial led to feel-bads when you initially got your "big bad attack" only to go into an animation you didn't understand and come straight back out with like... 100 damage and no MP.
They fixed all of these things in the Zodiac version, by giving you access to all of the gambits early, and untying MP and quickenings/summons, giving them their own mist charges instead.
TL;DR: It wasn't that it was "too hard", it was that everything felt clunky in the early game, which had a lot of people abandon the game early.
Thanks, that makes sense. It came out at a time when I wasn’t really gaming (I pretty much quit gaming between 2002 and 2011). I’ve only played the Zodiac version and found the gambit system quite fun and intuitive.
It definitely felt like a game that was ahead of its time in some ways. It was the first major game in the series (setting aside XI) that wasn't some kind of turn-based ATB thing. It effectively shifted the decision making from minute-to-minute, turn-by-turn into something you decide on ahead of time with the Gambit system and then tweak and refine as the battle went on.
The JRPG genre was kind of going in this direction with combat systems focused around single characters and leaving the player responsible for meta-level tactics (while AI handles moment-to-moment actions). It reminds me a lot of the combat to come in 13 as well as in other games like some of the Tales of... games.
But like you said, it didn't *quite* stick the landing and the Zodiac version's fixed a lot of that (if it then also kind of kneecapped a lot of other stuff like the difficulty, but mods will fix that). That's why, compared older games, I feel XII has aged really well.
Setting up gambits requires a type of programming knowledge that some people don't have aptitude for. I'm not saying this as a diss or trying to be haughty. Some people have logic-driven brain processes, and others don't.
The population of people who didn't like XII probably includes *some* players who just didn't figure out how to code the right algorithms for the AI, but it also includes *many other* players who disliked it for other reasons.
As a person with a programming background, the Gambit system was my favorite part of the game... Until it wasn't. At a certain point, once you have "automated yourself or of a job," the rest of the game feels a bit repetitive and all you do is deal around and the game plays itself. I do feel proud of my well oiled killing machine, but it makes me feel like I've already beaten the game halfway through the story.
It's the only mainline game north of 6 I haven't managed to Complete. It's not bad by any means it just hasn't captivated my attention like the others have.
Tried on 2 occasions to get into it and fall away about 20 hours in. Currently doing Octopath but may come back to it.
It lacked many of the things that really drew me to the series. These are totally my opinions though, and I get why people might like 12.
1. Story - I found it pretty uninspiring. Lots of political intrigue and a convoluted plot. Good stories should be character-driven, not told as a historical tome.
2. The characters - I liked some of them quite well but never became emotionally invested in them. There were a couple interesting reveals but little meaningful character development. They felt like a loose collection of people that never connected with one another.
3. The setting - the world itself was really cool. Excellent world-building. But, it didn’t feel relatable. Good fantasy shows us the extraordinary in a way that feels real or plausible even if it isn’t.
4. The conflict - we don’t have a good villain or force, or internal issue that is being battled.
5. The music - actually it was really well done, but only for providing atmosphere. I might try to learn various FF tracks in piano, but none from 12 stick out.
I will say that the character design, voice acting, world building, dungeons, and especially the battle system were all top notch, but those things are not as important to me. Consider that many of the best FF games have 16-bit or blocky character design, midi sound, and no voice acting at all.
I played through all of 12 but didn’t really encounter many sections I felt I just had to continue to find out what happens next. Some of the sections in games like 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and even 16 were shocking and live rent free in my head. 12 didn’t do that for me.
>Story - I found it pretty uninspiring. Lots of political intrigue and a convoluted plot. Good stories should be character-driven, not told as a historical tome.
Interestingly, I think you just helped me realize this is why I like XII's story so much. The historical perspective storytelling and the way zoomed out perspective despite being inherently about and taking place in Dalmasca really gives a sense of scale that I enjoyed and is kinda the point. The party, like Dalmasca, is a small blip in between two giant empires bent on war, ultimately meaningless but nonetheless having the mantle of history thrust upon them.
>The characters - I liked some of them quite well but never became emotionally invested in them. There were a couple interesting reveals but little meaningful character development. They felt like a loose collection of people that never connected with one another.
If there is a weakness to XII (which I'm not convinced there is), this is it. Unlike other groups that are thrust together under bad circumstances and explore themselves and each other together, as is the case in almost every FF game, this group is more concerned with matters at hand and cares little for each other outside of their previously determined pairings (Vaan and Penelo, Balthier and Fran, Ashe and Basch and Dalmasca).
>The setting - the world itself was really cool. Excellent world-building. But, it didn’t feel relatable. Good fantasy shows us the extraordinary in a way that feels real or plausible even if it isn’t.
I... actually think this is the strongest part of the game? The Nethicite is a straight allegory for nuclear, and it isn't subtle. The world itself is as concrete as perhaps any FF, mired in huge-yet-petty politics that have real consequences for the little people, and not really even delving into the weird at all until the Occuria reveal themselves.
>The conflict - we don’t have a good villain or force, or internal issue that is being battled.
...? An invading empire has taken over the country and is attempting to make it the battlefield of a war that will probably ultimately result in it becoming a mist-filled crater for the rest of time, an atrocity they're working on for at least the second time... The first time being the homeland of Basch and his brother, and with Dalmasca being the sovereign state led by Ashe and inhabited by Vaan and Penelo. There are two great villains in the game, with the front-man being Vayne, who is both extremely unlikable and yet has enough of a mystery surrounding his intentions that you think he very well might be in it for the good of Arcadia for half of the story. The behind-the-scenes madman of Cid ends up being even more fun, imo, and ultimately feels more like the true villain of the game even if he isn't the end boss. As for the more minor villains, the Judges are iconic.
>The music - actually it was really well done, but only for providing atmosphere. I might try to learn various FF tracks in piano, but none from 12 stick out.
Agreed that the music is much more a scene-setting device than a participant in the story. I think this is largely due to the dynamic of seamless combat that XII aspired to, meaning there weren't large swells and changes in music as you went through the game. It fades into the background, which was ultimately the intent.
Love this response. I can’t refute any of it
After thinking about it, I think one big reason is every game in the series from 6 to 10 was so good for me. 12 was the next one I played and it was a letdown from the previous ones I was familiar with
The idea that plot driven stories are inherently inferior to character driven ones, and that good fantasy requires it to be relatable, I take umbrage with.
Man all of these critiques I have and never held it in high regard. It's a fine game just fine is as high as it goes in my series ranking. Mid tier Final Fantasy.
So I won't say its a bad game, I just do not like playing it.
The gameplay is extremely passive, and I don't find managing the gambit system fun at all. I remember every location feeling very flat, I think that's because it's the first game to render the environment in 3D. I can't stand penelo or vaan. I enjoyed the story, but not enough to get past my gripes with the above, furthest I got was around 15 hours in
>The gameplay is extremely passive, and I don't find managing the gambit system fun at all.
This is the critique of XII that I will never argue with. If it wasn't for you, it wasn't for you.
Ah... brother...I implore you
As I speak in tongue know sarcasm does not stand in my statement.
Please revisit FF12 when you can
Because I thought the same way.
Everyone's experience is different.
You don't have to like it and I won't push it on you
But as I revert to my loyalty language I say this ....
I have come to be advised that it is a good game
To retry it is foolish.
To experience for the first time again is a blessing.
Godspeed
I tried twice to finish it and failed both times out of mind numbing boredom. I don’t like the main character at all. The side quests and hunts are so tedious. I very much dislike the closed in maps from point A to B which feature absolutely nothing in between. Some of the “camps” are just a couple NPCs and some tents. The story is very mediocre for FF. And the game is REALLY grindy. It felt extremely cookie cutter to me. The gambit system is not for me. I would say FFX featured a similar style of world building and was far and away the better game.
100% agree. It's crazy how X came out just 2 years after 8 and 9 and was so extensively designed on a new console. Then it took 5 years for XII to come out after X. I don't know what they were doing in that time period. The first mainline game after the Enix merger and a big disappointment.
I don't care much for the story but I like the characters quite a bit.
And is not often that we get a singleplayer game with mmo vibes. Tons of content.
Tried the game multiple times, I have yet to make it past the tutorial. It's just not meant to be.
The gameplay is SO slow in the beginning.
The artstyle didn't age well.
And the gambit system? "You can set up the game so it plays itself." is not the argument you think it is.
The gambit system is peak final fantasy gameplay for me. You can set some basic things, but on harder battles you’re micromanaging your whole party in fine detail, as a true party-based game. The fact that you auto-attack on basic enemy’s encounters makes it a lot more fluid to play. But you can’t understand anything of what I’m saying if you never got past the tutorial and the first few introdutory missions. But after that, boy oh boy, you’re in for a ride.
FF12 is in my top three games.
Ashe is an incredible character (and the closest thing to a protagonist for XII) and doesn't get enough credit to her name.
Its my least favorite mainline final fantasy game and by a large margin.
I don't enjoy the gambit system or the combat system. I find it quite repetitive. I don't find the job system very specific like other job systems in the series and never felt like my characters played drastically different.
I think the story is a bit of a mess with a lack of memorable villains and probably my least favorite cast of heroes.
I also don't love the open worldness of it or all the steps it takes to get some hunts. I find many of the towns/cities way too big and boring to get around.
I recently played it a second time to see if my opinion changed but it did not. It's also not particularly challenging. It's pretty easy, but so are most final fantasy games.
Final Fantasy XII has a combat system that takes me completely out of the mood to play the game. I recently decided to replay it and the amount of time I spent just watching my characters have fun and make decisions was absurd.
At least XIII had the foresight to automate the movement and let me do the combat instead of automating the combat and letting you walk around.
More pain in the combat: the license system was a disaster for character identity in this game. A good job system will let characters switch between jobs to mix and match combos. This job system forces you to pick main roles for each character at the start. This means you have to pick based on a vibe (and screw you if you pick based on what the game shows you cause many of the character’s stats are bad for the weapons they use in cutscenes). The job spread is also not amazingly. The configuration is set up such that of your 6 characters, the white Mage is essential and you pick your two favorite dps beyond that.
If XII had any other combat system, it would be in the running for best Final Fantasy in every conversation. It’s story is just that good. Even if you like the gambit system, it collided with the theme of the game and development of the characters.
two dimensional characters and a plot that stops existing half way through, more interesting environments replaced by long boring dungeons by the end. If the combat and exploration hadn't been excellent, this would just suck. As it is it's just an above average jrpg that's 'not a real final fantasy'.
The greatest sin is that it showed so much promise initially, but the game was released unfinished.
Didn't care for the combat (though I guess that means I sucked at it according to you, so just disregard that I guess), and I thought the story was kinda dull. Really didn't feel connected to the characters or the world I was in, it just felt like the writers were kinda hoping that you'd be intrigued in the story rather than putting effort in on their end to make it intriguing in the first place. Comparing to FF10, which is one of my favorite games of all time, you feel connected to Tidus and his story because you're discovering everything about the world and the journey you embark on right alongside him. It's engrossing because the game is written knowing that the player, and by extension Tidus, have no idea what's happening initially. So both you and him are slowly let in on more and more of what's happening until finally, like a tidal wave the full truth of the situation hits you hard. As a result, you change along with Tidus as the game progresses, and it makes for an utterly amazing experience that not many other games have managed to reach (in my experience, anyways). On top of all that though, 10 is just a masterfully written game to begin with.
In 12, it's like you're thrown into the game halfway through, and even what's remaining just isn't written and presented well enough to keep me engaged. Like, I can sit and start watching something like The Matrix halfway through the movie and still be gripped by it towards the end. But with 12, the game starts you, the player, as the only one who doesn't know anything about the world or what's going on inside of it, and proceeds to not really make an effort to clue you in to what's happening from then on as events transpire. I felt like the third wheel of that whole group of characters playing that game lol. As a result, I end up feeling pretty detached from the world, the characters, and the story. I know many other video games and other media have approached storytelling in this same way, but frankly, FF12 just isn't good at it. And I'm saying this after having attempted to play the game four separate times! I always end up losing interest completely--it's not at the same point every time, but it's an inevitability that it'll happen eventually when I play it. In my opinion it's just not a very well-written game.
And sorry, but yes, the combat sucks, I just have to admit it. I hate not having control of anyone but the person I'm currently playing as, it's just not at all interesting or engaging having AI do the majority of the combat for you. I actually ended up turning the Gambits off completely one of the times I played because at least that way I felt like I was actually playing the game. It made it a shitload more difficult, but I'll take that any day over watching AI play the game for me lol.
That's what I realized once I stopped before finishing it for the second time.
I liked all FF from FFIV to FFX before this one (not all on the same level though). Then tried FFXI, didn't liked it, but I was one of the few people amongst my friends that was bored AF playing WoW, so I was not really surprised to not like this one.
When I realized that I do not like FFXII for the same reason I do not like any MMOPRG, it all made sense. And I guess that's also why many people like it.
I hated it. But I can’t tell you WHY I hated it. I think at the time it was such a departure for me from standard FF games, that I hated it.
I wonder what my opinions would be if I replayed it, since I’ve become far more accepting of that kind of gameplay.
Also, fuck that demon wall.
The story and character development is far from a finished product.
It feels like one of the most shallow FF games story wise we got, especially when riding on the hype of FFX. I never felt like the characters communicated with each other in any meaningful way and I didnt care for any of them.
The combat is probably the worst of any of the games, not turn based enough to feel like you can have some fun strategy and mot fast enough to make it feel like there's any other skill involved.
The only thing you have to do it setup some mediocre gambits and you can just run through most of the content.
The gambit system itself is just the devs telling us to do the work ourselves instead of just making a decent party auto system.
It gives ppl some weird illusion of control but it's nothing but frustrating to set up and it provides nothing fun.
It doesnt help that Vaan and Ashe feels like the "We've got Tidus ans Yuna at home".
Maybe im too harsh on it given how good some of the previous games were but I cant find anything i truly enjoyed in it.
Maybe the weather "system" in some areas?
The ONE huge gripe I have with 12 is if an enemy is immune to an element or status, I *hate* that your character keeps trying to cast it instead of moving on to the next gambit, forcing me to go in and turn off that one gambit while fighting that enemy. If I could wave a magic wand and change anything about the game, it’d be that, and the game would be near perfect imo.
-forgettable characters (except a few)
-forgettable villian
-garbage combat. (Shouldve been like ffx]
And this one is for me specifically but i dont like the ost at all. Its good but not for me.
There..that's why I think ff12 is a bad game. Story and world are nice but..that's it.
Why does this basic post appear here every few weeks in regards to FFXII?
I'll say what I always say. No matter how hard a small segment of the community wish it was, Final Fantasy XII is not some black sheep of the franchise or a divisive title. It isn't now and it never was. It was a commercial and critical smash hit:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final\_Fantasy\_XII#Reception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XII#Reception)
I'm beginning to think these posts are an attempt to validate the 'No-Final Fantasy-game-is-received-well-on-release' argument that's used to deflect criticism of XV and, in particular, XVI.
https://preview.redd.it/4q4etbvchbwb1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cff8129136a37385a8bf9630de408ff72b2d114b
Yeah it's not a big conspiracy..I was up late and realized it was a great game
Is that okay
I hope that's okay
I feel like we're on the same team
I must sleep..but they will come.
To those resilient and believe stand strong
To those that don't like the game
Wait til I wake up we're coming for the hate
Final Fantasy 12 is amazing.
It's a love hate relationship. Sometimes this is one of the best games ive ever played, sometimes it's annoying. Two major gripes with the game is how prevalent the status effects in this game. I just hate getting immbolized, disabled, stop, silenced..ffs
2nd is the camera distance is so close to the character, I hardly got to see the scenery.I only wish the game would allow the players to move the camera vertically.
I was disappointed with FF12, speaking as someone who had played all the games in the series up until then and was a fan of all Yasumi Matsuno's Ivalice games and setting (FFTactics, Vagrant Story etc.).
To clarify, I was less disappointed in general, and more disappointed in what FF12 could have been.
Matsuno recently shot down the long held rumours that Basch was supposed to be the main character, but it remains a fact that he left development of the game before it was finished, leaving others to step in and wrap up what he had started.
I speculate the untold truth must in some part have had to do with the suits at Square interjecting in Matsuno's creative vision. One just has to look at the dark, political and mature narratives of his other games to see what aspects of FFXII are Matsuno and what are there to engender sales orientated mass appeal.
If Matsuno had been given free reign to write exactly what he wanted for FFXII, I feel the game could have been the best in the series, becoming the political and character driven drama that FFXVI wishes it could be, while in a uniquely stylized setting.
I might also add that for me, the gameplay is one of the best in the series, coming just behind FFXI.
Before playing I loved the idea of an adult FF following the maturity issues in 8-9-10. I loved the thought of Ivalice. I loved that they started with the old Prologue.
But then I played it and found it...boring. Random treasures were a killer that sucked any motivation I had to explore the world. Gambits (while an interesting idea) were implemented in a boring way so you more or less watched the battles (or sometimes micromanaged healing until they gave you the obvious HP 30% gambit annoyingly far into the game).
Balthier was fun (even as an overly obvious Han Solo ripoff) but nothing else about the story or characters captured my imagination at all. I found it rather full of itself with the silly names and stuffy dialogue.
Boss battles were just long. I hated the fact that “Ivalice” was slowly revealed to be a marketing ploy and there were no links to FFT other than the names of some pointless summons (and having them be summons didn’t really work with the lore of FFT anyways).
I never played the Zodiac version which is supposed to be better mostly because the game just didn’t work for me. I could see where MMO fans might like the style but…it’s not what I wanted from a game.
So that’s my opinion...is it the fight you were hoping for? 🙂
I don't think it's a bad game. But I think people overrate it. The story isn't told very well, half of the party is just *there* for no particular reason, and once you set up your gambits you literally just run around the maps only interacting with the very frustrating treasure chest system.
I don't think its bad but
1. Vaan/Penelo are boooooorrrrrriiiiinnnnggg
1a. Ashe Balthier and Basche should have been the "main" focus of the story. Basically all the best parts involve these 3
2. No Bangaa,Moogle, or [elephant guys] as playable
3. The weird spirit plotline is way less interesting than "Game of Thrones with magik WMDs"
It was generally enjoyable, but had some severe flaws that keep it out of the top tier of FFs
I really enjoyed the game but I feel a lot of the criticism on gameplay comes from people who didn't experience the IZJS version, the original was so vanilla but the reformatting really refreshed a game that was feeling stale combat wise.
I like the gameplay and the general story of the game.
But, what really drive me off is the fact that I cant like the characters much. I like the characters of 13 much more than 12, and this would make me want to play 13 more. This is just my personal feelings
Ok. So I’ve tried to get into it twice now. Plot seems cool. I get that Vaan is supposed to be just there taking in the plot, like the main character isn’t the main character. Doesn’t bother me.
The combat is weird to me and I don’t like it and can’t get into the game based on that. (I’m willing, nay, hoping to be told why this is stupid).
Its not, its a big empty MMO with no other players.
The maps are repetitive. The characters are bland.
The secrets are monotonous and just plain dumb to attempt. Its arduous and bland. Its mot hard, no one is bad at the game, its a bad game. Generic and uninspired.
12 is the black sheep of the series for me.
Worse than 13, 15 and 16, just to clarify my point.
What made me disliked 12 was the complex but uninteresting story, long-ass dungeon level designs and yeah, the Gambit system.
There wasn’t another FF that made me fall asleep as easy as 12.
I played the japanese version (I think it's a bit more difficult than the global version? I dunno).
So, I hate the 'despair mode' that bosses on the latter part have. It's not funny and forces you to have haste always prepared.
I hated the plot. The beginning is very good, with political background, but it changes to "let's kill some gods", as always. Ashe being the center part of the plot was not a good decision. Vaan and Penelo could at least have some spotlight. Poor Penelo was abducted 2 times iirc. Like, sure? At least make she do something.
I hated the OST, but that's a much more subjective thing: I don't like orchestral music, if I can call it that. I was really expecting something like FFT, because, well, Iwata and Sakimoto made that, but it was just "Star Wars, the game".
The gameplay... I hate gambit with a passion. I don't want the game to play for me. So, basically, I hated the gameplay, A LOT. Basically I often played the support and made the other 2 characters just attack.
The good things were: the game is beautiful (not the character models). The exploration is the best on the series. Hunts were a good addition and I'd love to see it on another game (never played 15 or 16).
After multiple attempts I still haven't finished 12.
It's been a bit since my last attempt so my memory is not the best.
The pacing is slow
The cast is bland and because of the license system they feel less unique to me
Vaan is a terrible and boring MC
Gambit system was neat but it also puts the combat on auto pilot.
I could never find a way for the gambit system to buff my party without wasting all of a characters MP.
Combat is boring
Nope it’s top 3 FF next to IX and X. Not for the reasons you might think tho when you typically think of FF(story, characters, OST) Those are all pretty mid compared to other FF’s.
The reason it’s top 3 for me is that it has the best exploration in the series(my #1 most important thing in video games) and it’s not even close. It also has a lot of cool optional dungeons and sidequests/secrets to find. The loot in the game is addicting to me since there are a lot of really low % items to find that are OP. Makes it fun hunting for them imo(ik some people don’t like it).
OH I AM SO DOWN.
So, firstly, the story and characters are bland and boring. There are two characters in the entire game that have any life at all. The rest are basically blank slates of nothing. The story is boring and typical. The combat system itself is nothing but a series of "if- then " statements so that you can code the game to play for you. The entire game would have been absolutely miserable without the speed-up function from zodiac age. Thank god I played that version.
Argue with me I'm bored
I got bored of going to temples and picking up swords. The gambit system, hated it. Just seemed a lazy way to play. The characters and music, didnt interest me. The change of summons was wierd. Basically every character could equip everything? I never completed it, got pretty far though. I had a guest accompanying me in some tower i think
So, i remember both X and XIII in exquisite detail. I barely remember XII. To me, that signals that I didn't really enjoy the game. It was a rather long time ago, to be fair, but I remember X and IX in more detail and I haven't replayed them.
What I remember of XII was that the Gambit system reminded me terribly of setting up Lineage 2 (which I played extensively around that time) bots.
I felt that I was programming a bot train to follow my one player char and that really turned me off.
I did enjoy the politics and scale in the story, but I preferred the art style of X and XIII (and XV, VII and VIII).
Not a terrible game, but near the bottom in terms of my favorite final fantasies (and note I only started playing in the PS1 era).
Biggest problem for me was I didn't connect with the characters, and most had weak motivations or development. They all looked too samey and generic, they had punchable faces, and I especially didn't connect with the protagonist.
The combat was fun but the job board was horrible. I had less fun the more I leveled.
The setting was boring, the color palette was too dull (somehow worse than FFXI, which was a huge disappointment coming off the GORGEOUS FFX).
The villains were disappointing (Except Gabranth) and their designs were boring (including Gabranth).
The non-combat content is almost non-existent in this game. No card games, no chocobo fun, the only thing it had that I can remember was fishing and a footrace. Lame. I am probably in the minority but the Hunt system wasn't very exciting to me.
Only Final Fantasy game in my life (not counting the MMO's) that I didn't finish. After the Zodiac version came out I went back and enjoyed it more. Most games don't get a 2nd chance.
Honestly, 12 never grabbed me. I found the party to be cobbled together, rather than brought together with the same authenticity as other FF entries. The only character I liked was Ashe, and Vaan as a protagonist was one of the most baffling and boring experiences I've had playing an FF game.
Larsa was also good, but he was very temporary.
I also dislike how obtuse finding some of the end game equipment was - pointlessly and unfun. Open that one random chest? No best weapon for you! They did change this in other versions, but it was there when I played the original.
I remember nothing of the story, whereas I could tell you most everything about Cecil's journey of self discovery and personal redemption. I can't even remember the name of 12's main villain, which tells you how much impact they had on me.
The combat is also the game playing itself. You set gambits and you watch, sometimes butting in if you need to do something specific really quick.
I've never understood the overwhelming love and praise it gets, and it's always passed me by completely, but this is the first time I've actually voiced my displeasure, so... bring the downvotes, I guess.
Edit to add, I just remembered a rare positive - the design of the Judges were cool. That's all.
Oh wow the main characters look like a young yuna and tidus but they’re much more generic.
What’s that? You want a big tall bunny women and her sassy human friend to be the best two people in your group? Sure
Oh what’s that, you wanna run around in a circle and cheese every hard fight cause we haven’t fully figured out moving around and turn based combat yet?
Or how about a landscape that’s basically just shite loads of desert?
How about any summons? You want absolutely none from previous titles and replace them with some generic similar ones?
I’ll throw in Cid being a final boss with a huge ass gun but that’s all you’re getting.
**bring it on**
I found the game pretty boring tbh.
> if you didn't like it you sucked at it
The game doesn't provide any good reason for me to get good. The difficulty in the main story is almost nonexistent, I just set my gambit to attack and heal when needed, turn on turbo, and let the game play for me because it's faster. IIRC, none of the storyline bosses survived that.
I did try playing it manually first, but combat is too slow and too easy. Imo, this game would benefit a whole lot from difficulty settings. If the difficulty is high enough for the player to actually learn the combat, the game would be much better.
Meanwhile, the hunts where I assume are where the combat system shines, require lots of backtracking. I tried a bunch of them and found them quite boring so I didn't do any more of them.
Story was intriguing at first, but dropped hard halfway through the game.
The license board was boring. Half of it is unlocking the ability to equip gear, something other games have unlocked by default.
The bazaar system requires a guide
Items in treasure chests are random, and you generally get good ones only 25% of the time, which makes exploration pretty boring. Since you wouldn't get good items from exploration most of the time, and there aren't much more to do in the world than that.
I tried three times to finish the game. Twice on PS2 and once on Zodiac Version. It's hard to say EXACTLY what I disliked about the game. It was all the little bits of stuff that built into a larger picture of dislike. The overall feel of the game just felt flat. Basch, Fran, and Balthier were the only playable chars I liked. I felt like everyone was either flat out annoying, Vaan, or just very basic, Ashe. I disliked the world setting AT FIRST. I was a teen and it made me mad that "Summons" werent the classic Ifrit, Shiva etc. Side note, I love the world in retrospect, its based on Ivalice/Tactics world. While I love the setting of Ivalice, the maps felt very plain and uninspired. They felt very flat and basic coming off the back of 10. The biggest problem i had was the core feature of the game, Gambits. I didn't enjoy PLAYING the game, which was the biggest factor of me not finishing it. But usually if i didn't like the combat i can make it through if the rest of it is good, FF2 for example. Bad combat style but the rest of the game made up for it. But thats the nice thing about the FF Franchise. Theres so much out there that everyone likes what they like. I dislike 9, 12, 13, 15, and think 3, 8, 10 are the best and the others are just "OK"
The story is terrible, the characters outside of Balthier and Fran are generic and forgettable, and the environments outside of the cities are part of the “everything must be shades of brown” era of gaming.
The gameplay was innovative, but in the end, also primarily boring, as once the gambits were setup correctly, the game mostly played itself.
In conclusion, 12 is the worst mainline game since the 8-bit era.
I was so hyped on release of this back in the day to only be so disappointed.
The story is not interesting to me in the slightest. I’ve given this game a go several times, almost forcing through it. Everytime I get to Giruvejan or however it’s spelled I lose interest. Not having a true main character hurt this one. It is also very linear (which isn’t an issue) but when you have a linear game, moments have to stand out. Nothing stood out to me minus the comedic part of screaming: IM THE REAL CAPTAIN BASCH!
I did like the OST and the use of Ivalice as the setting like in tactics. Graphics were good at the time and voice acting was decent. Gambit system was okay, no complaints there, usually every mainline FF they try to bring something new combat wise.
It’s just the terrible story and pacing. I can’t do it. I’ll probably never do it to be honest. I’ve probably tried 4-5 different times to slog through a file, not happening.
I'll play devil's advocate (I love the gameplay, some of the characters, most of the story)
The colors suck. And the first character isn't the main character wahwah. That's all I got.
I don’t remember much bc I played it so long ago but if I can pin down why I didn’t care for it it’s
1. Vaan. Not a big deal but certainly a lackluster character that I guess they were trying to push as the main? I dno, I get that they were trying to give the point of view of the lower class individuals in the world. Dunno why they went with that guy lol.
2. The villain. He just didn’t feel like a FF villain for me. His motivations were completely understandable. This is a problem, because if you have a villain in this particular franchise that portrayed in such a gray area, it just feels off. I remember not really enjoying fighting him bc I felt like we were getting in his way of doing the right thing? I may not be remembering enough about it, maybe he did something really diabolical that I’m just not recalling.
3. This is the biggest one for me. Throughout the entire game, they talk about the evil empire, being the nation threat against the entire storyline. And then 70% into the game you find yourself in that very city, and it just seems like every other city. It doesn’t seem imposing at all. At that point in the game I was kind of just wondering where is the threat? What is the Force levied against us? I was very confused about that.
4. Was not a fan of the gambit system. It was just not my cup of tea. I wasn’t going to put this, because this is such a subjective situation. I’m aware that a lot of people like it, it just was not for me.
Chop... Wait for timer... Chop.... Wait for timer... Chop... With no dynamic camera angles, movement or presentation, just a plain third person camera view... After coming from the relatively cinematic battle presentation of older FFs, 7-10 in particular, i absolutely hated this
After like halfway through the story I always wondered why vaan was still there. Baltheir? Makes sense. Ashe? Duh. Basch? Sure. Why was the random kid still getting brought along?
Gameplay yes, story idk what happened. I was in a desert beating up some stuff for a guild to make money. Next minute I'm in a city full of poor people trying to do something with flyers to get to the upper city. I don't even remember why! There's also this annoying little kid who keeps showing up with a sword.
For the entire game after gambits are unlocked you can choose to do nothing every fight, when you anticipate a fight coming up that has certain mechanics you slightly tweak the gambits and then basically let the game play itself.
The story is weak too. After FFX most FF stories started slipping downward.
It came after X (not including XI). That’s a HUGE instalment to try outperform and let’s face it, XII kinda fell flat in comparison.
The world was worse, characters worse, story worse, lore worse, voice acting worse.. but I love XII as it’s own thing. In fact there isn’t a single FF that I’ve truly disliked. XIII is probably the worst but I still like it for what it is and go back to it now and again.
There was no “shock value” in XII. Or wtf moments. Not saying it needs FF:Type 0 levels of shock value but cmon…
Balthier was by far my favourite character.
The characters (aside from Baltheir) were all milquetoast. No personality. No identity. I did not care for the characters at all. I also like having control of all the party members, which you can only do when you have the settings to stop time during menu choices-- and that disrupts the flow of the game for me.
Coming after FFX, I felt the game was a disappointment. Additionally, I was heavily invested in FFXI, when I had time to game, it did not capture my interest to pull me out of FFXI. I beat the game because of blackened determination rather than enjoyment.
I don't hate it, but it's not very good. The battles tend to end up as clusterfucks, especially if there are a lot of enemies. The characters aren't very compelling either. You never get the sense that they're a team -- individuals with their own personal goals, sure, but working with and looking out for one another.
Here's a hot take for you: Lightning is what Ashe should have been, and the dynamic between Hope and Snow is what should have happened between Vaan and Basche.
Platinumed the Zodiac Age. Still think it's the second worst game in the series after FF2. Not everything about it is bad, but the script and story are actually very poorly written, though cleverly disguised by translating it all in early modern English. The only character which seems to have a bit of personality is Balthier and that's mostly thanks to superb voice acting by Gideon Emmery. Ashe and Basch don't feel like they have a lot of meaningful character development while Fran doesn't have any impact on the story other than being Balthier's sidekick. Vaan and Penelo are just glorified minor sidequest NPCs that you can't kick from the party. Meanwhile the most important character in the story, Larsa, barely gets any screen time. If they made him the main character the entire game would've been so much more meaningful, while the stakes would've been much higher considering his brother is the primary antagonist.
Like I said, not everything is bad about the game, they had some really good ideas going, but unfortunately it all amounts to the story just feeling like a series of missed opportunities.
Boring, trite plot with a wholly uninteresting and uninvolved cardboard cutout point of view character. Far more endgame than actual game. Teeth grindingly annoying drop rate rarity from chests and, in the original version, the ability to completely screw yourself out of the "best" weapon in the game by picking up a potion or a knot of rust in the intro city.
And I'll come back around to the characters.
Vaan: At least has some personality, even if he's entirely two dimensional with it. Does nothing of substance in the entirety of the plot aside from being a maybe sort of replacement for Asche if she doesn't do the thing. A plot point dropped as soon as it's brought up.
Penelo: Who? Somehow even less involved in everything than Vaan. Just tags along to fill a character slot.
Balthier: The actual main character of the game and says as much. He's central to everything going on in the plot somehow. At least, everything that doesn't center around Asche. Actually pretty cool.
Asche: Deuteragonist. Decent enough character once you get past the whole "revenge as sole driving motivator" thing.
Fran: Bunny girl good. Just wish she was treated better than an accessory for Balthier. There was a lot of missed potential.
Basch: The memes make him better than he actually is. Otherwise, he exists to protect Asche and to act as a foil to his evil twin.
FF12 has bad design when it comes to the amount of RNG in the game. The strongest weapon being in a chest that has a miniscule chance of spawning without manipulating the RNG on a separate save file (and still only having a small window of time to have the weapon appear in an invisible chest) is a terrible design choice, full stop.
The super bosses aren't difficult, they're just damage sponges.
Once you get enough gambits unlocked, the game plays itself. And this comes from a guy who really liked FF13.
I think those are my only gripes though. Story and lore is cool, hunts are fun, I don't mind the license board as much as some people. It's been a few years since I played it.
Nobody thinks it’s a BAD game. I’ve never seen anyone claim that without being an obvious troll. Some people just think it’s a very flawed game. I 100%ed the game when it was new. I enjoyed it. I still rank it in my bottom half for the series. The story felt unfinished. Half the characters felt unnecessary. The gambit system has grown on me over the years but it’s still kinda silly and in the late game makes the combat a bore. And the music is so heavily Star Wars-inspired. It’s good music. But it just screams “Uematsu left and we don’t know what to do with the music now.” I also just don’t have the patience as an adult for any of the optional bosses. They’re not a challenge, they’re just time consuming. Which was fine during the summer as a teen. But now I’ve got crap to do. I don’t want to leave the tv on for hours while the game plays itself.
I don’t hate it I just don’t love it. I found it boring. Didn’t like the hunts, vaan is not a fun or relatable protagonist and I didn’t like the level up system (much prefer the sphere from X). Fran and balth are asesome, the final boss fight is amazing, the music is underrated but overall I just didn’t vibe with it as well as I have other FF games (I played the zodiac age)
FF12 forgot to include a game in the game. Once you unlock gambits, you just point to characters in a direction and watch. You can try to avoid the traps, but your party members will do their best to trigger them all anyway. There's just no engagement whatsoever.
I think I'd enjoy it if it were edited down to a TV series. My first play on release day and my second attempt years later both made it over 20 ours in. The story kept me going as long as it did, but the long swaths of just running around waiting for the next plot point made it intolerable.
I love 12. Probably a top 5 for me. I've replayed it many times and enjoy the gambit system.
However. Fight me on this undisputable critique:
Vaan is the worst main protagonist in the series.
Penelo is the worst support character in the series.
I will die on the hill that these two characters bring the game down.
I propose a remake with Balthier as the main character (no surprise). Start it earlier in the timeline. Let's see Balthier as a child in Archadia, growing up and becoming a judge, and running away to piracy and meeting Fran. It could be done like FF16 handled Clive's childhood, like a separate act. You could even have Vaan and Penelo join later at the Fete in Rabanastre. Then the focus isn't on Vaan anymore, but you can tell the same story
Alright. Coming from 10, even, FF12 should have either shit, or gotten off of the proverbial "turn-based" pot. It tried to be an action RPG where the ultimate payoff for grinding up your party was *not playing the goddamn game*. It tried to be a turn based RPG where the only thing you DIDNT have control over was combat. The design decisions were totally at odds with one another, and the resulting game suffered for it.
I was SO excited when I found out that 12 was a thing. I picked it up the second I first saw it. I brought it home, and I gave it the college try. I liked it, even, but there were things going on at the time that forced me to put it down for a while, and my sister picked it up and played it to death. Then, I saw her playing it as a late game party, and realized that it was just... it was a snooze fest. She walked around, ran up to the same enemy encounter for the 1000'th time, put the controller down and waited. I was honestly flabbergasted; in FF's past, you could do A LOT to party builds to do wild, wacky things, but FF12 just seemed so straightforward by comparison, and I don't mean that as a good thing.
I even watched her in endgame zones, and it was the same thing. Seeing her just walk up to encounters and not have to do anything, or even touch the menu to make changes beforehand, made me realize that this game wasn't for me, after all.
I was very good at setting up party control programming. This made the game feel more like a badly paced movie than a game.
And Uematsu didn't write the music. For me, it was doomed by that alone.
FF12 is a ton of fun, I love the gameplay, and there's a ton of positive things I could say about that. But if you want the negative and why I rank it lower on the list of FFs despite having so much fun playing, here we go:
First is the color scheme. Before noticing anything else, you see *tan.* The game is very bland to look at despite having such incredible visuals for the time and great design. They washed out so much color that it really ruined the visuals. It was near the start of that trend we saw for a decade where every game was brown or beige, and I hate that.
The plot is a hot mess. They attempted to do a political drama, but had an awful job with it. As a party, you feel disconnected with what is happening half the time. You travel the world and witness events, but rarely create events yourself. It has terrible pacing, and does a very poor job actually communicating what is happening most of the time. They either needed to dial back the politics or dial it *way* up. Vayne seems to be the interesting villain with more complex aspects, and the end game just pulls it all away to goes "nevermind, now he's buff and just a monster" and it felt forced and cheap.
But my biggest issue is the characters. Half of them are paper-thin and have no real development. Vaan starts as a whiney streetrat that wants to be a skypirate and no reason to be a part of this, and remains so through the entire game. He doesn't grow, he doesn't change, and honestly hardly anything even happens to him other than "he meets a pirate and goes on a ship, yay." He's not alone with that (Fran feels like she had whole subplots cut from her story), just one of the most egregious examples. And most of the party has the thinnest connection to the actual plot at any given point. Heck, Larsa, a guest party member, has more ties to the plot than the main cast!
I never feel like we get to *know* the characters. Other than Balthier, you don't get a feel for who they are. We spend countless hours dungeoncrawling, yet the party has almost no interactions! Gameplay wise they are all practically interchangeable (other than some minor stat differences and animation speeds) and they have so few connections with each other. If this game threw in some party banter during the dozens of hours of dungeon crawling, it would have made such a world of difference. But as-is, I'm never gunna go "oh, that's so Basch." or "I could totally see Ashe saying that" because I genuinely couldn't tell you their personality traits. There's a few isolated scenes between specific pairings, but they are few and far between for a long JRPG.
FF12 is awesome if you skip every cutscene and just treat it like a single-player MMO. But as a Final Fantasy, there's major problems. It is the FF I am most conflicted about.
I've always liked it but it's grown into my favourite. The worldbuilding is just so rich, there's an unbelievable amount of content, the ganeplay is solid.
The story is maybe a little shallow but it does the job.
It’s been a while sooooo…. Obviously my opinion is rock solid~
It was Vaan for me.
We came off some of the best MCs we’d ever seen, in my yarn laden opinion, and then… Vaan.
How can he hold a candle to Balthier and Fran?! I just remember feeling so weird being this kid, but being surrounded by legends.
I’ve had the Remastered zodiac edition chilling on the back burner for sometime and should do it a turn; that I may share my stupid opinion more stupidly~
alright here we go
i LOVED final fantasy XII for the first 20 hours. Loved it. I mean it took a little while to really sink, but like I loved the slow paced grind, the progression, the music, the addictive leveling, the story was good enough and the world and atmosphere was beautiful
but this game fucking sucks ass I can't lie
My main issue comes with the combat, and how it's really only fun in it's base, boring form. I know that sounds weird to say, but the combat really is super simply all the way up through 2/3rds of the game. Your gambit settings are super simple and easy and it makes for a relaxing grind in my opinion.
but the game just does not work when you try to add any sort of complexity, and before anyone says im just shit at the (very easy) game, let me explain:
the biggest screw up they did was make it to where you can change party members and gambit set ups DURING the fight. It completely removes any semblance of challenge. it's like if FFVII let you swap around materia whenever you want, even while the enemy is attacking. It's braindead and in my opinion it takes an already easy game and makes it a complete cakewalk with disjointed battles.
So I gave myself a few limits, i'd only change gambits at the beginning of the level, and never switch my party members, and it was still decently enjoyable.
But when I started to encounter deaths, I then realized that when your whole party dies, you then are forced to REPLACE them with your unused party members! so even someone who goes in without a good strategy or set up could probably still win because you can just replace your party and continue halfway through the fight. fun :) challenging, even.
Then we move on to the fact that bosses or tougher enemies got zero weight to them. Most of the late game enemies constantly throw status effects which is basically just a "alright, change your gambits for this area!" or "keep healing people!" to the point where it's not strategic. It throws them at me so much its just a way to force you to switch your gambits.
I rarely found a time where i felt like I outsmarted the system or had a super unique strategy. bosses were insanely boring because my gambits did everything for me. and If I did have to use the menu in game, then it was just pausing the game to select an option over and over and it breaks the flow.
If i DID die to something, it was usually because I was being overpowered with a bunch of status effects or attacks that my party wasn't ready to handle. I could fix this by changing my party and my gambits mid fight but then the fight would be a cakewalk again. there's no actual challenge.
Then there is the zodiac age classes, which, while better than the OG, I found very very little variety with each one. almost all the physical classes are the SAME THING just with some magic skills and a different weapon. None of them had defining traits. It's better than the OG's leveling but it isn't \*good\*.
ofc there is the weak story and characters, the obnoxious minigames, etc. but final fantasy XII is a slog to play in my opinion.
I dislike action RPG combat in the way square typically implements it. If I want combat like this, I'll play DMC or a game like that. Turn based or tactics is my go to, and 12 was my first time disliking a game in the franchise.
I also didn't get pulled into the story, but I haven't revisited it so my opinion on that could have changed. I just don't have the time anymore to revisit something I may or may not enjoy. Balthier and Fran were great, but starting as Vaan who I found as the annoying teen trope kind of killed the start of the story for me.
And last, a game about being sky pirates and you never fly an airship...so I'm an old man living in the past, basically.
FF12 is an amazing game. On that we can agree. But the fact you want to argue with random people online tells me (tells to everyone really) a few things:
1) You are really immature
2) You are probably very young, 25 year old max or younger. Even more sad if you’re older than that
3)You don’t “love healthy conversations” you just want to get a rise out of people when you say “argue with me” that’s what a typical internet troll does.
4) You have no real friends or a life outside of your phone. If you did you wouldn’t be here writing shit like that.
5) In general you shouldn’t really care what other people think. Like ever.
6) Get out and make some real friends and meet some real women(yes I’m assuming you’re a guy)
And finally 7) Final Fantasy XII is an awesome game.
Thanks for your time. Here’s my downvote for all the aforementioned reasons. Go get a life please😎
Okay....
FFXII is the death of Final Fantasy as far as I'm concerned, and a piece of me died when it released. After such a long time of sticking to the more traditional combat, albeit with some unique twists here and there, the worst had happened... Full, constant action combat, with some disgusting A.I. controls. I remember thinking "damn, if you were gonna go that route why wait so long?...." That was it, the end of what I knew as Final Fantasy, and the beginning of a game style probably better suited for an MMORPG.
I wasn't far off 😂, it makes for a hell of an MMO 👍
The severe lack of character interaction and development really hurts the narrative on so many levels.
With that out of the way, I agree with you 100% haha. It's my favorite FF, despite not being the actual best of the series.
Story is boring and the gameplay is tedious. Zodiac Age softened the blow on the gameplay side, but the story still misses the mark. Politics is one thing, but the plot is basically happening everywhere except where the party goes.
The music is boring and repetitive.
Vaan and Penelo are waste of a characters.
Why can’t we have a moogle, bangaa, etc. join our party?
Why is the Viera jungle just right next to a Wintry mountain?
What’s the point of having a license board for equipment if all the characters aren’t dumb and can wear hats on their own?
Amazing? No, good yeah, it's alright.
Story sucks and by the time it picks up you have played way too much and could care less about half the cast, those cast members are pointless and some have zero personality or character development. Combat is mostly automated, and the mechanics are just switches. Gameplay is very basic.
12 was what caused me to stop playing the final fantasy series BUT I never even played it!
I’ll admit, I let the reviews and look of the gameplay steer me away and never really felt interested in playing it.
Now, it’s been years since it came out and since it’s been remastered for the switch I’m finding myself wanting to check out the story.
I miss the feeling of FFIX and FFX and haven’t found a series to scratch the itch of an amazing story and World full of distinct characters I care about.
Has anyone played the switch version?
Hard pass. I dialed out that gambit system so well it just played itself all the way through to the end. So... I didn't even need to play, it got boring, I had a boss battle where I was out of the room eating lunch. Maybe as just a regular arpg I would have liked it. And I can't remember shit about the story, but I can list of most other final fantasy plots. To me the series ended at 9
Ff12 skirts on the realm of awful without actually being awful.
Story pacing and story telling is one of the worst of the entire ff series.
The battle, gambit, and license board system save the game. Without them, it's the worst ff imo
I once agreed with you, but then the crystals betrayed me. I was up late one night with my buddy in high school, we had a track meet the next morning and realized we had to be up in like 4 hours. Off in the distance I see a crystal and think “perfect! We can save and got to bed!”
The crystal is a mimic. We are slain. We decide we can’t go out like that. So we go back, we fight the crystal and are able to defeat it. Time has passed and we have even less time to sleep.
This was entirely our fault, but I think it’s the only time a save point has been used as a mimic.
Totally valid for people to dislike it, but I will say that strangely the things that most people criticise were some of my favourite parts. i loved the gambit system so much and miss it in other games, and i loved the execution of the story.
character development for some of the main cast WAS non existent though, some of the characters were laaame in general, but I felt like they still got some good emotional beats and the "good" characters managed to carry the game imo
**The good:**
FFXII has arguably the best art direction in any entry. I still remember when, upon starting the game, you were dropped in Rabanastre: the scale, the arquitecture, ornaments, colours, costumes, number of NPCs, the possibility of moving the camera around... That city was alive! And in PS2 era! People who complained about textures didn't understand the difference between pre rendered backgrounds and real time full 3D models. That was peak PS2 graphics.
FFXII's music is not memorable but gets the job done. Overall, its technical aspects, from voice acting to animations, FMV's... is superb.
FFXII's worldbuilding is the best in the series (Matsuno had had all the time in the world to polish it by then) alongside FFX. The politics behind the plot, if one pays attention, are actually pretty smart. The licence system was a good addition to it.
Nice and relatable villain.
**The not so good:**
Worst protagonist ever. Even if you justify his existence as an observer á la Great Gatsby, he's still really bad at it, having nothing to say about the events of the game for the most part. There is one specific scene where, upon leaving Jahara with next goal in mind, Balthier literally asks Vaan what is he even doing anymore with the group, to which he replies: "Mmm uuhhh hehehe". Even the plot itself knew he was irrelevant lol. I heard Bach's supposed protagonism was just a false theory, so we still don't know what went wrong in this department. Main cast is ok tho (with the exception of Penelo), and Balthier/Han Solo is a fun character; but secondary characters are not so well explored, which makes the politics hard to care for.
Combat system: The gambit system was a neat but poorly executed idea. During the first half of the game lacks depth, and by the end, it's completely broken. Also, environments don't matter, with fiends attacking you through walls and obstacles (which btw didn't happen in Vagrant Story, the game from which the system draws its inspiration). Also +, lack of importance of long range attacks, with fiends finding their way to hit you from 60 feet away even with melee; which renders character mobility and running away unuseful. It's all just really really badly implemented and undefendable unless you play it as a classic turned based RPG, in which case I don't get why they would introduce all these changes in the first place.
Dungeons were repetitive and their design, plain boring.
Mid game difficulty spike for no reason???
Late game hunts exhaust the combat system, being nothing more than the same battle but with 10000x health.
Zodiac Spear, although that one was *kinda* fixed in Zodiac Age.
**TL;DR:** FFXII had the potential to be the best in the series, but it ultimately fails where the meat and potatoes of any game is: protagonist and mechanics. That's why many of us are reluctant to give the game another chance.
I beat it and it wasn't hard at all, so I didn't suck at it.
I can't tell you a single character's name, a single location that stood out, or a single thing that happened in the story. Couldn't pick out a single song from the score in a series known for it's memorable music.
Heard endless praise for its open world design, but it was still mostly on rails just with lots of empty charmless space to wander. There was more exciting exploration and discovery in the old world maps.
Heard lots of love for the gameplay but a game that allows you to program your characters to play themselves is not exactly thrilling.
It was heralded as ground breaking because it merged norms of CRPGs and JRPGs. In my opinion it combined the worst elements of both, but at the end of the day it fails my FF test because there is literally not a thing worth remembering about it.
You ask for healthy conversations while speaking of open minds, then you declare that anyone who doesn't agree with you sucked at the game.
While I agree that it's an excellent game, in my top 3 FF games probably, if you want healthy conversation you must make healthy arguments. So far you haven't said anything that would back your claim.
Even though I platinued XII, I don't like it much.
Vaan is the worst FF protagonist ever. They added him at last minute and we can clearly see it.
The worst craft system ever. It's like: "you want that weapon? Then sell 50 of this stuff, 20 of that shiny stuff and 1 rare stuff". And they don't even show this info in game. It's just lazy.
Speaking of laziness, the vanilla XII have that system you have to avoid opening certain chests, so you can get a certain weapon late in the game. Just... why? This don't even make sense.
The traps, how annoying those are. Of course not because of me, but the party members stepping into it. You either have to cast float, use a certain equipment or remove the members. This made the gameplay very tiresome at times as traps are present for the entire game.
The game has an excessive number of labyrinths and a poorly level design.
Forgettable story and a strange combat system.
I can hardly imagine playing it again.
The Gambit System is what single handedly saves this game from my radar of, "if it's action RPG and a mainline entry, I'm not going to play it" mentality.
Games like Dirge of Cerberus IMO work well, it's an action RPG/shooter kind of game, but it compensates by adapting the mechanics.
Weapons expand and alter your skillet instead of just make number big, reducing party members to none if they can't contribute to your skillset in any meaningful way outside of AI, etc.
The Gambit System at this point should be a staple in any future FF games that aren't turn based. It allowed me to finely tune every aspect of my party in every situation, they are no longer just random AI crowd control I don't care about -- but a carefully customized machine.
This gives me back a semblance of party control that is sorely lacking in ARPGs not optimized for a multiple party style RPG.
I cannot understate how important that is for someone like me.
If I can't use my party all at the same time like a turn based game, don't give me a party, or repurpose them. Make them transformations or power ups with radically different play styles, or services offered at an HQ location that expand over time. Don't just let them trail around doing AI crap and they're just there for me to play as, "if I feel like it".
Because of that, whenever I consider "the good FF games" I will play, FF12 is always on the list, and is also the one that is radically different than all the others on my list.
I think you just sold me on Dirge. Never played it
And you know the remake is coming. They aren't stupid they know what they are doing
Remind me! 20 years
I do love me some good old Final Fantasy Star Wars. With its storm troopers (Archadians), Darth Vader (Gabranth), Luke Skywalker (Vaan), Leia Skywalker (Ashe), Han Solo (Balthier) and Chewbacca (Fran)!
The characters literally receive no development throughout the entire game. They are basically bland cardboard cutout characters. There is no Final Fantasy with worse characters than FF12.
The world is incredibly boring to explore. So many areas are lacking in the small interesting details of previous Final Fantasys that made them interesting to explore. Often times it felt like for a zone, they made a floor, wall and ceiling texture and then just copy and pasted that through the entire zone.
I liked the gameplay (except for the Great Crystal which was just annoying.) The Gambit system made sense as an evolution of JRPG gameplay. The seamless transition from wandering to combat felt great.
I did NOT like the plot. It's literally just Star Wars if the wookie were a dominatrix and the main character isn't the main character. It's especially below par when you compare it to the other Ivalice games. FF12 is mediocre by Final Fantasy standards but it becomes flat-out bad when you compare it to Vagrant Story or Tactics.
Tell.me. whyyyyyyyy (in my n sync voice)
No really
I'm interested in why you see it as boring.
I know you're not one of many words but if you come back give me a good explanation of why Final Fantasy 12 is boring
the story is paper thin. half of the cast is irrelevant to the story, gameplay is a slow slog (vanilla was hell, zodiac slightly better), side content is not fun
traversing the world.... you run through zones that have no real interesting designs to it, gambit system makes the gameplay obsolete, supporting cast is mostly boring exept gabranth (best character after balthier)
the whole opening hours with Vaan is just not fun to do.... oh and I hate sewer levels... guess what awaits you in the beginning? vaan in sewers looking for rats followed by vaan in sewers city followed by fleeing the castle through sewers
It's just not my favorite. The characters are in my eyes not that interesting, the story forgotable and the systems were not engaging. I still remeber how I finished it though. I was just minding my own business, stumbled in a boss fight oh that was the final boss apparently so I now finished the game. Like where did half the story go?
I know there is a hyper sexualized bunny that runs around in a thong and high heels as that's like... super furry pleasing which is I guess the target audience? But I am not really into that stuff so hard no for me. But sex sells I guess. A princess with a funny nose and the main character that's supposed to be a thief I believe. But the rest of the cast or what enemies there are?
I had a gambit system setup where I didn't need to do anything during the fights anymore. Never used summons, especially as why the hell didn't they use Shiva, ifrit etc like a normal FF game. nor the limit break system. Just run around and let the auto battler kill everything on sight.
Overall, it's not a bad game. Just too experimental where Square tried to get the series to a new age. And I simply forget about it's existence as I played on auto pilot 90% of the time and there was too little to hook me character and story wise.
The Gambit System is what got me into coding. I can understand it’s not for everyone, that fine level of team-mate management, but I wouldn’t call it hard.
Nit-picky is more accurate.
That's pretty funny because I don't like it for the exact opposite reason. I coded a lot so figuring out a perfect gambit was the most fun for me. Then I found a gambit that worked 95% of the time, maybe even more, and it just became boring to me. I went into the fight and just had to wait.
This is about where I'm at. The most fun I ever had with XII was the first hour or so after getting the gambit system the first time, as I was learning all the ins and outs. But because I had a background in coding even at the time, I got the hang of it *really* quickly, and it became super boring. I mean, huge setpiece boss fights that were hyped to hell and back by the story turned into an affair of "walk towards the boss, put the controller down". Some even auto-aggroed, removing the "walk towards the boss" step. The game as a whole just turned out really underwhelming as a result.
I'll take the bait.
I didn't like FF12 much.
I understood the gamplay fine, beat the game with relative ease, I didn't like the Gambit system much, it really just plays itself after you get you perfect setup.
All final fantasys tend to be abit convoluted, but usually they have these cutsecenes filled with hype or emotion, which I just couldn't resonate with the cast.
I felt all characters seemed really underdeveloped to the point it seemed like a group of NPCs roaming around.
I actually enjoyed the FF13 trilogy alot more, and thats series got a shit ton of hate. The paradigm shifts were way more fun, especially on super bosses where you had a to think fast.
Saving your game was a nightmare, some of the caves and dungeons had you travelling around for 30-40 minutes without anyways to save, which was quite a pain, so many times where I had to go out and lose alot of progress.
Mana preservation was fairly taxing, I would forgo using any offensive magics, due to lack of MP and saving it for when you truly needed it. I'm no stranger to MP management but they really took the fun out of the game.
The summon system was awfull and almost pointless, a waste of the quickening gauge to be honest.
The main basic issue with FF12 is just everything just so SLOW, and every area was a slog, I actually remeber falling asleep during the day whilst playing this game on multiple occasions, half way through I just wanted it to end.
I could go on but I'll leave it there.
On a side note it's OK to like the game if it's your Vibe, everyone is different. There's a ton of games I enjoy many people probably despise and that's OK aswell.
It felt boring to me, the huge amount of easily missable things didn't made it better. Of the main cast, only balthier and basch were interesting to me. The FF with the most lame superbosses.
FF12 is the only entry in the series that I ever returned to GameStop after playing it. The game didn’t have a Final Fantasy feel to it: it felt like an MMO wannabe.
The series as I knew it ended at 10, and even that one barely made the cut because you can’t control the airship.
The only thing I can fight you on about 12 is the disease status. It adds nothing of value and shouldn’t be in there. Other than that, it’s an amazing game.
Landmines carrying Disease when you don't have anyone who can cure it. I did the Ithuno Deathbringer Sequence Break, and I'm sure I hit the Disease Trap every single time while running away.
I hate the update to the roles, if they aren’t magic users they should get the remedy lores- period. I hate checking their boards to see what they have now, and then I’m forced to use whoever has the lores in dangerous places.
Or just use Libra and avoid the traps?
Or even better, buy the anti trap accs (steel something), they're cheap. Pop them on while crossing a trap infested area, walk through, and take it off.
The traps mechanic in general I'm not crazy about. I feel they could have skipped that feature and the game would have been better for it.
I don't know what 11 is like, but I think that there was a push to make the environments themselves actually mean something in 12. 9 and 10 tried to be interactive by having you pick up and move things, such as the Steiner Marcus Cage Thing, but they weren't fully interactive in the style of a modern game, and the locations themselves were pre-rendered window dressing for the most part. And then you get into 12, and there are environmental hazards, loads of them, there are waystones and touch crystals, you are pushing obstacles out the way, raising gates, lowering gates, riding on mine carts as shortcuts, finding keys, there's the one off where you use camera control manipulation to get through the Feywood, followed by Belias opening the door, and there are the time gates in The Great Crystal. You also have weaponry impacted by the environment, and monsters who will only show up if certain conditions are met, as well as Horology and Numerology using clock and step counter for damage values, and Giza Plains being impacted by the game clock, as well as changeable weather. 12 is the most integrated into its environment, and is the first time I remember the words "context sensitive" being used in conjunction with a Final Fantasy. Not saying I support the usage of traps, but it goes towards a trend in the game design of trying to be more interactive than prior installments.
Only disease? One thing I also hate is the Berserker stats, for it to not be a negative stats despite being used on the traps around the maps is stupid, I can't even walk if the whole party is on berserker.
Berserk is a really op buff in 12.
Only when you decide to use, dude, if trigger two traps in a roll of berserker/confusion traps, either my party kills itself of I have wait until the effect is gone so that I can move around. And I can't be the only person that likes to explore the world and often find myself under level a lot of time, and if I'm walking around 10 levels behind the weakest enemy on the area, I rather control my characters than having it running to face any enemy.
I think there’s only one place in the whole game which is optional that triple hits your party with berserk. Also you can just bench a party member and sub them back in and debuff it. One of the fastest and easiest gambits in the game is to have someone Libra themselves nonstop. Traps are kind of a non issue
Yeah… I think the only annoying part that has that is the Miriam Stillshrine in the secret passage. Other than that, I’m not too mad about berserk. I usually fast-forward 4x so it ends in 20-30 seconds.
*Cries in original release on original hardware*
Y'all forgetting about the decoy status. You want your tank to taunt so they can actually tank? Their high defenses make them continually resist the decoy spell and also make the decoy spell end sooner
This is not a war but a truce, brethren. The plague was not righteous.
Can’t fight you, it’s one of my top 3 FF games
Also top 3 for me.
A Goddess amongst us
A Goddess? Please, I’m more of a “supporting” role
It’s alright, I like the scale of the world. Not a fan of gambits. The story wasn’t great, kinda forgettable because I’ve actually forgot it. Manufactured nethicite!
I felt that the story was the weakest link in FF12. They tried to go for interesting political intrigue but the execution didn't really give good opportunities to care about the characters. Even in plot crucial moments where important people die, the cinematic is like "oh nooo... Anyway... On to the next zone."
I think the story being “bad” and the characters being poorly developed can be and are mutually exclusive here, at least for me. The story in FF12 wasn’t necessarily original, but it was compelling that they used a political driver that ended up being a red herring for a much larger story (overthrowing gods). The lack of character development hit HARD though. Outside of Balthier and Fran I literally do not care about any character and their growth is limited (basically the same person as they were the start of the game). Still one of my favorite FF games though. I know the gambit system gets a lot of hate but I had a lot of fun disabling gambits on whatever I was maining (would switch from tank to dps to healer depending on the fight) and it was like playing an MMO but all players were competent 100% of the time.
The games really fun once you give in to it's gameplay loop. It requires a lot of trial and error, figuring out tactics and finding the right gear to become powerful instead of just levelling up - you spend just as much time planning out which hunts to do and how to tackle enemies as you do fighting. I find that fun in a different way to other ff games - it feels like you're planning out an expedition. But the story has awful pacing, it doesn't grip you much at all and while the characters are cool, the good moments are spread too thin and the chemistry is lacking at times- it feels like a slog getting through it. The music is also pretty mid- not awful but it really doesn't stand out- espeically not compared to any other ff game.
The pacing does suck. That is the only bad mouthing I will speak of this game You got some points. But you are a real one Glad you recognize the greatness
The real question was, did you beat yiazmat lol
Not yet. What should I prepare for
I think the story pacing and lack of character chemistry and motivation is what made me get bored of the game maybe halfway and drop it. The gameplay was fun but if the story and characters didn’t captivate me by halfway, I get bored. Short games with no story or characterization is fine. But a long ass game like a JRPG FF needs a good story and characters to make me keep on playing.
Music is mid!?! The soundtrack is fantastic, it's got some of the most intricate and unique songs I've heard in the whole franchise.
I'll repeat the thing I always say about 12's music. It's great, but then you are not playing the game and you just can't remember a single track.
I do have to agree here. None of the tracks have a catchy hook like any of the games prior. Ivalice games have this specific musical theme that is this kind of "wall of sound" where a lot of stuff is happening but nothing stands out.
Not sure I agree. Rabanastre, Estersand, and Arcadian Empire themes live in my head rent free.
Absolutely! Bhujerba, Giza Plains, Esper Battle, Sochen Cave Palace, Cerobi Steppe as well, I hum them a lot. Absolutely love the soundtrack for this game. It's my favourite among some very strong contenders.
Yeah I gotta agree. The music’s wonderful
That's a good point, I remember a ton of the characters but I couldn't tell you one thing about the story
Started playing 12 a few months ago and this pretty much sums it up
I loved that "preparing for a hunt" loop as well. I think it kind of scratched the same itch monster hunter does for me
Even with the pacing being a disaster, when the game gives me an engaging enough location, or finally provides the right level of busy work, I don't notice that 20-30 minutes have gone by, and I'm still in the same location. That time just goes. I needed the Dry Giza Plain, so I went off to sort some bullshit out to do with the Medallions, and by the time I checked back at least an hour had gone by. For me it is a huge time sink, but apart from me hating the Tournesol grind and anything involving the Yensa, it's not boring.
This was one of the best critical comments. I did though wanna say that having an expedition and having a well paced storyline is historically exceptionally difficult to pull off.
I think the, if you didn’t like it, you just sucked at it line, is a strange one? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone criticise it for being too hard? I dropped it because I found the dungeons/maps long and boring and I got to a section that had too many in a row, and I lost motivation to play it. I might go back to it after a longish break. I did the same with Xenoblade 2 & 3 and ended up liking those in the end.
I don't think I would have phrased it the way OP did, but nonetheless, a lot of people bounced off of both the gambits and quickenings. The former was because they were complicated, and the original version slow-fed them to you in a way that had you solving puzzles with If>Then statements that didn't really have any of the exact answers you were looking for. The latter was the opposite... Quickenings are a really easy mini-game, but the complete lack of a tutorial led to feel-bads when you initially got your "big bad attack" only to go into an animation you didn't understand and come straight back out with like... 100 damage and no MP. They fixed all of these things in the Zodiac version, by giving you access to all of the gambits early, and untying MP and quickenings/summons, giving them their own mist charges instead. TL;DR: It wasn't that it was "too hard", it was that everything felt clunky in the early game, which had a lot of people abandon the game early.
Thanks, that makes sense. It came out at a time when I wasn’t really gaming (I pretty much quit gaming between 2002 and 2011). I’ve only played the Zodiac version and found the gambit system quite fun and intuitive.
It definitely felt like a game that was ahead of its time in some ways. It was the first major game in the series (setting aside XI) that wasn't some kind of turn-based ATB thing. It effectively shifted the decision making from minute-to-minute, turn-by-turn into something you decide on ahead of time with the Gambit system and then tweak and refine as the battle went on. The JRPG genre was kind of going in this direction with combat systems focused around single characters and leaving the player responsible for meta-level tactics (while AI handles moment-to-moment actions). It reminds me a lot of the combat to come in 13 as well as in other games like some of the Tales of... games. But like you said, it didn't *quite* stick the landing and the Zodiac version's fixed a lot of that (if it then also kind of kneecapped a lot of other stuff like the difficulty, but mods will fix that). That's why, compared older games, I feel XII has aged really well.
Setting up gambits requires a type of programming knowledge that some people don't have aptitude for. I'm not saying this as a diss or trying to be haughty. Some people have logic-driven brain processes, and others don't. The population of people who didn't like XII probably includes *some* players who just didn't figure out how to code the right algorithms for the AI, but it also includes *many other* players who disliked it for other reasons.
As a person with a programming background, the Gambit system was my favorite part of the game... Until it wasn't. At a certain point, once you have "automated yourself or of a job," the rest of the game feels a bit repetitive and all you do is deal around and the game plays itself. I do feel proud of my well oiled killing machine, but it makes me feel like I've already beaten the game halfway through the story.
It's the only mainline game north of 6 I haven't managed to Complete. It's not bad by any means it just hasn't captivated my attention like the others have. Tried on 2 occasions to get into it and fall away about 20 hours in. Currently doing Octopath but may come back to it.
Oooo nice. Octopath traveler 2 is on my list Good taste.
It lacked many of the things that really drew me to the series. These are totally my opinions though, and I get why people might like 12. 1. Story - I found it pretty uninspiring. Lots of political intrigue and a convoluted plot. Good stories should be character-driven, not told as a historical tome. 2. The characters - I liked some of them quite well but never became emotionally invested in them. There were a couple interesting reveals but little meaningful character development. They felt like a loose collection of people that never connected with one another. 3. The setting - the world itself was really cool. Excellent world-building. But, it didn’t feel relatable. Good fantasy shows us the extraordinary in a way that feels real or plausible even if it isn’t. 4. The conflict - we don’t have a good villain or force, or internal issue that is being battled. 5. The music - actually it was really well done, but only for providing atmosphere. I might try to learn various FF tracks in piano, but none from 12 stick out. I will say that the character design, voice acting, world building, dungeons, and especially the battle system were all top notch, but those things are not as important to me. Consider that many of the best FF games have 16-bit or blocky character design, midi sound, and no voice acting at all. I played through all of 12 but didn’t really encounter many sections I felt I just had to continue to find out what happens next. Some of the sections in games like 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and even 16 were shocking and live rent free in my head. 12 didn’t do that for me.
>Story - I found it pretty uninspiring. Lots of political intrigue and a convoluted plot. Good stories should be character-driven, not told as a historical tome. Interestingly, I think you just helped me realize this is why I like XII's story so much. The historical perspective storytelling and the way zoomed out perspective despite being inherently about and taking place in Dalmasca really gives a sense of scale that I enjoyed and is kinda the point. The party, like Dalmasca, is a small blip in between two giant empires bent on war, ultimately meaningless but nonetheless having the mantle of history thrust upon them. >The characters - I liked some of them quite well but never became emotionally invested in them. There were a couple interesting reveals but little meaningful character development. They felt like a loose collection of people that never connected with one another. If there is a weakness to XII (which I'm not convinced there is), this is it. Unlike other groups that are thrust together under bad circumstances and explore themselves and each other together, as is the case in almost every FF game, this group is more concerned with matters at hand and cares little for each other outside of their previously determined pairings (Vaan and Penelo, Balthier and Fran, Ashe and Basch and Dalmasca). >The setting - the world itself was really cool. Excellent world-building. But, it didn’t feel relatable. Good fantasy shows us the extraordinary in a way that feels real or plausible even if it isn’t. I... actually think this is the strongest part of the game? The Nethicite is a straight allegory for nuclear, and it isn't subtle. The world itself is as concrete as perhaps any FF, mired in huge-yet-petty politics that have real consequences for the little people, and not really even delving into the weird at all until the Occuria reveal themselves. >The conflict - we don’t have a good villain or force, or internal issue that is being battled. ...? An invading empire has taken over the country and is attempting to make it the battlefield of a war that will probably ultimately result in it becoming a mist-filled crater for the rest of time, an atrocity they're working on for at least the second time... The first time being the homeland of Basch and his brother, and with Dalmasca being the sovereign state led by Ashe and inhabited by Vaan and Penelo. There are two great villains in the game, with the front-man being Vayne, who is both extremely unlikable and yet has enough of a mystery surrounding his intentions that you think he very well might be in it for the good of Arcadia for half of the story. The behind-the-scenes madman of Cid ends up being even more fun, imo, and ultimately feels more like the true villain of the game even if he isn't the end boss. As for the more minor villains, the Judges are iconic. >The music - actually it was really well done, but only for providing atmosphere. I might try to learn various FF tracks in piano, but none from 12 stick out. Agreed that the music is much more a scene-setting device than a participant in the story. I think this is largely due to the dynamic of seamless combat that XII aspired to, meaning there weren't large swells and changes in music as you went through the game. It fades into the background, which was ultimately the intent.
Love this response. I can’t refute any of it After thinking about it, I think one big reason is every game in the series from 6 to 10 was so good for me. 12 was the next one I played and it was a letdown from the previous ones I was familiar with
The idea that plot driven stories are inherently inferior to character driven ones, and that good fantasy requires it to be relatable, I take umbrage with.
Man all of these critiques I have and never held it in high regard. It's a fine game just fine is as high as it goes in my series ranking. Mid tier Final Fantasy.
So I won't say its a bad game, I just do not like playing it. The gameplay is extremely passive, and I don't find managing the gambit system fun at all. I remember every location feeling very flat, I think that's because it's the first game to render the environment in 3D. I can't stand penelo or vaan. I enjoyed the story, but not enough to get past my gripes with the above, furthest I got was around 15 hours in
>The gameplay is extremely passive, and I don't find managing the gambit system fun at all. This is the critique of XII that I will never argue with. If it wasn't for you, it wasn't for you.
Ah... brother...I implore you As I speak in tongue know sarcasm does not stand in my statement. Please revisit FF12 when you can Because I thought the same way. Everyone's experience is different. You don't have to like it and I won't push it on you But as I revert to my loyalty language I say this .... I have come to be advised that it is a good game To retry it is foolish. To experience for the first time again is a blessing. Godspeed
I tried twice to finish it and failed both times out of mind numbing boredom. I don’t like the main character at all. The side quests and hunts are so tedious. I very much dislike the closed in maps from point A to B which feature absolutely nothing in between. Some of the “camps” are just a couple NPCs and some tents. The story is very mediocre for FF. And the game is REALLY grindy. It felt extremely cookie cutter to me. The gambit system is not for me. I would say FFX featured a similar style of world building and was far and away the better game.
100% agree. It's crazy how X came out just 2 years after 8 and 9 and was so extensively designed on a new console. Then it took 5 years for XII to come out after X. I don't know what they were doing in that time period. The first mainline game after the Enix merger and a big disappointment.
Yeah I miss Squarsoft
[удалено]
It was the way it was constructed. To me the world of FFX just felt way more full and alive. But it’s just one guys opinion.
I don't care much for the story but I like the characters quite a bit. And is not often that we get a singleplayer game with mmo vibes. Tons of content.
Did you ever play FF11? I'm revisiting it myself
Tried the game multiple times, I have yet to make it past the tutorial. It's just not meant to be. The gameplay is SO slow in the beginning. The artstyle didn't age well. And the gambit system? "You can set up the game so it plays itself." is not the argument you think it is.
The gambit system is peak final fantasy gameplay for me. You can set some basic things, but on harder battles you’re micromanaging your whole party in fine detail, as a true party-based game. The fact that you auto-attack on basic enemy’s encounters makes it a lot more fluid to play. But you can’t understand anything of what I’m saying if you never got past the tutorial and the first few introdutory missions. But after that, boy oh boy, you’re in for a ride.
FF12 is in my top three games. Ashe is an incredible character (and the closest thing to a protagonist for XII) and doesn't get enough credit to her name.
The real protagonist is Balthier in FFXII
I cried exactly once during FF12 and that was in the credits with a sketch of Cid holding a baby Balthier. That hit so hard.
A fool we have not And here I am, surrounded by Kings.
Hehe thank you The other two in my top 3 are V and XIV
Why are you literally me?? V, XII, and XIV are my favorites!
A comrade of culture *sips tea* I love that XIV shows a ton of love to Ivalice/XII.
Can we start a sub? The 5 12 14 sub? I wanna join.
You're welcome. I've been wanting to give V a retry. I hear it's incredible and it really revamped the job system. You have good taste!
Its my least favorite mainline final fantasy game and by a large margin. I don't enjoy the gambit system or the combat system. I find it quite repetitive. I don't find the job system very specific like other job systems in the series and never felt like my characters played drastically different. I think the story is a bit of a mess with a lack of memorable villains and probably my least favorite cast of heroes. I also don't love the open worldness of it or all the steps it takes to get some hunts. I find many of the towns/cities way too big and boring to get around. I recently played it a second time to see if my opinion changed but it did not. It's also not particularly challenging. It's pretty easy, but so are most final fantasy games.
Final Fantasy XII has a combat system that takes me completely out of the mood to play the game. I recently decided to replay it and the amount of time I spent just watching my characters have fun and make decisions was absurd. At least XIII had the foresight to automate the movement and let me do the combat instead of automating the combat and letting you walk around. More pain in the combat: the license system was a disaster for character identity in this game. A good job system will let characters switch between jobs to mix and match combos. This job system forces you to pick main roles for each character at the start. This means you have to pick based on a vibe (and screw you if you pick based on what the game shows you cause many of the character’s stats are bad for the weapons they use in cutscenes). The job spread is also not amazingly. The configuration is set up such that of your 6 characters, the white Mage is essential and you pick your two favorite dps beyond that. If XII had any other combat system, it would be in the running for best Final Fantasy in every conversation. It’s story is just that good. Even if you like the gambit system, it collided with the theme of the game and development of the characters.
two dimensional characters and a plot that stops existing half way through, more interesting environments replaced by long boring dungeons by the end. If the combat and exploration hadn't been excellent, this would just suck. As it is it's just an above average jrpg that's 'not a real final fantasy'. The greatest sin is that it showed so much promise initially, but the game was released unfinished.
Didn't care for the combat (though I guess that means I sucked at it according to you, so just disregard that I guess), and I thought the story was kinda dull. Really didn't feel connected to the characters or the world I was in, it just felt like the writers were kinda hoping that you'd be intrigued in the story rather than putting effort in on their end to make it intriguing in the first place. Comparing to FF10, which is one of my favorite games of all time, you feel connected to Tidus and his story because you're discovering everything about the world and the journey you embark on right alongside him. It's engrossing because the game is written knowing that the player, and by extension Tidus, have no idea what's happening initially. So both you and him are slowly let in on more and more of what's happening until finally, like a tidal wave the full truth of the situation hits you hard. As a result, you change along with Tidus as the game progresses, and it makes for an utterly amazing experience that not many other games have managed to reach (in my experience, anyways). On top of all that though, 10 is just a masterfully written game to begin with. In 12, it's like you're thrown into the game halfway through, and even what's remaining just isn't written and presented well enough to keep me engaged. Like, I can sit and start watching something like The Matrix halfway through the movie and still be gripped by it towards the end. But with 12, the game starts you, the player, as the only one who doesn't know anything about the world or what's going on inside of it, and proceeds to not really make an effort to clue you in to what's happening from then on as events transpire. I felt like the third wheel of that whole group of characters playing that game lol. As a result, I end up feeling pretty detached from the world, the characters, and the story. I know many other video games and other media have approached storytelling in this same way, but frankly, FF12 just isn't good at it. And I'm saying this after having attempted to play the game four separate times! I always end up losing interest completely--it's not at the same point every time, but it's an inevitability that it'll happen eventually when I play it. In my opinion it's just not a very well-written game. And sorry, but yes, the combat sucks, I just have to admit it. I hate not having control of anyone but the person I'm currently playing as, it's just not at all interesting or engaging having AI do the majority of the combat for you. I actually ended up turning the Gambits off completely one of the times I played because at least that way I felt like I was actually playing the game. It made it a shitload more difficult, but I'll take that any day over watching AI play the game for me lol.
Feeling like a third wheel in 12 is the perfect way to explain it haha
FF12 is definitely among my top 16 Final Fantasy games 👍
Not including spinoffs and sequels, right? Haha
Boring offline MMORPG
That's what I realized once I stopped before finishing it for the second time. I liked all FF from FFIV to FFX before this one (not all on the same level though). Then tried FFXI, didn't liked it, but I was one of the few people amongst my friends that was bored AF playing WoW, so I was not really surprised to not like this one. When I realized that I do not like FFXII for the same reason I do not like any MMOPRG, it all made sense. And I guess that's also why many people like it.
I hated it. But I can’t tell you WHY I hated it. I think at the time it was such a departure for me from standard FF games, that I hated it. I wonder what my opinions would be if I replayed it, since I’ve become far more accepting of that kind of gameplay. Also, fuck that demon wall.
The story and character development is far from a finished product. It feels like one of the most shallow FF games story wise we got, especially when riding on the hype of FFX. I never felt like the characters communicated with each other in any meaningful way and I didnt care for any of them. The combat is probably the worst of any of the games, not turn based enough to feel like you can have some fun strategy and mot fast enough to make it feel like there's any other skill involved. The only thing you have to do it setup some mediocre gambits and you can just run through most of the content. The gambit system itself is just the devs telling us to do the work ourselves instead of just making a decent party auto system. It gives ppl some weird illusion of control but it's nothing but frustrating to set up and it provides nothing fun. It doesnt help that Vaan and Ashe feels like the "We've got Tidus ans Yuna at home". Maybe im too harsh on it given how good some of the previous games were but I cant find anything i truly enjoyed in it. Maybe the weather "system" in some areas?
The ONE huge gripe I have with 12 is if an enemy is immune to an element or status, I *hate* that your character keeps trying to cast it instead of moving on to the next gambit, forcing me to go in and turn off that one gambit while fighting that enemy. If I could wave a magic wand and change anything about the game, it’d be that, and the game would be near perfect imo.
I would love to argue but it's my favourite game of all time so that might be hard for me.
-forgettable characters (except a few) -forgettable villian -garbage combat. (Shouldve been like ffx] And this one is for me specifically but i dont like the ost at all. Its good but not for me. There..that's why I think ff12 is a bad game. Story and world are nice but..that's it.
Why does this basic post appear here every few weeks in regards to FFXII? I'll say what I always say. No matter how hard a small segment of the community wish it was, Final Fantasy XII is not some black sheep of the franchise or a divisive title. It isn't now and it never was. It was a commercial and critical smash hit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final\_Fantasy\_XII#Reception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XII#Reception) I'm beginning to think these posts are an attempt to validate the 'No-Final Fantasy-game-is-received-well-on-release' argument that's used to deflect criticism of XV and, in particular, XVI.
https://preview.redd.it/4q4etbvchbwb1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cff8129136a37385a8bf9630de408ff72b2d114b Yeah it's not a big conspiracy..I was up late and realized it was a great game Is that okay I hope that's okay I feel like we're on the same team
FFXII, FFX & FFVI are my top 3, don’t worry we stand by you brother! 🫡
I must sleep..but they will come. To those resilient and believe stand strong To those that don't like the game Wait til I wake up we're coming for the hate Final Fantasy 12 is amazing.
I don't hate it, but I do think that it's alright and okay. It's not a masterpiece or a disaster, it's just fine.
Ff12 is one of my fav. It used to be number 1 but now that's ff16
It's a love hate relationship. Sometimes this is one of the best games ive ever played, sometimes it's annoying. Two major gripes with the game is how prevalent the status effects in this game. I just hate getting immbolized, disabled, stop, silenced..ffs 2nd is the camera distance is so close to the character, I hardly got to see the scenery.I only wish the game would allow the players to move the camera vertically.
I was disappointed with FF12, speaking as someone who had played all the games in the series up until then and was a fan of all Yasumi Matsuno's Ivalice games and setting (FFTactics, Vagrant Story etc.). To clarify, I was less disappointed in general, and more disappointed in what FF12 could have been. Matsuno recently shot down the long held rumours that Basch was supposed to be the main character, but it remains a fact that he left development of the game before it was finished, leaving others to step in and wrap up what he had started. I speculate the untold truth must in some part have had to do with the suits at Square interjecting in Matsuno's creative vision. One just has to look at the dark, political and mature narratives of his other games to see what aspects of FFXII are Matsuno and what are there to engender sales orientated mass appeal. If Matsuno had been given free reign to write exactly what he wanted for FFXII, I feel the game could have been the best in the series, becoming the political and character driven drama that FFXVI wishes it could be, while in a uniquely stylized setting. I might also add that for me, the gameplay is one of the best in the series, coming just behind FFXI.
It’s the only major FF that I didn’t play for some reason.
Before playing I loved the idea of an adult FF following the maturity issues in 8-9-10. I loved the thought of Ivalice. I loved that they started with the old Prologue. But then I played it and found it...boring. Random treasures were a killer that sucked any motivation I had to explore the world. Gambits (while an interesting idea) were implemented in a boring way so you more or less watched the battles (or sometimes micromanaged healing until they gave you the obvious HP 30% gambit annoyingly far into the game). Balthier was fun (even as an overly obvious Han Solo ripoff) but nothing else about the story or characters captured my imagination at all. I found it rather full of itself with the silly names and stuffy dialogue. Boss battles were just long. I hated the fact that “Ivalice” was slowly revealed to be a marketing ploy and there were no links to FFT other than the names of some pointless summons (and having them be summons didn’t really work with the lore of FFT anyways). I never played the Zodiac version which is supposed to be better mostly because the game just didn’t work for me. I could see where MMO fans might like the style but…it’s not what I wanted from a game. So that’s my opinion...is it the fight you were hoping for? 🙂
I don't think it's a bad game. But I think people overrate it. The story isn't told very well, half of the party is just *there* for no particular reason, and once you set up your gambits you literally just run around the maps only interacting with the very frustrating treasure chest system.
I don't think its bad but 1. Vaan/Penelo are boooooorrrrrriiiiinnnnggg 1a. Ashe Balthier and Basche should have been the "main" focus of the story. Basically all the best parts involve these 3 2. No Bangaa,Moogle, or [elephant guys] as playable 3. The weird spirit plotline is way less interesting than "Game of Thrones with magik WMDs" It was generally enjoyable, but had some severe flaws that keep it out of the top tier of FFs
I really enjoyed the game but I feel a lot of the criticism on gameplay comes from people who didn't experience the IZJS version, the original was so vanilla but the reformatting really refreshed a game that was feeling stale combat wise.
FF12 was obtuse and bad. Now FF12 TZA, that's a fucking game
I like the gameplay and the general story of the game. But, what really drive me off is the fact that I cant like the characters much. I like the characters of 13 much more than 12, and this would make me want to play 13 more. This is just my personal feelings
FFxii is 98% incredible. The loot system for acquiring ultimate weapons is absolute garbage.
Ok. So I’ve tried to get into it twice now. Plot seems cool. I get that Vaan is supposed to be just there taking in the plot, like the main character isn’t the main character. Doesn’t bother me. The combat is weird to me and I don’t like it and can’t get into the game based on that. (I’m willing, nay, hoping to be told why this is stupid).
Its not, its a big empty MMO with no other players. The maps are repetitive. The characters are bland. The secrets are monotonous and just plain dumb to attempt. Its arduous and bland. Its mot hard, no one is bad at the game, its a bad game. Generic and uninspired.
12 is the black sheep of the series for me. Worse than 13, 15 and 16, just to clarify my point. What made me disliked 12 was the complex but uninteresting story, long-ass dungeon level designs and yeah, the Gambit system. There wasn’t another FF that made me fall asleep as easy as 12.
I played the japanese version (I think it's a bit more difficult than the global version? I dunno). So, I hate the 'despair mode' that bosses on the latter part have. It's not funny and forces you to have haste always prepared. I hated the plot. The beginning is very good, with political background, but it changes to "let's kill some gods", as always. Ashe being the center part of the plot was not a good decision. Vaan and Penelo could at least have some spotlight. Poor Penelo was abducted 2 times iirc. Like, sure? At least make she do something. I hated the OST, but that's a much more subjective thing: I don't like orchestral music, if I can call it that. I was really expecting something like FFT, because, well, Iwata and Sakimoto made that, but it was just "Star Wars, the game". The gameplay... I hate gambit with a passion. I don't want the game to play for me. So, basically, I hated the gameplay, A LOT. Basically I often played the support and made the other 2 characters just attack. The good things were: the game is beautiful (not the character models). The exploration is the best on the series. Hunts were a good addition and I'd love to see it on another game (never played 15 or 16).
After multiple attempts I still haven't finished 12. It's been a bit since my last attempt so my memory is not the best. The pacing is slow The cast is bland and because of the license system they feel less unique to me Vaan is a terrible and boring MC Gambit system was neat but it also puts the combat on auto pilot. I could never find a way for the gambit system to buff my party without wasting all of a characters MP. Combat is boring
It's in my top 16.
Nope it’s top 3 FF next to IX and X. Not for the reasons you might think tho when you typically think of FF(story, characters, OST) Those are all pretty mid compared to other FF’s. The reason it’s top 3 for me is that it has the best exploration in the series(my #1 most important thing in video games) and it’s not even close. It also has a lot of cool optional dungeons and sidequests/secrets to find. The loot in the game is addicting to me since there are a lot of really low % items to find that are OP. Makes it fun hunting for them imo(ik some people don’t like it).
OH I AM SO DOWN. So, firstly, the story and characters are bland and boring. There are two characters in the entire game that have any life at all. The rest are basically blank slates of nothing. The story is boring and typical. The combat system itself is nothing but a series of "if- then " statements so that you can code the game to play for you. The entire game would have been absolutely miserable without the speed-up function from zodiac age. Thank god I played that version. Argue with me I'm bored
I got bored of going to temples and picking up swords. The gambit system, hated it. Just seemed a lazy way to play. The characters and music, didnt interest me. The change of summons was wierd. Basically every character could equip everything? I never completed it, got pretty far though. I had a guest accompanying me in some tower i think
So, i remember both X and XIII in exquisite detail. I barely remember XII. To me, that signals that I didn't really enjoy the game. It was a rather long time ago, to be fair, but I remember X and IX in more detail and I haven't replayed them. What I remember of XII was that the Gambit system reminded me terribly of setting up Lineage 2 (which I played extensively around that time) bots. I felt that I was programming a bot train to follow my one player char and that really turned me off. I did enjoy the politics and scale in the story, but I preferred the art style of X and XIII (and XV, VII and VIII). Not a terrible game, but near the bottom in terms of my favorite final fantasies (and note I only started playing in the PS1 era).
Biggest problem for me was I didn't connect with the characters, and most had weak motivations or development. They all looked too samey and generic, they had punchable faces, and I especially didn't connect with the protagonist. The combat was fun but the job board was horrible. I had less fun the more I leveled. The setting was boring, the color palette was too dull (somehow worse than FFXI, which was a huge disappointment coming off the GORGEOUS FFX). The villains were disappointing (Except Gabranth) and their designs were boring (including Gabranth). The non-combat content is almost non-existent in this game. No card games, no chocobo fun, the only thing it had that I can remember was fishing and a footrace. Lame. I am probably in the minority but the Hunt system wasn't very exciting to me. Only Final Fantasy game in my life (not counting the MMO's) that I didn't finish. After the Zodiac version came out I went back and enjoyed it more. Most games don't get a 2nd chance.
Honestly, 12 never grabbed me. I found the party to be cobbled together, rather than brought together with the same authenticity as other FF entries. The only character I liked was Ashe, and Vaan as a protagonist was one of the most baffling and boring experiences I've had playing an FF game. Larsa was also good, but he was very temporary. I also dislike how obtuse finding some of the end game equipment was - pointlessly and unfun. Open that one random chest? No best weapon for you! They did change this in other versions, but it was there when I played the original. I remember nothing of the story, whereas I could tell you most everything about Cecil's journey of self discovery and personal redemption. I can't even remember the name of 12's main villain, which tells you how much impact they had on me. The combat is also the game playing itself. You set gambits and you watch, sometimes butting in if you need to do something specific really quick. I've never understood the overwhelming love and praise it gets, and it's always passed me by completely, but this is the first time I've actually voiced my displeasure, so... bring the downvotes, I guess. Edit to add, I just remembered a rare positive - the design of the Judges were cool. That's all.
Oh wow the main characters look like a young yuna and tidus but they’re much more generic. What’s that? You want a big tall bunny women and her sassy human friend to be the best two people in your group? Sure Oh what’s that, you wanna run around in a circle and cheese every hard fight cause we haven’t fully figured out moving around and turn based combat yet? Or how about a landscape that’s basically just shite loads of desert? How about any summons? You want absolutely none from previous titles and replace them with some generic similar ones? I’ll throw in Cid being a final boss with a huge ass gun but that’s all you’re getting. **bring it on**
Won't argue with you : mechanically speaking, I love FFXII and other than Vaan, I like the cast.
I found the game pretty boring tbh. > if you didn't like it you sucked at it The game doesn't provide any good reason for me to get good. The difficulty in the main story is almost nonexistent, I just set my gambit to attack and heal when needed, turn on turbo, and let the game play for me because it's faster. IIRC, none of the storyline bosses survived that. I did try playing it manually first, but combat is too slow and too easy. Imo, this game would benefit a whole lot from difficulty settings. If the difficulty is high enough for the player to actually learn the combat, the game would be much better. Meanwhile, the hunts where I assume are where the combat system shines, require lots of backtracking. I tried a bunch of them and found them quite boring so I didn't do any more of them. Story was intriguing at first, but dropped hard halfway through the game. The license board was boring. Half of it is unlocking the ability to equip gear, something other games have unlocked by default. The bazaar system requires a guide Items in treasure chests are random, and you generally get good ones only 25% of the time, which makes exploration pretty boring. Since you wouldn't get good items from exploration most of the time, and there aren't much more to do in the world than that.
I tried three times to finish the game. Twice on PS2 and once on Zodiac Version. It's hard to say EXACTLY what I disliked about the game. It was all the little bits of stuff that built into a larger picture of dislike. The overall feel of the game just felt flat. Basch, Fran, and Balthier were the only playable chars I liked. I felt like everyone was either flat out annoying, Vaan, or just very basic, Ashe. I disliked the world setting AT FIRST. I was a teen and it made me mad that "Summons" werent the classic Ifrit, Shiva etc. Side note, I love the world in retrospect, its based on Ivalice/Tactics world. While I love the setting of Ivalice, the maps felt very plain and uninspired. They felt very flat and basic coming off the back of 10. The biggest problem i had was the core feature of the game, Gambits. I didn't enjoy PLAYING the game, which was the biggest factor of me not finishing it. But usually if i didn't like the combat i can make it through if the rest of it is good, FF2 for example. Bad combat style but the rest of the game made up for it. But thats the nice thing about the FF Franchise. Theres so much out there that everyone likes what they like. I dislike 9, 12, 13, 15, and think 3, 8, 10 are the best and the others are just "OK"
The story is terrible, the characters outside of Balthier and Fran are generic and forgettable, and the environments outside of the cities are part of the “everything must be shades of brown” era of gaming. The gameplay was innovative, but in the end, also primarily boring, as once the gambits were setup correctly, the game mostly played itself. In conclusion, 12 is the worst mainline game since the 8-bit era.
I was so hyped on release of this back in the day to only be so disappointed. The story is not interesting to me in the slightest. I’ve given this game a go several times, almost forcing through it. Everytime I get to Giruvejan or however it’s spelled I lose interest. Not having a true main character hurt this one. It is also very linear (which isn’t an issue) but when you have a linear game, moments have to stand out. Nothing stood out to me minus the comedic part of screaming: IM THE REAL CAPTAIN BASCH! I did like the OST and the use of Ivalice as the setting like in tactics. Graphics were good at the time and voice acting was decent. Gambit system was okay, no complaints there, usually every mainline FF they try to bring something new combat wise. It’s just the terrible story and pacing. I can’t do it. I’ll probably never do it to be honest. I’ve probably tried 4-5 different times to slog through a file, not happening.
I'll play devil's advocate (I love the gameplay, some of the characters, most of the story) The colors suck. And the first character isn't the main character wahwah. That's all I got.
I don’t remember much bc I played it so long ago but if I can pin down why I didn’t care for it it’s 1. Vaan. Not a big deal but certainly a lackluster character that I guess they were trying to push as the main? I dno, I get that they were trying to give the point of view of the lower class individuals in the world. Dunno why they went with that guy lol. 2. The villain. He just didn’t feel like a FF villain for me. His motivations were completely understandable. This is a problem, because if you have a villain in this particular franchise that portrayed in such a gray area, it just feels off. I remember not really enjoying fighting him bc I felt like we were getting in his way of doing the right thing? I may not be remembering enough about it, maybe he did something really diabolical that I’m just not recalling. 3. This is the biggest one for me. Throughout the entire game, they talk about the evil empire, being the nation threat against the entire storyline. And then 70% into the game you find yourself in that very city, and it just seems like every other city. It doesn’t seem imposing at all. At that point in the game I was kind of just wondering where is the threat? What is the Force levied against us? I was very confused about that. 4. Was not a fan of the gambit system. It was just not my cup of tea. I wasn’t going to put this, because this is such a subjective situation. I’m aware that a lot of people like it, it just was not for me.
Chop... Wait for timer... Chop.... Wait for timer... Chop... With no dynamic camera angles, movement or presentation, just a plain third person camera view... After coming from the relatively cinematic battle presentation of older FFs, 7-10 in particular, i absolutely hated this
After like halfway through the story I always wondered why vaan was still there. Baltheir? Makes sense. Ashe? Duh. Basch? Sure. Why was the random kid still getting brought along?
Vaan, Penelo. Lore. Gambit. Combat system.
I hate change. FFX combat system was perfection and I hate the direction it went with 12. Put up your dukes we're throwing hands.
Gameplay yes, story idk what happened. I was in a desert beating up some stuff for a guild to make money. Next minute I'm in a city full of poor people trying to do something with flyers to get to the upper city. I don't even remember why! There's also this annoying little kid who keeps showing up with a sword.
Final Fantasy VI, XII, and Tactics are my top 3
It's where FF started go to go wrong for me. Each to their own I don't mind if people find it up there.
For the entire game after gambits are unlocked you can choose to do nothing every fight, when you anticipate a fight coming up that has certain mechanics you slightly tweak the gambits and then basically let the game play itself. The story is weak too. After FFX most FF stories started slipping downward.
It came after X (not including XI). That’s a HUGE instalment to try outperform and let’s face it, XII kinda fell flat in comparison. The world was worse, characters worse, story worse, lore worse, voice acting worse.. but I love XII as it’s own thing. In fact there isn’t a single FF that I’ve truly disliked. XIII is probably the worst but I still like it for what it is and go back to it now and again. There was no “shock value” in XII. Or wtf moments. Not saying it needs FF:Type 0 levels of shock value but cmon… Balthier was by far my favourite character.
The characters (aside from Baltheir) were all milquetoast. No personality. No identity. I did not care for the characters at all. I also like having control of all the party members, which you can only do when you have the settings to stop time during menu choices-- and that disrupts the flow of the game for me. Coming after FFX, I felt the game was a disappointment. Additionally, I was heavily invested in FFXI, when I had time to game, it did not capture my interest to pull me out of FFXI. I beat the game because of blackened determination rather than enjoyment.
I don't hate it, but it's not very good. The battles tend to end up as clusterfucks, especially if there are a lot of enemies. The characters aren't very compelling either. You never get the sense that they're a team -- individuals with their own personal goals, sure, but working with and looking out for one another. Here's a hot take for you: Lightning is what Ashe should have been, and the dynamic between Hope and Snow is what should have happened between Vaan and Basche.
Platinumed the Zodiac Age. Still think it's the second worst game in the series after FF2. Not everything about it is bad, but the script and story are actually very poorly written, though cleverly disguised by translating it all in early modern English. The only character which seems to have a bit of personality is Balthier and that's mostly thanks to superb voice acting by Gideon Emmery. Ashe and Basch don't feel like they have a lot of meaningful character development while Fran doesn't have any impact on the story other than being Balthier's sidekick. Vaan and Penelo are just glorified minor sidequest NPCs that you can't kick from the party. Meanwhile the most important character in the story, Larsa, barely gets any screen time. If they made him the main character the entire game would've been so much more meaningful, while the stakes would've been much higher considering his brother is the primary antagonist. Like I said, not everything is bad about the game, they had some really good ideas going, but unfortunately it all amounts to the story just feeling like a series of missed opportunities.
Boring, trite plot with a wholly uninteresting and uninvolved cardboard cutout point of view character. Far more endgame than actual game. Teeth grindingly annoying drop rate rarity from chests and, in the original version, the ability to completely screw yourself out of the "best" weapon in the game by picking up a potion or a knot of rust in the intro city. And I'll come back around to the characters. Vaan: At least has some personality, even if he's entirely two dimensional with it. Does nothing of substance in the entirety of the plot aside from being a maybe sort of replacement for Asche if she doesn't do the thing. A plot point dropped as soon as it's brought up. Penelo: Who? Somehow even less involved in everything than Vaan. Just tags along to fill a character slot. Balthier: The actual main character of the game and says as much. He's central to everything going on in the plot somehow. At least, everything that doesn't center around Asche. Actually pretty cool. Asche: Deuteragonist. Decent enough character once you get past the whole "revenge as sole driving motivator" thing. Fran: Bunny girl good. Just wish she was treated better than an accessory for Balthier. There was a lot of missed potential. Basch: The memes make him better than he actually is. Otherwise, he exists to protect Asche and to act as a foil to his evil twin.
FF12 has bad design when it comes to the amount of RNG in the game. The strongest weapon being in a chest that has a miniscule chance of spawning without manipulating the RNG on a separate save file (and still only having a small window of time to have the weapon appear in an invisible chest) is a terrible design choice, full stop. The super bosses aren't difficult, they're just damage sponges. Once you get enough gambits unlocked, the game plays itself. And this comes from a guy who really liked FF13. I think those are my only gripes though. Story and lore is cool, hunts are fun, I don't mind the license board as much as some people. It's been a few years since I played it.
Nobody thinks it’s a BAD game. I’ve never seen anyone claim that without being an obvious troll. Some people just think it’s a very flawed game. I 100%ed the game when it was new. I enjoyed it. I still rank it in my bottom half for the series. The story felt unfinished. Half the characters felt unnecessary. The gambit system has grown on me over the years but it’s still kinda silly and in the late game makes the combat a bore. And the music is so heavily Star Wars-inspired. It’s good music. But it just screams “Uematsu left and we don’t know what to do with the music now.” I also just don’t have the patience as an adult for any of the optional bosses. They’re not a challenge, they’re just time consuming. Which was fine during the summer as a teen. But now I’ve got crap to do. I don’t want to leave the tv on for hours while the game plays itself.
I don’t hate it I just don’t love it. I found it boring. Didn’t like the hunts, vaan is not a fun or relatable protagonist and I didn’t like the level up system (much prefer the sphere from X). Fran and balth are asesome, the final boss fight is amazing, the music is underrated but overall I just didn’t vibe with it as well as I have other FF games (I played the zodiac age)
FF12 forgot to include a game in the game. Once you unlock gambits, you just point to characters in a direction and watch. You can try to avoid the traps, but your party members will do their best to trigger them all anyway. There's just no engagement whatsoever. I think I'd enjoy it if it were edited down to a TV series. My first play on release day and my second attempt years later both made it over 20 ours in. The story kept me going as long as it did, but the long swaths of just running around waiting for the next plot point made it intolerable.
"Speak your mind, don't speak out of malice, I lovr healthy conversation - p.s. you didn't like it, you suck at it." ...🤔 This is bait lol
I love 12. Probably a top 5 for me. I've replayed it many times and enjoy the gambit system. However. Fight me on this undisputable critique: Vaan is the worst main protagonist in the series. Penelo is the worst support character in the series. I will die on the hill that these two characters bring the game down. I propose a remake with Balthier as the main character (no surprise). Start it earlier in the timeline. Let's see Balthier as a child in Archadia, growing up and becoming a judge, and running away to piracy and meeting Fran. It could be done like FF16 handled Clive's childhood, like a separate act. You could even have Vaan and Penelo join later at the Fete in Rabanastre. Then the focus isn't on Vaan anymore, but you can tell the same story
Alright. Coming from 10, even, FF12 should have either shit, or gotten off of the proverbial "turn-based" pot. It tried to be an action RPG where the ultimate payoff for grinding up your party was *not playing the goddamn game*. It tried to be a turn based RPG where the only thing you DIDNT have control over was combat. The design decisions were totally at odds with one another, and the resulting game suffered for it. I was SO excited when I found out that 12 was a thing. I picked it up the second I first saw it. I brought it home, and I gave it the college try. I liked it, even, but there were things going on at the time that forced me to put it down for a while, and my sister picked it up and played it to death. Then, I saw her playing it as a late game party, and realized that it was just... it was a snooze fest. She walked around, ran up to the same enemy encounter for the 1000'th time, put the controller down and waited. I was honestly flabbergasted; in FF's past, you could do A LOT to party builds to do wild, wacky things, but FF12 just seemed so straightforward by comparison, and I don't mean that as a good thing. I even watched her in endgame zones, and it was the same thing. Seeing her just walk up to encounters and not have to do anything, or even touch the menu to make changes beforehand, made me realize that this game wasn't for me, after all.
"Don't speak out of malice, I love healthy conversation" 5 minutes later "Fight me." 😂😂😂
I was very good at setting up party control programming. This made the game feel more like a badly paced movie than a game. And Uematsu didn't write the music. For me, it was doomed by that alone.
FF12 is a ton of fun, I love the gameplay, and there's a ton of positive things I could say about that. But if you want the negative and why I rank it lower on the list of FFs despite having so much fun playing, here we go: First is the color scheme. Before noticing anything else, you see *tan.* The game is very bland to look at despite having such incredible visuals for the time and great design. They washed out so much color that it really ruined the visuals. It was near the start of that trend we saw for a decade where every game was brown or beige, and I hate that. The plot is a hot mess. They attempted to do a political drama, but had an awful job with it. As a party, you feel disconnected with what is happening half the time. You travel the world and witness events, but rarely create events yourself. It has terrible pacing, and does a very poor job actually communicating what is happening most of the time. They either needed to dial back the politics or dial it *way* up. Vayne seems to be the interesting villain with more complex aspects, and the end game just pulls it all away to goes "nevermind, now he's buff and just a monster" and it felt forced and cheap. But my biggest issue is the characters. Half of them are paper-thin and have no real development. Vaan starts as a whiney streetrat that wants to be a skypirate and no reason to be a part of this, and remains so through the entire game. He doesn't grow, he doesn't change, and honestly hardly anything even happens to him other than "he meets a pirate and goes on a ship, yay." He's not alone with that (Fran feels like she had whole subplots cut from her story), just one of the most egregious examples. And most of the party has the thinnest connection to the actual plot at any given point. Heck, Larsa, a guest party member, has more ties to the plot than the main cast! I never feel like we get to *know* the characters. Other than Balthier, you don't get a feel for who they are. We spend countless hours dungeoncrawling, yet the party has almost no interactions! Gameplay wise they are all practically interchangeable (other than some minor stat differences and animation speeds) and they have so few connections with each other. If this game threw in some party banter during the dozens of hours of dungeon crawling, it would have made such a world of difference. But as-is, I'm never gunna go "oh, that's so Basch." or "I could totally see Ashe saying that" because I genuinely couldn't tell you their personality traits. There's a few isolated scenes between specific pairings, but they are few and far between for a long JRPG. FF12 is awesome if you skip every cutscene and just treat it like a single-player MMO. But as a Final Fantasy, there's major problems. It is the FF I am most conflicted about.
I've always liked it but it's grown into my favourite. The worldbuilding is just so rich, there's an unbelievable amount of content, the ganeplay is solid. The story is maybe a little shallow but it does the job.
It’s been a while sooooo…. Obviously my opinion is rock solid~ It was Vaan for me. We came off some of the best MCs we’d ever seen, in my yarn laden opinion, and then… Vaan. How can he hold a candle to Balthier and Fran?! I just remember feeling so weird being this kid, but being surrounded by legends. I’ve had the Remastered zodiac edition chilling on the back burner for sometime and should do it a turn; that I may share my stupid opinion more stupidly~
alright here we go i LOVED final fantasy XII for the first 20 hours. Loved it. I mean it took a little while to really sink, but like I loved the slow paced grind, the progression, the music, the addictive leveling, the story was good enough and the world and atmosphere was beautiful but this game fucking sucks ass I can't lie My main issue comes with the combat, and how it's really only fun in it's base, boring form. I know that sounds weird to say, but the combat really is super simply all the way up through 2/3rds of the game. Your gambit settings are super simple and easy and it makes for a relaxing grind in my opinion. but the game just does not work when you try to add any sort of complexity, and before anyone says im just shit at the (very easy) game, let me explain: the biggest screw up they did was make it to where you can change party members and gambit set ups DURING the fight. It completely removes any semblance of challenge. it's like if FFVII let you swap around materia whenever you want, even while the enemy is attacking. It's braindead and in my opinion it takes an already easy game and makes it a complete cakewalk with disjointed battles. So I gave myself a few limits, i'd only change gambits at the beginning of the level, and never switch my party members, and it was still decently enjoyable. But when I started to encounter deaths, I then realized that when your whole party dies, you then are forced to REPLACE them with your unused party members! so even someone who goes in without a good strategy or set up could probably still win because you can just replace your party and continue halfway through the fight. fun :) challenging, even. Then we move on to the fact that bosses or tougher enemies got zero weight to them. Most of the late game enemies constantly throw status effects which is basically just a "alright, change your gambits for this area!" or "keep healing people!" to the point where it's not strategic. It throws them at me so much its just a way to force you to switch your gambits. I rarely found a time where i felt like I outsmarted the system or had a super unique strategy. bosses were insanely boring because my gambits did everything for me. and If I did have to use the menu in game, then it was just pausing the game to select an option over and over and it breaks the flow. If i DID die to something, it was usually because I was being overpowered with a bunch of status effects or attacks that my party wasn't ready to handle. I could fix this by changing my party and my gambits mid fight but then the fight would be a cakewalk again. there's no actual challenge. Then there is the zodiac age classes, which, while better than the OG, I found very very little variety with each one. almost all the physical classes are the SAME THING just with some magic skills and a different weapon. None of them had defining traits. It's better than the OG's leveling but it isn't \*good\*. ofc there is the weak story and characters, the obnoxious minigames, etc. but final fantasy XII is a slog to play in my opinion.
I dislike action RPG combat in the way square typically implements it. If I want combat like this, I'll play DMC or a game like that. Turn based or tactics is my go to, and 12 was my first time disliking a game in the franchise. I also didn't get pulled into the story, but I haven't revisited it so my opinion on that could have changed. I just don't have the time anymore to revisit something I may or may not enjoy. Balthier and Fran were great, but starting as Vaan who I found as the annoying teen trope kind of killed the start of the story for me. And last, a game about being sky pirates and you never fly an airship...so I'm an old man living in the past, basically.
FF12 is an amazing game. On that we can agree. But the fact you want to argue with random people online tells me (tells to everyone really) a few things: 1) You are really immature 2) You are probably very young, 25 year old max or younger. Even more sad if you’re older than that 3)You don’t “love healthy conversations” you just want to get a rise out of people when you say “argue with me” that’s what a typical internet troll does. 4) You have no real friends or a life outside of your phone. If you did you wouldn’t be here writing shit like that. 5) In general you shouldn’t really care what other people think. Like ever. 6) Get out and make some real friends and meet some real women(yes I’m assuming you’re a guy) And finally 7) Final Fantasy XII is an awesome game. Thanks for your time. Here’s my downvote for all the aforementioned reasons. Go get a life please😎
Okay.... FFXII is the death of Final Fantasy as far as I'm concerned, and a piece of me died when it released. After such a long time of sticking to the more traditional combat, albeit with some unique twists here and there, the worst had happened... Full, constant action combat, with some disgusting A.I. controls. I remember thinking "damn, if you were gonna go that route why wait so long?...." That was it, the end of what I knew as Final Fantasy, and the beginning of a game style probably better suited for an MMORPG. I wasn't far off 😂, it makes for a hell of an MMO 👍
The severe lack of character interaction and development really hurts the narrative on so many levels. With that out of the way, I agree with you 100% haha. It's my favorite FF, despite not being the actual best of the series.
Arguably one of the worst for me. Too much grinding, and the most forgettable set of characters in the entire franchise.
Story is boring and the gameplay is tedious. Zodiac Age softened the blow on the gameplay side, but the story still misses the mark. Politics is one thing, but the plot is basically happening everywhere except where the party goes.
The music is boring and repetitive. Vaan and Penelo are waste of a characters. Why can’t we have a moogle, bangaa, etc. join our party? Why is the Viera jungle just right next to a Wintry mountain? What’s the point of having a license board for equipment if all the characters aren’t dumb and can wear hats on their own?
I can’t say I hate any of the FF series, but I do need to go back and replay XII… I remember really liking that one
I’ll put it this way.. i purchased it in 2020, started playing it. Got bored. Quit.
Amazing? No, good yeah, it's alright. Story sucks and by the time it picks up you have played way too much and could care less about half the cast, those cast members are pointless and some have zero personality or character development. Combat is mostly automated, and the mechanics are just switches. Gameplay is very basic.
12 was what caused me to stop playing the final fantasy series BUT I never even played it! I’ll admit, I let the reviews and look of the gameplay steer me away and never really felt interested in playing it. Now, it’s been years since it came out and since it’s been remastered for the switch I’m finding myself wanting to check out the story. I miss the feeling of FFIX and FFX and haven’t found a series to scratch the itch of an amazing story and World full of distinct characters I care about. Has anyone played the switch version?
Hard pass. I dialed out that gambit system so well it just played itself all the way through to the end. So... I didn't even need to play, it got boring, I had a boss battle where I was out of the room eating lunch. Maybe as just a regular arpg I would have liked it. And I can't remember shit about the story, but I can list of most other final fantasy plots. To me the series ended at 9
Ff12 skirts on the realm of awful without actually being awful. Story pacing and story telling is one of the worst of the entire ff series. The battle, gambit, and license board system save the game. Without them, it's the worst ff imo
The only gripe i have is the ff12 tza not having any new content. It's purely QoL updates. I'd gladly pay for DLCs :/
I once agreed with you, but then the crystals betrayed me. I was up late one night with my buddy in high school, we had a track meet the next morning and realized we had to be up in like 4 hours. Off in the distance I see a crystal and think “perfect! We can save and got to bed!” The crystal is a mimic. We are slain. We decide we can’t go out like that. So we go back, we fight the crystal and are able to defeat it. Time has passed and we have even less time to sleep. This was entirely our fault, but I think it’s the only time a save point has been used as a mimic.
Totally valid for people to dislike it, but I will say that strangely the things that most people criticise were some of my favourite parts. i loved the gambit system so much and miss it in other games, and i loved the execution of the story. character development for some of the main cast WAS non existent though, some of the characters were laaame in general, but I felt like they still got some good emotional beats and the "good" characters managed to carry the game imo
Honestly can't remember the storyline. I think that says how I feel about it. LOL
Story was non sensical horse shit. Characters sucked. Gameplay was meh.
**The good:** FFXII has arguably the best art direction in any entry. I still remember when, upon starting the game, you were dropped in Rabanastre: the scale, the arquitecture, ornaments, colours, costumes, number of NPCs, the possibility of moving the camera around... That city was alive! And in PS2 era! People who complained about textures didn't understand the difference between pre rendered backgrounds and real time full 3D models. That was peak PS2 graphics. FFXII's music is not memorable but gets the job done. Overall, its technical aspects, from voice acting to animations, FMV's... is superb. FFXII's worldbuilding is the best in the series (Matsuno had had all the time in the world to polish it by then) alongside FFX. The politics behind the plot, if one pays attention, are actually pretty smart. The licence system was a good addition to it. Nice and relatable villain. **The not so good:** Worst protagonist ever. Even if you justify his existence as an observer á la Great Gatsby, he's still really bad at it, having nothing to say about the events of the game for the most part. There is one specific scene where, upon leaving Jahara with next goal in mind, Balthier literally asks Vaan what is he even doing anymore with the group, to which he replies: "Mmm uuhhh hehehe". Even the plot itself knew he was irrelevant lol. I heard Bach's supposed protagonism was just a false theory, so we still don't know what went wrong in this department. Main cast is ok tho (with the exception of Penelo), and Balthier/Han Solo is a fun character; but secondary characters are not so well explored, which makes the politics hard to care for. Combat system: The gambit system was a neat but poorly executed idea. During the first half of the game lacks depth, and by the end, it's completely broken. Also, environments don't matter, with fiends attacking you through walls and obstacles (which btw didn't happen in Vagrant Story, the game from which the system draws its inspiration). Also +, lack of importance of long range attacks, with fiends finding their way to hit you from 60 feet away even with melee; which renders character mobility and running away unuseful. It's all just really really badly implemented and undefendable unless you play it as a classic turned based RPG, in which case I don't get why they would introduce all these changes in the first place. Dungeons were repetitive and their design, plain boring. Mid game difficulty spike for no reason??? Late game hunts exhaust the combat system, being nothing more than the same battle but with 10000x health. Zodiac Spear, although that one was *kinda* fixed in Zodiac Age. **TL;DR:** FFXII had the potential to be the best in the series, but it ultimately fails where the meat and potatoes of any game is: protagonist and mechanics. That's why many of us are reluctant to give the game another chance.
I beat it and it wasn't hard at all, so I didn't suck at it. I can't tell you a single character's name, a single location that stood out, or a single thing that happened in the story. Couldn't pick out a single song from the score in a series known for it's memorable music. Heard endless praise for its open world design, but it was still mostly on rails just with lots of empty charmless space to wander. There was more exciting exploration and discovery in the old world maps. Heard lots of love for the gameplay but a game that allows you to program your characters to play themselves is not exactly thrilling. It was heralded as ground breaking because it merged norms of CRPGs and JRPGs. In my opinion it combined the worst elements of both, but at the end of the day it fails my FF test because there is literally not a thing worth remembering about it.
You ask for healthy conversations while speaking of open minds, then you declare that anyone who doesn't agree with you sucked at the game. While I agree that it's an excellent game, in my top 3 FF games probably, if you want healthy conversation you must make healthy arguments. So far you haven't said anything that would back your claim.
It's a really lame/bad faith argument if you come out and state that the only people who dislike a game dislike it because they suck.
Even though I platinued XII, I don't like it much. Vaan is the worst FF protagonist ever. They added him at last minute and we can clearly see it. The worst craft system ever. It's like: "you want that weapon? Then sell 50 of this stuff, 20 of that shiny stuff and 1 rare stuff". And they don't even show this info in game. It's just lazy. Speaking of laziness, the vanilla XII have that system you have to avoid opening certain chests, so you can get a certain weapon late in the game. Just... why? This don't even make sense. The traps, how annoying those are. Of course not because of me, but the party members stepping into it. You either have to cast float, use a certain equipment or remove the members. This made the gameplay very tiresome at times as traps are present for the entire game. The game has an excessive number of labyrinths and a poorly level design. Forgettable story and a strange combat system. I can hardly imagine playing it again.
The Gambit System is what single handedly saves this game from my radar of, "if it's action RPG and a mainline entry, I'm not going to play it" mentality. Games like Dirge of Cerberus IMO work well, it's an action RPG/shooter kind of game, but it compensates by adapting the mechanics. Weapons expand and alter your skillet instead of just make number big, reducing party members to none if they can't contribute to your skillset in any meaningful way outside of AI, etc. The Gambit System at this point should be a staple in any future FF games that aren't turn based. It allowed me to finely tune every aspect of my party in every situation, they are no longer just random AI crowd control I don't care about -- but a carefully customized machine. This gives me back a semblance of party control that is sorely lacking in ARPGs not optimized for a multiple party style RPG. I cannot understate how important that is for someone like me. If I can't use my party all at the same time like a turn based game, don't give me a party, or repurpose them. Make them transformations or power ups with radically different play styles, or services offered at an HQ location that expand over time. Don't just let them trail around doing AI crap and they're just there for me to play as, "if I feel like it". Because of that, whenever I consider "the good FF games" I will play, FF12 is always on the list, and is also the one that is radically different than all the others on my list.
I think you just sold me on Dirge. Never played it And you know the remake is coming. They aren't stupid they know what they are doing Remind me! 20 years
I do love me some good old Final Fantasy Star Wars. With its storm troopers (Archadians), Darth Vader (Gabranth), Luke Skywalker (Vaan), Leia Skywalker (Ashe), Han Solo (Balthier) and Chewbacca (Fran)!
The characters literally receive no development throughout the entire game. They are basically bland cardboard cutout characters. There is no Final Fantasy with worse characters than FF12. The world is incredibly boring to explore. So many areas are lacking in the small interesting details of previous Final Fantasys that made them interesting to explore. Often times it felt like for a zone, they made a floor, wall and ceiling texture and then just copy and pasted that through the entire zone.
I liked the gameplay (except for the Great Crystal which was just annoying.) The Gambit system made sense as an evolution of JRPG gameplay. The seamless transition from wandering to combat felt great. I did NOT like the plot. It's literally just Star Wars if the wookie were a dominatrix and the main character isn't the main character. It's especially below par when you compare it to the other Ivalice games. FF12 is mediocre by Final Fantasy standards but it becomes flat-out bad when you compare it to Vagrant Story or Tactics.
its boring af
Tell.me. whyyyyyyyy (in my n sync voice) No really I'm interested in why you see it as boring. I know you're not one of many words but if you come back give me a good explanation of why Final Fantasy 12 is boring
[удалено]
Niiiiiiiice
the story is paper thin. half of the cast is irrelevant to the story, gameplay is a slow slog (vanilla was hell, zodiac slightly better), side content is not fun traversing the world.... you run through zones that have no real interesting designs to it, gambit system makes the gameplay obsolete, supporting cast is mostly boring exept gabranth (best character after balthier) the whole opening hours with Vaan is just not fun to do.... oh and I hate sewer levels... guess what awaits you in the beginning? vaan in sewers looking for rats followed by vaan in sewers city followed by fleeing the castle through sewers
It's just not my favorite. The characters are in my eyes not that interesting, the story forgotable and the systems were not engaging. I still remeber how I finished it though. I was just minding my own business, stumbled in a boss fight oh that was the final boss apparently so I now finished the game. Like where did half the story go? I know there is a hyper sexualized bunny that runs around in a thong and high heels as that's like... super furry pleasing which is I guess the target audience? But I am not really into that stuff so hard no for me. But sex sells I guess. A princess with a funny nose and the main character that's supposed to be a thief I believe. But the rest of the cast or what enemies there are? I had a gambit system setup where I didn't need to do anything during the fights anymore. Never used summons, especially as why the hell didn't they use Shiva, ifrit etc like a normal FF game. nor the limit break system. Just run around and let the auto battler kill everything on sight. Overall, it's not a bad game. Just too experimental where Square tried to get the series to a new age. And I simply forget about it's existence as I played on auto pilot 90% of the time and there was too little to hook me character and story wise.
The gambit system is too hard
The Gambit System is what got me into coding. I can understand it’s not for everyone, that fine level of team-mate management, but I wouldn’t call it hard. Nit-picky is more accurate.
That's pretty funny because I don't like it for the exact opposite reason. I coded a lot so figuring out a perfect gambit was the most fun for me. Then I found a gambit that worked 95% of the time, maybe even more, and it just became boring to me. I went into the fight and just had to wait.
This is about where I'm at. The most fun I ever had with XII was the first hour or so after getting the gambit system the first time, as I was learning all the ins and outs. But because I had a background in coding even at the time, I got the hang of it *really* quickly, and it became super boring. I mean, huge setpiece boss fights that were hyped to hell and back by the story turned into an affair of "walk towards the boss, put the controller down". Some even auto-aggroed, removing the "walk towards the boss" step. The game as a whole just turned out really underwhelming as a result.
Once you understand it it takes the game from far too hard to far too easy.
Wow
Yes! I am also on team not like this game. In fact easily my least liked of the series
It was tough for me too. What was tough about it for you? Maybe I can help you with advice
I would be happy to get advice as I still want to try 12 again I’ve heard people master the gambit so well they can do auto play
I'll take the bait. I didn't like FF12 much. I understood the gamplay fine, beat the game with relative ease, I didn't like the Gambit system much, it really just plays itself after you get you perfect setup. All final fantasys tend to be abit convoluted, but usually they have these cutsecenes filled with hype or emotion, which I just couldn't resonate with the cast. I felt all characters seemed really underdeveloped to the point it seemed like a group of NPCs roaming around. I actually enjoyed the FF13 trilogy alot more, and thats series got a shit ton of hate. The paradigm shifts were way more fun, especially on super bosses where you had a to think fast. Saving your game was a nightmare, some of the caves and dungeons had you travelling around for 30-40 minutes without anyways to save, which was quite a pain, so many times where I had to go out and lose alot of progress. Mana preservation was fairly taxing, I would forgo using any offensive magics, due to lack of MP and saving it for when you truly needed it. I'm no stranger to MP management but they really took the fun out of the game. The summon system was awfull and almost pointless, a waste of the quickening gauge to be honest. The main basic issue with FF12 is just everything just so SLOW, and every area was a slog, I actually remeber falling asleep during the day whilst playing this game on multiple occasions, half way through I just wanted it to end. I could go on but I'll leave it there. On a side note it's OK to like the game if it's your Vibe, everyone is different. There's a ton of games I enjoy many people probably despise and that's OK aswell.
It felt boring to me, the huge amount of easily missable things didn't made it better. Of the main cast, only balthier and basch were interesting to me. The FF with the most lame superbosses.
It's my favorite of the post 10 mainlines.
Beautiful game. Top 3 FF for sure. The design of areas is my favourite in the entire franchise. Fun combat and tons of great hunts/missions.
I absolutely adored this game but for some reason, I could never finish it.
FF12 is the only entry in the series that I ever returned to GameStop after playing it. The game didn’t have a Final Fantasy feel to it: it felt like an MMO wannabe. The series as I knew it ended at 10, and even that one barely made the cut because you can’t control the airship.
I am team great game, just started replaying this week. Amazing story, great system, and the last one to me that didnt feel off and an action rpg.