Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
In almost all Final Fantasy series, there’s one universal theme that is commonly accepted — that is, you walk around in dungeons and at any give moment, the screen would flash and you’d enter into turn-based combat against several foes. You’d choose what killer attacks you want to execute on the enemies, and then the little people on TV duke it out. Repeat this for thousands of time while you watch an epic story unfold.
Please note the word, “epic.” It has to be ****ing epic, you hear me SQUARESOFT?! YOU HEAR ME?! If it’s NOT EPIC enough, like the world is about to get split in half and you’re the man to stop the whole crazy shit from going down, it AIN’T EPIC ENOUGH! In the 12th rendition, you play the boy Vaan - a young impressionable boy who wants to be a sky pirate. Lo and behold, a skypirate shows up with a princess to be saved. Is it epic yet? No… not yet.
The princess is key in a plot to free the man from the control of the God-like people who oversees all of the land. Basically, it’s a really really intricate plot… so intricate, I don’t have a clue what was going on half the time. The cut scenes don’t quite make sense at times, and … I just don’t get it sometimes. So, I don’t like the story. It sucks. I mean, it’s epic, but it’s epically confusing! There’s no real good flow between the cutscenes, and well… I just wasn’t quite interested in #12 than I was with the previous. I think it’s all those crazy dialogs where Square thought it’d be super sweet to put words out of commonly heard orders.
Anyway, the combat is the gem here - it’s not exactly total revamped, but it’s very free form. It’s almost like playing MMORPG where you see the monsters running amok and you can smack them or run away at will. Of course, a lot of dungeons are linear, and thus extremely stupid - but the active combat is a nice change. You can build up your characters to have a tank, healer, and damage dealer all together =) Very cool indeed…. except, the monsters are too easy. The normal story mode ones anyway… I mean, you can easily slaughter them.
To make the MMORPG style work, “gambit” is introduced. It’s sort of like AI, where the characters are set to perform certain things in response to their environment. ie, “See monster = ATTACK!” or “Low HP = HEAL” … well, with a good enough of a gambit setup, you virtually don’t have to push buttons anymore, just move around, and watch monsters die. This can be a blessing or curse — blessing in that you can be proud of your accomplishment when facing tough enemies, curse in that it can get real boring against easy mobs.
I dunno - it’s a long game… took me over 100 hours to finish, but I did do everything - including the boss with millions of hp =) Try the game if you’re a FF fan, but - don’t be too excited, cause it isn’t all that great.