Final Fantasy XII

Recently I've been working my way through a bunch of side quests that I missed in Final Fantasy XII. Sadly I could not obtain the Zodiac Spear, but I'm not terribly distressed about that. I just don't understand why they set it up the way they did. If you leave certain treasure chests unopened, you can obtain the spear later in-game. I'm confused. This IS Final Fantasy, right? Finding treasures was half the fun in previous installments. Who would have the mind to leave very specific chests unopened when they come across them?

That aside, yesterday I figured out that I would have to return to the Great Crystal for two reasons: 1) to obtain the Excalibur and 2) to hunt down a rare monster. As you might expect, I'm not terribly excited about this prospect.

I really felt that the Great Crystal was the most annoying and poorly designed area of the game. For one thing, it's really hard to navigate. The game doesn't even give you a map, so you have to go online to find one. Oh, and did I mention that this area is huge? You're not going to have much luck navigating this piece of work unless you've got a map; and even then it's a nightmare.

Secondly - I could be mistaken on this point - there's no easy way in to the Great Crystal. You pretty much have to make your way through Giruvegan all over again. Tell me if I'm wrong on this point, because I'd like to know if there indeed is an easier way in. In other words, you're pretty much hooped if you don't do everything you need to do the first time around. And really, who would think to fight an Esper, find one of the best weapons in the game, battle a rare monster, and then get out (actually, there's probably more to do there). That's a laundry list of problems for such a poorly designed area.

If you enjoyed playing the Great Crystal, tell me your reasons. Maybe it's just that I'm not a masochist, so I don't get much joy out of it.

Yesterday I defeated the Hell Wyrm in Final Fantasy XII. This battle was quite time consuming, but not as intense as I initially though it would be.

I read in an FAQ that if you had the gambits set up just right, you wouldn't even have to touch the controller. I decided to put this to the test, so I went and had a shower while my characters battled the Hell Wyrm. When I got out of the shower, sure enough Vaan, Ashe, and Fran were still at it.

Additionally, I was able to check my email, surf the web, and get myself ready for a drive across town. I didn't actually defeat him until I got home later that night, but I must say that whoever came up with this strategy is quite brilliant.

Hell Wyrm: not half as bad as he sounds.

Yeah, I know I said I wouldn't talk about Final Fantasy XII anymore, but after completing the Shadowseer hunt, I don't know what forces could stop me from ranting on.

Ah, the Pharos of Ridorana. Visually, it's one of the more stunning locations in the game. The Pharos is one of those majestic towers with seemingly unending depth (or rather, height, as the case may be). I'm reminded somewhat of the Fanatic's Tower in Final Fantasy VI. The tower was seemingly endlessly tall, and restricted your use of attacks. In fact, it forced you to fight with magic alone. This is remarkably similar to the Pharos: the ascent also restricted your party of physical attacks, magicks or techniks. The main difference being that you got to choose how you wanted to be limited.

The Pharos is also similar to the Fanatic's Tower in that it is quite monotonous. The Pharos is perhaps a little more interesting, but once you get to the Penumbra (and floors below) - the chief subject of this post - it gets quite repetitive.

But I digress. The Penumbra: an area only accessible after completing the various storyline elements of the Pharos (if I'm not mistaken). In its depths await swarming level 50 encounters, tragically monotonous puzzles, and otherwise annoying level design. Although the developers do provide you with a small map of the area, they decided to blur it out with static. Not that this should come as any surprise, since there are many areas later in-game where this is true.

The floor is basically a circle with four rooms at set intervals. Each room needs to be lit with the correct number of black orbs for you to get access to the floors below. This wouldn't be so bad, except that black orbs are a little harder to come by than you might think; especially when you end up needing over 160 of them (in total). Each room is a gateway to a larger area, where you are swarmed by enemies (oh, and these areas aren't lit all that well; you have to place the correct number of black orbs in the pedestals before you can really see in these rooms). Granted, there isn't always much of an incentive to explore these rooms, but occasionally you do come across some nice treasures (I found an Ultima Blade). Of course, you sort of have to go into these rooms anyway, if you're going to gather more black orbs.

What really grinds me is that there are another two floors exactly like this one. Each floor contains increasingly more encounters, and each floor requires more black orbs to proceed. My main characters were all over level 73, and I still died twice in my attempts to reach the Shadowseer at the bottom floor. The seer wasn't terribly difficult to defeat, but getting to him was annoying. The Pharos is definitely going up there with the Great Crystal as one of the more annoying parts of the game.

Today I finished Final Fantasy XII. Or, more accurately, I hopped on the Strahl and headed for the final confrontation without mucking about. You see, I had already put over 100 hours into this game, trying to collect all the gear, finishing the side quests, and completing various other tasks. I was not aware that I was that close to finishing the main storyline, but I had the suspicion that I was getting pretty close.

I may go back and attempt to complete more of the side quests (the hunts, at least), but honestly the Giruvegan Great Crystal was starting to get on my nerves (more on that later). Since the game had long sat on my "to be completed" list, I decided to go ahead and finish it off. Not to mention, my characters were starting to get a little OP'D.

Anyway, I know I've talked about this game a fair bit already, so here's my final review. I would much prefer to sit in front of a camera and talk about it (like Spoony does), but since I don't have a video camera yet that's a moot point.

I was simply amazed by the vastness of this game. It's mind boggling. Even so, you are not obliged to explore all of it. If you simply followed the main storyline, you could probably finish the game without seeing anywhere from 30 to 50 % of all areas. It just goes to show you how much depth there is to the side quests. However, if you did finish the game without messing around with all the extras, you might have a little trouble with The Undying (although I wouldn't be surprised if there were people who defeated him with one character at level 20 or something ridiculous like that).

This brings me to the side quests. I liked the fact that you could get started on the hunts right away. Some of the most difficult battles in the game are with these monsters as opposed to boss battles. I liked this side quest because it was pretty straightforward. And then there's the trophy hunts. It's not enough for FFXII to have one major side quest involving grueling battles. Noooooo... OK, so I probably sound a bit cynical but I'm still scratching my head at this side quest. I understand the reward of it; I just don't understand why it had to involve more monotonous grinding.

Speaking of grinding, what were they thinking with the Great Crystal? I mean, is there a good reason why they couldn't give you a map? This is just poor planning. It's prolonging the game artificially. What benefit is there in forcing players to go online looking for a map? You're going to need it anyway. It's not possible to navigate the place in your head, unless you go to all the trouble of diagramming every detail. You will get disoriented. It takes way too long to get around even with a map.

Even so, I did like the battle system. To a large degree, you can automate most of the combat (sometimes you can even walk away and go to the bathroom while your characters finish off the enemies). I know some people that didn't really like this system, but I don't have anything bad to say about it. If anything, it makes things a little too easy.

I wasn't crazy about the storyline. Even if you missed half of the dialogue (like I did) you could still piece together the major plot points without much trouble. The game tries to be smart by citing geographical locations and technical jargon akin to the FF universe, but in large part there's nothing compelling about the storyline. And before you pummel me with your FFXII game case, allow me to explain. First of all, the characters don't really evolve or develop in any way (with the possible exception of Ashe). Secondly, the storyline is too straightforward. There really aren't any turns or twists to speak of. I don't like to make comparisons, but Final Fantasy VI had a fabulous storyline by contrast. Each character had a back story, there were some awesome plot twists, and Kefka is by far one of the best villains the series has seen (oh, and the music was way better too).

Speaking of music, I did enjoy the musical score offered by XII. In a way, though, it feels too polished. The music took a serious dive with FFVIII, and started to improve with subsequent releases in the series, but I feel the music is a little too linear and repetitive by comparison. Again, it's good, but I would love to hear more electric guitars and synthesizers in there.

As for the final battle, I was rather surprised. Most of the time, final dungeons in the FF series are rather involved, taking an extremely long time to complete. FFXII is the rare exception. The final dungeon is more of an air station, and it only takes a little under an hour (maybe even less) to navigate. The final battle is a little disappointing as well. We really don't know Vayne as a character when we encounter him. At various points his menace was hinted at, but we never really got to see it in action. All in all, the world in FFXII feels a little too peaceful to be at turmoil.

One thing that the game does have going for it is the cinematics. Not that one would expect any less, but the cut scenes are definitely a pleasure to watch. The graphics are also quite pleasant.

The game is definitely not without its flaws, but it's still worth checking out if you like the FF series. The characters were a little too one-dimensional for my liking, but it's a pretty cool game. And it's definitely more of a game than it is an experience.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I first saw Final Fantasy XII. It almost seemed like a mix between Lord of the Rings and Star Wars when I first watched the opening sequence. One of the things that struck me immediately was the new combat system. Obviously there are major differences from one Final Fantasy to the next, but they finally did away with turn-based combat in this installment of Final Fantasy.

As it turns out, I rather like it. There are some obvious flaws, because you can set things up in such a way that you don't really have to touch any buttons, but I liked the idea of having all the monsters visible on the map instead of random encounters at various intervals.

I found the storyline impossibly difficult to follow, but maybe that's just me. The world is huge, and I thought that was pretty cool. In some ways it can be tedious and confusing trying to figure out where you need to go and what you need to do next, but obviously they put some thought into the design, because there are certain 'shortcuts', even when you're getting around the various cities.

This isn't really an official review, since I haven't actually finished the game yet. I've put in about 30 - 40 hours of gameplay, and even though I was still enjoying it, I stopped playing it altogether for some reason. I don't know why I do this sometimes, but I don't always have the endurance or determination to finish a game all the way through. It's actually been a long time since I've played it, but who knows? I might pick it up again.