Final Fantasy 12

[gkscotty]

30 hours in now. And it's superb. Just thought I'd put some of my thoughts in this thread.

First of all... the battle system, which is a complete reinvention of how it works in the series, is SUPERB. It really works well, it looks much more convincing than before and it feels very natural. The two systems that underlie your skills (Licence board and Gambits) also work excellently. The Licence board is quite possibly the most non-linear skills system FF has ever done. The gambit system is an excellent way to customise the behaviour of the two AI controlled members of your party. This is definitely a "gameplay" FF.

for example, for a while I had Penelo set up with the following gambits... (the game always goes for the first gambit forst, and if not possible will use the second and so on)

1. Enemy HP > 50% --> Cast Blind
2. Enemy HP > 50% --> Steal
3. Party Leader's Target --> Attack
4. Ally HP Cure

Under these settings, Penelo would first blind an enemy and keep trying it until it was blinded. Once the enemy was blind she would skip the first command and start stealing from enemies. Once the enemy's HP was under 50%, she'd default to attack the leader's target to help finish it off. Once all enemies were dealt with, she'd cast cure until our health was full again. It sounds complex, but really its only as complicated as you want to make it.

Characters... are not so interesting. The plot is very political but I'm not really emphasising with anyone that much. Vaan is one of the less interesting FF protagonists I've seen and Ashe is a bit too driven IMO. But the world is superbly designed and modelled, and I like the small touches. (as far as I know none of the usual summons show up as summons in this game, but the imperial ships are called the Leviathan, the Shiva, the Ifrit...) There are many cool things so far.

One thing that's really of note is the difficulty of the game. There are some really severe difficulty spikes. The game is not shy about letting you wander into areas too high level for you. (my lv22 party hit a area where there were level 45s today, and briskly retreated) It will even drop high-level characters into areas far below their level. (see the tyrannosaurus in the first explorable area) To make things worse, gil is always in short supply. Bosses have always been very challenging so far and I've had a real shortage on Pheonix Down and Ethers. But the challenge is quite satisfying, you can switch out characters mid battle (even when dead) and Summons and Quickenings (Limit Breaks) are very powerful.

So far, I'm really enjoying it. Here's hoping it keeps the pace.