There's a ridiculous amount of stuff to do in this game. I'm 90 hours in now and still have several marks left, a bunch of high level areas to explore, 27 more rare monster trophies to find, 5 more Espers to fight, several optional bosses to challenge, all of the ultimate weapons/items to get, a fishing minigame to beat, and then the final dungeon to go through.
I'm not even going to touch a lot of that because it'll take 200 hours!
The Ancient Man of Mystery (Mark, Rank VII) is awesome. I went after him at too low of a level, but refused to let go and drew the battle out for an hour. I finally won and that was it! Threw down my hands and made up my mind. This is the best FF ever because the boss battles are just so awesome. Now I'm determined to fight every boss battle in the game, because I can't stand to miss any.
Ancient man of mystery is good. Anyone who's played the older NES/SNES Final Fantasy games will want to check it out.
The story is difficult to get a hold of the first time, through... specially in the beginning when the game throws so many names at you. After watching my older brother play through some of the story sequences, I had a much easier time visualizing in my head the story that was being told.
Holy moly. I must be playing extremely slow or something cause I'm nearing the 100 hour mark, and I still think I'm about halfway through the game. I'm getting my 3rd Esper tonight. But I have done nearly everything else I can do at the moment besides the main storyline. I'm up to all the rank vii hunts, and they are wiping me out, so i need to beef up a little. i've also been decimated by every optional boss in the game, but at least i know where they are now for later.
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The license system seems pretty interesting but you can only see licenses in a radius of already purchased ones, I'd like to get a map of all the licenses as well as a description of how the different weapon types work.
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Popped in today and saw this thread, so figured I'd post this grid I whipped up for more visually-oriented people like myself. It has some typos and no summons, but helps visualization a lot, if I do say so myself.
Remember how it was as a kid when your parents would take you to the store to pick out a cool gift for your friend's birthday...and you'd drool over it? Well just this weekend I picked up FFXII as a Christmas gift for my brother-in-law who is returning from Iraq in a week. If only I had bought a PS2 instead of an Xbox. (But at least I'll be getting a Wii soon) Nevertheless, I'd really like to play FFXII. Maybe it will come out for PC eventually.
I had to proclaim my mighty triumph in saying that I finally beat FF12! My playtime clocked in at 98:43 and I've rarely ever had such a feeling of accomplishment in a gaming experience before ever. Now I need to go back and do some more of the side quests just to do them because frankly I miss the world of Ivalice. This is easily the best Final Fantasy game I've ever played (and I played almost all of them) and it makes me look forward to FF13, which I feel has a ton to live up to!
Marcus Dublin
Artist - Kaos Studios
PS: Is anyone still playing this masterpiece and has anyone beat it yet?
I'm probably going to have to take back my statement that this is the best FF ever. The end-game really fell flat for me. It killed the experience.
Basically, I was being a total completist when it came to side quests, and was really enjoying myself and looking forward to finishing the game. But it turns out there is this very linear sequences of things you have to do at the end, and the second last side-quest boss sucks.
I mean really sucks. Like, unbelievably stupid sucks. It is entirely possibly to spend over 8 hours facing this boss. Perhaps they were going for an "epic" battle, but it doesn't feel like that at all. It's not fun, it's not interesting, it isn't even easy so you can blow through it. No, you need to grind the fuck out of the game and then dedicate an entire day of your life to sitting there reviving your characters over and over again while you slowly damage an enemy who has 50 million HP (not an exaggeration). It is so ridiculous that it actually allows you to leave the battle, go and save your game at a crystal, and come back to finish it later. Ever after coming back 4 times, I couldn't stand to finish the fight.
This is the game that has the best boss battles I've ever experienced in an RPG, and it managed to throw in the worst boss experience I've ever had right when I was so happy with the game.
So I said screw it, I'm just going to stop and finish the main storyline.
The final dungeon was short and boring. The final boss isn't interesting at all and looks pretty dumb. It really stuck out in the end just how poorly developed the cast ended up being. The ending credits were completely unrewarding and dull and narrated by freaking Penelo, who did absolutely nothing for 99.9% of the game.
It's sad, because there is a lot of potential there that they completely ignored. They set up all of this background information about the characters pasts that they didn't do anything with! Looking back, each character gets a one-liner once every 20 hours in the game, and that's about it aside from 2 or 3 instances.
So my final judgement on FFXII is as follows:
Amazing art. Solid combat system. Best boss battles of any RPG. Completely mishandled end-game. Good cast ruined by severe lack of decent character development (but Balthier and Fran are still cool). Good build up of the plot ruined in an unrewarding climax.
My suggestion, beat all of the marks and espers, and hell wrym, then immediately finish the game. Don't waste time getting ultimate weapons and don't try Yiazmat and you will finish in a far better mood.
I got the game a couple of days ago and so far I am hating most of it. The character designs for the main characters are awful, but I knew that going in. The skin textures on the bodies of the male characters are freakish. The intro was a shameful rip-off ("you got your Episode 1 in my Final Fantasy!") and a rip-off of something crappy to boot. Manually controlling the camera sucks, because it is pointless, and just highlights that the environments are completely non-interactive. I don't find it particularly epic that my character can't seem to navigate tall grass or 2 foot drops. I somehow find it even more absurd that my character can't jump when they made everything 3D, and give me control of the camera. Why didn't they copy the jumping from WoW too? The combat so far is tedious and boring-- good thing the game plays combat for me-- maybe next time they can make the entire game play itself. And the music! Oh god, the music is so bad I have to turn the sound off. What the hell is wrong with them? Millions of dollars and this is the best they can do? Oh, wait. I can think of more things about the game that totally suck. Why are the environments so big? The reason you have big environments in MMOs is so that everyone is not in the same space at the same time, but it is completely pointless and stupid in a singleplayer game. Now I have to wander through giant lifeless environments without even the small diversion of chatting with actual human beings to ease the bordom.
Just to confirm that I wasn't going insane, I went back and played some of FFX. The characters look so much better in that game. The music is catchy and not annoying. The combat, while not great starting out, is at least minimal and somewhat interesting. All the designs are more original and interesting to look at.
I was really looking forward to this game, since I had heard so many positive things about it. I understand that some of you guys are really having fun with it and that is great. Different strokes for different folks. I just figured I would pop in here and give my early opinion of the game, so that people like me will have some fair warning.
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I mean really sucks. Like, unbelievably stupid sucks. It is entirely possibly to spend over 8 hours facing this boss. Perhaps they were going for an "epic" battle, but it doesn't feel like that at all. It's not fun, it's not interesting, it isn't even easy so you can blow through it. No, you need to grind the fuck out of the game and then dedicate an entire day of your life to sitting there reviving your characters over and over again while you slowly damage an enemy who has 50 million HP (not an exaggeration). It is so ridiculous that it actually allows you to leave the battle, go and save your game at a crystal, and come back to finish it later. Ever after coming back 4 times, I couldn't stand to finish the fight.
This is the game that has the best boss battles I've ever experienced in an RPG, and it managed to throw in the worst boss experience I've ever had right when I was so happy with the game.
So I said screw it, I'm just going to stop and finish the main storyline.
The final dungeon was short and boring. The final boss isn't interesting at all and looks pretty dumb. It really stuck out in the end just how poorly developed the cast ended up being.
So my final judgement on FFXII is as follows:
Amazing art. Solid combat system. Best boss battles of any RPG. Completely mishandled end-game. Good cast ruined by severe lack of decent character development (but Balthier and Fran are still cool). Good build up of the plot ruined in an unrewarding climax.
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I thought most FF games were like this? I want to try the game out but I'll probably never finish it. It's probably not fun enough to be a worthy use of my time.
I just purchased FFXII from Gamefly and I'm liking it a lot. The modification to the battle engine is excellent in my opinion. The world seems very rich and I love the designs of the Bangaa and other incidental characters. Voice overs are surprisingly good. Sometimes when characters talk to each other their bodies don't move and they just flap their lips which looks odd. I wish I could have just played as Reks instead of Vaan though.
acc: You fell into the 'obsessive japanese gamer' trap. In most RPG's from Japan there are quests that incredibly tedious and/or hard, harder than anything in the main story. Beating these is little more than a badge of honor but remains popular enough that they still exist today (see: Emerald and Ruby Weapon from FFVII).
While most of what I said still holds true, one thing I was wrong about was the battle system. It is much better than previous games, and not having to worry about random encounters makes exploring areas much more fun. I love setting up my gambits.
While a lot of people were a bit down on the story, and I was initially very unhappy with the main characters, I have been really enjoying story and the supporting cast. It has almost become like a game to spot all the shots, characters and designs borrowed from the Star Wars movies-- thank god it has gotten away from Ep. 1 as the game has gone along.
A lot of the annoying things about moving around towns are made moot later in the game also. I had already planned to force myself to play the game for 10 hours before putting it down, and I'm glad I did. So far it is really fun and it has really gotten it's hooks in me.
how about sharing character setups?
everyone has light armor
Vaan: dagger & shield, primary thief also uses disable to draw aggro if monsters start attacking Penelo or Fran.
Balthier: Gun when long range or Spear when using as a thief.
Basch: Hammer and Shield, secondary fighter. I kind of messed up his license grid early in the game.
Ashe: Sword and Shield, primary fighter. She has a little white magic as well just in case.
Fran: Bow, long range attack/black mage. Also uses a staff when I use her as a thief/black mage.
Penelo: I have her using a Bow but she's primarily my healer/buffer. I have gambits that have her renew protects and shells on the party when I need them and I manually have her cast Curea if I need it.
Fran used to die alot but it seems I got her fixed up pretty good now Basch is the guy that needs the most attention because I kind of screwed him up.
I'm changing around my team pretty often. Penelo and Fran are both over ten levels below the rest of the team, so I gave up on them.
Vaan: Sword and Shield, Secondary fighter with a little black magic when needed. Shifting focus to light armor, to spread out my Quickenings, but currently wearing heavy. Knows enough White magic to heal a little, but rarely needed for that.
Balthier: Ranged fighter, guns often thief too.
Basch: Fighter/Healer, Katana and heavy armor. Sometimes set as a thief in easier areas.
Ashe: Primary spellcaster, using a rod, does a lot of healing.
Vaan: sword and shield with heavy armor. also a thief.
Balthier: ranged with guns.
Fran: ranged with bows. black magic and some healing.
Basch: hammer/axe with shield.
Ashe: sword and shield with white magic and Esper (only have one at the moment. at Mt Bur-Omisace).
Penelo: heavy magic user. (white, black, green, arcane)
my primary part is Vaan, Ashe and rotate between Balthier and Fran when they level up. Vaan and Ashe are a few levels above everyone else at the moment but i've been level the others while trying to get money.
I'm at the 47 hour mark. I'm having a great time with it. About the Yazmat (in japan, thats how it was spelt) boss... the dev team made that as a salute to the the great Yasumi "Yazz" Matsuno who left the helm of the project in the fourth year of development. Yaz-Mat, awesome eh?
I've been playing it for 105 hours so far. I dont feel yet like I'm near the end... and I still have a mouthfull of Marks to hunt.
My highest character is penelo at level 61. the rest are fairly equal. I like good balance in my team.
57, 60, 55, 58 etc.. I favored penelo because she seamed the weakest, so I made her the highest level on purpose. Then i realised Bathier was falling way behind.. so now hes second highest.
I'm in the tall tower level now.
The story is a little.. "meh" but Its a great game alone for the satisfaction of fighting cool stuff.
I really didnt feel the ending and the final boss battle... It took me a few minutes to realize.... HEY WAIT... THIS IS THE FINAL BATTLE? WTF !!!!!? End boss = easy. I didnt even have the best swords and shields, and my guys were all averaged at around level 57.
Ancient Man of mystery Mob hunt = awesome and hard.
I'm 93 hours in, Fran, Vaan, and Ashe. Level 82, two hunts left to go license boards are maxed out except weapons and armour and I want to hit level 99 before I go into the final boss so I can defeat it with a smackdown power.
Just finished, 110 hours, Vaan, Fran, and Ashe at level 99 and all license boards maxed out. Game was awesome as usual but there was a particular amount of grinding in this one compared to previous games.
Replies
Ingenious level design and character design. I'm sure lots of planning went into all this before I was made.
The snowy mountains are one of the coolest environments I've ever witnessed. Now All I wish was the plot was to destoy an all powerful ring.
I'm not even going to touch a lot of that because it'll take 200 hours!
The Ancient Man of Mystery (Mark, Rank VII) is awesome. I went after him at too low of a level, but refused to let go and drew the battle out for an hour. I finally won and that was it! Threw down my hands and made up my mind. This is the best FF ever because the boss battles are just so awesome. Now I'm determined to fight every boss battle in the game, because I can't stand to miss any.
The story is difficult to get a hold of the first time, through... specially in the beginning when the game throws so many names at you. After watching my older brother play through some of the story sequences, I had a much easier time visualizing in my head the story that was being told.
The license system seems pretty interesting but you can only see licenses in a radius of already purchased ones, I'd like to get a map of all the licenses as well as a description of how the different weapon types work.
[/ QUOTE ]
Popped in today and saw this thread, so figured I'd post this grid I whipped up for more visually-oriented people like myself. It has some typos and no summons, but helps visualization a lot, if I do say so myself.
Marcus Dublin
Artist - Kaos Studios
PS: Is anyone still playing this masterpiece and has anyone beat it yet?
Basically, I was being a total completist when it came to side quests, and was really enjoying myself and looking forward to finishing the game. But it turns out there is this very linear sequences of things you have to do at the end, and the second last side-quest boss sucks.
I mean really sucks. Like, unbelievably stupid sucks. It is entirely possibly to spend over 8 hours facing this boss. Perhaps they were going for an "epic" battle, but it doesn't feel like that at all. It's not fun, it's not interesting, it isn't even easy so you can blow through it. No, you need to grind the fuck out of the game and then dedicate an entire day of your life to sitting there reviving your characters over and over again while you slowly damage an enemy who has 50 million HP (not an exaggeration). It is so ridiculous that it actually allows you to leave the battle, go and save your game at a crystal, and come back to finish it later. Ever after coming back 4 times, I couldn't stand to finish the fight.
This is the game that has the best boss battles I've ever experienced in an RPG, and it managed to throw in the worst boss experience I've ever had right when I was so happy with the game.
So I said screw it, I'm just going to stop and finish the main storyline.
The final dungeon was short and boring. The final boss isn't interesting at all and looks pretty dumb. It really stuck out in the end just how poorly developed the cast ended up being. The ending credits were completely unrewarding and dull and narrated by freaking Penelo, who did absolutely nothing for 99.9% of the game.
It's sad, because there is a lot of potential there that they completely ignored. They set up all of this background information about the characters pasts that they didn't do anything with! Looking back, each character gets a one-liner once every 20 hours in the game, and that's about it aside from 2 or 3 instances.
So my final judgement on FFXII is as follows:
Amazing art. Solid combat system. Best boss battles of any RPG. Completely mishandled end-game. Good cast ruined by severe lack of decent character development (but Balthier and Fran are still cool). Good build up of the plot ruined in an unrewarding climax.
My suggestion, beat all of the marks and espers, and hell wrym, then immediately finish the game. Don't waste time getting ultimate weapons and don't try Yiazmat and you will finish in a far better mood.
Just to confirm that I wasn't going insane, I went back and played some of FFX. The characters look so much better in that game. The music is catchy and not annoying. The combat, while not great starting out, is at least minimal and somewhat interesting. All the designs are more original and interesting to look at.
I was really looking forward to this game, since I had heard so many positive things about it. I understand that some of you guys are really having fun with it and that is great. Different strokes for different folks. I just figured I would pop in here and give my early opinion of the game, so that people like me will have some fair warning.
- BoBo
I mean really sucks. Like, unbelievably stupid sucks. It is entirely possibly to spend over 8 hours facing this boss. Perhaps they were going for an "epic" battle, but it doesn't feel like that at all. It's not fun, it's not interesting, it isn't even easy so you can blow through it. No, you need to grind the fuck out of the game and then dedicate an entire day of your life to sitting there reviving your characters over and over again while you slowly damage an enemy who has 50 million HP (not an exaggeration). It is so ridiculous that it actually allows you to leave the battle, go and save your game at a crystal, and come back to finish it later. Ever after coming back 4 times, I couldn't stand to finish the fight.
This is the game that has the best boss battles I've ever experienced in an RPG, and it managed to throw in the worst boss experience I've ever had right when I was so happy with the game.
So I said screw it, I'm just going to stop and finish the main storyline.
The final dungeon was short and boring. The final boss isn't interesting at all and looks pretty dumb. It really stuck out in the end just how poorly developed the cast ended up being.
So my final judgement on FFXII is as follows:
Amazing art. Solid combat system. Best boss battles of any RPG. Completely mishandled end-game. Good cast ruined by severe lack of decent character development (but Balthier and Fran are still cool). Good build up of the plot ruined in an unrewarding climax.
[/ QUOTE ]
I thought most FF games were like this? I want to try the game out but I'll probably never finish it. It's probably not fun enough to be a worthy use of my time.
acc: You fell into the 'obsessive japanese gamer' trap. In most RPG's from Japan there are quests that incredibly tedious and/or hard, harder than anything in the main story. Beating these is little more than a badge of honor but remains popular enough that they still exist today (see: Emerald and Ruby Weapon from FFVII).
I wish I could have just played as Reks instead of Vaan though.
[/ QUOTE ]
I feel exactly the same way. Ever since the end of that into I've been wishing I could switch back to him.
Around 20 hours so far, just spoke to the Gariff.
While a lot of people were a bit down on the story, and I was initially very unhappy with the main characters, I have been really enjoying story and the supporting cast. It has almost become like a game to spot all the shots, characters and designs borrowed from the Star Wars movies-- thank god it has gotten away from Ep. 1 as the game has gone along.
A lot of the annoying things about moving around towns are made moot later in the game also. I had already planned to force myself to play the game for 10 hours before putting it down, and I'm glad I did. So far it is really fun and it has really gotten it's hooks in me.
everyone has light armor
Vaan: dagger & shield, primary thief also uses disable to draw aggro if monsters start attacking Penelo or Fran.
Balthier: Gun when long range or Spear when using as a thief.
Basch: Hammer and Shield, secondary fighter. I kind of messed up his license grid early in the game.
Ashe: Sword and Shield, primary fighter. She has a little white magic as well just in case.
Fran: Bow, long range attack/black mage. Also uses a staff when I use her as a thief/black mage.
Penelo: I have her using a Bow but she's primarily my healer/buffer. I have gambits that have her renew protects and shells on the party when I need them and I manually have her cast Curea if I need it.
Fran used to die alot but it seems I got her fixed up pretty good now Basch is the guy that needs the most attention because I kind of screwed him up.
Vaan: Sword and Shield, Secondary fighter with a little black magic when needed. Shifting focus to light armor, to spread out my Quickenings, but currently wearing heavy. Knows enough White magic to heal a little, but rarely needed for that.
Balthier: Ranged fighter, guns often thief too.
Basch: Fighter/Healer, Katana and heavy armor. Sometimes set as a thief in easier areas.
Ashe: Primary spellcaster, using a rod, does a lot of healing.
Balthier: ranged with guns.
Fran: ranged with bows. black magic and some healing.
Basch: hammer/axe with shield.
Ashe: sword and shield with white magic and Esper (only have one at the moment. at Mt Bur-Omisace).
Penelo: heavy magic user. (white, black, green, arcane)
my primary part is Vaan, Ashe and rotate between Balthier and Fran when they level up. Vaan and Ashe are a few levels above everyone else at the moment but i've been level the others while trying to get money.
My highest character is penelo at level 61. the rest are fairly equal. I like good balance in my team.
57, 60, 55, 58 etc.. I favored penelo because she seamed the weakest, so I made her the highest level on purpose. Then i realised Bathier was falling way behind.. so now hes second highest.
I'm in the tall tower level now.
The story is a little.. "meh" but Its a great game alone for the satisfaction of fighting cool stuff.
Spoiler ********
I really didnt feel the ending and the final boss battle... It took me a few minutes to realize.... HEY WAIT... THIS IS THE FINAL BATTLE? WTF !!!!!? End boss = easy. I didnt even have the best swords and shields, and my guys were all averaged at around level 57.
Ancient Man of mystery Mob hunt = awesome and hard.
******