That anon is also wrong in that you CAN'T take Vaan out, because his realization and display of acceptance instead of revenge is the only reason Ashe can follow suit and not become the next Dynast King, saving humankind.
>Yeah, well, it doesn't have to be VAAN
He fits the trope. His characterization is what is needed in a "lesser plebe" being able to overcome his trials to compare to the Dalmascan royal to overcome hers. His responsibilities are less, so he can win his fate faster and easier than Ashe, who has much much more. >Okay, but Vaan could've wanted to be a baker for all I care
I know how these threads' arguments tend to go.
yeah i'm not gonna do the meme complaints since they're fricking moronic.
but i hate how the game story ends JUST as it gets started. FFIX had the same problem too.
I wish the game had some QoL choices for the side quests and hunting but it's a pretty "fun" game. I'll be ready to get bombed but if it had a more "action" (literally press a button to attack tier and another button for specials with like literally 3-4 hit combos) based combat with the job variety and gambits - i'd be extremely happy.
I thought it was pretty funny SE packaged a FFXII demo with Dragon Quest VIII to sell more copies. I had multiple friends who bought DQ8 just for the demo. Turns out most liked DQ8 more lol
I wonder why this remains for so many people. It's a tiny required mini-quest to just press the "shout" button in a couple different places in town until the cops come by to arrest you. It takes, like, 3 minutes.
I was bored and gave it up. It felt like a star wars rip off / single player mmo where I had to write programs to make the AI not moronic, rather just play FFX again
You're just being a moron, you've probably never played an MMO even.
Take FF10 for example, it's linear and has a variety of mini-games ergo it's nothing like an MMO.
You can even look at other RPGs with larger worlds, like say Dragons Dogma. Nothing like an MMO because it has action combat and the side quests are not generic since your actions make a difference.
FF12 has brainless combat with auto-attacks, a bad combat to story ratio, generic as frick side-content, and wide open fields with almost nothing in it. Very much like an MMO.
FF10 will never be good, Kitase will never lick your balls
I love the game and even I can admit that it’s heavily inspired by Star Wars anon
Do you really not see the parallels between luke/Han and vaan/balthier?
I love when people compare Final Fantasy XII to Star Wars. It's accurate, there's lots of similarities in characters and design, but the music is SO VERY John Williams, it's IMO breathtaking! I love it, a lot.
It gives me an excuse to broadcast one of my favorite comparisons: The Sandsea. How much it instantly makes people think of exploring deep Tatooine when hearing this track... it's fun.
But it's not just "taking rolling deserts" or something. It's got giant storage tanks and mining locales and inns and and and and... there's LOTS to find playing FFXII. It is a BIG game.
Playing it right now, it's okay, I guess. I genuinely despise Vaan and his VA though and it really seems like everything else in the game is 2000x more interesting and I can only image that Matsuno was not the one who came up with that moron.
The game is formatted like an MMO with it just having generic side quests and wide open fields with pretty much nothing in them. But yeah the combat is better than Xenoblade, another single player MMO.
>generic side quests and wide open fields with pretty much nothing in them.
The more I hear this the more I realize it's applicable to everything but (you)r favorite game. There's not a single game in the series where that description wouldn't be "valid" in some sense.
You're just being a moron, you've probably never played an MMO even.
Take FF10 for example, it's linear and has a variety of mini-games ergo it's nothing like an MMO.
You can even look at other RPGs with larger worlds, like say Dragons Dogma. Nothing like an MMO because it has action combat and the side quests are not generic since your actions make a difference.
FF12 has brainless combat with auto-attacks, a bad combat to story ratio, generic as frick side-content, and wide open fields with almost nothing in it. Very much like an MMO.
Dunno why you brought up DD, I said in the series, as in an FF game. FFXIV has minigames, does that make it not an MMO? >brainless combat with auto attacks
lmao
>The game is formatted like an MMO with it just having generic side quests and wide open fields with pretty much nothing in them.
Is this honestly what X and XIII fans feel about games that arent a hallway?
Gambit is irrelevant because ff12 (along with every FF) has braindead combat. If you ask it to do anything other than the most basic of things, it falls apart (e.g. trying to set up a sensible steal gambit is impossible). Gambit would be a disaster in xenoblade because it's a more complex game, the AI has to take positioning, aggro management, unique art effects, CC combos, talent arts, and various different DoTs all at the same time. The sequels are even more complex, the base ai doesn't work all the time (melia) but it's better than what a Gambit system would be, it's also one of the reasons why xenoblade Uber mogs ff12, among many other reasons like environment/level design, music, a proper completed story, etc.
They aren't very special nowadays but back then that level of detail and geometry was unseen in jrpgs, in any case they still take a fat shit over 12's "environment design"
12' environments don't even have vertically, it's a horizontal plane with no level design
2 years ago
Anonymous
Are you joking?
2 years ago
Anonymous
No I played the game unfortunately, gave it 3 tries but it was boring as frick even with 4x speed. I played VS after and despite being an even more unfinished matsuno game much more thought was put into the level design from a decade prior
2 years ago
Anonymous
Being a part of Ivalice, it is already considerably northern Middle Eastern with borrowed designs from all sorts of desert lands, Mediterranean architecture, Turkish structure, Lebanese, Syrian... to say there is "no design" put into where Final Fantasy XII is placed is quite false.
Dalmasca, Garamsythe Waterway, Nalbina, Mines, Ozmone Plains, Sochen Cave Palace, Archades, Cerobi Steppe, Balfonheim Port, Phon Coast region, Salikawood, Nabreus Deadlands, Skycity of Bhujerba, the 3 Jagd regions to include Tomb of Raithwall to the Sandseas to the Golmore Jungle to the Jahara to the Giruvegan to the Pharos, Mt. Bur-Omisace... that's not even one-third the areas of FFXII and they have CONSIDERABLE amounts of design placed into them. The royal cities and capitals have SKYSCRAPERS for how much verticality they have inside and outside the buildings, the Sandseas closer to any city have considerable amounts of hills and pits and canyons, other Sandseas are surprising in how flat they are and yet still have sandtraps and sudden rocky peaks, too. The destroyed lands and cities, the bright steppes and highlands, the ethereal Giruvegan and the vampiric Pharos, the intimidating but divine Mt. Bur-Omisace, even the undergrounds and the caves are different according to where they appear on the map for how much is human-impacted like the Henne Mines to how much is simply stalagtite and stalagmite caverns... they're all different and unique and yet still keep the theme of a more Mediterranean Ivalice. And all have stairways and hills and "too high to see" and "too scary to peak down into" built into their maps.
And more than just differences, the DETAIL is EXTRAORDINARY, too.
I'm sorry nothing caught your eye when racing through the game at 4x-speed, but it's a marvelous world and a very strongly designed video game.
All set to wonderful music, too. Makes you slow down and listen~
2 years ago
Anonymous
I was talking about the level design brah there's no verticality in ff12
2 years ago
Anonymous
Then you aren't being clear on what you mean by "verticality."
You say you're talking about "level design," but there's ENORMOUS buildings in most of the cities, skyscrapers even. The Sandseas are flat and open with glaringly obvious tanks that stand tall above the vast desert, all on purpose to catch your attention. There are mountains to crawl up and down, there are caves to descend, there's are areas literally defines as the Lowlands and the Uplands. Heck, there's a actual city in the sky... and another divine city housing god-like beings that aircraft can't even reach! There's TONS of "verticality" in "level design."
Or do you mean in gameplay, where you have control of Vaan, that there's "no verticality?" Every city has staircases to climb up and down, taxis to take from one area or another that ride on platforms and fly over parts of town, sewers to descend into where solving puzzles requires enormous climbing and draining and moving over and around pillars that can hide your view or let you peak over what you have yet to do. The "overworld" outside cities has STEEP cliffs and sandy hills that you have to hike up and down to reach items or unique monsters, there are rocky blocks you can't climb over, there are more stairs to climb to leads to areas with decks and grated shelves, Heck, there's even areas that are specifically elevated so you can garner perspective of just how BIG the place you're exploring is! The Tomb of Raithwall is BUILT around ups and downs. The Pharos is literally DESIGNED around the fact it is a lighthouse and you need to climb it! There's TONS of "verticality" when moving around the map.
If you're baiting me, good job, because it's disappointing when people spew lies about what is a spectacularly designed video game.
2 years ago
Anonymous
having staircases and shit isn't proper veticality for level design because they just work as dividers, games like elden ring, xenoblade, or even smt now with v have multiple ways to get somewhere based on jumping around and going through different paths, 12 doesn't, it's open fields are very limited, you can't even jump in 12.
Also when comparing actually veticality in terms of world building obviously 12 isn't as good as xenoblade
2 years ago
Anonymous
>I wanted a platformer
For crying out loud.
>FFXII isn't as good as Xenoblade Chronicles
Xenoblade Chronicles was a game designed around your ability to jump, used a completely different game engine, came out for the Wii, and was release more than 4 years after FFXII was.
Does Xenoblade Chronicles have peaks that literally take minutes to climb to the top of, which FFXII does not have? Yes, you're right. You can even claim it has "more verticality."
But stop saying "FFXII has no verticality" when it does. It has lots. And it's a JRPG, not Mario 64.
2 years ago
Anonymous
12 is my favorite FF after Tactics and I have to agree somewhat with the idea that 12 lacks verticality, or something. Every time I play 12 I get the feeling the game was too ambitious for the hardware it was developed for, it tries to make a big complex world fit onto a shitty 4:3 screen, the camera really restricts how much you can view of the world, so there's always a cramped up feeling I get every time I play 12. You can't ever really zoom out to get a better look at anything, you literally get to stare at three FF girl butts or pan up and see them from the top. It's great except it's not.
2 years ago
Anonymous
FFXII was the first Final Fantasy game that gave you control of the camera (FFX's camera could very mildly move, but it was mapped to the background you ran on), and even then it did have a zoom in and out function. You didn't have to keep the camera zoomed in on your party. When you went out into different regions, you absolutely could zoom the camera out and pan around to feel some freedom. Though, this was NOT as "free" as when inside the mines or the caves or places like the Barheim Passage. It was MEANT to feel "cramped."
I'm happy to hear you very much enjoyed FFXII, and Tactics! But we disagree about its design being "too big" for the Playstation 2. It's breathtaking and groundbreaking, honestly in all it can do and all it shows. I can concede that, given the game's JRPG genre and the fact it is 18+ years old now, you've probably been able to experience other games that let you REALLY "zoom out" and feel free and open than what 2006 FFXII did. That's fair to you. But, I can't say it's fair to FFXII. It wasn't really meant to be BoTW: Final Fantasy. And yet, what it did was still huge and the game had a lot, and I do mean A LOT, of content inside it. For a game centered around its plot and its delivery, it got enormous world design, level design, character design and detail to go with it. Variation that still kept its Ivalice theme and "Mediterranean" feel.
Doesn't matter if you can choose your job for each character. At the end of the day, it's still the same auto attack mmorpg combat. The characters don't even change clothes when you give them a new job.
Everything it did from gameplay, to characters, to the music, to plot, and to the world was done and improved upon in Xenoblade 1. It was more of a Final Fantasy 13 and actual spiritual sequel to 12 than Final Fantasy 13 itself.
most osts are complete background noise, but if you listen to anyone who liked any single game ever theirs not a single bad ost in this world except there is. most are
i think the only company that consistently puts out fantastic osts is Atlus
>Everything it did from gameplay, to characters, to the music, to plot, and to the world was done and improved upon in Xenoblade 1.
I'd argue that XIV is more of a XII sequel than XIII or XB1
The gambit system might be pretty fun if you have the tism or like micromanagement. The rest is just kind of forgettable. It felt too grounded compared to previous FF titles.
Also I really disliked the fact that there were no physical arts for melee oriented classes. Mages got all the cool shit.
>Also I really disliked the fact that there were no physical arts for melee oriented classes. Mages got all the cool shit.
with the other part going into the quickening shit.
The Technicks were so fricking stupid that it felt like they were shoved in at the last minute. >Do damage based on all the steps you've taken since the last time you used this skill >but also we're not going to give you any gambits to detect when you've taken a lot of steps
it was literally last minute cracktrip idea, after years Black folk found out the formula
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Traveler_(ability)#Final_Fantasy_XII
The story is great though. It's the culmination of Matsuno's general style.
pennelo's hips are making me unwise
>everyone on the development team from the writers to Sakimoto loved her and considered her their favorite character >all of her scenes got cut for time though so everyone just considers her useless and unimportant
A damn shame.
>It's the culmination of Matsuno's general style.
What? More like an incredibly milquetoast take on his usual formula. The fantasy politics completely die off like halfway through the game and then it's a generic plot about scouring ancient ruins and shit for magical artifacts.
The central plot is about the REAL heroes and the struggle to wrest control of Ivalice's destiny away from evil gods and this all plays out behind the scenes of the great political conflict and winds up being covered up until someone writes later on to reveal the the truth of things.
This is like Matsuno 101. The politics always window dressing to the unknown behind the scenes struggles.
The main problem is that everything that is interesting in FF12 happens and doesn't show it to the player.
>the cast is >literally just some dudes off the street and Ashe.
You didn't play FFXII.
Also, the level of drama, fantastic writing, spectacular acting, incredible graphics and even higher tier music made playing the game a wonder. It easily met critical fame, which it certainly warranted.
It was bullshit that we only got 1 Viera and 5 bland Humes.
Balthier does have some great lines though.
>This is like Matsuno 101. The politics always window dressing to the unknown behind the scenes struggles.
Except that stories like FFT's handled this stuff way better and made the core plot that much more entertaining in context. FFXII did not. Most of its events best events happen off-screen while the playable cast are busy dicking around in ancient ruins.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The game itself is speaking to the player that what Ashe's team is doing by "dicking around in ancient ruins" is BY FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR the most important thing happening to Ivalice. And it's something the entire land will NEVER know about. It will be covered-up by Marquis Halim Ondore IV in his united fight against Archadia and how he re-tells the story. He is this games narrator, after all.
You're simply stating that "war battles" are cooler and you would've liked this to be "Independence Day," not "Stargate."
2 years ago
Anonymous
>The game itself is speaking to the player that what Ashe's team is doing by "dicking around in ancient ruins" is BY FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR the most important thing happening to Ivalice.
And? That part of the story is not very interesting. It's a generic JRPG plot about a ragtag group of adventurers rising up against some shady supernatural figures and an "evil" empire. That's been done a million times and is not the thing that people really care about in Matsuno stories. What they care about is all the fantasy politics and world building.
2 years ago
Anonymous
How do you know the "best stuff happens off-screen?"
It could be just a boring ship battle and political diplomat meeting for all you know.
The only conclusion you're coming to is that you didn't like the quest across Ivalice with the Princess of Dalmasa, a Prince of Archades, a traitorous General of the army who's twin brother is a Judge of the Empire, a renegade mercenary and son of the most important adjunct of the Empire "Sky Pirate" and his sexy-as-frick-Playboy playmate and the naive coward plebian with his teenaged girlfriend. That journey where they fight against fallen Espers, god-like beings, learn of the secret and hidden history of the Dynast King, explore caves and dungeons in the hope of evasion, and the tropical lands near the ocean or the mystical lands near the mountain peak or the literal Skycity of Bhujerba, that journey where they gain power and knowledge and grow and team-up with more and more leaders of the world and surpass their own misgivings and wretched pasts... the conclusion you come up with is "warships firing cannons is way cooler, this sucks. I didn't buy a game to listen to Shakespeare."
>What's so interesting about Fran talking to her sister in a forest? Huh?
You're the type that plays JRPGs as fast as they can and goes to the bathroom during cutscenes, aren't you?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>What's so interesting about Fran talking to her sister in a forest? Huh?
God that was a boring part of the game. Nothing happened. The best part was the very end when Vaan makes a joke about Fran's age and people tell him to grow up. Everything else about that entire part of the game was boring. I wish I could play an arcade shooter or Pokemon Snap, give me some action.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>The only conclusion you're coming to is that you didn't like the quest across Ivalice with the Princess of Dalmasa, a Prince of Archades, a traitorous General of the army who's twin brother is a Judge of the Empire, a renegade mercenary and son of the most important adjunct of the Empire "Sky Pirate" and his sexy-as-frick-Playboy playmate and the naive coward plebian with his teenaged girlfriend.
I would've been okay with those four. I wasn't okay with irrelevant street rats joining the party and wasting time with their inane blabbering. >That journey where they fight against fallen Espers, god-like beings, learn of the secret and hidden history of the Dynast King, explore caves and dungeons in the hope of evasion, and the tropical lands near the ocean or the mystical lands near the mountain peak or the literal Skycity of Bhujerba
This kind of stuff comes part and parcel with the FF series. The mere presence of fantasy whimsy is not gonna impress twelve games into a series chock full of the stuff. There's got to be a unique twist it that makes the setting stand out. I didn't feel that in FFXII. >that journey where they gain power and knowledge and grow and team-up with more and more leaders of the world and surpass their own misgivings and wretched pasts...
You mean like every other FF cast? I don't see how this is special or exceptional.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>I don't see how this is special or exceptional.
To other FF? You're right! It fits a fictional story about heroes saving a planet. So witty.
To other video games? I dunno, Final Fantasy XII is very much like Crash Bandicoot.
2 years ago
Anonymous
What is even the point of this post? Of course I'm going to set my expectations for a game in a long-running series based on earlier entries in the series.
If you're not feeling any uniqueness to FFXII in terms of its world, lore, English dialogue delivery or how it matched its theme of a fictional fantasy world set in the land of Ivalice, then you're quite dull.
And don't tell me it's because you played FF1 through 11 before you played FF12 that it lost any special value to you, and then should lose value to everyone else.
>If you're not feeling any uniqueness to FFXII in terms of its world, lore, English dialogue delivery or how it matched its theme of a fictional fantasy world set in the land of Ivalice, then you're quite dull.
FFXII is quite dull. So dull, in fact, that the developers had to put in a fast-forward feature just to keep players from falling asleep during its hours of long, boring deserts and dungeons. >And don't tell me it's because you played FF1 through 11 before you played FF12 that it lost any special value to you, and then should lose value to everyone else.
It's not just because of that. I could go into its pacing issues, it's semi-autopilot combat, its boring villains, etc.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>FFXII is quite dull. So dull, in fact, that the developers had to put in a fast-forward feature just to keep players from falling asleep during its hours of long, boring deserts and dungeons.
This "feature" was applied to combat. You didn't like FFXII's Gambit-based combat? Fine. But I won't state it's "dull." It was VERY specific and required strong, manipulative investment to "get it right."
>It's not just because of my having experienced all other games that I find Final Fantasy XII to be quite dull. But it's the biggest reason why I think so. Don't blame me for being so highly experienced in all the other games just like FFXII. There's just so many. >I could explain why FFXII is just like every single other boring game in existence but I won't.
Nah, you don't have to. I wish Ganker had Zodiac Age fast-forward on posts; it takes so long to bother reading them. I don't even want to read them. I'm certain because I've played 1chan, 2chan, and 3chan before coming here. It's all the same.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>This "feature" was applied to combat.
No, it was applied to every part of the game. It's literally bound to a shoulder button. I can't remember which one (I think it was R1), but it was definitely around for more than just the combat. I clearly remember speeding through Rabanastre with it on multiple times when I was playing the IZJS and ZA versions. >You didn't like FFXII's Gambit-based combat?
I like the idea of programmable AI, but not when it's used in a boring, real-time MMO-esque combat system where you can only directly control one character at a time and spend most of your playtime running around pointlessly lengthy dungeons killing weak enemies. At that point, I'd rather just stick with a standard ATB system and maybe replace random battles with field encounters that go into a separate battle screen. >Nah, you don't have to. I wish Ganker had Zodiac Age fast-forward on posts; it takes so long to bother reading them. I don't even want to read them. I'm certain because I've played 1chan, 2chan, and 3chan before coming here. It's all the same.
You seem awful perturbed in the posterior, buddy. Maybe I suggest a bit of Preparation H?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>I clearly remember speeding through Rabanastre with it on multiple times when I was playing the IZJS and ZA versions.
...Because you were replaying a 2nd and 3rd time a game you verrrrrrrrry fully played before, right?
You wanted to replay FFXII so much, it was your 3rd or more time replaying it after all, that "exploring" the towns was just a "waste of your time and added nothing to your fond memory of playing FFXII," right???
2 years ago
Anonymous
>...Because you were replaying a 2nd and 3rd time a game you verrrrrrrrry fully played before, right?
I'm not digging out my fricking PS4 just to prove I beat the game. I haven't touched that thing in almost two years.
You're literally complaining you played FFXII, and replayed it two more times, and that it was boring every time. So boring that even when 4x running through towns, nothing caught your interest. Like fast-forwarding the game and story didn't make it "better" it just brought you to the end "sooner."
>You're literally complaining you played FFXII, and replayed it two more times, and that it was boring every time.
I only ever beat the ZA version. I didn't get very far in OG and I only got as far as snow mountain area in the IZJS version.
2 years ago
Anonymous
You're literally complaining you played FFXII, and replayed it two more times, and that it was boring every time. So boring that even when 4x running through towns, nothing caught your interest. Like fast-forwarding the game and story didn't make it "better" it just brought you to the end "sooner."
2 years ago
Anonymous
for a fricking PS2 era game this looks so fricking good
2 years ago
Anonymous
Ashe is the most beautiful woman in gaming history tbh
Strong art direction will always trump fancy ultra realistic graphics. DQ8 looks great too.
2 years ago
Anonymous
DQ always looked nice though, just like CT.
2 years ago
Anonymous
And that's just some minor shop in some backstreet of some huge town. Designers really put effort into this game, geez.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>hopscotch on weird floor patterns
holy frick i thought i was the only kid that did this.
2 years ago
Anonymous
My folks loved oriental rugs and I played on these, too.
Went outside to the school park where I could find concrete and make a hopscotch graph and also Skip-It. It's fun to see background NPCs just playing.
2 years ago
Anonymous
How stupid. It's like watching a play written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and saying >What was that? So boring. It was just like every other musical I've ever seen. Nothing unique about that at all.
2 years ago
Anonymous
If you're not feeling any uniqueness to FFXII in terms of its world, lore, English dialogue delivery or how it matched its theme of a fictional fantasy world set in the land of Ivalice, then you're quite dull.
And don't tell me it's because you played FF1 through 11 before you played FF12 that it lost any special value to you, and then should lose value to everyone else.
2 years ago
Anonymous
There's nothing unique about 12's ivalice. Had you said vagrant story I would have agreed. And no, it doesn't count because they're in the same universe or some shit
2 years ago
Anonymous
>And don't tell me it's because you played FF1 through 11 before you played FF12
As someone that actually did this FF12 is special. Only FF with that kind of Persian-Eastern themed architecture and cities. Reminds me of how with FF10 they went with a Polynesian theme for the world.
No wonder they were infinitely superior (in world design) to any medieval FF that preceded them.
2 years ago
Anonymous
A pleasant lie, that.
2 years ago
Anonymous
just how old is she by the way?
2 years ago
Anonymous
According to "Final Fantasy Scenario Ultimania" she has to be at least 50 years old and is likely to be considerably older.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I love that voice acting
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeah, it's all really well done. You can tell tone and sense of class disparity, not just from the writing, but in how it's recited. The main story characters are, frankly, clever in how they speak their lines.
I mean, c'mon, who saw this image and instantly heard his voice?
>It's the culmination of Matsuno's general style.
It's impossible for FF12 to be this since Matsuno got sick of the suits interfering and trying to get in the way of his vision for the game so he jumped ship.
I like FF12 alot and think Ivalice is easily the best world and universe in the FF series but the game is literally an incomplete version of Matsuno's vision so it isn't right to call the game a culmination imo
>having to programm your characters how to behave is fricking cool >switching jobs on the fly is a fricking must >mmorpg esque world is great with many (shitty requirements) secrets >story is a mess >great armor
Interesting game but the Gambit system is too simple to let me do what I really want. The fact that you can't have gambits route to other gambits means that every action has to be triggered by ONE specific condition which often constraints how complex things can get. DAO was janky as hell but it solved this problem very easily.
I'm also astounded they still didn't fix Decoy being a negative condition such that even casting it on yourself only works once out of every few times.
My other big issue is that the side content is kind of hit and miss compared to the entries that preceded it. For instance, while there are some cute hidden side quests, most of side content is "go kill this thing for some cash and items". You could really see a lot of XI's influence, for the worse.
Aside from that, I liked it. It's weird in some ways because Main Character duties are split between Vaan, Ashe and Basch. But overall, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the world and how much detail was put into fleshing it out overall. I liked how you could go on a sky ferry and hang out there sometimes.
It's clearly obvious that after Matsuno left the suits stepped in and starting changing the story, otherwise it's probably the last "good" FF before the dark times
Not gonna lie but „dark times ff“ are 99.99% because of hd and mismanagement. People are like muh bad ff, but what really happened >toriyama is a shit writer and wrote a dumb ending >square took every hd dev and let them work ok ff14, to recoup sales >ff13 forced to do a triology so square has some income >announcing like too many games too early to please investors and the crowd >giving nomuras baby away to some moron who just should finish the story and do a full game but instead tries to make it his own and shits the bed
All this is pretty much true except for one thing.
The sequels to FF13 weren't made to generate income, that was the job of the hundreds of handheld games and remasters SE made in that era (like constant KH handhelds, FF remasters and remakes on handhelds etc).
The FF13 sequels were made to recoup the costs of the shitty Crystal Tools engine. Investors weren't pleased that they poured millions and millions into a garbage engine that ended up being one and done despite SE promising them that they will get a huge return on their investment because they originally planned to use the engine for long term and cover all their projects company wide. So, in order to not get too much flack from investors, they decided to recycle the assets and the engine for cheap sequels. The extra money surely didn't hurt, but yeah, the main purpose of the sequels was to simply USE the engine on ANYTHING to fool the investors.
>The FF13 sequels were made to recoup the costs of the shitty Crystal Tools engine.
Also the reason Forspoken even exists. It's pretty obvious that SE has abandoned it as its original purpose was to be used by all AAA projects and mainly FF and KH. Turned out to be another turd but they still have to use it on something and recycle all those sweet FFXV assets and its shitty open world. Which is why Forspoken looks like a FFXV asset flip right down to its animations.
I was talking about Luminous, but Luminous is just a remade Crystal Tools anyway. Ebony engine that was being used by Versus, Proto-Luminous that was and is still being used by XIV 2.0 and Luminous itself are all just off shoots of Crystal Tools. They're all different but all started from the same base, the only difference is that Luminous has pretty much ditched most of the baggage from Crystal Tools and has become its own thing.
I think the game is over simplified in its narrative theme. It’s too black and white. The theme is the juxtaposition between doing what is right and doing one’s duty. This is exemplified in Ashe’s journey, in which she eventually learns of her family’s fealty to the occurias,and she must choose to do her duty and take back her throne, or do what is right and free humanity. This is in contrast to Gabranth, who is on the cover art. He also faced a similar choice between his duty to the empire or the moral choice by helping Dalmascus. He chooses his duty, and he gets punished heavily for it in the story, while Ashe chooses to do the right thing, and she gets everything in the end, including her throne and country back. This is a simplified view of things in which one must always forsake ones duty to the moral high ground. Furthermore, Vayne himself is also trying to wrest destiny away from the occurias, yet he is a bad guy, why? It’d make more sense for Larsa to be taken control of by the spirits, with him trying to guide Ashe back to power at the behest of the occurias being a twist, with Vayne being the actually benevolent emperor who succeeds in freeing humanity in the end, having to make the hard choices and sacrifice his family to do so. FF4 did the same narrative theme already, and it did it better, despite more simplistic.
>Furthermore, Vayne himself is also trying to wrest destiny away from the occurias, yet he is a bad guy, why?
Because his attempt at doing it involves conquest and lots of death, destruction and atrocities feeling like it's all for the greater good united under him and his empire compared to Ashe and Larsa's peaceful cooperation. His motives are good but his means are not as he himself realizes he's bringing much undue suffering, even if he believes it's necessary and right in the end.
Ivalice is the best FF universe by far. All of the games in it are fairly good, unfortunately XII has a god awful convoluted plot and the combat is not interesting. The main characters are all fairly bland. It's a great game to explore though and check out sexy Viera.
I hope we get to explore more of Ivalice in the future with an actual good game.
>I hope we get to explore more of Ivalice in the future with an actual good game.
Have you seen what Matsuno is doing now? It's never going to happen. It'll live on in stuff like XVI, Triangle Strategy and the like but I doubt Matsuno will ever step back into Square's offices again.
>I hope we get to explore more of Ivalice in the future with an actual good game.
Have you seen what Matsuno is doing now? It's never going to happen. It'll live on in stuff like XVI, Triangle Strategy and the like but I doubt Matsuno will ever step back into Square's offices again.
>they don't know about ivalice alliance
even the directors know it's a world ripe for the taking but it seems squenix is too busy being moronic, they shown desire to go back and do more shit in that world but something holds them away from it, a shame if anything.
It's not going to happen. People know that Fabula Nova Black person or whatever was a shitshow, trying to market something as sprawling across several games is not going to happen from Square at least for the next decade. XI/XII's staff was largely absorbed into XIV/XVI, YoshiP is a huge Matsunogay and in that sense it'll live on as much as it can without them calling it Ivalice in name. Not that it matters anyway, Ivalice was more about a "style" of game than it was about the actual world itself. XII bottomed it out at flying saucers anyway, trying to pace that backwards to a grounded setting like XVI would be too much work.
>eople know that Fabula Nova Black person or whatever was a shitshow, trying to market something as sprawling across several games is not going to happen from Square at least for the next decade. >Motomu Toriyama >Black person that directed FF13
hahaha, the point of ivalice alliance had little to do with motou because the original devs wanted to do until squenix started snorting rancid coke, i don't know what's going on with these morons and i just hope all the moronic Black folk end up OD'ing somewhere and squenix is either bought or dissolves.
>Archadia, under Vayne who's the defacto ruler, engages in warmaking and conquest. >Their conquest of Dalmasca results in the deaths of Ashe's father and husband as well as Vaan's brother meaning the both of them desire revenge against Archadia. >Through the party's journeying, they meet and befriend Larsa and Vaan begins doubt whether his hatred of Archadia and desire for revenge is correct, eventually deciding it isn't. >The party eventually realizes that Ashe is being guided by the Occuria who have been manipulating Ivalice's history for ages. >Vaye and Venat are attempting to wrest control of fate from the Occuria but their way of doing it is through conquest and bloodshed that brings about suffering, ultimately subscribing to the "a million is just a statistic" school of thought. >Ashe, through Vaan's example, eventually overcomes her desire for revenge, allowing herself to no longer fall prey to the Occuria's manipulations and, like Vayne, fight to put the destiny of Ivalice into the hands of its' people. >The final showdown is then a conflict of ideals over the future of Ivalice: Vayne's "by any meas necessary" Ivalice united under one country and ruler or Ashe's coexistance between all nations; Ashe's ideology wins out through the party's defeat of Vayne.
Doesn't the occuria literally just "eh frick it" once ashe goes the "you can't control me" route? it's not like they take the treaty blade away from her or anything, the space mana aliens just go quiet after that.
The Occuria reigning over the world above the Giruvegan do not consider intervention with those lesser dimensional being to be worth their time. They merely influence civilization's direction via a few people and grant shards which hold a pittance of their power to those people (which practically ignite the planet with how much magic it holds).
When Ashe decides she will not take more from them, the Occuria lose the final amount of interest they had in such a pitiful land and, yes, say >"eh frick it"
and decide they've got other things to do.
Enormous and mind-boggingly breakthrough for civilization of ancient Ivalice, but just a ripple to the Occuria.
That's also another thing. The Occuria are beings who exist far above people. They meddle a bit because hey, we're being benevolent here and helping you insignificant cretins out. But by their chosen steward rejecting them their reaction isn't "NOOOOOO, YOU DARE REJECT US YOU PITIFUL HUMAN SCUM!?" but more "lol fine, we tried but humans are dumb and gay seeya homie". It's also what makes Venat a rebel since it directly intervenes in the affairs of mortals instead of simply guiding and manipulating.
>It's also what makes Venat a rebel since it directly intervenes in the affairs of mortals instead of simply guiding and manipulating.
venat is a rebel for different reasons. he helped the archadians manufacture copies of the shards, thereby limiting the influence the occuria have over the course of history. venat even says >indeed, what claim does gerun have over history's weave on throne immortal, rent from time
after cid says >the reigns of history back in the hands of man
he basically wants humans to be free of otherworldly influence and is branded a heretic as a result. they even say >venat is a heretic
Job system was cool but it should have changed your characters appearance.
I still cant recall anything about the story other than some war.
If they were going to make the MC such an unimportant loser you should have been able to create your own character.
I liked the music.
Gambit system is still a gold standard for games with real time party based combat.
If this game were made today it would probably be a live service game.
Easy to RNG manipulate allowing you to get an entire aresenal of invisible max damage bows that don't require a job license to use as soon as you can ride an airship in the game (like an hour in).
the only thing I wish they could fix which they did in other FF games is to have the gambit system ignore situations where the enemies absorbs elements or are immune, otherwise the gambits just keep casting it over and over and you cant switch them off.
FFXIII you'll stop doing that automatically if you analyze the enemies
I have beaten this game 6 times, 4 of which were 100% runs. Thr gambit system is probably one of the best combat systems I know of, my only complaint is that there aren't enough big fights that require real strategy and pre-planning. The ones that are there though are probably the best fights in the final fantasy seties as a whole.
I liked the combat and world. The story could've been better. My main issue is the cast. It's so fricking random and like none of them know or care about eachother, literally just some dudes off the street and Ashe.
>the cast is >literally just some dudes off the street and Ashe.
You didn't play FFXII.
Also, the level of drama, fantastic writing, spectacular acting, incredible graphics and even higher tier music made playing the game a wonder. It easily met critical fame, which it certainly warranted.
Or the "Lucifer" Venat who falls out of the ruling Heavens to support the Emperor into inciting death to break fated control of the future from God(s), but fails?
Is FFXII the Bible, too?
Does having Captain Basch forgiving the Judge chasing him, sparing his life only for the Judge to kill himself by suicide make this "Les Miserables," as well?
Uh oh! The game doesn't have robots, so I guess it CAN'T have R2-D2 or C-3P0, so it's definitely nothing like Star Wars, never mind. Coincidences aren't real in writing, everything is by intent and thought out and precise and filled with deep meaning. Similarities don't exist: it's blatant plagiarism!
I love the game and even I can admit that it’s heavily inspired by Star Wars anon
Do you really not see the parallels between luke/Han and vaan/balthier?
The mid to last part was such a let down, you can clearly see the writer and direction changed, its so rushed and poorly done. Shame because it had serious potential, also the gameplay was trash.
I think it was only in the last decade that Japanese software companies finally got out of the habit of sharing source code on flash drives. Japan is a country of extremes when it comes to technology. You have either tech wizards who can pull a crazy amount of weight or a bunch of tech-illiterate laymen who wouldn't know the difference between an OS and a program.
why the hell does XII have so much missable content? do one wrong thing and you lose the zodiac spear. I can't tell if that was in the original or the zodiac age recitify this.
I know I beat the game, but I don't remember anything about the story.I don't even remember how it starts. I do remember liking the gambit system. I should replay this again sometime.
Empires are at war Archadia, Rosaria and Dalmasca, Dalcasca gets conquered by Archadia, Gabranth (one of the most KINO villians in video games) gets PTSD from this declares himself dead inside, becomes a cuck of the Empire as a Judge Magister because all was stripped from him his nation, everything defects to Archadia the only thing that remains of his past self is that he hates his twin bro for not showing up to the war.
Frames his big bro so he gets arrested in the Rossarian alliance army, they think Basch killed the Dalcascan King. They arrest him instead of Gabranth.
Archadia is subverting kingdoms the frick up and conquering them from the inside very cleverly. Archadia also is developing the nuclear bomb of this world because they have a genius scientist Cid who is the father of Balthier the sky pirate dude with the cool voice actor.
They need to stop this new age of nukes where Archadia has a monopoly on nukes. They need to break free of the Ocuria. That is the true struggle for freedom. It's main theme is freedom. Freedom gets explored in a lot of its dimensions: anarchistic (pirates), statal with rights (the empires), religious (the occuria).
I played the game for 10 hours at least, i couldn't finish it because my computer is a potato, and for all i played i liked it, will probably play it again once i get my new gayming computer
Its kino in its own way if you like politics and warring empires n shit you will like dwelling into the lore. it has the most complete world of any final fantasy.
>4x speedhack ruins the game >dual jobs ruins the game >ez seitengrat ruins the game IZJS was better
>x4 speed ruins the game
you homosexuals complained about how slow the first non-zodiac age expansion version was which is why it got added
Dual jobs make the game significnatly easier sure but you can install Struggle for Freedom mod and go Struggle for all the builds to challenge yourself. Even with Dual Jobs the difficulty will feel good.
gambit system is kino world is kino vaan is a homosexual balthier best character of all ff with ignis
>balthier best character of all ff with ignis
based
I want a party based rpg similar to this but with more depth to the gambit systems. For example multiple if then/else statements on a single action.
Does anyone know any other games that have a system like that?
No, 12 is more like RTwP while xenoblade is like a mix between an MMO and real time (Not action) combat. In 12 you can control your entire party whereas in xenoblade you control 1 person but there are more mechanics to juggle to compensate
a shittier version of it yes. the cool shit about FF12 is the gambits you can refine the AI so it becomes a well oiled war machine everyone following the AI commands you programmed into them so everything just works optimally.
You can make some gambit chains where tbh you can leave the controller down in battle and it will play itself. Your teammates will be so good that you can just not play. But don't do that, it becomes more boring.
A super boss will always demand you are engaged with whats happening anyway.
That's not cool, it just exposes how shallow the gameplay systems are, which was true for previous FF games too but those had good pacing, proper stories, and mix ups in gameplay to compensate
Probably my least favourite game by Matsuno (which isn't surprising with how he quit S-E during FFXII's development) - I dumped like 200-300 hours into it due to sheer amount of side content, but plot itself was surprisingly boring (Judges was the best part of it, all five of them had fantastic VAs) and badly paced. Game balance was all over the place (I know IZJS fixed it but I'm no longer 14yo who can easily spend 200+ hours on non-portable game I already beat before), especially Zodiacs - they were super fun to fight but absolutely useless when you summoned them.
Also frick Pharos and Great Crystal dungeons, both should've been postgame dungeons and not plot-driven ones - it's like if I had to beat Palace of the Dead in Tactics Ogre to progress through the main story.
In short - I came for plot but stayed for the gameplay because plot didn't excite me.
FFT > Vagrant Story > Tactics Ogre LUCT > FFXII
Is my overall rating of Matsuno's games (LUCT is so low because of too many garbage gameplay decisions, plot is fine; Vagrant Story's main issue is too much menuing)
Great game misunderstood but 90% of its player base >b-but I!!! >Dissidia!!! >worst mc!!!
Telltale signs you are detailing with a legitimate moron
Game is fantastic and has a great cast
archadian empire is such a good track. archades as a whole is just masterfully designed. the partition between the slums and city proper, the skyline and hoving cabs, and the aesthetic of its soldiers is all pure kino.
I like the game, especially the zodiac edition, but every time I play I get annoyed and stop playing because too many items are a huge pain in the butt to get, if not outright esoteric in where to find them.
It's a wonderful game to invest in and partake with. You get a whole new world to immerse yourself in... and it's an amazing world! It's deep, it's big, it's detailed, and it's beautiful! There are hundreds upon hundreds of people you can talk to, dozens upon dozens of sub-plots associated with friends and strangers and mafias and racial disputes and emergency needs and religious requests that are assigned to named characters that have their own voice actors... or simply named NPCs who have comedy for dialogue to read and clearly comfortable in this land of Ivalice. Pride in where they're from and who they are, scheming about what they can do next and who to bribe.
ALL of it occurring in front of what seals it all together, prevent any escape: gorgeous music. An entire soundtrack, for every region, for every city, for every overworld walk, for every underworld cavern, it's all endless and remarkable. A musical soundtrack you literally turn on the game just so you can GO TO THAT PLACE and LISTEN because of how much it feels like you're, just, THERE when you hear it. Like the Giza Plains. An entire region that changes based on rainfall and when you go and how you manipulate things. It's wonderful.
I'm glad you loved this game. I'll affirm to you that it's worth your love.
I really appreciated the fact that you can beat omega weapon in the trial mode and not have to run through the godforsaken great crystal yet another time.
Trying to 100% the vanilla PS2 version of this game actually burned me out in ways that made me lose interest in playing anything else on my backlog. I was a genuinely punishing experience that left me disappointed every step of the way.
Do the zodiac edition instead. The trial mode lets you get OP weapons and transfer them back to your game which can make the grind mildly easier. It’s still hours and hours of random drops to worry about though.
>This game is political >But there are also these godlike beings that
Everytime. Do Japanese devs get paid extra if you kill some gods near the end of the game?
It's amazing seeing the sheer amount of people who clamour for Basch to be MC when he contributed the least out of the male party members and the so called mature character who got replaced wasn't Basch in the first place.
He plays the role of making decisions based on loyalty to his beliefs rather than loyalty to others'. If you're asking about something else he does, at the end of the game his twin brother Judge Gabranth dies. So, he puts on his armor, takes that identity and becomes Lord Larsa's guardian from then on.
The VA work was fricking amazing.
Cool world.
Neat Jobs.
Actually difficult boss fights if you don't know the gimmick or aren't over leveled/abuse quickening.
Well, yeah, there's the player being too dumb. Like when Kingmaker came out - a lot of dumbasses who didn't know the first thing about Pathfinder got filtered by the spider cave, because they didn't realize that killing swarms requires splash weapons or a torch.
My first home console was the PS3, until then I only had handhelds, and to be honest even now I just mostly play stuff on the Switch and the Steam Deck while laying in bed.
ain't it gameboy or something? so about as much as that.
2 years ago
Anonymous
It's a DS game. You summon hordes of cute chibi FF monsters and have them march towards the enemy's summon circle while fighting their own hordes of cute chibi FF monsters.
Why did they make a universe with a bunch of different cool species, but then the party members consist of: >Light haired hume #1 >Light haired hume #2 >Light haired hume #3 >Light haired hume #4 >Light haired hume #5 >Light haired bunny girl
So I played this game because my ex recommended it to me. Little did I know that she loved games that weren't hard or played themselves. The gameplay is some of the most sleep inducing shit I've ever seen.
I got to the point where you need to rescue Panelo and realized it wasn't going to get any better.
Didn't play the OG when it was out because I didn't have ps2. Bought the Zodiac Age remake excited to play it, but gameplay was boring and I haven't picked it up since then. Does it get better eventually or nah?
Cool world. Gay gameplay.
/thread
Upvoted.
I would have rather Reks been the main character
Dualclassing was a mistake
I used the game as a discus
because it was fricking horrible
midwits
ruined by vaan and penelo, the two characters put in to appeal to two of japan's biggest demographics.
If you take Vaan and Penelo out, the game doesn't get that much better.
That anon is also wrong in that you CAN'T take Vaan out, because his realization and display of acceptance instead of revenge is the only reason Ashe can follow suit and not become the next Dynast King, saving humankind.
>Yeah, well, it doesn't have to be VAAN
He fits the trope. His characterization is what is needed in a "lesser plebe" being able to overcome his trials to compare to the Dalmascan royal to overcome hers. His responsibilities are less, so he can win his fate faster and easier than Ashe, who has much much more.
>Okay, but Vaan could've wanted to be a baker for all I care
I know how these threads' arguments tend to go.
yeah i'm not gonna do the meme complaints since they're fricking moronic.
but i hate how the game story ends JUST as it gets started. FFIX had the same problem too.
I wish the game had some QoL choices for the side quests and hunting but it's a pretty "fun" game. I'll be ready to get bombed but if it had a more "action" (literally press a button to attack tier and another button for specials with like literally 3-4 hit combos) based combat with the job variety and gambits - i'd be extremely happy.
The worst Final Fantasy game
>t. The one guy who liked FFXIII and hates that XIII-2 changed things
Not at all, go hang off a tree REEEEtard
cool world. best gameplay in the series. disappointing story.
9/10
Wears out it's welcome the same as the rest of the franchise
Dogshit single player MMO that is "le underrated reddit gem"
I thought it was pretty funny SE packaged a FFXII demo with Dragon Quest VIII to sell more copies. I had multiple friends who bought DQ8 just for the demo. Turns out most liked DQ8 more lol
wasn't zodiac age a shitty "remaster" outsourced to indians?
no, it's the game's best version. the patched OG is fine too
then what was the shitty remaster called?
the x remaster is the one that's fricked up
it changes all of the character faces and screws up facial animation in cutscenes
You're thinking of FFX's demaster. FFXII's wasn't that bad. It was made by the same people though
It's only a little bit shitty and on PC it's definitive because of 60fps and mods.
i hated going around the town saying i’m bash or whatever his name was. shit was so annoying and the voice acting for the main character was so bad
BASCH LIVES!
ROSENBURG
DON'T BELIEVE ONDORES LIES
I wonder why this remains for so many people. It's a tiny required mini-quest to just press the "shout" button in a couple different places in town until the cops come by to arrest you. It takes, like, 3 minutes.
I was bored and gave it up. It felt like a star wars rip off / single player mmo where I had to write programs to make the AI not moronic, rather just play FFX again
FF10 will never be good, Kitase will never lick your balls
https://www.siliconera.com/top-10-final-fantasy-games-in-japan-include-ffx-and-ffxiv/
cope
>beaten by 7 and 6
OH NONONONO
I love when people compare Final Fantasy XII to Star Wars. It's accurate, there's lots of similarities in characters and design, but the music is SO VERY John Williams, it's IMO breathtaking! I love it, a lot.
It gives me an excuse to broadcast one of my favorite comparisons: The Sandsea. How much it instantly makes people think of exploring deep Tatooine when hearing this track... it's fun.
But it's not just "taking rolling deserts" or something. It's got giant storage tanks and mining locales and inns and and and and... there's LOTS to find playing FFXII. It is a BIG game.
Playing it right now, it's okay, I guess. I genuinely despise Vaan and his VA though and it really seems like everything else in the game is 2000x more interesting and I can only image that Matsuno was not the one who came up with that moron.
>le ebin single player MMO
Isn't the gambit system just a better version of whatever Xenoblade has going on? Never felt like an MMO to me.
The game is formatted like an MMO with it just having generic side quests and wide open fields with pretty much nothing in them. But yeah the combat is better than Xenoblade, another single player MMO.
>generic side quests and wide open fields with pretty much nothing in them.
The more I hear this the more I realize it's applicable to everything but (you)r favorite game. There's not a single game in the series where that description wouldn't be "valid" in some sense.
You're just being a moron, you've probably never played an MMO even.
Take FF10 for example, it's linear and has a variety of mini-games ergo it's nothing like an MMO.
You can even look at other RPGs with larger worlds, like say Dragons Dogma. Nothing like an MMO because it has action combat and the side quests are not generic since your actions make a difference.
FF12 has brainless combat with auto-attacks, a bad combat to story ratio, generic as frick side-content, and wide open fields with almost nothing in it. Very much like an MMO.
Dunno why you brought up DD, I said in the series, as in an FF game. FFXIV has minigames, does that make it not an MMO?
>brainless combat with auto attacks
lmao
>is this MMO not an MMO?
Now this moron isn't even trying to make sense.
Having minigames is a quality you brought up for FFX not being an MMO, read your own posts you fat imbecile
Ironic that a fricking moron is calling anyone else stupid.
>12 isn't even on the list
>no argument
Predictable response from a Xigger
You stopped trying to make an argument, you're just acting like a moron because it's all a moron can do.
I accept your concession
So you're a schizo too, pathetic.
I accept your concession
>The game is formatted like an MMO with it just having generic side quests and wide open fields with pretty much nothing in them.
Is this honestly what X and XIII fans feel about games that arent a hallway?
Gambit is irrelevant because ff12 (along with every FF) has braindead combat. If you ask it to do anything other than the most basic of things, it falls apart (e.g. trying to set up a sensible steal gambit is impossible). Gambit would be a disaster in xenoblade because it's a more complex game, the AI has to take positioning, aggro management, unique art effects, CC combos, talent arts, and various different DoTs all at the same time. The sequels are even more complex, the base ai doesn't work all the time (melia) but it's better than what a Gambit system would be, it's also one of the reasons why xenoblade Uber mogs ff12, among many other reasons like environment/level design, music, a proper completed story, etc.
I'll never be able to take someone that says Xenbolade's environment is good seriously
They aren't very special nowadays but back then that level of detail and geometry was unseen in jrpgs, in any case they still take a fat shit over 12's "environment design"
>xenofrickingblade
>in any case they still take a fat shit over 12's "environment design"
12' environments don't even have vertically, it's a horizontal plane with no level design
Are you joking?
No I played the game unfortunately, gave it 3 tries but it was boring as frick even with 4x speed. I played VS after and despite being an even more unfinished matsuno game much more thought was put into the level design from a decade prior
Being a part of Ivalice, it is already considerably northern Middle Eastern with borrowed designs from all sorts of desert lands, Mediterranean architecture, Turkish structure, Lebanese, Syrian... to say there is "no design" put into where Final Fantasy XII is placed is quite false.
Dalmasca, Garamsythe Waterway, Nalbina, Mines, Ozmone Plains, Sochen Cave Palace, Archades, Cerobi Steppe, Balfonheim Port, Phon Coast region, Salikawood, Nabreus Deadlands, Skycity of Bhujerba, the 3 Jagd regions to include Tomb of Raithwall to the Sandseas to the Golmore Jungle to the Jahara to the Giruvegan to the Pharos, Mt. Bur-Omisace... that's not even one-third the areas of FFXII and they have CONSIDERABLE amounts of design placed into them. The royal cities and capitals have SKYSCRAPERS for how much verticality they have inside and outside the buildings, the Sandseas closer to any city have considerable amounts of hills and pits and canyons, other Sandseas are surprising in how flat they are and yet still have sandtraps and sudden rocky peaks, too. The destroyed lands and cities, the bright steppes and highlands, the ethereal Giruvegan and the vampiric Pharos, the intimidating but divine Mt. Bur-Omisace, even the undergrounds and the caves are different according to where they appear on the map for how much is human-impacted like the Henne Mines to how much is simply stalagtite and stalagmite caverns... they're all different and unique and yet still keep the theme of a more Mediterranean Ivalice. And all have stairways and hills and "too high to see" and "too scary to peak down into" built into their maps.
And more than just differences, the DETAIL is EXTRAORDINARY, too.
I'm sorry nothing caught your eye when racing through the game at 4x-speed, but it's a marvelous world and a very strongly designed video game.
All set to wonderful music, too. Makes you slow down and listen~
I was talking about the level design brah there's no verticality in ff12
Then you aren't being clear on what you mean by "verticality."
You say you're talking about "level design," but there's ENORMOUS buildings in most of the cities, skyscrapers even. The Sandseas are flat and open with glaringly obvious tanks that stand tall above the vast desert, all on purpose to catch your attention. There are mountains to crawl up and down, there are caves to descend, there's are areas literally defines as the Lowlands and the Uplands. Heck, there's a actual city in the sky... and another divine city housing god-like beings that aircraft can't even reach! There's TONS of "verticality" in "level design."
Or do you mean in gameplay, where you have control of Vaan, that there's "no verticality?" Every city has staircases to climb up and down, taxis to take from one area or another that ride on platforms and fly over parts of town, sewers to descend into where solving puzzles requires enormous climbing and draining and moving over and around pillars that can hide your view or let you peak over what you have yet to do. The "overworld" outside cities has STEEP cliffs and sandy hills that you have to hike up and down to reach items or unique monsters, there are rocky blocks you can't climb over, there are more stairs to climb to leads to areas with decks and grated shelves, Heck, there's even areas that are specifically elevated so you can garner perspective of just how BIG the place you're exploring is! The Tomb of Raithwall is BUILT around ups and downs. The Pharos is literally DESIGNED around the fact it is a lighthouse and you need to climb it! There's TONS of "verticality" when moving around the map.
If you're baiting me, good job, because it's disappointing when people spew lies about what is a spectacularly designed video game.
having staircases and shit isn't proper veticality for level design because they just work as dividers, games like elden ring, xenoblade, or even smt now with v have multiple ways to get somewhere based on jumping around and going through different paths, 12 doesn't, it's open fields are very limited, you can't even jump in 12.
Also when comparing actually veticality in terms of world building obviously 12 isn't as good as xenoblade
>I wanted a platformer
For crying out loud.
>FFXII isn't as good as Xenoblade Chronicles
Xenoblade Chronicles was a game designed around your ability to jump, used a completely different game engine, came out for the Wii, and was release more than 4 years after FFXII was.
Does Xenoblade Chronicles have peaks that literally take minutes to climb to the top of, which FFXII does not have? Yes, you're right. You can even claim it has "more verticality."
But stop saying "FFXII has no verticality" when it does. It has lots. And it's a JRPG, not Mario 64.
12 is my favorite FF after Tactics and I have to agree somewhat with the idea that 12 lacks verticality, or something. Every time I play 12 I get the feeling the game was too ambitious for the hardware it was developed for, it tries to make a big complex world fit onto a shitty 4:3 screen, the camera really restricts how much you can view of the world, so there's always a cramped up feeling I get every time I play 12. You can't ever really zoom out to get a better look at anything, you literally get to stare at three FF girl butts or pan up and see them from the top. It's great except it's not.
FFXII was the first Final Fantasy game that gave you control of the camera (FFX's camera could very mildly move, but it was mapped to the background you ran on), and even then it did have a zoom in and out function. You didn't have to keep the camera zoomed in on your party. When you went out into different regions, you absolutely could zoom the camera out and pan around to feel some freedom. Though, this was NOT as "free" as when inside the mines or the caves or places like the Barheim Passage. It was MEANT to feel "cramped."
I'm happy to hear you very much enjoyed FFXII, and Tactics! But we disagree about its design being "too big" for the Playstation 2. It's breathtaking and groundbreaking, honestly in all it can do and all it shows. I can concede that, given the game's JRPG genre and the fact it is 18+ years old now, you've probably been able to experience other games that let you REALLY "zoom out" and feel free and open than what 2006 FFXII did. That's fair to you. But, I can't say it's fair to FFXII. It wasn't really meant to be BoTW: Final Fantasy. And yet, what it did was still huge and the game had a lot, and I do mean A LOT, of content inside it. For a game centered around its plot and its delivery, it got enormous world design, level design, character design and detail to go with it. Variation that still kept its Ivalice theme and "Mediterranean" feel.
Kind of a bloated game.
tried to finish it 3 different times and couldnt do it but I loved most of the VA.
Excellent game at 4x speed.
Doesn't matter if you can choose your job for each character. At the end of the day, it's still the same auto attack mmorpg combat. The characters don't even change clothes when you give them a new job.
Amazing world and graphics, wasted potential story.
I'm captain basch!!! Decent game. Bad music and story for a FF
Everything it did from gameplay, to characters, to the music, to plot, and to the world was done and improved upon in Xenoblade 1. It was more of a Final Fantasy 13 and actual spiritual sequel to 12 than Final Fantasy 13 itself.
Xenoblade has objectively worse gameplay and arguably worse music.
>xenoblade arguably worse music than ff12
12tards are delusional holy shit
Both games are slightly mediocre in the OST department.
most osts are complete background noise, but if you listen to anyone who liked any single game ever theirs not a single bad ost in this world except there is. most are
i think the only company that consistently puts out fantastic osts is Atlus
>Everything it did from gameplay, to characters, to the music, to plot, and to the world was done and improved upon in Xenoblade 1.
I'd argue that XIV is more of a XII sequel than XIII or XB1
It did British voice acting better too. Why did it sound like XII's actors were talking into cans when they spoke anyways?
Compression to minimize storage, I'm guessing
it was pure kino and the last good final fantasy game
The gambit system might be pretty fun if you have the tism or like micromanagement. The rest is just kind of forgettable. It felt too grounded compared to previous FF titles.
Also I really disliked the fact that there were no physical arts for melee oriented classes. Mages got all the cool shit.
>Also I really disliked the fact that there were no physical arts for melee oriented classes. Mages got all the cool shit.
with the other part going into the quickening shit.
The Technicks were so fricking stupid that it felt like they were shoved in at the last minute.
>Do damage based on all the steps you've taken since the last time you used this skill
>but also we're not going to give you any gambits to detect when you've taken a lot of steps
it was literally last minute cracktrip idea, after years Black folk found out the formula
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Traveler_(ability)#Final_Fantasy_XII
Biggest brainlet filter in video games.
>the game that literally has an auto-battle system
>and boring as frick story
yeah totally a filter
it got some homosexuals angry and unwilling to play it so yeah, totally a filter.
>if everyone gets bored it's good
The story is great though. It's the culmination of Matsuno's general style.
>everyone on the development team from the writers to Sakimoto loved her and considered her their favorite character
>all of her scenes got cut for time though so everyone just considers her useless and unimportant
A damn shame.
>It's the culmination of Matsuno's general style.
What? More like an incredibly milquetoast take on his usual formula. The fantasy politics completely die off like halfway through the game and then it's a generic plot about scouring ancient ruins and shit for magical artifacts.
The central plot is about the REAL heroes and the struggle to wrest control of Ivalice's destiny away from evil gods and this all plays out behind the scenes of the great political conflict and winds up being covered up until someone writes later on to reveal the the truth of things.
This is like Matsuno 101. The politics always window dressing to the unknown behind the scenes struggles.
The main problem is that everything that is interesting in FF12 happens and doesn't show it to the player.
It was bullshit that we only got 1 Viera and 5 bland Humes.
Balthier does have some great lines though.
>This is like Matsuno 101. The politics always window dressing to the unknown behind the scenes struggles.
Except that stories like FFT's handled this stuff way better and made the core plot that much more entertaining in context. FFXII did not. Most of its events best events happen off-screen while the playable cast are busy dicking around in ancient ruins.
The game itself is speaking to the player that what Ashe's team is doing by "dicking around in ancient ruins" is BY FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR the most important thing happening to Ivalice. And it's something the entire land will NEVER know about. It will be covered-up by Marquis Halim Ondore IV in his united fight against Archadia and how he re-tells the story. He is this games narrator, after all.
You're simply stating that "war battles" are cooler and you would've liked this to be "Independence Day," not "Stargate."
>The game itself is speaking to the player that what Ashe's team is doing by "dicking around in ancient ruins" is BY FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR the most important thing happening to Ivalice.
And? That part of the story is not very interesting. It's a generic JRPG plot about a ragtag group of adventurers rising up against some shady supernatural figures and an "evil" empire. That's been done a million times and is not the thing that people really care about in Matsuno stories. What they care about is all the fantasy politics and world building.
How do you know the "best stuff happens off-screen?"
It could be just a boring ship battle and political diplomat meeting for all you know.
The only conclusion you're coming to is that you didn't like the quest across Ivalice with the Princess of Dalmasa, a Prince of Archades, a traitorous General of the army who's twin brother is a Judge of the Empire, a renegade mercenary and son of the most important adjunct of the Empire "Sky Pirate" and his sexy-as-frick-Playboy playmate and the naive coward plebian with his teenaged girlfriend. That journey where they fight against fallen Espers, god-like beings, learn of the secret and hidden history of the Dynast King, explore caves and dungeons in the hope of evasion, and the tropical lands near the ocean or the mystical lands near the mountain peak or the literal Skycity of Bhujerba, that journey where they gain power and knowledge and grow and team-up with more and more leaders of the world and surpass their own misgivings and wretched pasts... the conclusion you come up with is "warships firing cannons is way cooler, this sucks. I didn't buy a game to listen to Shakespeare."
>What's so interesting about Fran talking to her sister in a forest? Huh?
You're the type that plays JRPGs as fast as they can and goes to the bathroom during cutscenes, aren't you?
>What's so interesting about Fran talking to her sister in a forest? Huh?
God that was a boring part of the game. Nothing happened. The best part was the very end when Vaan makes a joke about Fran's age and people tell him to grow up. Everything else about that entire part of the game was boring. I wish I could play an arcade shooter or Pokemon Snap, give me some action.
>The only conclusion you're coming to is that you didn't like the quest across Ivalice with the Princess of Dalmasa, a Prince of Archades, a traitorous General of the army who's twin brother is a Judge of the Empire, a renegade mercenary and son of the most important adjunct of the Empire "Sky Pirate" and his sexy-as-frick-Playboy playmate and the naive coward plebian with his teenaged girlfriend.
I would've been okay with those four. I wasn't okay with irrelevant street rats joining the party and wasting time with their inane blabbering.
>That journey where they fight against fallen Espers, god-like beings, learn of the secret and hidden history of the Dynast King, explore caves and dungeons in the hope of evasion, and the tropical lands near the ocean or the mystical lands near the mountain peak or the literal Skycity of Bhujerba
This kind of stuff comes part and parcel with the FF series. The mere presence of fantasy whimsy is not gonna impress twelve games into a series chock full of the stuff. There's got to be a unique twist it that makes the setting stand out. I didn't feel that in FFXII.
>that journey where they gain power and knowledge and grow and team-up with more and more leaders of the world and surpass their own misgivings and wretched pasts...
You mean like every other FF cast? I don't see how this is special or exceptional.
>I don't see how this is special or exceptional.
To other FF? You're right! It fits a fictional story about heroes saving a planet. So witty.
To other video games? I dunno, Final Fantasy XII is very much like Crash Bandicoot.
What is even the point of this post? Of course I'm going to set my expectations for a game in a long-running series based on earlier entries in the series.
>If you're not feeling any uniqueness to FFXII in terms of its world, lore, English dialogue delivery or how it matched its theme of a fictional fantasy world set in the land of Ivalice, then you're quite dull.
FFXII is quite dull. So dull, in fact, that the developers had to put in a fast-forward feature just to keep players from falling asleep during its hours of long, boring deserts and dungeons.
>And don't tell me it's because you played FF1 through 11 before you played FF12 that it lost any special value to you, and then should lose value to everyone else.
It's not just because of that. I could go into its pacing issues, it's semi-autopilot combat, its boring villains, etc.
>FFXII is quite dull. So dull, in fact, that the developers had to put in a fast-forward feature just to keep players from falling asleep during its hours of long, boring deserts and dungeons.
This "feature" was applied to combat. You didn't like FFXII's Gambit-based combat? Fine. But I won't state it's "dull." It was VERY specific and required strong, manipulative investment to "get it right."
>It's not just because of my having experienced all other games that I find Final Fantasy XII to be quite dull. But it's the biggest reason why I think so. Don't blame me for being so highly experienced in all the other games just like FFXII. There's just so many.
>I could explain why FFXII is just like every single other boring game in existence but I won't.
Nah, you don't have to. I wish Ganker had Zodiac Age fast-forward on posts; it takes so long to bother reading them. I don't even want to read them. I'm certain because I've played 1chan, 2chan, and 3chan before coming here. It's all the same.
>This "feature" was applied to combat.
No, it was applied to every part of the game. It's literally bound to a shoulder button. I can't remember which one (I think it was R1), but it was definitely around for more than just the combat. I clearly remember speeding through Rabanastre with it on multiple times when I was playing the IZJS and ZA versions.
>You didn't like FFXII's Gambit-based combat?
I like the idea of programmable AI, but not when it's used in a boring, real-time MMO-esque combat system where you can only directly control one character at a time and spend most of your playtime running around pointlessly lengthy dungeons killing weak enemies. At that point, I'd rather just stick with a standard ATB system and maybe replace random battles with field encounters that go into a separate battle screen.
>Nah, you don't have to. I wish Ganker had Zodiac Age fast-forward on posts; it takes so long to bother reading them. I don't even want to read them. I'm certain because I've played 1chan, 2chan, and 3chan before coming here. It's all the same.
You seem awful perturbed in the posterior, buddy. Maybe I suggest a bit of Preparation H?
>I clearly remember speeding through Rabanastre with it on multiple times when I was playing the IZJS and ZA versions.
...Because you were replaying a 2nd and 3rd time a game you verrrrrrrrry fully played before, right?
You wanted to replay FFXII so much, it was your 3rd or more time replaying it after all, that "exploring" the towns was just a "waste of your time and added nothing to your fond memory of playing FFXII," right???
>...Because you were replaying a 2nd and 3rd time a game you verrrrrrrrry fully played before, right?
I'm not digging out my fricking PS4 just to prove I beat the game. I haven't touched that thing in almost two years.
>You're literally complaining you played FFXII, and replayed it two more times, and that it was boring every time.
I only ever beat the ZA version. I didn't get very far in OG and I only got as far as snow mountain area in the IZJS version.
You're literally complaining you played FFXII, and replayed it two more times, and that it was boring every time. So boring that even when 4x running through towns, nothing caught your interest. Like fast-forwarding the game and story didn't make it "better" it just brought you to the end "sooner."
for a fricking PS2 era game this looks so fricking good
Ashe is the most beautiful woman in gaming history tbh
Strong art direction will always trump fancy ultra realistic graphics. DQ8 looks great too.
DQ always looked nice though, just like CT.
And that's just some minor shop in some backstreet of some huge town. Designers really put effort into this game, geez.
>hopscotch on weird floor patterns
holy frick i thought i was the only kid that did this.
My folks loved oriental rugs and I played on these, too.
Went outside to the school park where I could find concrete and make a hopscotch graph and also Skip-It. It's fun to see background NPCs just playing.
How stupid. It's like watching a play written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and saying
>What was that? So boring. It was just like every other musical I've ever seen. Nothing unique about that at all.
If you're not feeling any uniqueness to FFXII in terms of its world, lore, English dialogue delivery or how it matched its theme of a fictional fantasy world set in the land of Ivalice, then you're quite dull.
And don't tell me it's because you played FF1 through 11 before you played FF12 that it lost any special value to you, and then should lose value to everyone else.
There's nothing unique about 12's ivalice. Had you said vagrant story I would have agreed. And no, it doesn't count because they're in the same universe or some shit
>And don't tell me it's because you played FF1 through 11 before you played FF12
As someone that actually did this FF12 is special. Only FF with that kind of Persian-Eastern themed architecture and cities. Reminds me of how with FF10 they went with a Polynesian theme for the world.
No wonder they were infinitely superior (in world design) to any medieval FF that preceded them.
A pleasant lie, that.
just how old is she by the way?
According to "Final Fantasy Scenario Ultimania" she has to be at least 50 years old and is likely to be considerably older.
I love that voice acting
Yeah, it's all really well done. You can tell tone and sense of class disparity, not just from the writing, but in how it's recited. The main story characters are, frankly, clever in how they speak their lines.
I mean, c'mon, who saw this image and instantly heard his voice?
i don't remember much about her but her ass is outrageous
>It's the culmination of Matsuno's general style.
It's impossible for FF12 to be this since Matsuno got sick of the suits interfering and trying to get in the way of his vision for the game so he jumped ship.
I like FF12 alot and think Ivalice is easily the best world and universe in the FF series but the game is literally an incomplete version of Matsuno's vision so it isn't right to call the game a culmination imo
gambit system is kino world is kino vaan is a homosexual balthier best character of all ff with ignis
>Tfw hated the gambit system and enjoyed pausing and issuing commands
I can't be the only one
pennelo's hips are making me unwise
Can't wait for XVI to filter the frick out of these same homosexuals yet again, 92 universal acclaim btw
>having to programm your characters how to behave is fricking cool
>switching jobs on the fly is a fricking must
>mmorpg esque world is great with many (shitty requirements) secrets
>story is a mess
>great armor
Interesting game but the Gambit system is too simple to let me do what I really want. The fact that you can't have gambits route to other gambits means that every action has to be triggered by ONE specific condition which often constraints how complex things can get. DAO was janky as hell but it solved this problem very easily.
I'm also astounded they still didn't fix Decoy being a negative condition such that even casting it on yourself only works once out of every few times.
My other big issue is that the side content is kind of hit and miss compared to the entries that preceded it. For instance, while there are some cute hidden side quests, most of side content is "go kill this thing for some cash and items". You could really see a lot of XI's influence, for the worse.
Aside from that, I liked it. It's weird in some ways because Main Character duties are split between Vaan, Ashe and Basch. But overall, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the world and how much detail was put into fleshing it out overall. I liked how you could go on a sky ferry and hang out there sometimes.
It's clearly obvious that after Matsuno left the suits stepped in and starting changing the story, otherwise it's probably the last "good" FF before the dark times
Not gonna lie but „dark times ff“ are 99.99% because of hd and mismanagement. People are like muh bad ff, but what really happened
>toriyama is a shit writer and wrote a dumb ending
>square took every hd dev and let them work ok ff14, to recoup sales
>ff13 forced to do a triology so square has some income
>announcing like too many games too early to please investors and the crowd
>giving nomuras baby away to some moron who just should finish the story and do a full game but instead tries to make it his own and shits the bed
Literally everyone knows that the dark times came from mismanagement and Crystal Tools, I don't see the point you are trying to make here.
All this is pretty much true except for one thing.
The sequels to FF13 weren't made to generate income, that was the job of the hundreds of handheld games and remasters SE made in that era (like constant KH handhelds, FF remasters and remakes on handhelds etc).
The FF13 sequels were made to recoup the costs of the shitty Crystal Tools engine. Investors weren't pleased that they poured millions and millions into a garbage engine that ended up being one and done despite SE promising them that they will get a huge return on their investment because they originally planned to use the engine for long term and cover all their projects company wide. So, in order to not get too much flack from investors, they decided to recycle the assets and the engine for cheap sequels. The extra money surely didn't hurt, but yeah, the main purpose of the sequels was to simply USE the engine on ANYTHING to fool the investors.
>The FF13 sequels were made to recoup the costs of the shitty Crystal Tools engine.
Also the reason Forspoken even exists. It's pretty obvious that SE has abandoned it as its original purpose was to be used by all AAA projects and mainly FF and KH. Turned out to be another turd but they still have to use it on something and recycle all those sweet FFXV assets and its shitty open world. Which is why Forspoken looks like a FFXV asset flip right down to its animations.
FFXV was made on Luminous not CT
I was talking about Luminous, but Luminous is just a remade Crystal Tools anyway. Ebony engine that was being used by Versus, Proto-Luminous that was and is still being used by XIV 2.0 and Luminous itself are all just off shoots of Crystal Tools. They're all different but all started from the same base, the only difference is that Luminous has pretty much ditched most of the baggage from Crystal Tools and has become its own thing.
Played like 10 minutes the other day
Man this is just FFXI, get out of here FFXI nobody likes you dude.
I think the game is over simplified in its narrative theme. It’s too black and white. The theme is the juxtaposition between doing what is right and doing one’s duty. This is exemplified in Ashe’s journey, in which she eventually learns of her family’s fealty to the occurias,and she must choose to do her duty and take back her throne, or do what is right and free humanity. This is in contrast to Gabranth, who is on the cover art. He also faced a similar choice between his duty to the empire or the moral choice by helping Dalmascus. He chooses his duty, and he gets punished heavily for it in the story, while Ashe chooses to do the right thing, and she gets everything in the end, including her throne and country back. This is a simplified view of things in which one must always forsake ones duty to the moral high ground. Furthermore, Vayne himself is also trying to wrest destiny away from the occurias, yet he is a bad guy, why? It’d make more sense for Larsa to be taken control of by the spirits, with him trying to guide Ashe back to power at the behest of the occurias being a twist, with Vayne being the actually benevolent emperor who succeeds in freeing humanity in the end, having to make the hard choices and sacrifice his family to do so. FF4 did the same narrative theme already, and it did it better, despite more simplistic.
>Furthermore, Vayne himself is also trying to wrest destiny away from the occurias, yet he is a bad guy, why?
Because his attempt at doing it involves conquest and lots of death, destruction and atrocities feeling like it's all for the greater good united under him and his empire compared to Ashe and Larsa's peaceful cooperation. His motives are good but his means are not as he himself realizes he's bringing much undue suffering, even if he believes it's necessary and right in the end.
Ivalice is the best FF universe by far. All of the games in it are fairly good, unfortunately XII has a god awful convoluted plot and the combat is not interesting. The main characters are all fairly bland. It's a great game to explore though and check out sexy Viera.
I hope we get to explore more of Ivalice in the future with an actual good game.
>I hope we get to explore more of Ivalice in the future with an actual good game.
Have you seen what Matsuno is doing now? It's never going to happen. It'll live on in stuff like XVI, Triangle Strategy and the like but I doubt Matsuno will ever step back into Square's offices again.
>they don't know about ivalice alliance
even the directors know it's a world ripe for the taking but it seems squenix is too busy being moronic, they shown desire to go back and do more shit in that world but something holds them away from it, a shame if anything.
It's not going to happen. People know that Fabula Nova Black person or whatever was a shitshow, trying to market something as sprawling across several games is not going to happen from Square at least for the next decade. XI/XII's staff was largely absorbed into XIV/XVI, YoshiP is a huge Matsunogay and in that sense it'll live on as much as it can without them calling it Ivalice in name. Not that it matters anyway, Ivalice was more about a "style" of game than it was about the actual world itself. XII bottomed it out at flying saucers anyway, trying to pace that backwards to a grounded setting like XVI would be too much work.
>eople know that Fabula Nova Black person or whatever was a shitshow, trying to market something as sprawling across several games is not going to happen from Square at least for the next decade.
>Motomu Toriyama
>Black person that directed FF13
hahaha, the point of ivalice alliance had little to do with motou because the original devs wanted to do until squenix started snorting rancid coke, i don't know what's going on with these morons and i just hope all the moronic Black folk end up OD'ing somewhere and squenix is either bought or dissolves.
The plot isn't all that complicated.
>Archadia, under Vayne who's the defacto ruler, engages in warmaking and conquest.
>Their conquest of Dalmasca results in the deaths of Ashe's father and husband as well as Vaan's brother meaning the both of them desire revenge against Archadia.
>Through the party's journeying, they meet and befriend Larsa and Vaan begins doubt whether his hatred of Archadia and desire for revenge is correct, eventually deciding it isn't.
>The party eventually realizes that Ashe is being guided by the Occuria who have been manipulating Ivalice's history for ages.
>Vaye and Venat are attempting to wrest control of fate from the Occuria but their way of doing it is through conquest and bloodshed that brings about suffering, ultimately subscribing to the "a million is just a statistic" school of thought.
>Ashe, through Vaan's example, eventually overcomes her desire for revenge, allowing herself to no longer fall prey to the Occuria's manipulations and, like Vayne, fight to put the destiny of Ivalice into the hands of its' people.
>The final showdown is then a conflict of ideals over the future of Ivalice: Vayne's "by any meas necessary" Ivalice united under one country and ruler or Ashe's coexistance between all nations; Ashe's ideology wins out through the party's defeat of Vayne.
Doesn't the occuria literally just "eh frick it" once ashe goes the "you can't control me" route? it's not like they take the treaty blade away from her or anything, the space mana aliens just go quiet after that.
The Occuria reigning over the world above the Giruvegan do not consider intervention with those lesser dimensional being to be worth their time. They merely influence civilization's direction via a few people and grant shards which hold a pittance of their power to those people (which practically ignite the planet with how much magic it holds).
When Ashe decides she will not take more from them, the Occuria lose the final amount of interest they had in such a pitiful land and, yes, say
>"eh frick it"
and decide they've got other things to do.
Enormous and mind-boggingly breakthrough for civilization of ancient Ivalice, but just a ripple to the Occuria.
That's also another thing. The Occuria are beings who exist far above people. They meddle a bit because hey, we're being benevolent here and helping you insignificant cretins out. But by their chosen steward rejecting them their reaction isn't "NOOOOOO, YOU DARE REJECT US YOU PITIFUL HUMAN SCUM!?" but more "lol fine, we tried but humans are dumb and gay seeya homie". It's also what makes Venat a rebel since it directly intervenes in the affairs of mortals instead of simply guiding and manipulating.
picrel
>It's also what makes Venat a rebel since it directly intervenes in the affairs of mortals instead of simply guiding and manipulating.
venat is a rebel for different reasons. he helped the archadians manufacture copies of the shards, thereby limiting the influence the occuria have over the course of history. venat even says
>indeed, what claim does gerun have over history's weave on throne immortal, rent from time
after cid says
>the reigns of history back in the hands of man
he basically wants humans to be free of otherworldly influence and is branded a heretic as a result. they even say
>venat is a heretic
Is there any in lore explanation why the cast can do DBZ style attacks when using quickening?
The suits thought it would be cool
aren't they channeling the Mist when they do that? shits magic
Job system was cool but it should have changed your characters appearance.
I still cant recall anything about the story other than some war.
If they were going to make the MC such an unimportant loser you should have been able to create your own character.
I liked the music.
Gambit system is still a gold standard for games with real time party based combat.
If this game were made today it would probably be a live service game.
Shit remaster.
IZJS is one of the best FF games in the series.
Combat system frequently filters brainlets.
Story and pacing is its weak point.
>Combat system frequently filters brainlets.
it literally plays yourself you fricking moron
Brainlet detected thanks for proving my point.
Easy to RNG manipulate allowing you to get an entire aresenal of invisible max damage bows that don't require a job license to use as soon as you can ride an airship in the game (like an hour in).
One of my favorite FF's. Ganker is just salty because they got filtered by the early game t-rex
I wish they would rebalance this game for Zodiac Age. You were never meant to have dual classes or double the stats
the only thing I wish they could fix which they did in other FF games is to have the gambit system ignore situations where the enemies absorbs elements or are immune, otherwise the gambits just keep casting it over and over and you cant switch them off.
FFXIII you'll stop doing that automatically if you analyze the enemies
I have beaten this game 6 times, 4 of which were 100% runs. Thr gambit system is probably one of the best combat systems I know of, my only complaint is that there aren't enough big fights that require real strategy and pre-planning. The ones that are there though are probably the best fights in the final fantasy seties as a whole.
i want to touch fran's ears
Worst version of the game
This or Dragon Quest XI if I enjoyed Trials of Mana and Skyrim?
dragon quest xi sucks. its made for children and its the easiest rpg ive ever played
Is that a yes? That fits Trials of Mana
I liked the combat and world. The story could've been better. My main issue is the cast. It's so fricking random and like none of them know or care about eachother, literally just some dudes off the street and Ashe.
>the cast is
>literally just some dudes off the street and Ashe.
You didn't play FFXII.
Also, the level of drama, fantastic writing, spectacular acting, incredible graphics and even higher tier music made playing the game a wonder. It easily met critical fame, which it certainly warranted.
Never played it.
I played the original release on day-of-release, though.
Sublime world, artstyle and matching OST
The voice acting is probably the best of any video game ever made.
Why is it still so expensive?
And it never goes on sale for greater than %50 and because it's still fifty fricking dollars means that it has historically been as low as only $25.
Fricking put that shit as $7 on sale. What are you doing, Steam/SE???
loved exploring
dont regret modding it half way so i can always play as fran
Ruined the original PS2 versions excellent level up system. Unplayable. The Zodiac Age is a piece of shit.
Going with low hanging fruit
star wars/10
Not every media with an evil empire is Star Wars anon.
I love my bounty hunter with their animal companion friend that race comes from a forest/jungle.
Don't take it so seriously bab
Or the "Lucifer" Venat who falls out of the ruling Heavens to support the Emperor into inciting death to break fated control of the future from God(s), but fails?
Is FFXII the Bible, too?
Does having Captain Basch forgiving the Judge chasing him, sparing his life only for the Judge to kill himself by suicide make this "Les Miserables," as well?
Uh oh! The game doesn't have robots, so I guess it CAN'T have R2-D2 or C-3P0, so it's definitely nothing like Star Wars, never mind. Coincidences aren't real in writing, everything is by intent and thought out and precise and filled with deep meaning. Similarities don't exist: it's blatant plagiarism!
the dev team did admit they used star wars as a inspiration base for the translation to english though.
I love the game and even I can admit that it’s heavily inspired by Star Wars anon
Do you really not see the parallels between luke/Han and vaan/balthier?
busted my nuts to fran too many times
best role for each job?
you dont have to optimize unless you are playing with the Struggle for Freedom mod.
Why is this one the most expensive entry on Steam? It doesn't make sense.
Because it's the best game in the series
because it's not on sale
If you say so.
Because Team Ivalice always makes the best final fantasy stories besides FF6
The mid to last part was such a let down, you can clearly see the writer and direction changed, its so rushed and poorly done. Shame because it had serious potential, also the gameplay was trash.
skies of arcadia mogs this game to death
how in the hell has that not gotten a remaster or port.
Sega probably lost the source code and assets. Wouldn't be the first time either.
japan and their history of losing source codes.
I think it was only in the last decade that Japanese software companies finally got out of the habit of sharing source code on flash drives. Japan is a country of extremes when it comes to technology. You have either tech wizards who can pull a crazy amount of weight or a bunch of tech-illiterate laymen who wouldn't know the difference between an OS and a program.
why the hell does XII have so much missable content? do one wrong thing and you lose the zodiac spear. I can't tell if that was in the original or the zodiac age recitify this.
I know I beat the game, but I don't remember anything about the story.I don't even remember how it starts. I do remember liking the gambit system. I should replay this again sometime.
Empires are at war Archadia, Rosaria and Dalmasca, Dalcasca gets conquered by Archadia, Gabranth (one of the most KINO villians in video games) gets PTSD from this declares himself dead inside, becomes a cuck of the Empire as a Judge Magister because all was stripped from him his nation, everything defects to Archadia the only thing that remains of his past self is that he hates his twin bro for not showing up to the war.
Frames his big bro so he gets arrested in the Rossarian alliance army, they think Basch killed the Dalcascan King. They arrest him instead of Gabranth.
Archadia is subverting kingdoms the frick up and conquering them from the inside very cleverly. Archadia also is developing the nuclear bomb of this world because they have a genius scientist Cid who is the father of Balthier the sky pirate dude with the cool voice actor.
They need to stop this new age of nukes where Archadia has a monopoly on nukes. They need to break free of the Ocuria. That is the true struggle for freedom. It's main theme is freedom. Freedom gets explored in a lot of its dimensions: anarchistic (pirates), statal with rights (the empires), religious (the occuria).
is there an FOV mod on PC for Zodiac Age? still too zoomed in for my tastes
based af the most high wit game of the series. the most kino story if you actually understand the politics behind it.
Somehow the original PS2 version was better.
I lost buckets worth of seed to Fran and Ashe
The problem with FFXII is not Vaan and Penelo but that the story is not about Vaan and Penelo.
Midwit
And Bob Ross' "Joy of Painting" isn't about Bob Ross.
Cool game, I really liked it.
Balthier is so fricking based
Gideon Emery stole that show
I want a Vagrant Story in the ff12 engine but with the combat system left untouched. Also a quick weapon swap for the love of god
Probably my favorite Final Fantasy game.
I care that the world looks lived in with proper history and context and not just a series of designed set-pieces.
maybe i should quit the low level ffix challenge and try to get the excalibur II before the 12 hour time limit
Aren't low-level runs just abusing the shit out of Freya's Jump? Sounds super boring, you should totally switch to racing for the sword.
Go for it while trying to keep a relatively low level.
I played the game for 10 hours at least, i couldn't finish it because my computer is a potato, and for all i played i liked it, will probably play it again once i get my new gayming computer
Its kino in its own way if you like politics and warring empires n shit you will like dwelling into the lore. it has the most complete world of any final fantasy.
>x4 speed ruins the game
you homosexuals complained about how slow the first non-zodiac age expansion version was which is why it got added
Dual jobs make the game significnatly easier sure but you can install Struggle for Freedom mod and go Struggle for all the builds to challenge yourself. Even with Dual Jobs the difficulty will feel good.
>balthier best character of all ff with ignis
based
>4x speedhack ruins the game
>dual jobs ruins the game
>ez seitengrat ruins the game
IZJS was better
I want a party based rpg similar to this but with more depth to the gambit systems. For example multiple if then/else statements on a single action.
Does anyone know any other games that have a system like that?
Xenoblade shills are officially worse than Persona 4 fanatics from the looks of things
Does Xenoblade play similarly to XII?
No, 12 is more like RTwP while xenoblade is like a mix between an MMO and real time (Not action) combat. In 12 you can control your entire party whereas in xenoblade you control 1 person but there are more mechanics to juggle to compensate
a shittier version of it yes. the cool shit about FF12 is the gambits you can refine the AI so it becomes a well oiled war machine everyone following the AI commands you programmed into them so everything just works optimally.
You can make some gambit chains where tbh you can leave the controller down in battle and it will play itself. Your teammates will be so good that you can just not play. But don't do that, it becomes more boring.
A super boss will always demand you are engaged with whats happening anyway.
That's not cool, it just exposes how shallow the gameplay systems are, which was true for previous FF games too but those had good pacing, proper stories, and mix ups in gameplay to compensate
KINO.
And people try to claim this wasn't a unique experience or was too boring to bother with.
I do like the soundtrack from the original more than the remasters, though.
Way too easy, 90% of the enemies should've had their stats boosted by a massive amount.
Install the Struggle for Freedom mod
And make every dungeon crawl take like 2 hours? Are you insane?
it already takes two hours because the dungeons are frickhuge tho.
Probably my least favourite game by Matsuno (which isn't surprising with how he quit S-E during FFXII's development) - I dumped like 200-300 hours into it due to sheer amount of side content, but plot itself was surprisingly boring (Judges was the best part of it, all five of them had fantastic VAs) and badly paced. Game balance was all over the place (I know IZJS fixed it but I'm no longer 14yo who can easily spend 200+ hours on non-portable game I already beat before), especially Zodiacs - they were super fun to fight but absolutely useless when you summoned them.
Also frick Pharos and Great Crystal dungeons, both should've been postgame dungeons and not plot-driven ones - it's like if I had to beat Palace of the Dead in Tactics Ogre to progress through the main story.
In short - I came for plot but stayed for the gameplay because plot didn't excite me.
FFT > Vagrant Story > Tactics Ogre LUCT > FFXII
Is my overall rating of Matsuno's games (LUCT is so low because of too many garbage gameplay decisions, plot is fine; Vagrant Story's main issue is too much menuing)
Great game misunderstood but 90% of its player base
>b-but I!!!
>Dissidia!!!
>worst mc!!!
Telltale signs you are detailing with a legitimate moron
Game is fantastic and has a great cast
archadian empire is such a good track. archades as a whole is just masterfully designed. the partition between the slums and city proper, the skyline and hoving cabs, and the aesthetic of its soldiers is all pure kino.
draklor lab is just as good.
too many status effects so you wouldn't fall asleep in battle. Felt like every enemy was a marlboro
90 % of the skills are useless
Never used any of them except healing magic, black magic and haste
I like the game, especially the zodiac edition, but every time I play I get annoyed and stop playing because too many items are a huge pain in the butt to get, if not outright esoteric in where to find them.
Trash remaster, it make the game too much easier
I used to coom buckets to penelo and the micro skirt princess
I adore this game. I played through it during one of the worst periods of my life and to this day I believe it was what kept me from killing myself.
It's a wonderful game to invest in and partake with. You get a whole new world to immerse yourself in... and it's an amazing world! It's deep, it's big, it's detailed, and it's beautiful! There are hundreds upon hundreds of people you can talk to, dozens upon dozens of sub-plots associated with friends and strangers and mafias and racial disputes and emergency needs and religious requests that are assigned to named characters that have their own voice actors... or simply named NPCs who have comedy for dialogue to read and clearly comfortable in this land of Ivalice. Pride in where they're from and who they are, scheming about what they can do next and who to bribe.
ALL of it occurring in front of what seals it all together, prevent any escape: gorgeous music. An entire soundtrack, for every region, for every city, for every overworld walk, for every underworld cavern, it's all endless and remarkable. A musical soundtrack you literally turn on the game just so you can GO TO THAT PLACE and LISTEN because of how much it feels like you're, just, THERE when you hear it. Like the Giza Plains. An entire region that changes based on rainfall and when you go and how you manipulate things. It's wonderful.
I'm glad you loved this game. I'll affirm to you that it's worth your love.
ASHELIA BARGAINBIN DALMASCA
you heretic, it's b'nargain.
make her a knight with black magic?
I really appreciated the fact that you can beat omega weapon in the trial mode and not have to run through the godforsaken great crystal yet another time.
Trying to 100% the vanilla PS2 version of this game actually burned me out in ways that made me lose interest in playing anything else on my backlog. I was a genuinely punishing experience that left me disappointed every step of the way.
Do the zodiac edition instead. The trial mode lets you get OP weapons and transfer them back to your game which can make the grind mildly easier. It’s still hours and hours of random drops to worry about though.
I already beat it and everything. I suffered through it once, don’t plan on doing it again.
Gambit system would've been interesting if the game was actually difficult. Automating an already easy game makes it even more brainless.
>This game is political
>But there are also these godlike beings that
Everytime. Do Japanese devs get paid extra if you kill some gods near the end of the game?
FFXVI is the same shit
>there's eidolons...and they're politicians
It's amazing seeing the sheer amount of people who clamour for Basch to be MC when he contributed the least out of the male party members and the so called mature character who got replaced wasn't Basch in the first place.
besides being a knight job and helping vaan does he do anything else? even his "pal" knifes him in the back.
He plays the role of making decisions based on loyalty to his beliefs rather than loyalty to others'. If you're asking about something else he does, at the end of the game his twin brother Judge Gabranth dies. So, he puts on his armor, takes that identity and becomes Lord Larsa's guardian from then on.
It's pretty neat.
Kino
A TRIAL FOR ASHELIA B'BARGIN OF DALMASCAAAAAAA
The VA work was fricking amazing.
Cool world.
Neat Jobs.
Actually difficult boss fights if you don't know the gimmick or aren't over leveled/abuse quickening.
It had a lot going for it~
la cinematografia dei videogiochi
FFXII's gameplay is veritable proof that there is more to being filtered than a game being "too hard".
Well, yeah, there's the player being too dumb. Like when Kingmaker came out - a lot of dumbasses who didn't know the first thing about Pathfinder got filtered by the spider cave, because they didn't realize that killing swarms requires splash weapons or a torch.
I played Revenant Wings, and the FFT games, but I have never played this one to be honest.
You played Revenant Wings, but not XII itself?
My first home console was the PS3, until then I only had handhelds, and to be honest even now I just mostly play stuff on the Switch and the Steam Deck while laying in bed.
Is revenant wings worth playing
I liked it, but I was twelve so I can't really tell you how it holds up now.
ain't it gameboy or something? so about as much as that.
It's a DS game. You summon hordes of cute chibi FF monsters and have them march towards the enemy's summon circle while fighting their own hordes of cute chibi FF monsters.
What?
Why did they make a universe with a bunch of different cool species, but then the party members consist of:
>Light haired hume #1
>Light haired hume #2
>Light haired hume #3
>Light haired hume #4
>Light haired hume #5
>Light haired bunny girl
Because anime. Otaku hate non-humanoid races.
Ask the Japanese why their superheroes are always blonde haired
Worst FF post IX. There's nothing to discuss.
So I played this game because my ex recommended it to me. Little did I know that she loved games that weren't hard or played themselves. The gameplay is some of the most sleep inducing shit I've ever seen.
I got to the point where you need to rescue Panelo and realized it wasn't going to get any better.
I liked the game a lot and zodiac age perfected the gameplay but the letterboxing was fricking obnoxious.
it was meant for praystation 2, some real old screen things.
Literally the best FF in every category but turns off classical FF fans because its "complexity rivals War and Peace."
shikari/black battlemage
monk/white battlemage
knight/time battlemage
archer/red battlemage
foebreaker/bushi
machinist/uhlan
didn't jobs get changed on the new version so they actually mean something now?
Didn't play the OG when it was out because I didn't have ps2. Bought the Zodiac Age remake excited to play it, but gameplay was boring and I haven't picked it up since then. Does it get better eventually or nah?
have a nice day zoomer
Love this game. I have a lalafell in FFXIV name Lil Vayne.
>Lil Vayne
fricking great name kek
One of my favorite FFs