This. I dropped Tactics Ogre when I found out I can't just play the game and that I needed a guide to not miss things. Literally just dropped the game half-way through.
Stop being autists. You don't need to be a completionist on your first playthrough
No one is replaying a game right after finishing it. Miss-able content that requires a guide, and is not caused by player choice, is just bad game design. These things should only be easter eggs, not actual game content.
>Buy the game. >Well you can't have this content because you didn't follow a 100 page guide when you started playing.
I do. I just 100% FF9, which came immediately after I beat it for the first time normally >Those things should only be easter eggs
Zodiac Spear is an easter egg; it's massively overkill for anything in the main story
10 months ago
Anonymous
Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games which is what you seem to be looking for.
>The game is better if we add something that requires a guide to unlock.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>I'm shit at RPG's and need my hand held throughout
go play pokemon Black person
10 months ago
Anonymous
But you're advocating for games that require guides, i.e., hands to be held?
>Ah yes, I will not open these treasure chests because I have deduced from last night's dream that not opening them will unlock a weapon called the zodiac spear! It makes total sense based on the story so far.
10 months ago
Anonymous
cope
10 months ago
Anonymous
you lost the argument
10 months ago
Anonymous
Not defending FF12's implementation of missable content, but the design choice itself is perfectly valid and engaging if the developer is competent knows what they're doing (ie. not Square).
10 months ago
Anonymous
unironically yes. before the internet devs would literally put in content that was designed to generate rumours around the playground, chatter among fans, so long as it isnt integral to beating any content i really dont see a problem with this.
It wouldnt work now by any means, the internet has robbed us of that, which is fine, but there was nothing wrong with rumer generating content.
10 months ago
Anonymous
This isn't even rumor generating content. The Zodiac Spear locked behind the four chests is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to get without a guide. Not hard, not difficult, not rare. Impossible. No human could ever find it, not ever, the lifespan of the universe would not be enough to find it. Only reading the guide works.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Not true. I found it by mistake.
10 months ago
Anonymous
You did no such thing. You probably found the second spear from a chest that spawns randomly (and has a 0.001 chance to drop it). We're talking about the first one, from the necropolis. You don't get that one "by mistake". You only get it by reading the official guide and following it step by step.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Yes I did and you can't prove I didn't.
10 months ago
Anonymous
You probably found it in that other chest that has like a 1/500 chance of having a Zodiac Spear inside. I guess for a game that was only supposed to play like an MMO in theory they sure didn’t shy away from MMO-tier drop rates (or MMO-tier lack of respect for human concepts of real time) on a lot of things.
Obtaining pic related was one of the worst grinds of my life.
10 months ago
Anonymous
im playing Zodiac at the moment and i thought id escape hell by not even bothering and just going for Durandal or something but >chest has 10% chance to spawn >80% its gil >20% its an item >5% its the weapon if you have Diamond Armlet
100% ass, i just decided to put Berserk Gloves and Morningstar on Basch, Hermes Sandals on Balthier and Muramasa/Genji on Vaan and be done with it. not planning to fight YIazmat on this file so frick it
>its my favourite below CC
That had better stand for Crystal Chronicles, if it's Crisis Core then you have supremely shit taste and I regret reading any of your posts.
knew my brain was trying to remind me of something. yeah Crystal Chronicles, and im even more pissed our only shot at a good version of it for the next 100 years they fricked up the multiplayer. again
10 months ago
Anonymous
And if true, you didn't know how.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Know what anon, I'll give you that, as much as we like to double down on our initial arguement to a moronic detriment on this website you're right, its not handled well.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games
Not the kind of shit they did in FF12 and if you're defending it I'm assuming you don't know what the player needs to do to get the Zodiac Spear. I'll tell you.
The player needs to avoid opening four specific treasure chests. They are in plain sight and not marked in any way, they're just default treasure boxes. There is no indication at all or or any kind of logic which four have to remain shut. The game does not give ANY hints to this whatsoever. You could play a trillion times trillion years and never figure this out because there is no indication that these chests are connected to the spear. Oh, and you can't close the chests after opening them. You literally just randomly have to refuse to pick up unmarked non-special treasure to get the best weapon in the game.
This is not good game design.
This isn't even rumor generating content. The Zodiac Spear locked behind the four chests is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to get without a guide. Not hard, not difficult, not rare. Impossible. No human could ever find it, not ever, the lifespan of the universe would not be enough to find it. Only reading the guide works.
How about you go frick yourself with your shit opinion? In a huge game like FF locking the best shit behind arbitrary missable nonsense is gay. If it was instead the third best spear, no one would be as salty.
Also dumbass acting like non autists play this game
It's extra shit you don't need
10 months ago
Anonymous
If it is the most powerful weapon in the game, then it is needed. This is why its a game. Speaking of "needs", you also don't need to play video games. Hopefully, you're not a game dev.
10 months ago
Anonymous
But you don't need the Zodiac Spear. It isn't even the best weapon outside of shear brute force. It doesn't have combo potential like katanas or greatswords, or any sort of elemental bonus.
10 months ago
Anonymous
You also don't need a lot of weapons in the game, but that's bad logic to justify such bad game design because then why not remove most weapon from the game? Why even have multiple weapons? Part of the game is about the combat and weapons, the flavor and nuance of variety is what separates good game from a better game. Making one of these items impossible to get without a guide is bad game design. Also, it doesn't matter if a player needs it or not, it matters that the devs chose to add miss-able content that requires a guide. The decision in itself is bad game design.
10 months ago
Anonymous
It's not bad game design
10 months ago
Anonymous
>It's not bad game design! >It just isn't, okay!
10 months ago
Anonymous
explain how it's bad
10 months ago
Anonymous
Miss-able content that requires a guide is bad game design.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Why is that bad? Why do you need to collect everything on your first playthrough?
10 months ago
Anonymous
Hypothetically, so you're okay if a game is filled with miss-able content that you can't unlock unless you read a guide?
10 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, you pathetic zoomer homosexual.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah sure, why would I care that much? I can get it on another playthrough later. It's not like you're only allowed one playthrough. Most times on my first playthrough I miss a tonne of shit, then on a replay I 100% it with a guide
10 months ago
Anonymous
Requiring a guide to play a game is bad game design. It means your game in of itself is not sufficient.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Explain
10 months ago
Anonymous
I thought it was already apparent what I meant. Whatever you put in the guide could easily be translated into clues in the game or locked behind a puzzle. The game in itself should not require knowledge outside of the game that the game itself does not provide, otherwise the game design by definition is insufficient.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Boomers will tell you that finding something that didn't make sense or didn't have an answer, then crawling through the early days of the internet to find a community to find and share answers was great
10 months ago
Anonymous
You have this excuse for NES, and maybe SNES at best. Name a single PSX or later game that didn't have tons of tutorials.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>excuse
Is it an excuse? Hunting for answers with others was fun; tutorials weren't
10 months ago
Anonymous
This is a bot.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Seriously? You don't see the fun in a community?
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Boomers will tell you that finding something that didn't make sense or didn't have an answer, then crawling through the early days of the internet to find a community to find and share answers was great
You clearly don't agree.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I never experienced, so I can't say myself
We live in a world where answers are found before you even play the game
10 months ago
Anonymous
It's a pitiable thing. I encourage you all to play games and try things without ~~*preconceived notions*~~.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I don't know what you're talking about. That has nothing to do what I said
10 months ago
Anonymous
You're either playing dumb or are exceptionally moronic. Either way, this "discussion" is over.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Name a single PSX or later game that didn't have tons of tutorials.
Legend of Dragoon had something similar to the spear with the stardust, good fricking luck not missing any without a guide.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Would you consider the Chaos badges the same as the Zodiac sphere?
10 months ago
Anonymous
Not the og anon, but it's not like you would get it on a second or third playthrough without a guide. That's how it's bad game design. Instead of rewarding people for hard work or effort, it rewards those who got their parents to buy the strategy guide.
Also who gives a frick about this game. Stupid ass wannabe star wars story where only Balthier and Ashe (kind of) matter with gameplay that's barely above a MMO idler. Final Fantasy as a franchise is mediocre.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>big number spear with zero strategic use is missable content
You are a moron.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>item is in game >not game content
You're hyper focusing on the spear, we are talking about game design.
10 months ago
Anonymous
What is your problem outside of this specific spear?
10 months ago
Anonymous
No it isn't. Miss-able content is only bad when it is real world time locked or location locked (like those pokemon events they used to do).
10 months ago
Anonymous
No, you don't understand. Under no circumstances do you need the Zodiac Spear. Beat the penultimate boss? Best DPS is Excalibur, a greatswrod. Beat the ultimate boss? Yagyu Darkblade, a ninja sword. Everything inbetween? Katana with Genji equipment. There are literally zero meaningful battles where Zodiac Spear is optimal.
10 months ago
Anonymous
The Genji equipment is probably worse seeing as you only get them via stealing from Gilgamesh at specific health intervals
10 months ago
Anonymous
i feel like its less of an egregious sin because its not that complicatred, its not specific intervals, the first fight its everytime he pulls out a sword and in the 2nd its the same except just twice, once before and after cutscenes
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Making one of these items impossible to get without a guide
It's not impossible, there's a very very very low chance of getting it from a chest in the great crystal.
10 months ago
Anonymous
you can also straight up buy it in Zodiac version. for 12 years these people have clung onto a single weapon in the game as evidence the game is bad as if Ultimate weapons in all FFs have been explicitly detailed in game.
and its not even the best weapon. youd get further just stealing Genji Gloves and Muramasa from Gilgamesh. Zodiac Spear is not the make or break for helping you beat Hell Wyrm or Yiazmat
10 months ago
Anonymous
In the original version, the Zodiac spear was the strongest weapon.
10 months ago
Anonymous
nah it wasnt, even if youre a pleb. raw damage is for plebs.
Holy Lance with and White Mask with a gambit to attack yourself when low and various other shenanigans are better setups than just "strongest weapon".
like i said, people are clinging to it HARD as if it does so much damage everything else is invalidated but it doesnt, even in the original. having a black mage caste Scathe or Ardor on a reflected party with your White Mage having an Opal Ring to stop reflected spells being bounced is infinitely more useful than one pleb on your party with a strong weapon.
its shit design but the Zodiac Spear being obtuse is not a negative against a game in a genre with frequently batshit ultimate weapon steps. saying it is, is practically bandwagoning, like saying Emerald Weapon in FFVII makes it the best JRPG ever made because its harder than Sephiroth and is secret
10 months ago
Anonymous
That's the Zodiac edition, not the original version. The original version required you to not open specific chests. There is a reason they removed this gimmick in the Zodiac version, and it's because it's a moronic way to get an item.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>needed
it isn't
10 months ago
Anonymous
well then you are EXTREMELY autistic. As in "I don't know how you can function in real life"-autistic.
Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games which is what you seem to be looking for.
10 months ago
Anonymous
What does grinding have to do with the topic of missable content?
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games
Not the kind of shit they did in FF12 and if you're defending it I'm assuming you don't know what the player needs to do to get the Zodiac Spear. I'll tell you.
The player needs to avoid opening four specific treasure chests. They are in plain sight and not marked in any way, they're just default treasure boxes. There is no indication at all or or any kind of logic which four have to remain shut. The game does not give ANY hints to this whatsoever. You could play a trillion times trillion years and never figure this out because there is no indication that these chests are connected to the spear. Oh, and you can't close the chests after opening them. You literally just randomly have to refuse to pick up unmarked non-special treasure to get the best weapon in the game.
This is not good game design.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah it was made to sell guide books.i remember bac then they were really popular.
Frick nips.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games which is what you seem to be looking for.
The zodiac spear isn't even that bad. A player could eventually deduce that certain chests vanish when you open the one in the necrohol.
The invisible airship chest with the invisible bow is way worse.
10 months ago
Anonymous
You realize that this is the cheat version of getting the zodiac spear? The real way to get it is from a rare item drop.
10 months ago
Anonymous
its lost on them. even in Zodiac the chest requirement was scrapped and the "clue" is the items in 12 chests on Phon Coast being labeled suspiciously in japanese- lost entirely in the english translation. now the argument is actually "but Great Trango, The Grandia III and the Silmarillion have 1% drop rates, defend that", when they actually are fully cheat weapons and only supposed to be found by autists in the first place, silimarly to those "FFXI Player beats secret boss playing for 6 days!"
genuinely concerned how a secret weapon caused this much seethe
How about you go frick yourself with your shit opinion? In a huge game like FF locking the best shit behind arbitrary missable nonsense is gay. If it was instead the third best spear, no one would be as salty.
Also dumbass acting like non autists play this game
This. I dropped Tactics Ogre when I found out I can't just play the game and that I needed a guide to not miss things. Literally just dropped the game half-way through.
>the way the forest viera walk in slow motion >no fricking hurry when you live forever >they all have pure white ears >viera who leave the forest all have black tips >because they can't hear the forest anymore >said forest is apparently sapient and canonically wants to murder the party specifically for stealing one of her pure bunny daughters
I know that fanart doesn't represent that but I swear this was a thing.
nah dude, im playing it right now. just went to Eruyt to check. only the wood guards have pure white tips.
unless the implication is that all the others have been frickin everything that turns up in the village and arent pure or whatever.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I just finished playthrough last week. Now I'm playing the whole KH series. FF12 is criminally underrated and people who cry about gambits are stupid.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>"it plays itself, its fricking boring"
yeah okay now try letting it play itself during any boss battle without being overleveled and watch Fran get Disabled and Reversed and killed immediately because Ashe cast Curaja automatically and party wiped. unless you WANT to click attack 40,000 times i dont get how setting up your actions to work cleanly is a bad mechanic
Quick
Post your favorite side areas in FF games
pic related. fed this fat b***h way too many Fuma Shurikens
10 months ago
Anonymous
I am saying that complaining about gambits is stupid because you can just turn them off. I did a whole playthrough last week without using them.
10 months ago
Anonymous
sure, i just dont know why you would, i love the system- im just getting memories of Golmore Jungle's boss and the Necrohol where you get 900 status effects every 3 seconds and it sounds like ass to individually cure everyone and then rebuff
10 months ago
Anonymous
It was ass. It was extremely hard.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>unless you WANT to click attack 40,000 times
I do this lol. I usually use around 3-5 gambits. Sometimes less.
It's not because I hate gambits. I just like it that way
thats part of how guide books worked, its the Funkopops and figmas of the late 90s/2000s, they absolutely were meant to compliment each other, thats why there were ads for the guidebooks in the manuals and on websites
It's the dumbest shit.
FFIX is one of my favorites but it has so much scavenger hunt and missable content it's ridiculous.
Thankfully it seems this trend died alongside guide books. I don't think XII has any missables beyond the spear.
also blame Famitsu because FFIV was only made because Sakaguchi was salty that the editor didnt like 2 or 3 and wouldnt put them i nthe magazine. Japanese media has always been closely tied to games
exodiashe the forbidden one aside
what the FRICK are those gambits
it's like the list of neurons that connect to make a person dump gas on their heads and set themselves on fire.
its a list of gambits to make someone dump something alright
10 months ago
Anonymous
>need an account to view
Weak
10 months ago
Anonymous
https://files.catbox.moe/cf12w4.jpg
never say we mistreat our customers
10 months ago
Anonymous
Based and mortifying. Just what I’d expect from a FFXII thread.
exodiashe the forbidden one aside
what the FRICK are those gambits
it's like the list of neurons that connect to make a person dump gas on their heads and set themselves on fire.
Amazing game
Dififcult to master its mechanics
Story is heavy carried by the villians, the party kinda sucks. Vaan sucks and so does Panelo.
Exploring the world of Ivalice was one of the best experiences I had in gaming (at least when I was 12 years old)
first JRPG that I spent more than 100 hours. It is also the first of the 2 game that my then gf(now wife) watched me play from start to finish. because she liked the character's voices.
I've never liked that argument. "Just don't engage with the mechanics". It'd be a valid argument if you were going out of your way to look up some OP build and then complain the game is easy, you've only got yourself to blame in that scenario, but saying simply don't use this main mechanic just seems silly as a defense.
It’s not a good argument, it never has been. For starters, playing the game without gambits is even worse than playing it with them. Aside from the few instances in which you’d turn them off for strategic purposes, there is no sane reason for playing through the game without them deliberately.
Please download this mod to get rid of that black bar under cutscenes. EVERYONE should get it (Cutscenes Unleashed).
https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy12/mods/37
gambit system is garbage, it only "works" because the combat would be like dragging your dick over hot glass without it because they decided it should play like a fricking mmo for some colossally moronic reason
it's a bandage for their own shit design and liking it is actual fricking stockholm syndrome
The game was so boring they put in a 4x speed button.
Adding 4x speed to your JRPG reduces friction between the player and grinding.
If that enemy off to the side is only going to take <30 seconds to move to and kill I'm gonna do it every time. If it's going to take 2 minutes or more I'm less likely to.
The speed up function both made the game playable and broke it. Because at the end of the day it's a boring as hell game and it's not very good.
The game is fine in the aspects it chose to focus in. It's just weak in others and the couple good things don't carry the experience for me. Very disappointing game. Especially in the characters and story. I guess I expected more from Ivalice considering all the praise it gets. I thought every single game sucked besides Tactics (and Vagrant Story if you want to count that, I guess). Never been so disappointed with the franchise than when I played through the Ivalice games
The whole point was to exploit morons. The same way gacha works. The spear is ultimately meaningless, but you have to have it, goy. Just like the hottest new gacha jpeg. Game guides were the original gacha.
Took me over 3 years to beat even with the speed multipliers in Zodiac Age, i would have loved it so much if it wasn't such a slog. I wanted to beat all the marks but i barely made it through the main story
I played the original release, the day it came out.
I loved it. Highly recommend it to patient people.
Wonderful art style, Ivalice environment and plot, well-written story, SPECTACULAR voice acting (literally Top 3 BEST voice acted video games EVER CREATED to-this-day, by even critics' standards), and a terrific soundtrack.
Eruyt Village
Still the best system ever created for party based combat
great story, characters, environment
too bad the soundtrack and endgame were not very good for a game of that caliber
I thought the endgame(except the dungeon with ultima) and soundtrack were fine, but its the story that falls flat. The first half is good but it loses so much steam towards the end and just becomes dull.
there is quite literally no other game that gives you such fine control over the entire party in real time. the better games ive played all require individual commands to be input for each and/or are strictly turn based.
you can set everyone in FFXII to do whatever you would want to do in a certain situation. if im battle through an area ive already been through the battle system is going to be so much more of a slog of going into menus to cure status ailments. it can be argued its boring but going anywhere unmolested in any traditional final fantasy is a chore in and of itself, Macalania Woods in X was ass and so was the moon in IV, Cloud of Darkness run up in III was also a load of shit. in XII you can just set your gambits and get to where you need to go, get some LP and items along the way or even actually just flee
turning the game into an auto macro fest is the exact opposite of a good system
it's admitting defeat, it's giving up on making a good combat system and telling the game to play itself for you
I'm super biased because I played the game multiple times since release but it's the only game where I can listen to a soundtrack on youtube and immediately get pulled into the game's world again. One of the only reasons besides Tony Hawk that I was glad I had PS2 growing up.
Not it wasn't it was shit. no world map, long narrow hallways, AHAHAHAHAHAHA, not real equipment, no story, simon says "gameplay", too short, too easy, too boring, blitzball, endgame is shit, ugh. No thank you.
The story is barely there, the main characters almost never interact with each other, no fun gimmicks or side content, boring open map design, plays like a singleplayer MMO and it killed the series.
I can't imagine the poor souls who finished it without the fast forward button.
Deep Sea Research Centre, Fork Tower, The 12 Sealed Weapons of Kuza Castle, Riding the Chocobo around the World, Ozma, Hot and Cold Chocobo, Jumping Rope, TRIPLE TRIAD, TetraMaster, Obtaining The Excalibur II and more.
Literally anything that deviates from the dull formula of FFXII would be fun side content. CPR minigame, ball and cup simulator, blitzball, triple triad, snowboarding. Anything.
>no fun gimmicks or side content
[...] >Yes. MMO checklist quests aren't side fun side content.
do go on and elaborate, anon.
It's pretty straight forward.
>fighting minibosses isn't fun
Why do you play video games?
No it's not fun because the game isn't fun. The FUN of fighting minibosses from a checklist in FFXII is pressing the fast forward button and pausing if your characters are about to die and a gambit isn't resolving it for you.
>exploring zertinan caverns and seeing it connect a billion different locales >finding the hidden areas in nabreus deadlands >doing all the puzzles that clear the way to various espers >hunts >not the sickest shit ever
absolute dogshit taste.
>Walking through an empty cave >Walking through an empty desert >Don't remember any puzzles so I can't have enjoyed them >Killing enemies which is all you do in the game
If you're an MMO addict this might squeeze the last endorphin out of your dried up brain, but for everybody else this is obligatory nothing content.
>Deep Sea Research Centre >Fork Tower
Feels like you're being conflicting here
10 months ago
Anonymous
Didn't say that.
you dont play games to have fun and explore, you play games to have a huge list of autist distractions to complete. i cant imagine thinking it has MMO tier gameplay unless you have a negative bias against FFXIV because it literally rips half its mechanics from XII, but that doesnt mean XII is more of an MMO just because FXIV figured out how to waste your time more.
its actually fricking criminal how hard FFXIV just apes XII
>you dont play games to have fun and explore, you play games to have a huge list of autist distractions to complete.
If that were true I would like FFXII, since the exploration is garbage and all you have to do is check items off a list. Never played XIV.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>walking through empty ship >walking through empty tower
10 months ago
Anonymous
Still didn't post that.
10 months ago
Anonymous
It's the same thing. If you somehow think the Zertinan caverns are empty then so are the Deep Sea Research Center and Fork Tower
10 months ago
Anonymous
>walking through empty grasslands >walking through empty ruins
10 months ago
Anonymous
if youve never played XIV and youre saying XII is an MMO then youre talking shit and your opinion is worthless as like i said you can REALLY tell where they just scraped XII- and i dont mean in an esoteric way, there are character models and plot point lifted directly from the PS2 game
10 months ago
Anonymous
It's a repetitive game where you run around a barren open world with barely any story automatically fighting enemies and doing quests off a checklist. Sounds like an MMO to me.
It's the same thing. If you somehow think the Zertinan caverns are empty then so are the Deep Sea Research Center and Fork Tower
It's not my post.
Whoah, the game isn't fun? I guess all the fun I've had with it was a decade spanning dream, that's really weird. Thanks for letting me know
Lots of people have deluded themselves into thinking NUMBERS GO UP is fun. There are people playing Destiny 2 as we speak, you think they're having fun? There are old people having "fun" on poker machines too.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Why do you play video games?
10 months ago
Anonymous
To have fun and be immersed in atmospheric or aesthetically pleasing content that was created with passion, artistry or at least good intention.
XII has good graphics and animations for the time but it's not enough. It's empty in every sense of the word and feels like 20% of what the creator put on paper made it into the game.
10 months ago
Anonymous
That's an interesting opinion
10 months ago
Anonymous
so most RPGs. you havnt really given any valid points towards XII being an MMO other than "fighting enemies and walking around" and not being able to remember the story.
off the top of my head, the game starts with Vaan wanting to steal loot fro mthe palace, that Balthier and Fran also want, then they all meet Ashe on the way out and figure out the Empire is trying to take over Rabanastre peacefully, from then on the game is about finding ways to stop them from using the Royal Nukes by finding your own Royal Nuke Codes and stopping a rogue space ghost from teaching the Empire how to make more nukes
the games lack of "story" is only apparent later in the game where you have a ton of diversions and exploration going on.
you dont play games to have fun and explore, you play games to have a huge list of autist distractions to complete. i cant imagine thinking it has MMO tier gameplay unless you have a negative bias against FFXIV because it literally rips half its mechanics from XII, but that doesnt mean XII is more of an MMO just because FXIV figured out how to waste your time more.
its actually fricking criminal how hard FFXIV just apes XII
10 months ago
Anonymous
>The humes ever skew hist'ry's weave >with haste they move through too short lives >towards waste... >and wasting... >on. they. run.
XII is total kino, the fly in the ointment isn't the gameplay, it's the way they implemented the old fashioned jrpg grind. Getting mp back by walking is great, on one hand, on the other it incentivized you to run laps for 20 minutes while the team's batteries recharged.
10 months ago
Anonymous
...there are multiple dots on the lisence board to generate MP based on doing and taking damage, the only point in the game MP is a problem is maybe at the start.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I do remember it being mitigated, but I also remember running laps around the tomb of raithwall.
10 months ago
Anonymous
yeah nah yeah, that makes sense cos Tomb of Raithwall is the "first" real dungeon and the only spell you have is probably cure and 100MP
its morons like him that miss 90% of the game because they just go where theyre told and then say the 150 hours they spent grinding for no reason made the game shit.
that said, the content in general is hidden behind arbitrary guide book steps. most of the Espers cant be found without communing with the gods and discerning the wiccan steps to press switches in. to get to Ultima for example- even the guide is LITERALLY 30-50 steps long detailing as to which switches to press and which paths to take in The Great Crystal with 5 different time limits. some more stuff youre not finding without a guide
>Ultima Blade >Muramasa >Gilgamesh 2 >Exodus >Cu Chulainn >Zeromus >Three Medallions >Wyrmhero Blade >90% of Rare Game Trophies >90% of the materials in the game >"Fishing" Minigame and thus all the fishing spots
its just such a fricking obtuse game for no reason but its my favourite simply because of the important parts of a game like the systems, art and design. im playing it right now, just left it on the couch at Pharos. I dont agree that its an MMO or else all 3D FF games are MMOs but it can be fricking mind numbing when you focus on one part of the game too long
Nothing will EVER master the experience of playing FFVIII, the most kino RPG of all time, by Refining 100 Tents into CURAGA at the beginning of the game, staying in Critical for the entire game so you can easily use your Limit Breaks all with no grinding ever needed.
i think xii and all of ivalice alliance is the best thing about FF and how to "milk" a numbered title/sub-series correctly just by releasing good games in the same universe
I find the combat extremely relaxing. It's fun to just walk around in one of the many zones and just kill enemies over and over.
The environments look great.
The music sounds great.
No random encounters.
No battle screens.
they fricked up the NA and EU versions by removing Penelos kidnap scenes so shers just straight not in the game for the first few sections outside of following Vaan through Giza then fricking off
She would have been noteworthy if they made her a PAWG instead of a flat tie. Hell, she had a one-piece outfit. How did she even get that? She and Vaan were poverty stricken orphans, so it's a wonder no one jumped her bones all those years in Rabanastre wearing that shit. Just saying.
i'm saying it exists in the real world so why wouldn't it exist there
Vayne and Cid did nothing wrong, right?
honestly, other than the war mongering, what was so wrong about wanting to harness technology and take humanity's destiny back into the hands of humans? Especially when the espers were explicitly like "go and do our bidding and slay him" lol. during the end of the game I kinda feel like ashe was in the wrong for sure. She was starting wars just because of the past
google body suits, also rompers. They're just one pieces that you wear out and about. Most of the time women wear skirts or shorts over it, but there are definitely people that don't
10 months ago
Anonymous
>a homeless girl affording this shit
lol. lmao, even.
10 months ago
Anonymous
again, LOTS of poor black people have those, just like they have LV bags
My favorite game. I'm currently in the process of designing a spiritual successor and have already started creating assets. Once I've got something to show off I'll start seeing if I can find people to work with.
you got alot of frickin work cut out for you if you actually want it to play like XII, you better enjoy coding because the CT system for stacking actions sounds like a fricking headache
Great Crystal is actually fine when you realise "down= good" because the wrong paths are all dead ends until you get the Treaty Blade and suddenly it says "lol get fricked" and the path to Ultima is scuffed because no map and a time limit
in the original they work off MP and you can chain them by pressing the characters button when it pops up, once everyones uses are gone the buttons become "restock" and you have to press it again to use what it restocked.
then once a certain number have been chained together you get a "Concurrence" at the end which is a non-elemetnal fat dump of damage, the best one being Black Hole, which is 4x level 3s anywhere in the chain.
i think my highest chain is 13 or something and it didnt actually do all that much damage to the boss i used it on compared to Oil>Firaga
Just mash any available buttons as fast as you can. You think it can't be that simple, there has to be some kind of trick, but not, that's literally it.
if you get Zodiac on PC theres actually a mod where you can use monsters and NPCs so if you like the races i say go for it. they actually have unique animations too because they all join your party as guests at one point or another
>to play as
You don't play as any of those races. You barely even get to converse with other of those other races. Both the gameplay and the story focuses on the humans. You only get 1 different race party member and that's the viera
>The world is underutilised
as opposed to which games wherein the world is so intrinsically linked to the game?
it has locations with history that are populated or built according to the lore put forward, i cant neutrally, objectively point to any area that isnt "utilised". there arent even any cutoff side areas with no explanation or usage
>A second Zodiac Spear can be obtained in an alternative site, the Henne Mines' Phase 2 Dig. Even if the aforementioned forbidden chests are opened, the spear is still obtainable here. To unlock the site, at least 10 Espers must be acquired, and the Mindflayer Hunt completed. The player must speak to Geomancer Yugelu in Jahara to unlock this site, reachable via the Ore Separation.
Been playing TZA and it's so fricking boring, I finally got to a moment where I actually wanted to stop playing. I think I'm like 20 levels under what I should be for this part but I fought and died to the ghost boss that multiplies after fighting it for like 30 minutes. I'm seriously considering just using the in-game cheats to get EXP/LP just so I can see the rest of the story.
>I think I'm like 20 levels under what I should be for this part but I fought and died to the ghost boss that multiplies after fighting it for like 30 minutes.
There's no main story boss that does that I think, except Ahriman. If you're that far into the game you should know how to beat him
>There's no main story boss that does that I think, except Ahriman
yeah that's it
i think you might just be a moron if you managed to get to Sochen Cave Palace underleveled
I'm a moron because I don't waste my time grinding? Whatever man. My average level is like 25 and I just checked and the enemies are like ~38, so not as bad as I thought but still pretty bad. I'm sure I can probably beat the boss without grinding, but it's not fun.
yes actually. grinding would be specifically chaining skeletons in Lhusu Mines to get enough LP to unlock some bullshit. if you cant even level up correctly enough to be at an adequate level for the main narrative i dont know what to tell you. have you even been doing hunts? anything other than following the story from A to B?
theres frickshit WAY before Ahriman you shouldve had trouble with in the Hunts that wouldve made you realise youre moderately underleveled. level TWENTY FIVE by then is a little suspicious that youre just playing the game to get it over with at the detriment of actually playing it properly
>have you even been doing hunts?
Was at the start, stopped going out of my way to do them after hitting a wall with the cluckatrice really early on. Figured I needed to do the story stuff first, but the combat sucks so hard in this game that I have no desire to go do hunts again.
>cluckatrice >the chicken with 3 adds
alright, i dont want to call you a moron anymore because it genuinely seems like you just havnt really thought about what youre doing at all and are having sincere trouble.
try having a Black Mage, i hear theyre good with attacking multiple enemies at a time, you might also want to designate a White Mage to heal your party automatically
10 months ago
Anonymous
I attempted it as soon as I could, didn't even have any multiple hit moves yet besides the few mote items I had. If I wanted Aero I would have had to grind for money, in which case I figured I should go do story stuff instead. If I went back and did it now I'd be insanely overleveled.
>the combat sucks
you wouldn't know because you haven't engaged with it at all
If I haven't engaged with the combat and yet still got 30 hours in doing nothing but combat then it's a shit game.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>grind money
son, i really genuinely dont want to just call you a moron but the loot in the game youve been picking up has no other use than to be sold so you can buy healing items and motes.
the loop of hunts being to defeat a difficult enemy that you leveled up on the way to, selling loot from the enemies on the way to it, and then going on to the next hunt shouldve been more than enough to have you not say the "combat sucks"
i got filtered at the first Ghost casting Doom, but i went back and finished it later then continued with the rest of hunts- i feel like youre conflating "the combat sucks" with "i genuinely dont know whats going on and i dont want to try"
10 months ago
Anonymous
>son, i really genuinely dont want to just call you a moron but the loot in the game youve been picking up has no other use than to be sold
of course I know that you idiot, I thought you had enough brains to get what I meant without having to explain the whole process.
>the loop of hunts being to defeat a difficult enemy that you leveled up on the way to, selling loot from the enemies on the way to it, and then going on to the next hunt shouldve been more than enough to have you not say the "combat sucks"
I've done that and it sucks.
>i got filtered at the first Ghost casting Doom,
that's one of the hunts I did before cluckatrice and I didn't have much trouble with it, and yet you're giving me shit? Despite that being a much simpler fight?
>30 hours in
How the frick are you 30 hours in, still at the Sochen Cave Palace, and underleveled to boot? I managed to beat the game for the first time in far less time than that, without grinding and without being underleveled. What the frick have you been doing all this time?
28 hours on the file. Like I said, I did a few hunts at the start, ended up wasting time in the sandsea area backtracking to find the yentza secret the npc mentioned, ended up having to go through the whole salikawood a second time since I already explored everything before the moogle boss gave me the quest to round them all up. Other than that I can't see why it would be any longer than normal.
yeah but heres the thing, i reckon once the Black Chocobos in Ozmone started taking significant chunks out of Ashe's panties you wouldve realised you probably shouldve leveled a little bit, and doubly so once you turned around and saw the Dullahands beating the shit out of Basch.
having 3 bench characters underleveled is a more common occurence than having your entire party struggle against a ghost 30 hours in
Been trying to keep everyone leveled so no one falls behind since I've been fricked in other games by that.
10 months ago
Anonymous
see the difference is i didnt lambast the entire game having shit combat just because i couldnt heal doom and got slapped to shit at level 10.
its an old game, but still not as bad as FFIV where you should feel the need to sweat bullets wondering if you need to grind more- all youre doing is convincing me and painting a picture of the kinds of people who dont like FFXII- which is a generalisation and a dumb thing to do but the only way you could possibly be having a problem is if youre not playing the game even semi-correctly.
because if you were, the real point you wouldve dropped the game playing like this is White Chocobo putting up anti-physical and anti-magic barriers for 2 minutes straight and screaming autistically while running up and down Paramina. do you play RPGs often because i absolutely would just fricking hate FFXII if i didnt for the same reason people like Ross on AccursedFarms doesnt like WOW. its just 4 homies in a row hitting stuff but thats not ALL the genre is
10 months ago
Anonymous
>see the difference is i didnt lambast the entire game having shit combat just because i couldnt heal doom and got slapped to shit at level 10.
I'm not saying that it has shit combat because I died, I'm saying it has shit combat because I'm not enjoying it. I've played plenty of JRPG's before, played every FF before XII except 3, XII easily has the most boring gameplay of every FF game I've played except 2. 4 homies in a row is easily superior to MMO combat.
10 months ago
Anonymous
but XII has a significantly higher number of combat interactions than any other FF. its my favourite below CC. it actually has systems and buffs above "take less magic damage" or "take less physical damage". i havnt had more "fun" in a FF than casting Berserk, Haste, Bravery, Reflect, Reverse, Bubble and Decoy on a single party member and then letting high level spells bounce off their butthole into a Boss im underleveled for and saying "lol rip" in 3 seconds
im not so neurotic im going to try and convince you youre 100% dumbdumb for not liking it. it just sounds from description of what youve been doing that something went horribly wrong
10 months ago
Anonymous
>its my favourite below CC
That had better stand for Crystal Chronicles, if it's Crisis Core then you have supremely shit taste and I regret reading any of your posts.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>30 hours in
How the frick are you 30 hours in, still at the Sochen Cave Palace, and underleveled to boot? I managed to beat the game for the first time in far less time than that, without grinding and without being underleveled. What the frick have you been doing all this time?
10 months ago
Anonymous
NTA, but first time I beat 12 it took me 86 hours.
10 months ago
Anonymous
yeah but heres the thing, i reckon once the Black Chocobos in Ozmone started taking significant chunks out of Ashe's panties you wouldve realised you probably shouldve leveled a little bit, and doubly so once you turned around and saw the Dullahands beating the shit out of Basch.
having 3 bench characters underleveled is a more common occurence than having your entire party struggle against a ghost 30 hours in
10 months ago
Anonymous
i know what i wouldve been doing to excuse fricking up that hard
10 months ago
Anonymous
>I managed to beat the game for the first time in far less time than that
Bullshit. I'm over 40 hours in and only just got to Bahamut with the party barely level 50, and I've been abusing turbo and guides half the time
10 months ago
Anonymous
I did all of the content and it took me around ~150 IIRC. By then I was so thoroughly unsatisfied with how lame and hollow the victories were that I didn’t even bother trying to find that level 99 red chocobo or whatever. Decided it was a fool’s errand, entered the final area, absolutely stomped the final boss, and watched the embarrassingly forgettable ending only to let out a sigh of relief that I was finally set free from the curse of FFXII.
That’s FFXII threads in a nutshell. Their fervent tenacity is what convinced me that FFXII must have something great going for it if people would defend it so earnestly. Sadly, I was mistaken.
That’s FFXII threads in a nutshell. Their fervent tenacity is what convinced me that FFXII must have something great going for it if people would defend it so earnestly. Sadly, I was mistaken.
again, clinging to a single piece of equipment as a talking point for entire game only outs you as a fricking pleb and not worth talking to in the first place. >b-but its the strongest weapon.
glad we clarified why you play videogames metapleb
so instead of talking about facets of the entire game, you singled out a single piece of equipment like a Redditor trying to farm likes with a meme. listen its whatever, i dont sleep next to a copy of the game and feel the need to defend it but despite me thinking it was a japanese goblin trick to make it so ass to obtain i still dont really see how its a talking point past the aforementioned Reddit mentality.
I usually discard opinions of anons who refer to anything as “Reddit,” and you’ve very clearly reinforced the fact that I am doing so with good reason.
Good level design and some good bossfights bur the story bosses are pathetic and the combat system leaves a lot to be desired. The fact that the game's main gimmick is you can program it to run itself is stupid and the license board skills are terrible, absolutely nothing of interest just equipment licenses.
>Zodiac Spear is anti consumer >high level Magic kills the processing power, so they're forever queued up >Summons are moronic because they overcorrected from Yuna's OP summons >Gambit system is a trap, everyone plays the same "Revive, Buff, Heal, Attack" triple gambits, there is no depth at all >Status effects chances are undocumented and Shell fricks them up, it's unironically optimal just to use Nihopaloa + remedies >MC is lame >Story main beats happen when you're not there, useless mcguffin goose chase while there is a war brewing >You meet the main antagonist right before the final boss, he litterally says "who are you" >Great Crystal moronic map
Shit game, I respect more XIII than this shit show, with all its flaws it actually becomes playable at some point
b-but IZJS fixes all of those >shut up Black person
high level magic has a CT score meaning Scathe is CT8- cant queue up 3 Scathes and cheese the game.
status effect chances are high but still have a chance to miss but Indigo Amulet makes it 95% iir.
the rest of your post is skill issue and ADHD and you straight up didnt pay attention to the fact that one person cant win a war started by literal magic ghosts in the first place. i think you should stick to Power of Friendship sexy elf "the player is moronic, just say anything" JRPGs
I'm not talking about charge time you moron, i'm talking about the fact that the spell uses so much particles it's queued until nothing else happens in the fight so it can be freed up
You litterally can have scathe queued for minutes because the fight already has animations that are called after scathe but happen before
They fixed it in IZJS, it's not a game design issue, they just didnt bother taking the PS2 power into account >just equip the indigo amulet >skill issue
CT isnt charge time its the queued action list and nothing else can be done while one action takes up all the slots. i think you just made up a bunch of shit >dude the memory of the PS2 was so low it couldnt load all of the particles so it never casted
not how it works at all and im surprised you managed to do enough mental gymnastics to come up with that you did because this isnt the first time ive had to listen to someone tell me "DUDE ITS SO BROKE, LIKE THE GAME LITERALLY CANT EVEN LOAD XYZ" for several games in a similarly "that kid" incendiary manner.
I know I'll get flaked but I prefer the original over the International Job System.
The original is more of an RPG where characters aren't tied to a specific role.
nah thats perfectly valid because the game was never intended to have 2 jobs on each character, to the point it doubles back on letting you put whatever on whoever and ironically scuffs the freedom a little bit
This is well documented. PS2 limitation. >b-but reddit
hence the different website links. Magic queue was a thing, and it only affected the high particle spells. Go away now.
yeah and one of those links seems to be pondering it being removed when the limit was actually upped from 5 to 8 in Zodiac IIRC.
you havnt convinced me youre not being a Reddit "that kid" by saying the game is somehow fundamentally broken and Scathe is impossible to cast. its not a limitation of the PS2 "because of the particles", you quite literally dont know how games work and are talking out of your ass. you really think the game cant and so refuses to load a 1 second particle effect because its too big and that the system in place for casting it wasnt just fricked up? when the game is full of 15 second cutscenes for super attacks from both the party and bosses?
it was broken because they fricked up - not because of a "limitation"
I usually discard opinions of anons who refer to anything as “Reddit,” and you’ve very clearly reinforced the fact that I am doing so with good reason.
i usually discard opinions of anyone who regurgitate one meaningless opinion as the only facet of an entire thing, in this case its not because i have a bias against an entire website ironically, but because farming for replies by mentioning the most popular meme from something is shit-tier conversation >MARIO BROS 2? HEY DID YOU KNOW IT WAS ACTUALLY-
yeah cool, but what about the actual game and how convoluted some of the side stuff is even after you initially find it like the medalli- >WAS ACTUALLY CALLED DOKI DOKI PANIC, DAMN WHAT A SHIT RIP OFF GAME LOL
>You meet the main antagonist right before the final boss, he litterally says "who are you"
This is really inexcusable. Even if you have a villain who doesn't meet the hero until the finale, you will at least have a thematic build-up to their confrontation, they may not meet but they're paths have been set against each other from the beginning or some such. When you get there and Vayne is like "huh? What the frick" it's just silly. Like frick this whole thing is a star wars larp and Sheev doesn't exist until the 11th hour but his ideological conflict with Luke is the entire 3rd movie and the whole thing is presented as a set-up for their meeting.
It's the worst Matsuno game (and it shows because he left S-E midway into development), and I had no desire to play IZJS because it only fixed some gameplay aspects. I agree with on many points but I also want to add horrible story pacing - almost everytime you need to get past 3 filler locations in order to get to actual story-vital location only to be distracted by dumb minigames or fetch quests (the entire road to Archades is the worst example of this). Sure, FFT also did this, but it was several times faster than in FFXII (plus FFT actually had cutscene archive to rewatch plot in case you needed to refresh your memory - FFXII didn't bother with it and Youtube had frickall in 2006; I even managed to completely forget who the frick Gabranth was when I finally climbed the top of moronic pharos because some characters appear only once per 5-10 hours of the game).
Also this FF has one of the most useless main parties in the series - feels like NPCs like Larsa / Reddas / Ondore do more for plot progression than Ashe and her band.
You have more choice in the original but the game could use more structure which is why people like the job system. In reality it's a bandaid though, the real problem is the skills themselves you pick up on the job board are trash.
It sort of ruins their characterization by not forcing them into roles that suit their skills. By the end of vanilla FFXII my whole party was basically wearing and using the exact same endgame gear.
if you get the Zodiac Burger edition you can have fun with some Tactics tier mods that let you put anything or anyone in your party. if you want to make a team of 6 Viera on their way to kidnap Larsa for [reasons] then you can
I hated it on ps2 as a kid and absolutely fricking loved it to the point of 100%ing it on PC.
Being able to speed up the walking made all the difference. Ok maybe my taste also changed over the years. I made a complete 180 on the game.
I'm even kinda sad I 100%ed because I wanna do more stuff in it
Best universe to frick around in, but the project lead suffered from burnout or whatever and fricked off mid-development. One of the main things that bothers me is that all the characters are fricking great, but they ALL get the backseat so that the two numbnuts who weren't even characters in the OG script steal the lead. This feeling never left me throughout the playthrough. Every time they speak or demand the limelight, it's like nails on chalkboard.
Play Vagrant Story, FF Tactics Advance, or Tactics Orgre to experience Ivalice as it's meant to be.
I'd rather trust a dev who worked on FFXII until the very end than Matsuno who threw a b***hfit and quit the company during FFXII's development... only to make fricking nothing in al these years (outside of, surprise-surprise, games owned by Square-Enix). Same person still can't decide in his tweets whether or not Ovelia died at the end of FFT, so Matsuno's not a trustable source at this point.
Terribly balanced, but the gambit system is genius, suppresses all the boring aspect of turn based combat while keeping the strategic aspect instead of forfeiting it for zoom zoom real time jrpg trash
It just does an incredibly bad job of rewarding effort. Lots of the side-quests and secrets (summons, for example) take an ungodly amount of time to unlock, and then you’re left with the sad reality that they are fricking useless and weren’t worth the effort to begin with. On top of that, the game’s story and CGI clips are some of the worst in the series so whatever motivation you have to progress is also constantly being tested.
But none of them really... clicked, you know? I think it's what
It just does an incredibly bad job of rewarding effort. Lots of the side-quests and secrets (summons, for example) take an ungodly amount of time to unlock, and then you’re left with the sad reality that they are fricking useless and weren’t worth the effort to begin with. On top of that, the game’s story and CGI clips are some of the worst in the series so whatever motivation you have to progress is also constantly being tested.
says. There's stuff there but you don't really feel all that good once you're there
Story was weird but it has my favourite battle system of all FFs
I honestly loved the ability to make a flowchart for my characters and have them auto-fight. I generally still played a single character and let my party members go at it, but it was cool to just sit back and watch them beat the shit out of something with the commands I would've given them anyway
Matsuno had a few good games in the 90s and people need to accept that that's the ONLY good stuff he made
Everything he's made since has been varying levels of mediocre to atrocious
>A few good games in the 90s
did I fricking sutter?
not to mention that mr. pizza cutter himself is one of the most widely mocked characters in the entire franchise
well this is good game. no dialogues though, characters just going around and saying one-liners.
i don't like morale of the game. you kinda starting from rabanastre, playing as rabanastre proletarians and rabanastre princess, but the game is about empire, so in the end main characters are larsa, bash and gabrant, and vayne, and all of them like "glory to empire, do everything to protect young emperor and empire"
besides, all this ff12 story, it's kinda ukrainian, rabanastre is donbass territory, and people jerking aroung with nuclear weapon. Arkadia making systhetical nuclear bombs, venat stole the technology about them, some cities was bombed with judge zecht. and gods are telling you USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS, and you kinda, "no thanks"
sorry theres a lot to read in this thread. may have already been discussed
but the zodiac system felt very weird to me. like everything felt basically the same no matter what class you choose. there was no actual personality in any of the weapons that i could see. there were no special attacks or special moves or anything like that. it was pretty lame
aside from that, and the fact that a lot of the later enemies just spat a bunch of status ailments on your entire party and made you spend 2-5 minutes healing and curing everyone after every single battle getting extremely exhausting, the game was alright
i liked the story and characters but its definitely not even close to my favourite final fantasy
I tried playing it because people told me it was like Xenoblade but it wasn't like Xenoblade at all, the game is just a bunch of corridors and there were no side quests at all up until the point I was.
The combat is really fun though, I loved it.
Every single sequel to a mainline title has been garbage >TAY
garbage >X-2
garbage >XIII-2 and XIII-3
Less garbage than XIII honestly, but still garbage
I can't say I ever touched LR with a 13-foot pole but 7R's combat is definitely a good attempt at "modern FF" if not a perfect one.
16 doesn't even try to be FF, which isn't inherently a bad thing. It's definitely fun throughout the entire game but it's also got its fair share of faults.
Frick LR though, let team ninja make a mainline game, or at the least take like 80% of SOP's combat, that was probably the best "Action FF" I've played.
my opinion differs. 13-2 was my favourite of the 13s. i thought noel and serah were much cooler as protagonists and i loved the time traveling. best part about ff13-2 was how much cooler lightning was as a background character. not to be rude but i feel thats where lightning excels.
10-2 was not better than 10-1 but it was very cool to play with all the different job outfits. i liked that it had more of a positive vibe as well
then again this is the same board that thinks obvious badguys like Loghain and Solidus "did nothing wrong" so I feel any arguments I have would fall on deaf ears
Also because he dresses way too sharp to be the MC. His mannerisms, his wits, even his entourage (a beastial woman to complete his human half) are all there, but the one problem is his looks...maybe his age, but that's irrelevant in comparison. Square Enix was on a warpath when it came to blonde haired spiky boys at the time, like Cloud, Tidus, etc. to be main representatives, so yeah.
>want to play through FF12 again on my PS2 >look up zodiac age >not enough new/changed content to grab me >but it has a fast forward mechanic
do i go authentic or should i buy the TZA? i'm at an impasse
The ps2 game already got pretty boring near the end, but the remaster makes the game even easier. I vividly recommend the struggle for freedom mod on nexus. It completely rebalances the game by specializing characters and buffing enemies, which really lets the gambit system shine in how good it is
Incredibly ahead of its time
One of the most boring games ever made
Yea incredibly boring and taking steps in all the wrong directions
If it went turbo weeb tranime like xenoblade 2 it would've been praised as the best ff
The story is kino
I remember jacking off to renders of Ashe when it came out
Unironically my favorite Final Fantasy
I liked it, but making you miss out on the endgame weapon because you didn't use a guide from the beginning of the game was bullshit.
Which one?
needed to cut Vann and Penelo
Zodiac Spear
I remember that opening certain chests with no tell locked you out of the Zodiac Spear
Stop being autists. You don't need to be a completionist on your first playthrough
No one is replaying a game right after finishing it. Miss-able content that requires a guide, and is not caused by player choice, is just bad game design. These things should only be easter eggs, not actual game content.
>Buy the game.
>Well you can't have this content because you didn't follow a 100 page guide when you started playing.
I do. I just 100% FF9, which came immediately after I beat it for the first time normally
>Those things should only be easter eggs
Zodiac Spear is an easter egg; it's massively overkill for anything in the main story
>The game is better if we add something that requires a guide to unlock.
>I'm shit at RPG's and need my hand held throughout
go play pokemon Black person
But you're advocating for games that require guides, i.e., hands to be held?
>Ah yes, I will not open these treasure chests because I have deduced from last night's dream that not opening them will unlock a weapon called the zodiac spear! It makes total sense based on the story so far.
cope
you lost the argument
Not defending FF12's implementation of missable content, but the design choice itself is perfectly valid and engaging if the developer is competent knows what they're doing (ie. not Square).
unironically yes. before the internet devs would literally put in content that was designed to generate rumours around the playground, chatter among fans, so long as it isnt integral to beating any content i really dont see a problem with this.
It wouldnt work now by any means, the internet has robbed us of that, which is fine, but there was nothing wrong with rumer generating content.
This isn't even rumor generating content. The Zodiac Spear locked behind the four chests is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to get without a guide. Not hard, not difficult, not rare. Impossible. No human could ever find it, not ever, the lifespan of the universe would not be enough to find it. Only reading the guide works.
Not true. I found it by mistake.
You did no such thing. You probably found the second spear from a chest that spawns randomly (and has a 0.001 chance to drop it). We're talking about the first one, from the necropolis. You don't get that one "by mistake". You only get it by reading the official guide and following it step by step.
Yes I did and you can't prove I didn't.
You probably found it in that other chest that has like a 1/500 chance of having a Zodiac Spear inside. I guess for a game that was only supposed to play like an MMO in theory they sure didn’t shy away from MMO-tier drop rates (or MMO-tier lack of respect for human concepts of real time) on a lot of things.
Obtaining pic related was one of the worst grinds of my life.
im playing Zodiac at the moment and i thought id escape hell by not even bothering and just going for Durandal or something but
>chest has 10% chance to spawn
>80% its gil
>20% its an item
>5% its the weapon if you have Diamond Armlet
100% ass, i just decided to put Berserk Gloves and Morningstar on Basch, Hermes Sandals on Balthier and Muramasa/Genji on Vaan and be done with it. not planning to fight YIazmat on this file so frick it
knew my brain was trying to remind me of something. yeah Crystal Chronicles, and im even more pissed our only shot at a good version of it for the next 100 years they fricked up the multiplayer. again
And if true, you didn't know how.
Know what anon, I'll give you that, as much as we like to double down on our initial arguement to a moronic detriment on this website you're right, its not handled well.
It's extra shit you don't need
If it is the most powerful weapon in the game, then it is needed. This is why its a game. Speaking of "needs", you also don't need to play video games. Hopefully, you're not a game dev.
But you don't need the Zodiac Spear. It isn't even the best weapon outside of shear brute force. It doesn't have combo potential like katanas or greatswords, or any sort of elemental bonus.
You also don't need a lot of weapons in the game, but that's bad logic to justify such bad game design because then why not remove most weapon from the game? Why even have multiple weapons? Part of the game is about the combat and weapons, the flavor and nuance of variety is what separates good game from a better game. Making one of these items impossible to get without a guide is bad game design. Also, it doesn't matter if a player needs it or not, it matters that the devs chose to add miss-able content that requires a guide. The decision in itself is bad game design.
It's not bad game design
>It's not bad game design!
>It just isn't, okay!
explain how it's bad
Miss-able content that requires a guide is bad game design.
Why is that bad? Why do you need to collect everything on your first playthrough?
Hypothetically, so you're okay if a game is filled with miss-able content that you can't unlock unless you read a guide?
Yes, you pathetic zoomer homosexual.
Yeah sure, why would I care that much? I can get it on another playthrough later. It's not like you're only allowed one playthrough. Most times on my first playthrough I miss a tonne of shit, then on a replay I 100% it with a guide
Requiring a guide to play a game is bad game design. It means your game in of itself is not sufficient.
Explain
I thought it was already apparent what I meant. Whatever you put in the guide could easily be translated into clues in the game or locked behind a puzzle. The game in itself should not require knowledge outside of the game that the game itself does not provide, otherwise the game design by definition is insufficient.
Boomers will tell you that finding something that didn't make sense or didn't have an answer, then crawling through the early days of the internet to find a community to find and share answers was great
You have this excuse for NES, and maybe SNES at best. Name a single PSX or later game that didn't have tons of tutorials.
>excuse
Is it an excuse? Hunting for answers with others was fun; tutorials weren't
This is a bot.
Seriously? You don't see the fun in a community?
>Boomers will tell you that finding something that didn't make sense or didn't have an answer, then crawling through the early days of the internet to find a community to find and share answers was great
You clearly don't agree.
I never experienced, so I can't say myself
We live in a world where answers are found before you even play the game
It's a pitiable thing. I encourage you all to play games and try things without ~~*preconceived notions*~~.
I don't know what you're talking about. That has nothing to do what I said
You're either playing dumb or are exceptionally moronic. Either way, this "discussion" is over.
>Name a single PSX or later game that didn't have tons of tutorials.
Legend of Dragoon had something similar to the spear with the stardust, good fricking luck not missing any without a guide.
Would you consider the Chaos badges the same as the Zodiac sphere?
Not the og anon, but it's not like you would get it on a second or third playthrough without a guide. That's how it's bad game design. Instead of rewarding people for hard work or effort, it rewards those who got their parents to buy the strategy guide.
Also who gives a frick about this game. Stupid ass wannabe star wars story where only Balthier and Ashe (kind of) matter with gameplay that's barely above a MMO idler. Final Fantasy as a franchise is mediocre.
>big number spear with zero strategic use is missable content
You are a moron.
>item is in game
>not game content
You're hyper focusing on the spear, we are talking about game design.
What is your problem outside of this specific spear?
No it isn't. Miss-able content is only bad when it is real world time locked or location locked (like those pokemon events they used to do).
No, you don't understand. Under no circumstances do you need the Zodiac Spear. Beat the penultimate boss? Best DPS is Excalibur, a greatswrod. Beat the ultimate boss? Yagyu Darkblade, a ninja sword. Everything inbetween? Katana with Genji equipment. There are literally zero meaningful battles where Zodiac Spear is optimal.
The Genji equipment is probably worse seeing as you only get them via stealing from Gilgamesh at specific health intervals
i feel like its less of an egregious sin because its not that complicatred, its not specific intervals, the first fight its everytime he pulls out a sword and in the 2nd its the same except just twice, once before and after cutscenes
>Making one of these items impossible to get without a guide
It's not impossible, there's a very very very low chance of getting it from a chest in the great crystal.
you can also straight up buy it in Zodiac version. for 12 years these people have clung onto a single weapon in the game as evidence the game is bad as if Ultimate weapons in all FFs have been explicitly detailed in game.
and its not even the best weapon. youd get further just stealing Genji Gloves and Muramasa from Gilgamesh. Zodiac Spear is not the make or break for helping you beat Hell Wyrm or Yiazmat
In the original version, the Zodiac spear was the strongest weapon.
nah it wasnt, even if youre a pleb. raw damage is for plebs.
Holy Lance with and White Mask with a gambit to attack yourself when low and various other shenanigans are better setups than just "strongest weapon".
like i said, people are clinging to it HARD as if it does so much damage everything else is invalidated but it doesnt, even in the original. having a black mage caste Scathe or Ardor on a reflected party with your White Mage having an Opal Ring to stop reflected spells being bounced is infinitely more useful than one pleb on your party with a strong weapon.
its shit design but the Zodiac Spear being obtuse is not a negative against a game in a genre with frequently batshit ultimate weapon steps. saying it is, is practically bandwagoning, like saying Emerald Weapon in FFVII makes it the best JRPG ever made because its harder than Sephiroth and is secret
That's the Zodiac edition, not the original version. The original version required you to not open specific chests. There is a reason they removed this gimmick in the Zodiac version, and it's because it's a moronic way to get an item.
>needed
it isn't
well then you are EXTREMELY autistic. As in "I don't know how you can function in real life"-autistic.
Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games which is what you seem to be looking for.
What does grinding have to do with the topic of missable content?
>Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games
Not the kind of shit they did in FF12 and if you're defending it I'm assuming you don't know what the player needs to do to get the Zodiac Spear. I'll tell you.
The player needs to avoid opening four specific treasure chests. They are in plain sight and not marked in any way, they're just default treasure boxes. There is no indication at all or or any kind of logic which four have to remain shut. The game does not give ANY hints to this whatsoever. You could play a trillion times trillion years and never figure this out because there is no indication that these chests are connected to the spear. Oh, and you can't close the chests after opening them. You literally just randomly have to refuse to pick up unmarked non-special treasure to get the best weapon in the game.
This is not good game design.
Yeah it was made to sell guide books.i remember bac then they were really popular.
Frick nips.
The zodiac spear isn't even that bad. A player could eventually deduce that certain chests vanish when you open the one in the necrohol.
The invisible airship chest with the invisible bow is way worse.
You realize that this is the cheat version of getting the zodiac spear? The real way to get it is from a rare item drop.
its lost on them. even in Zodiac the chest requirement was scrapped and the "clue" is the items in 12 chests on Phon Coast being labeled suspiciously in japanese- lost entirely in the english translation. now the argument is actually "but Great Trango, The Grandia III and the Silmarillion have 1% drop rates, defend that", when they actually are fully cheat weapons and only supposed to be found by autists in the first place, silimarly to those "FFXI Player beats secret boss playing for 6 days!"
genuinely concerned how a secret weapon caused this much seethe
How about you go frick yourself with your shit opinion? In a huge game like FF locking the best shit behind arbitrary missable nonsense is gay. If it was instead the third best spear, no one would be as salty.
Also dumbass acting like non autists play this game
This. I dropped Tactics Ogre when I found out I can't just play the game and that I needed a guide to not miss things. Literally just dropped the game half-way through.
It was a different time, they really wanted you to buy the strategy guide.
I swear SE had some kind of deal with Prima, Bradygames, ect to put as much esoteric missable shit in their games to help sell guides.
>the way the forest viera walk in slow motion
>no fricking hurry when you live forever
>they all have pure white ears
>viera who leave the forest all have black tips
>because they can't hear the forest anymore
>said forest is apparently sapient and canonically wants to murder the party specifically for stealing one of her pure bunny daughters
I know that fanart doesn't represent that but I swear this was a thing.
nah dude, the Eruyt rabbits still have dark tips
I see white tips peaking over that speech bubble anon...I think maybe the picrel in the foreground had sex before marriage or something.
nah dude, im playing it right now. just went to Eruyt to check. only the wood guards have pure white tips.
unless the implication is that all the others have been frickin everything that turns up in the village and arent pure or whatever.
I just finished playthrough last week. Now I'm playing the whole KH series. FF12 is criminally underrated and people who cry about gambits are stupid.
>"it plays itself, its fricking boring"
yeah okay now try letting it play itself during any boss battle without being overleveled and watch Fran get Disabled and Reversed and killed immediately because Ashe cast Curaja automatically and party wiped. unless you WANT to click attack 40,000 times i dont get how setting up your actions to work cleanly is a bad mechanic
pic related. fed this fat b***h way too many Fuma Shurikens
I am saying that complaining about gambits is stupid because you can just turn them off. I did a whole playthrough last week without using them.
sure, i just dont know why you would, i love the system- im just getting memories of Golmore Jungle's boss and the Necrohol where you get 900 status effects every 3 seconds and it sounds like ass to individually cure everyone and then rebuff
It was ass. It was extremely hard.
>unless you WANT to click attack 40,000 times
I do this lol. I usually use around 3-5 gambits. Sometimes less.
It's not because I hate gambits. I just like it that way
>>they all have pure white ears
who leave the forest all have black tips
Actually never noticed this, great detail if true
thats part of how guide books worked, its the Funkopops and figmas of the late 90s/2000s, they absolutely were meant to compliment each other, thats why there were ads for the guidebooks in the manuals and on websites
It's the dumbest shit.
FFIX is one of my favorites but it has so much scavenger hunt and missable content it's ridiculous.
Thankfully it seems this trend died alongside guide books. I don't think XII has any missables beyond the spear.
The missable content in FF9 can be found without a guide
I never claimed otherwise.
My point was that there is a lot of it.
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Permanently_missable_content#Final_Fantasy_IX
unironically blame Nintendo and Nintendo Power.
also blame Famitsu because FFIV was only made because Sakaguchi was salty that the editor didnt like 2 or 3 and wouldnt put them i nthe magazine. Japanese media has always been closely tied to games
Sauce.
https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/111230602
its a list of gambits to make someone dump something alright
>need an account to view
Weak
https://files.catbox.moe/cf12w4.jpg
never say we mistreat our customers
Based and mortifying. Just what I’d expect from a FFXII thread.
exodiashe the forbidden one aside
what the FRICK are those gambits
it's like the list of neurons that connect to make a person dump gas on their heads and set themselves on fire.
Anakin was too annoying. I love Padmé so much it's unreal.
Worst PS2 game I’ve ever played.
One of the best in the series definetly ahead of its time tho
It has the best world-building.
Amazing game
Dififcult to master its mechanics
Story is heavy carried by the villians, the party kinda sucks. Vaan sucks and so does Panelo.
Exploring the world of Ivalice was one of the best experiences I had in gaming (at least when I was 12 years old)
first JRPG that I spent more than 100 hours. It is also the first of the 2 game that my then gf(now wife) watched me play from start to finish. because she liked the character's voices.
Post your favorite jobs combo
>Ninja/White Mage
>Red Mage/Black Mage
>Monk/Samurai
I played the european one on PS2, so everyone could learn anything.
>foebreaker/shikari
>knight/bushi
>monk/black mage
>archer/red mage
>Monk/Knight so Balthier can do everything
>Archer/White Mage so Penelo can sit at the back for reasons
FF12 has like 3 good moments padded out with 150 hours of boring moments.
I wish Square would remake this and remove all characters other than Balthier and his sex rabbit.
it's a top 3 FF game
awful, the game is somehow still a slog at 4X speed
MMO-like singleplayer game. IOW, trash. Sakaguchi ruined FF by naming an MMO XI.
I could never finish it. I always get bored.
Same, tried twice.
Singleplayer MMO that plays itself once you set up gambits, not my thing
You realize gambits are optional, right?
I've never liked that argument. "Just don't engage with the mechanics". It'd be a valid argument if you were going out of your way to look up some OP build and then complain the game is easy, you've only got yourself to blame in that scenario, but saying simply don't use this main mechanic just seems silly as a defense.
It’s not a good argument, it never has been. For starters, playing the game without gambits is even worse than playing it with them. Aside from the few instances in which you’d turn them off for strategic purposes, there is no sane reason for playing through the game without them deliberately.
Playing without them makes the game play somewhat like a final fantasy game.
>somewhat
It’s awful and you know it.
The last good final fantasy
worst ff alongside 16 and 13 and 14
and 15
great world, interesting zones, story is okay and the dialogue is fun. Definitely worth a play for SURE.
Probably the best texture work I've seen in a video game. The style is just amazing.
the soul of the world is nearly unmatched
>tfw no eight foot tall bunny warrior girl with an icelandic accent
jdimsa
Please download this mod to get rid of that black bar under cutscenes. EVERYONE should get it (Cutscenes Unleashed).
https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy12/mods/37
>heat death of the universe
>new jrpg with gambit system
which comes first?
gambit system is garbage, it only "works" because the combat would be like dragging your dick over hot glass without it because they decided it should play like a fricking mmo for some colossally moronic reason
it's a bandage for their own shit design and liking it is actual fricking stockholm syndrome
Best entry in the franchise.
I don’t remember the story at all o.o
The game was so boring they put in a 4x speed button.
Adding 4x speed to your JRPG reduces friction between the player and grinding.
If that enemy off to the side is only going to take <30 seconds to move to and kill I'm gonna do it every time. If it's going to take 2 minutes or more I'm less likely to.
The speed up function both made the game playable and broke it. Because at the end of the day it's a boring as hell game and it's not very good.
if your rpg needs fastforward to just be playable in the first place you have failed in my eyes
I love the central conceit of a fast forward button. They should have made a more engaging combat system.
The game is fine in the aspects it chose to focus in. It's just weak in others and the couple good things don't carry the experience for me. Very disappointing game. Especially in the characters and story. I guess I expected more from Ivalice considering all the praise it gets. I thought every single game sucked besides Tactics (and Vagrant Story if you want to count that, I guess). Never been so disappointed with the franchise than when I played through the Ivalice games
>Especially in the characters and story
Those were the best parts
>Thoughts of FFXII?
Vayne Solidor did many things wrong.
Fun but painfully straightforward.
Spear isn't necessary but the whole chest shenanigans is pretty pants on head moronic
The whole point was to exploit morons. The same way gacha works. The spear is ultimately meaningless, but you have to have it, goy. Just like the hottest new gacha jpeg. Game guides were the original gacha.
This kind of tactic is centuries old, greedy people will always exploit morons.
Took me over 3 years to beat even with the speed multipliers in Zodiac Age, i would have loved it so much if it wasn't such a slog. I wanted to beat all the marks but i barely made it through the main story
watching bots arguing is like having a fricking stroke
I played the original release, the day it came out.
I loved it. Highly recommend it to patient people.
Wonderful art style, Ivalice environment and plot, well-written story, SPECTACULAR voice acting (literally Top 3 BEST voice acted video games EVER CREATED to-this-day, by even critics' standards), and a terrific soundtrack.
Eruyt Village
The Skycity of Bhujerba
The Royal Capital of Rabanastre
Ivalice is so comfy
this. it's a world that's genuinely fun to traverse and explore on foot.
Name a RPG with a better world
Still the best system ever created for party based combat
great story, characters, environment
too bad the soundtrack and endgame were not very good for a game of that caliber
What's wrong with the endgame?
>soundtrack
nta but it's pretty dull and forgettable, especially coming off of the likes of 1-10
>soundtrack
>not very good
I thought the endgame(except the dungeon with ultima) and soundtrack were fine, but its the story that falls flat. The first half is good but it loses so much steam towards the end and just becomes dull.
>he doesn't like Paramina Rift, Stillshrine of Miriam, Archades, Giruvegan, Ridorina
>Still the best system ever created for party based combat
there is quite literally no other game that gives you such fine control over the entire party in real time. the better games ive played all require individual commands to be input for each and/or are strictly turn based.
you can set everyone in FFXII to do whatever you would want to do in a certain situation. if im battle through an area ive already been through the battle system is going to be so much more of a slog of going into menus to cure status ailments. it can be argued its boring but going anywhere unmolested in any traditional final fantasy is a chore in and of itself, Macalania Woods in X was ass and so was the moon in IV, Cloud of Darkness run up in III was also a load of shit. in XII you can just set your gambits and get to where you need to go, get some LP and items along the way or even actually just flee
turning the game into an auto macro fest is the exact opposite of a good system
it's admitting defeat, it's giving up on making a good combat system and telling the game to play itself for you
Far better with the International Zodiac Job System
best FF next to 10 and 14. I put like 120 hours into zodiac edition.
>bunny asses
?si=KaO7E4XU20o2_4rn
It's no FFV, VIII or IX. Those are true Veecore FF games. Those are the ONLY approved FF games around here xirs
I'm super biased because I played the game multiple times since release but it's the only game where I can listen to a soundtrack on youtube and immediately get pulled into the game's world again. One of the only reasons besides Tony Hawk that I was glad I had PS2 growing up.
the beginning of the end for Final Fantasy
No, that was X. X-2 was the complete end, everything after is a rotting shambling corpse. Stick to Western RPGs like BG3, anons
X was fine
Not it wasn't it was shit. no world map, long narrow hallways, AHAHAHAHAHAHA, not real equipment, no story, simon says "gameplay", too short, too easy, too boring, blitzball, endgame is shit, ugh. No thank you.
The story is barely there, the main characters almost never interact with each other, no fun gimmicks or side content, boring open map design, plays like a singleplayer MMO and it killed the series.
I can't imagine the poor souls who finished it without the fast forward button.
>no side content
>boring open map design
Yes. MMO checklist quests aren't side fun side content.
Give me an example of fun side content
Deep Sea Research Centre, Fork Tower, The 12 Sealed Weapons of Kuza Castle, Riding the Chocobo around the World, Ozma, Hot and Cold Chocobo, Jumping Rope, TRIPLE TRIAD, TetraMaster, Obtaining The Excalibur II and more.
>Hot and Cold Chocobo
>Fun
Literally anything that deviates from the dull formula of FFXII would be fun side content. CPR minigame, ball and cup simulator, blitzball, triple triad, snowboarding. Anything.
It's pretty straight forward.
No it's not fun because the game isn't fun. The FUN of fighting minibosses from a checklist in FFXII is pressing the fast forward button and pausing if your characters are about to die and a gambit isn't resolving it for you.
Whoah, the game isn't fun? I guess all the fun I've had with it was a decade spanning dream, that's really weird. Thanks for letting me know
>fighting minibosses isn't fun
Why do you play video games?
>exploring zertinan caverns and seeing it connect a billion different locales
>finding the hidden areas in nabreus deadlands
>doing all the puzzles that clear the way to various espers
>hunts
>not the sickest shit ever
absolute dogshit taste.
>Walking through an empty cave
>Walking through an empty desert
>Don't remember any puzzles so I can't have enjoyed them
>Killing enemies which is all you do in the game
If you're an MMO addict this might squeeze the last endorphin out of your dried up brain, but for everybody else this is obligatory nothing content.
I'm afraid the only brain deficient here is (you)rs. Alzheimer's claims yet another boomer. F.
>Deep Sea Research Centre
>Fork Tower
Feels like you're being conflicting here
Didn't say that.
>you dont play games to have fun and explore, you play games to have a huge list of autist distractions to complete.
If that were true I would like FFXII, since the exploration is garbage and all you have to do is check items off a list. Never played XIV.
>walking through empty ship
>walking through empty tower
Still didn't post that.
It's the same thing. If you somehow think the Zertinan caverns are empty then so are the Deep Sea Research Center and Fork Tower
>walking through empty grasslands
>walking through empty ruins
if youve never played XIV and youre saying XII is an MMO then youre talking shit and your opinion is worthless as like i said you can REALLY tell where they just scraped XII- and i dont mean in an esoteric way, there are character models and plot point lifted directly from the PS2 game
It's a repetitive game where you run around a barren open world with barely any story automatically fighting enemies and doing quests off a checklist. Sounds like an MMO to me.
It's not my post.
Lots of people have deluded themselves into thinking NUMBERS GO UP is fun. There are people playing Destiny 2 as we speak, you think they're having fun? There are old people having "fun" on poker machines too.
Why do you play video games?
To have fun and be immersed in atmospheric or aesthetically pleasing content that was created with passion, artistry or at least good intention.
XII has good graphics and animations for the time but it's not enough. It's empty in every sense of the word and feels like 20% of what the creator put on paper made it into the game.
That's an interesting opinion
so most RPGs. you havnt really given any valid points towards XII being an MMO other than "fighting enemies and walking around" and not being able to remember the story.
off the top of my head, the game starts with Vaan wanting to steal loot fro mthe palace, that Balthier and Fran also want, then they all meet Ashe on the way out and figure out the Empire is trying to take over Rabanastre peacefully, from then on the game is about finding ways to stop them from using the Royal Nukes by finding your own Royal Nuke Codes and stopping a rogue space ghost from teaching the Empire how to make more nukes
the games lack of "story" is only apparent later in the game where you have a ton of diversions and exploration going on.
you dont play games to have fun and explore, you play games to have a huge list of autist distractions to complete. i cant imagine thinking it has MMO tier gameplay unless you have a negative bias against FFXIV because it literally rips half its mechanics from XII, but that doesnt mean XII is more of an MMO just because FXIV figured out how to waste your time more.
its actually fricking criminal how hard FFXIV just apes XII
>The humes ever skew hist'ry's weave
>with haste they move through too short lives
>towards waste...
>and wasting...
>on. they. run.
XII is total kino, the fly in the ointment isn't the gameplay, it's the way they implemented the old fashioned jrpg grind. Getting mp back by walking is great, on one hand, on the other it incentivized you to run laps for 20 minutes while the team's batteries recharged.
...there are multiple dots on the lisence board to generate MP based on doing and taking damage, the only point in the game MP is a problem is maybe at the start.
I do remember it being mitigated, but I also remember running laps around the tomb of raithwall.
yeah nah yeah, that makes sense cos Tomb of Raithwall is the "first" real dungeon and the only spell you have is probably cure and 100MP
its morons like him that miss 90% of the game because they just go where theyre told and then say the 150 hours they spent grinding for no reason made the game shit.
that said, the content in general is hidden behind arbitrary guide book steps. most of the Espers cant be found without communing with the gods and discerning the wiccan steps to press switches in. to get to Ultima for example- even the guide is LITERALLY 30-50 steps long detailing as to which switches to press and which paths to take in The Great Crystal with 5 different time limits. some more stuff youre not finding without a guide
>Ultima Blade
>Muramasa
>Gilgamesh 2
>Exodus
>Cu Chulainn
>Zeromus
>Three Medallions
>Wyrmhero Blade
>90% of Rare Game Trophies
>90% of the materials in the game
>"Fishing" Minigame and thus all the fishing spots
its just such a fricking obtuse game for no reason but its my favourite simply because of the important parts of a game like the systems, art and design. im playing it right now, just left it on the couch at Pharos. I dont agree that its an MMO or else all 3D FF games are MMOs but it can be fricking mind numbing when you focus on one part of the game too long
>side content
This. Way too linear, and boring too.
>no fun gimmicks or side content
>Yes. MMO checklist quests aren't side fun side content.
do go on and elaborate, anon.
Endgame hardest content being impossible without Gambits lol fricking flamboyant homosexual game for trannies
>open FFXII thread
>don't see the pasta
>123 posts
I'm shocked, is it finally okay to talk about this game?
The only good, Veecore-approved FF games are VIII, V and IX - true Kino masterpieces
best gameplay
Great misunderstood game when it originally released. Thankfully more people have tried it now.
Nothing will EVER master the experience of playing FFVIII, the most kino RPG of all time, by Refining 100 Tents into CURAGA at the beginning of the game, staying in Critical for the entire game so you can easily use your Limit Breaks all with no grinding ever needed.
i think xii and all of ivalice alliance is the best thing about FF and how to "milk" a numbered title/sub-series correctly just by releasing good games in the same universe
I find the combat extremely relaxing. It's fun to just walk around in one of the many zones and just kill enemies over and over.
The environments look great.
The music sounds great.
No random encounters.
No battle screens.
I love it
Better than XV and XVI
Worse than XIII
Always thought it was cool how the airships were named after Summons.
>Penelo is nonexistent shite in 12
>Penelo is kinda decent to based outside 12 itself
how does this happen?
they fricked up the NA and EU versions by removing Penelos kidnap scenes so shers just straight not in the game for the first few sections outside of following Vaan through Giza then fricking off
She's the most worthless character in the game so who cares
But she's cute, though.
She would have been noteworthy if they made her a PAWG instead of a flat tie. Hell, she had a one-piece outfit. How did she even get that? She and Vaan were poverty stricken orphans, so it's a wonder no one jumped her bones all those years in Rabanastre wearing that shit. Just saying.
there are a lot of poor black women walking around in "body suits," which are similar to penelo's one piece
wut
i'm saying it exists in the real world so why wouldn't it exist there
honestly, other than the war mongering, what was so wrong about wanting to harness technology and take humanity's destiny back into the hands of humans? Especially when the espers were explicitly like "go and do our bidding and slay him" lol. during the end of the game I kinda feel like ashe was in the wrong for sure. She was starting wars just because of the past
You must be thinking of swimsuits.
google body suits, also rompers. They're just one pieces that you wear out and about. Most of the time women wear skirts or shorts over it, but there are definitely people that don't
>a homeless girl affording this shit
lol. lmao, even.
again, LOTS of poor black people have those, just like they have LV bags
You mean knockoffs?
not sure bro I'm not actually talking to them
Still the world's longest jogging simulator.
Not since Death Stranding took the crown
Right, I already forgot about that
Zodiac version is so bad it's sullied the memories I had of playing the PS2 original version.
>what if FF was star wars
My favorite game. I'm currently in the process of designing a spiritual successor and have already started creating assets. Once I've got something to show off I'll start seeing if I can find people to work with.
you got alot of frickin work cut out for you if you actually want it to play like XII, you better enjoy coding because the CT system for stacking actions sounds like a fricking headache
my fav ff. great crystal sucks though.
Great Crystal is actually fine when you realise "down= good" because the wrong paths are all dead ends until you get the Treaty Blade and suddenly it says "lol get fricked" and the path to Ultima is scuffed because no map and a time limit
I STILL don't know how Limit Breaks work in FF12.
in the original they work off MP and you can chain them by pressing the characters button when it pops up, once everyones uses are gone the buttons become "restock" and you have to press it again to use what it restocked.
then once a certain number have been chained together you get a "Concurrence" at the end which is a non-elemetnal fat dump of damage, the best one being Black Hole, which is 4x level 3s anywhere in the chain.
i think my highest chain is 13 or something and it didnt actually do all that much damage to the boss i used it on compared to Oil>Firaga
I think they sucked in the original. I might be thinking of summon though, I can't remember.
they sucked BECAUSE they worked off of MP and you couldnt control them anyway
Just mash any available buttons as fast as you can. You think it can't be that simple, there has to be some kind of trick, but not, that's literally it.
Quick
Post your favorite side areas in FF games
Nice cult you have there.
It needed more emphasis on the tactics system and to give you the ability to change tactics outside the menu.
Should I play this?
The races look cool to play as
Yes, FF12 is a great game. I think ff12 is not as good as 7 or 10 but it's better than the rest.
if you get Zodiac on PC theres actually a mod where you can use monsters and NPCs so if you like the races i say go for it. they actually have unique animations too because they all join your party as guests at one point or another
>to play as
You don't play as any of those races. You barely even get to converse with other of those other races. Both the gameplay and the story focuses on the humans. You only get 1 different race party member and that's the viera
>barely converse with
>every 2nd NPC is a lizard, Moogle or Seeq and the Nu Mou literally run the Holy Mafia on Bur Omisace
Don't waste your time. The world is underutilised and 7 of those are just different NPC models.
>The world is underutilised
as opposed to which games wherein the world is so intrinsically linked to the game?
it has locations with history that are populated or built according to the lore put forward, i cant neutrally, objectively point to any area that isnt "utilised". there arent even any cutoff side areas with no explanation or usage
Second best in the series only behind 9.
I love it deeply.
>A second Zodiac Spear can be obtained in an alternative site, the Henne Mines' Phase 2 Dig. Even if the aforementioned forbidden chests are opened, the spear is still obtainable here. To unlock the site, at least 10 Espers must be acquired, and the Mindflayer Hunt completed. The player must speak to Geomancer Yugelu in Jahara to unlock this site, reachable via the Ore Separation.
Been playing TZA and it's so fricking boring, I finally got to a moment where I actually wanted to stop playing. I think I'm like 20 levels under what I should be for this part but I fought and died to the ghost boss that multiplies after fighting it for like 30 minutes. I'm seriously considering just using the in-game cheats to get EXP/LP just so I can see the rest of the story.
i think you might just be a moron if you managed to get to Sochen Cave Palace underleveled
>I think I'm like 20 levels under what I should be for this part but I fought and died to the ghost boss that multiplies after fighting it for like 30 minutes.
There's no main story boss that does that I think, except Ahriman. If you're that far into the game you should know how to beat him
>There's no main story boss that does that I think, except Ahriman
yeah that's it
I'm a moron because I don't waste my time grinding? Whatever man. My average level is like 25 and I just checked and the enemies are like ~38, so not as bad as I thought but still pretty bad. I'm sure I can probably beat the boss without grinding, but it's not fun.
Mate, you don't need to grind to be higher level than that. You must have been running away from a lot of enemies
yes actually. grinding would be specifically chaining skeletons in Lhusu Mines to get enough LP to unlock some bullshit. if you cant even level up correctly enough to be at an adequate level for the main narrative i dont know what to tell you. have you even been doing hunts? anything other than following the story from A to B?
theres frickshit WAY before Ahriman you shouldve had trouble with in the Hunts that wouldve made you realise youre moderately underleveled. level TWENTY FIVE by then is a little suspicious that youre just playing the game to get it over with at the detriment of actually playing it properly
>have you even been doing hunts?
Was at the start, stopped going out of my way to do them after hitting a wall with the cluckatrice really early on. Figured I needed to do the story stuff first, but the combat sucks so hard in this game that I have no desire to go do hunts again.
Try coming back after you dilate
>cluckatrice
>the chicken with 3 adds
alright, i dont want to call you a moron anymore because it genuinely seems like you just havnt really thought about what youre doing at all and are having sincere trouble.
try having a Black Mage, i hear theyre good with attacking multiple enemies at a time, you might also want to designate a White Mage to heal your party automatically
I attempted it as soon as I could, didn't even have any multiple hit moves yet besides the few mote items I had. If I wanted Aero I would have had to grind for money, in which case I figured I should go do story stuff instead. If I went back and did it now I'd be insanely overleveled.
If I haven't engaged with the combat and yet still got 30 hours in doing nothing but combat then it's a shit game.
>grind money
son, i really genuinely dont want to just call you a moron but the loot in the game youve been picking up has no other use than to be sold so you can buy healing items and motes.
the loop of hunts being to defeat a difficult enemy that you leveled up on the way to, selling loot from the enemies on the way to it, and then going on to the next hunt shouldve been more than enough to have you not say the "combat sucks"
i got filtered at the first Ghost casting Doom, but i went back and finished it later then continued with the rest of hunts- i feel like youre conflating "the combat sucks" with "i genuinely dont know whats going on and i dont want to try"
>son, i really genuinely dont want to just call you a moron but the loot in the game youve been picking up has no other use than to be sold
of course I know that you idiot, I thought you had enough brains to get what I meant without having to explain the whole process.
>the loop of hunts being to defeat a difficult enemy that you leveled up on the way to, selling loot from the enemies on the way to it, and then going on to the next hunt shouldve been more than enough to have you not say the "combat sucks"
I've done that and it sucks.
>i got filtered at the first Ghost casting Doom,
that's one of the hunts I did before cluckatrice and I didn't have much trouble with it, and yet you're giving me shit? Despite that being a much simpler fight?
28 hours on the file. Like I said, I did a few hunts at the start, ended up wasting time in the sandsea area backtracking to find the yentza secret the npc mentioned, ended up having to go through the whole salikawood a second time since I already explored everything before the moogle boss gave me the quest to round them all up. Other than that I can't see why it would be any longer than normal.
Been trying to keep everyone leveled so no one falls behind since I've been fricked in other games by that.
see the difference is i didnt lambast the entire game having shit combat just because i couldnt heal doom and got slapped to shit at level 10.
its an old game, but still not as bad as FFIV where you should feel the need to sweat bullets wondering if you need to grind more- all youre doing is convincing me and painting a picture of the kinds of people who dont like FFXII- which is a generalisation and a dumb thing to do but the only way you could possibly be having a problem is if youre not playing the game even semi-correctly.
because if you were, the real point you wouldve dropped the game playing like this is White Chocobo putting up anti-physical and anti-magic barriers for 2 minutes straight and screaming autistically while running up and down Paramina. do you play RPGs often because i absolutely would just fricking hate FFXII if i didnt for the same reason people like Ross on AccursedFarms doesnt like WOW. its just 4 homies in a row hitting stuff but thats not ALL the genre is
>see the difference is i didnt lambast the entire game having shit combat just because i couldnt heal doom and got slapped to shit at level 10.
I'm not saying that it has shit combat because I died, I'm saying it has shit combat because I'm not enjoying it. I've played plenty of JRPG's before, played every FF before XII except 3, XII easily has the most boring gameplay of every FF game I've played except 2. 4 homies in a row is easily superior to MMO combat.
but XII has a significantly higher number of combat interactions than any other FF. its my favourite below CC. it actually has systems and buffs above "take less magic damage" or "take less physical damage". i havnt had more "fun" in a FF than casting Berserk, Haste, Bravery, Reflect, Reverse, Bubble and Decoy on a single party member and then letting high level spells bounce off their butthole into a Boss im underleveled for and saying "lol rip" in 3 seconds
im not so neurotic im going to try and convince you youre 100% dumbdumb for not liking it. it just sounds from description of what youve been doing that something went horribly wrong
>its my favourite below CC
That had better stand for Crystal Chronicles, if it's Crisis Core then you have supremely shit taste and I regret reading any of your posts.
>30 hours in
How the frick are you 30 hours in, still at the Sochen Cave Palace, and underleveled to boot? I managed to beat the game for the first time in far less time than that, without grinding and without being underleveled. What the frick have you been doing all this time?
NTA, but first time I beat 12 it took me 86 hours.
yeah but heres the thing, i reckon once the Black Chocobos in Ozmone started taking significant chunks out of Ashe's panties you wouldve realised you probably shouldve leveled a little bit, and doubly so once you turned around and saw the Dullahands beating the shit out of Basch.
having 3 bench characters underleveled is a more common occurence than having your entire party struggle against a ghost 30 hours in
i know what i wouldve been doing to excuse fricking up that hard
>I managed to beat the game for the first time in far less time than that
Bullshit. I'm over 40 hours in and only just got to Bahamut with the party barely level 50, and I've been abusing turbo and guides half the time
I did all of the content and it took me around ~150 IIRC. By then I was so thoroughly unsatisfied with how lame and hollow the victories were that I didn’t even bother trying to find that level 99 red chocobo or whatever. Decided it was a fool’s errand, entered the final area, absolutely stomped the final boss, and watched the embarrassingly forgettable ending only to let out a sigh of relief that I was finally set free from the curse of FFXII.
>the combat sucks
you wouldn't know because you haven't engaged with it at all
2nd best FF after 16.
I'm not cultured so the dialogue oftentimes confused me
best setting
>read through the thread
>Contrarians actually defend the trash way the hidden zodiac spear was obtained
I hate this place
That’s FFXII threads in a nutshell. Their fervent tenacity is what convinced me that FFXII must have something great going for it if people would defend it so earnestly. Sadly, I was mistaken.
again, clinging to a single piece of equipment as a talking point for entire game only outs you as a fricking pleb and not worth talking to in the first place.
>b-but its the strongest weapon.
glad we clarified why you play videogames metapleb
0/10
yeah sounds about right youd think "a whole game is not shit because of one secret weapon" is bait
The secret weapon is the icing on the shit cake.
When did I say anything about the game, I called the fricking way the zodiac spear was obtained to be trash.
so instead of talking about facets of the entire game, you singled out a single piece of equipment like a Redditor trying to farm likes with a meme. listen its whatever, i dont sleep next to a copy of the game and feel the need to defend it but despite me thinking it was a japanese goblin trick to make it so ass to obtain i still dont really see how its a talking point past the aforementioned Reddit mentality.
I usually discard opinions of anons who refer to anything as “Reddit,” and you’ve very clearly reinforced the fact that I am doing so with good reason.
Good level design and some good bossfights bur the story bosses are pathetic and the combat system leaves a lot to be desired. The fact that the game's main gimmick is you can program it to run itself is stupid and the license board skills are terrible, absolutely nothing of interest just equipment licenses.
better than FFXVI
>Zodiac Spear is anti consumer
>high level Magic kills the processing power, so they're forever queued up
>Summons are moronic because they overcorrected from Yuna's OP summons
>Gambit system is a trap, everyone plays the same "Revive, Buff, Heal, Attack" triple gambits, there is no depth at all
>Status effects chances are undocumented and Shell fricks them up, it's unironically optimal just to use Nihopaloa + remedies
>MC is lame
>Story main beats happen when you're not there, useless mcguffin goose chase while there is a war brewing
>You meet the main antagonist right before the final boss, he litterally says "who are you"
>Great Crystal moronic map
Shit game, I respect more XIII than this shit show, with all its flaws it actually becomes playable at some point
b-but IZJS fixes all of those
>shut up Black person
high level magic has a CT score meaning Scathe is CT8- cant queue up 3 Scathes and cheese the game.
status effect chances are high but still have a chance to miss but Indigo Amulet makes it 95% iir.
the rest of your post is skill issue and ADHD and you straight up didnt pay attention to the fact that one person cant win a war started by literal magic ghosts in the first place. i think you should stick to Power of Friendship sexy elf "the player is moronic, just say anything" JRPGs
I'm not talking about charge time you moron, i'm talking about the fact that the spell uses so much particles it's queued until nothing else happens in the fight so it can be freed up
You litterally can have scathe queued for minutes because the fight already has animations that are called after scathe but happen before
They fixed it in IZJS, it's not a game design issue, they just didnt bother taking the PS2 power into account
>just equip the indigo amulet
>skill issue
ok shill
CT isnt charge time its the queued action list and nothing else can be done while one action takes up all the slots. i think you just made up a bunch of shit
>dude the memory of the PS2 was so low it couldnt load all of the particles so it never casted
not how it works at all and im surprised you managed to do enough mental gymnastics to come up with that you did because this isnt the first time ive had to listen to someone tell me "DUDE ITS SO BROKE, LIKE THE GAME LITERALLY CANT EVEN LOAD XYZ" for several games in a similarly "that kid" incendiary manner.
nah thats perfectly valid because the game was never intended to have 2 jobs on each character, to the point it doubles back on letting you put whatever on whoever and ironically scuffs the freedom a little bit
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/191202-final-fantasy-xii-the-zodiac-age/75594532
https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/4mtuqp/spell_queueing_seems_to_be_removed_for_the_zodiac/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/595520/discussions/0/2268068817141423715/
This is well documented. PS2 limitation.
>b-but reddit
hence the different website links. Magic queue was a thing, and it only affected the high particle spells. Go away now.
yeah and one of those links seems to be pondering it being removed when the limit was actually upped from 5 to 8 in Zodiac IIRC.
you havnt convinced me youre not being a Reddit "that kid" by saying the game is somehow fundamentally broken and Scathe is impossible to cast. its not a limitation of the PS2 "because of the particles", you quite literally dont know how games work and are talking out of your ass. you really think the game cant and so refuses to load a 1 second particle effect because its too big and that the system in place for casting it wasnt just fricked up? when the game is full of 15 second cutscenes for super attacks from both the party and bosses?
it was broken because they fricked up - not because of a "limitation"
i usually discard opinions of anyone who regurgitate one meaningless opinion as the only facet of an entire thing, in this case its not because i have a bias against an entire website ironically, but because farming for replies by mentioning the most popular meme from something is shit-tier conversation
>MARIO BROS 2? HEY DID YOU KNOW IT WAS ACTUALLY-
yeah cool, but what about the actual game and how convoluted some of the side stuff is even after you initially find it like the medalli-
>WAS ACTUALLY CALLED DOKI DOKI PANIC, DAMN WHAT A SHIT RIP OFF GAME LOL
>You meet the main antagonist right before the final boss, he litterally says "who are you"
This is really inexcusable. Even if you have a villain who doesn't meet the hero until the finale, you will at least have a thematic build-up to their confrontation, they may not meet but they're paths have been set against each other from the beginning or some such. When you get there and Vayne is like "huh? What the frick" it's just silly. Like frick this whole thing is a star wars larp and Sheev doesn't exist until the 11th hour but his ideological conflict with Luke is the entire 3rd movie and the whole thing is presented as a set-up for their meeting.
It's the worst Matsuno game (and it shows because he left S-E midway into development), and I had no desire to play IZJS because it only fixed some gameplay aspects. I agree with on many points but I also want to add horrible story pacing - almost everytime you need to get past 3 filler locations in order to get to actual story-vital location only to be distracted by dumb minigames or fetch quests (the entire road to Archades is the worst example of this). Sure, FFT also did this, but it was several times faster than in FFXII (plus FFT actually had cutscene archive to rewatch plot in case you needed to refresh your memory - FFXII didn't bother with it and Youtube had frickall in 2006; I even managed to completely forget who the frick Gabranth was when I finally climbed the top of moronic pharos because some characters appear only once per 5-10 hours of the game).
Also this FF has one of the most useless main parties in the series - feels like NPCs like Larsa / Reddas / Ondore do more for plot progression than Ashe and her band.
I know I'll get flaked but I prefer the original over the International Job System.
The original is more of an RPG where characters aren't tied to a specific role.
You have more choice in the original but the game could use more structure which is why people like the job system. In reality it's a bandaid though, the real problem is the skills themselves you pick up on the job board are trash.
It sort of ruins their characterization by not forcing them into roles that suit their skills. By the end of vanilla FFXII my whole party was basically wearing and using the exact same endgame gear.
Sex with Fran
Pretty damn fun. Balthier and Fran are a great cast but Vaan has no reason to exist.
Emulate or get the steam port?
Steam, though there is an argument to be made that original IZJS is better due to only having one class instead of two
They wanted to hit that middle ground for people who liked how open the original was I guess
Yeah, but they were too lazy to balance for it
if you get the Zodiac Burger edition you can have fun with some Tactics tier mods that let you put anything or anyone in your party. if you want to make a team of 6 Viera on their way to kidnap Larsa for [reasons] then you can
I hated it on ps2 as a kid and absolutely fricking loved it to the point of 100%ing it on PC.
Being able to speed up the walking made all the difference. Ok maybe my taste also changed over the years. I made a complete 180 on the game.
I'm even kinda sad I 100%ed because I wanna do more stuff in it
most underrated ff
>That optional ages long labyrinth dungeon
Crazy to think my kid self found the right path by accident. Needed a guide when I replayed it.
Best universe to frick around in, but the project lead suffered from burnout or whatever and fricked off mid-development. One of the main things that bothers me is that all the characters are fricking great, but they ALL get the backseat so that the two numbnuts who weren't even characters in the OG script steal the lead. This feeling never left me throughout the playthrough. Every time they speak or demand the limelight, it's like nails on chalkboard.
Play Vagrant Story, FF Tactics Advance, or Tactics Orgre to experience Ivalice as it's meant to be.
Vaan and Penelo are audience inserts
Your mom is an audience insert
Except nobody likes them, so that doesn’t make much sense.
You're not supposed to think about them; you're supposed to be them
I'd rather be one of the cool MC's. Like Balthier hanging around with my cool crew and fricking the princess.
Your opinion is such shit that I suspect you work in brainwashed modern games development. As a janitor, I hope.
I like Penelo's ass very much
why is that
I love Penelo and her cute little butt
Balthier is still the main characer, you just aren't him
Yeah, no shit
Why do people parrot this? Basch and Ashe are clearly the main characters
I often forget Basch even existed.
What? Anon, that makes even less sense.
Balthier is the quintessential foil, i dont know how anyone could think hes main outside of "hes so cool hes definitely the main character"
the real question is why the frick they made another entire game around Vaan instead of just Balthier- hes even in that frickin game too.
Revenant Wings was a waste of time
Vaan was always in the original script. Basch was never the lead.
Liar. They were inserted by grey suits to appeal to a younger audience. Specifically the Japs. They didn't even care about overseas demograph.
Vaan was chosen before they even finished the characters. You're the liar, clinging on to a myth. Look it up.
Vaan and Penelo were late inserts by suits orders and had nothing to do in Matsuno's script.
I'd rather trust a dev who worked on FFXII until the very end than Matsuno who threw a b***hfit and quit the company during FFXII's development... only to make fricking nothing in al these years (outside of, surprise-surprise, games owned by Square-Enix). Same person still can't decide in his tweets whether or not Ovelia died at the end of FFT, so Matsuno's not a trustable source at this point.
Terribly balanced, but the gambit system is genius, suppresses all the boring aspect of turn based combat while keeping the strategic aspect instead of forfeiting it for zoom zoom real time jrpg trash
pretty kino, but had a lot of missed potential
should have had class changing and some ffxi mechanics like skill chains and magic bursts
How can a world that's so pretty and expansive be so boring to explore? The game's got basically no secret areas
It just does an incredibly bad job of rewarding effort. Lots of the side-quests and secrets (summons, for example) take an ungodly amount of time to unlock, and then you’re left with the sad reality that they are fricking useless and weren’t worth the effort to begin with. On top of that, the game’s story and CGI clips are some of the worst in the series so whatever motivation you have to progress is also constantly being tested.
what, XII has the most optional side areas out of any FF
But none of them really... clicked, you know? I think it's what
says. There's stuff there but you don't really feel all that good once you're there
Story was weird but it has my favourite battle system of all FFs
I honestly loved the ability to make a flowchart for my characters and have them auto-fight. I generally still played a single character and let my party members go at it, but it was cool to just sit back and watch them beat the shit out of something with the commands I would've given them anyway
the best in the series
then again that's a low bar because there is only like 5 or 6 worthwhile games in the entire series
It's the dictionary definition of mediocre. There's not a single noteworthy thing about it other than you can set it to play itself
Vaan might have been in the game because suits wanted a teenage main character, but he wasn't an afterthought during development
https://rainsunflower.wordpress.com/2020/07/20/no-vaan-was-not-a-late-addition-to-final-fantasy-xii/
Matsuno had a few good games in the 90s and people need to accept that that's the ONLY good stuff he made
Everything he's made since has been varying levels of mediocre to atrocious
>Vagrant Story
>Tactics Advance
>A few good games in the 90s
did I fricking sutter?
not to mention that mr. pizza cutter himself is one of the most widely mocked characters in the entire franchise
Vagrant Story and TA are 2000's games and are both great
well this is good game. no dialogues though, characters just going around and saying one-liners.
i don't like morale of the game. you kinda starting from rabanastre, playing as rabanastre proletarians and rabanastre princess, but the game is about empire, so in the end main characters are larsa, bash and gabrant, and vayne, and all of them like "glory to empire, do everything to protect young emperor and empire"
besides, all this ff12 story, it's kinda ukrainian, rabanastre is donbass territory, and people jerking aroung with nuclear weapon. Arkadia making systhetical nuclear bombs, venat stole the technology about them, some cities was bombed with judge zecht. and gods are telling you USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS, and you kinda, "no thanks"
I haven't played it yet, but I have a copy of TZA lying around for the switch. I'm going to give it a go later in the year.
It sucked and the upgraded version sucked as well.
sorry theres a lot to read in this thread. may have already been discussed
but the zodiac system felt very weird to me. like everything felt basically the same no matter what class you choose. there was no actual personality in any of the weapons that i could see. there were no special attacks or special moves or anything like that. it was pretty lame
aside from that, and the fact that a lot of the later enemies just spat a bunch of status ailments on your entire party and made you spend 2-5 minutes healing and curing everyone after every single battle getting extremely exhausting, the game was alright
i liked the story and characters but its definitely not even close to my favourite final fantasy
I tried playing it because people told me it was like Xenoblade but it wasn't like Xenoblade at all, the game is just a bunch of corridors and there were no side quests at all up until the point I was.
The combat is really fun though, I loved it.
xbc1 does have a more open world but not anything worth exploring
x, 2, and 3 at least have something worth exploring
FFXII still had a bit of that FF factor which is completely gone now with FFXV and FFXVI
STAR WARS! IT'S STAR WARS,!
FF2 was also Star Wars
Where is FFXII-2?
No, the DS one doesn't count
Every single sequel to a mainline title has been garbage
>TAY
garbage
>X-2
garbage
>XIII-2 and XIII-3
Less garbage than XIII honestly, but still garbage
13LR is ironically have better combat than 7R and FF16 combined. SE should have let Tri-Ace handle the mainline games instead of mmo dev
>13LR is ironically have better combat than 7R and FF16 combined
Absolutely fricking not
Filtered
It was shit across the board, 7R at least made the stagger mechanic actually make some sort of sense. It didn't really fit in 16 though
>7R at least made the stagger mechanic actually make some sort of sense
then the random in-fight cutscene removes all stagger.
but at least it had some point, unlike 15 where you would just randomly stagger foes
I can't say I ever touched LR with a 13-foot pole but 7R's combat is definitely a good attempt at "modern FF" if not a perfect one.
16 doesn't even try to be FF, which isn't inherently a bad thing. It's definitely fun throughout the entire game but it's also got its fair share of faults.
Frick LR though, let team ninja make a mainline game, or at the least take like 80% of SOP's combat, that was probably the best "Action FF" I've played.
my opinion differs. 13-2 was my favourite of the 13s. i thought noel and serah were much cooler as protagonists and i loved the time traveling. best part about ff13-2 was how much cooler lightning was as a background character. not to be rude but i feel thats where lightning excels.
10-2 was not better than 10-1 but it was very cool to play with all the different job outfits. i liked that it had more of a positive vibe as well
Dirge of Cerberus was kino
Soulful world
Worst game in the series.
Vayne and Cid did nothing wrong, right?
they did everything wrong
Like what?
all the evil shit he did in the game.
then again this is the same board that thinks obvious badguys like Loghain and Solidus "did nothing wrong" so I feel any arguments I have would fall on deaf ears
Can we just admit how "badass" and "should've been the main character" Balthier was in every scene he was in?
>"should've been the main character" Balthier was in every scene he was in?
Isn't there a joke he makes about the even? Good VA though
He does refer to himself as the leading man in his debut scene.
kek he's not wrong, the mc is just there to hold the camera
Also because he dresses way too sharp to be the MC. His mannerisms, his wits, even his entourage (a beastial woman to complete his human half) are all there, but the one problem is his looks...maybe his age, but that's irrelevant in comparison. Square Enix was on a warpath when it came to blonde haired spiky boys at the time, like Cloud, Tidus, etc. to be main representatives, so yeah.
kino in game form
She makes this weird croaking sound during this cutscene lol
It was the best FF and I loved it.
>want to play through FF12 again on my PS2
>look up zodiac age
>not enough new/changed content to grab me
>but it has a fast forward mechanic
do i go authentic or should i buy the TZA? i'm at an impasse
TZA totally fricks with the balancing too, but it looks VERY pretty.
The ps2 game already got pretty boring near the end, but the remaster makes the game even easier. I vividly recommend the struggle for freedom mod on nexus. It completely rebalances the game by specializing characters and buffing enemies, which really lets the gambit system shine in how good it is