Played 12 as a kid for the first time, and absolutely loved it, played Zodiac age recently, still absolutely loved it. It's my favourite Final Fantasy and generally one of my favourite games of all time.
>zodiac age
too easy
Final Fantasy isn't exactly a difficult series. There are difficulty spikes here and there but nobody is playing the series for its extreme challenges.
I'm going to say something really autistic and people are going to be mad but I don't care
Zodiac version is better than the original but the fast forward feature shouldn't be there, it makes the game almost unplayable for me
Even the zodiac version with the struggle for freedom mod is too easy comparatively. What breaks the game for me is being able to control guests and spam infinite OP technicks.
I would say the original license board is great while you're still exploring it. Near the end it's not that good, but I had a lot of fun with it in early to mid game.
You reveal the tiles, do a guesswork of which route each character should take, then just go from there. Maybe it would benefit from being bigger, but I liked it a lot.
The only thing bad about zodiac age is the letterboxing during cutscenes. Absolutely atrocious.
Everything else is a huge upgrade over older versions.
"Too easy" is not an argument. You are not forced to pick a 2nd job. If your fun can only be attained by everyone else having the same limitations as you in a singleplayer game, you're a fricking loser.
>"Zodiac age is too easy" >so do New Game Minus >"n-no its artificial difficulty"
cant win with these people
This game sucks. It's one of the worst FF games after 13. Anyone who thinks it's good is stupid and anyone who thinks it's a masterpiece is a fricking moron.
theyre just straight up shitc**t children. its not enough to not like it, anyone who does like it is [5th grader tantrum]
>You are not forced to pick a 2nd job.
Someone picking up the game for the first time is not going to realize that the game isn't balanced around 2 jobs.
>You really think shit like FF8 or 9 are better
YES!
ff12 took a turn towards single player mmo and a different gameplay feel. i would have rather had something like ff x-2 but with an actual story and characters
you have never played them
12 is such a departure from FF, it had cities that were too big in which a lot of it is just a waste of your time, and gambits are just auto-battle.
9 was fantastic
even X was fantastic even with it's linearity.
It's also not a game that demands a lot of backtracking to finish the main story. You're only to be reexploring an area if you want to do the side content.
yes anon, too big for what it offers you.
Lindbulm in 9 felt a lot better, you get to see how the people lived and they felt a lot more memorable to me than 12's npcs.
Despite me vastly preferring Tactics ogre/ffxii artstyle.
you want the capital city of the main antagonistic force to be one screen with 4 fleshed out npcs in it?
this is nostalgia and lack of memory talking because Archades has a literal class divide involved in the main story progression and you start by entering the city from the frickin literal ghetto- same as Rabanastre, a desert market city
the entire time youre there you learn about how close to ruin every upperclassman in Archades is and how terrified they are that theyll lose everything and the Merchant and Profession Hub that Rabanastre is. you simply dont remember much about XII and have just assumed "9 NPCs better" over it.
8 months ago
Anonymous
bro I played and dropped the game like 5 times
I remember a lot of it and not because it's memorable.
And don't put words in my mouth that's you getting mad at made up scenarios that you created you fool.
I did not say anything about only 4 npcs.
Fool.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>i remember it >but it wasnt memorable >fool >f-fool
shut up you blabbering c**t lmao.
It's really long, everywhere is fricking huge and a bit of chore to get through, the story is interesting but very broken up between frick huge dungeons so the flow is odd.
Vaan and Penelo are useless to the narrative and take screentime away from Balther, Basche, and Ashe
This game would be so much better if they just cut the crap and had Balthier take centre stage like he is suppossed to.
>balthier
is not very interesting. Basch on the other hand should have been the protagonist
The only reason why the cast got together in the first place is a result of Vaan's actions. Penelo is down there with Fran for party members that barely do anything outside of their one moment. Blaming her for screen time stealing is moronic.
Basch would have been a boring MC and Balthier's role works best as a secondary character. If anyone should get the role of permanent MC and PoV character it would be Ashe because she's already the closest thing to a MC narratively anyway.
It's one of the weaker entries because it's new features are all rather boring and the plotline is generic while not feeling like a nostalgic callback like FF9. It's not a bad game but it's only memorable because of it's mediocrity and being probably the most graphically impressive PS2 game.
Vaan was literally created very late into script development because the Square executives believed the Japanese audiance wouldn't be able to relate to Basch or Balthier. This is one of the most well known facts about the games development.
It's also worth noting he was written in by the main writer for the Kingdom Hearts series, if that gives any more perspective to the situation.
Incorrect. Vaan wasn't added to replace Basch or Balthier at the last minute. He's what eventually became of a character that's no longer there.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>Vaan wasn't added to replace Basch or Balthier at the last minute.
Yeah I never said this
8 months ago
Anonymous
I'm just saying that Matsuno debunked the rumor about Vaan being added to replace Balthier/Basch.
8 months ago
Anonymous
It's unclear what the exact series of events were because an interview with Minagawa from 2007(?) was where the "rumor" was originally sourced. Matsuno uses Google TL for his tweets, and I don't even remember the source of the Minagawa interview, so there's really no telling exactly what the situation was. The development of XII was so long and turbulent you can't really date particular characters to a specific point, as we don't even know what the scope of the content Matsuno left the team when he departed was. All that existed of Vaan could've very well been just a character design.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Matsumoto is back peddling
>>>Q: With regard to the design of the game, Matsuno's departure and the exit requirements, I would like to know if they are completely satisfied with the final result or if his ideas that were really close to his heart had to be handed over for lack of time or means?
Hiroshi Minagawa: Like any video game between the moment you decide on a project when you then see the final version of the game, of course there are always things that change. For Final Fantasy XII, it was like for the other games, there are a lot of things that have changed but I would say that there have not been huge transformations compared to what we had planned to do. There are just little things that have changed from right to left. On the other hand, if you want an example of something that has changed a lot: basically, Final Fantasy XII was not supposed to look so much like Vagrant Story in design, we had rather planned to return to big-headed characters.
To give you an idea also of the evolution of the atmosphere of the game, the first character we had created and who was basically the hero of the story was Bash, and finally the heroes of the final game as we know it today who are Vaan and Penelo, they were last and we added them at the end.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Nobody is saying Vaan was intended to replace Basch or Bathlier as both characters still have way more agency with the plot. Vaan was simply the self-insert for beta Japanese men. He was a tacked on addition; not a replacement. Only fricking tards who can't read think otherwise.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>Spends the early game in jail until when Vaan spergs out uncontrollably on sight causing the cell to become unhinged and the cast drops into Barheim >After Barheim, he returns to Rabanastre and we undergo a quest to deliver a sword to the resistance. None of them wish to team up with Basch for obvious reasons and its Vaan who convinces them to give him a second chance because the people couldn't believe that Reks' brother would believe in Basch >No one actually wants to go to Bhujerba to help Basch save Ashe, it just happens because Balthier felt bad after getting Penelo kidnapped (which once again happens because of events that Vaan caused early on) >We go to Raithwall with the Vossler shit and its Basch's one big moment
and then the guy proceeds to do frick all because Gabranth is elsewhere for almost the entire game and the two boss fights are less about Basch and more about Gabranth doing other stuff.
Basch was a big wet fart with more hype than action. The characters who carried 12's plot the most were Vaan, Balthier and Ashe.
Everyone is. Even in central parts of their storyline the characters that step up have like two fricking lines, party banter comes to a complete halt after larsa leaves.
Worst story
Worst characters
Worst character design
Worst soundtrack
Worst battle system
Worst growth system
Worst side quests
Not even the much praised exploration was all that good (no world-map, no airship, boring copy-pasted dungeons, mogged by any Xenoblade in terms of scale)
>he thinks Vayne is a villain
He’s an antagonist, but he does literally nothing wrong at any point. He’s every bit the immaculate emperor he portrays himself as and usurping the Occuria would only be a good thing. The war with Rosaria that the protagonists are working to prevent wouldn’t be a conflict of Good versus Evil, just human politics.
Characters were all uninteresting
Story was ok but it felt like it ended randomly. I expected way more
Game was super easy. Maybe 2 fights in the whole game required any input outside setting gambits
I dropped 4. The bosses all seemed like random tricks you were sure to fail the first time, and they would be behind an unskippable 5 minute mini boss you had to redo every single time
10/10 voice acting
6/10 story
7/10 cast
It shouldn't have been a numbered final fantasy at all since it's an ivalice game but its ok. I didn't play it during release but like 3 years ago and it was surprisingly enjoyable.
not sure if you're serious but yes, he was the dude that wanted to overthrow the Sanctum and publicly execute the l'cie, he was also the only good antagonist of the trilogy besides Caius and had a cool and decently challenging boss fight
One of my favorites. Love the music, system, ambiance/world (Ivalice fan), graphics, enemies and lore. Some of the characters are good, but the story is it's weakest point (though it has some good parts). I remember playing with the camera so I could get a better angle at Ashe and Fran's butts.
what im saying is i wouldnt exactly call a ps1 midriff "fujo" tier and it started far later than PS1, the implication that kuja being a purple satin frickboi in 240p means Squeenix was pandering, is a little weak.
who the frick was i imagining in 7, 6 and 5. to say "before 8", ive completely forgotten since posting
8 months ago
Anonymous
Let's take a look at Kuja then......... Oh.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>Baphomet with no breasts
What the frick were the asiatics doing?
8 months ago
Anonymous
VII was pozzed with all the israeli shit, VIII was probably pozzed with something that I don't know about, but IX had Kuja, and Baphomet for the first time. It was the beginning of the end.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>VIII was probably pozzed with something that I don't know about
Doomtrain, Occult books, Mike Tyson, Robin Williams, Michael Jackson, Squall's gay outfit etc etc
TZA with a single board is basically IZJS. Everything they added was made to cater to people who complained about lack of subjobs/free reclassing due to fear of commitment.
[...]
[...]
Why do you guys keep parroting the idea that the story drops off towards the end? Seems to be pretty structurally sound to me. Clear beginning, middle and end.
The story is fine but once you get to the trip to Archades arc, everyone not named Ashe pretty much only exist to chime in when the plot remembers them. Which ends up making stuff like Balthier vs Cid or Basch vs Gabranth feel underwhelming. Not to mention that Vaan whose role was to be the one who sort of helped to ground Ashe in quest for revenge kind of just feels like it was unfinished after the Garif village talk.
Played it recently. Cool concept for the time it came out. If I would have played it back then I would have enjoyed it. Nowadays I just don't have time for that much busywork though. I dropped it at the part where they're crossing the giant machines in the desert and the sand people shark things attack them.
More RPGs need to automate combat. If I've already figured out the optimal series of commands for an encounter then they might as well cut out the busy work and let me activate it with one button instead of several.
The input is the decision making, but once that's done it should be as simple and quickly to do as possible.
It's just menu shit. There's no skill behind navigating them.
>There's no skill behind navigating them
yes, that's the problem. automating the navigation does not solve the problem. again, might as well cut the game entirely if the gameplay is trivial.
white/time mage too OP
set gambit to Protectga + Shellga, Bubble and Haste, Dispelga on sight and Curaja when <50% health and you basically can't die unintentionally
A return to form after 8 and 10. Felt closer to games like 4 and 6 in terms of setting and aesthetic. Definitely the best of the nu-FFs, MMOs excluded.
could've been a masterpiece if matsuno didn't lose it. the first chapter of the game is legitimately enthralling and full of potential
the majority of the game is very bland and boring, and the story goes nowhere
Not many people seem to mention the great side quests and shit like monster hunts that this game had. In terms of scope and varied terrain and enemies it really all felt like a huge adventure. I did everything in this game as a teen except the Omega and Yiazmat battles.
People complain about it for being too much like MMO stuff, but I'm glad they went back to making the sidequests all about combat and exploring after FFX's atrocious minigames. I'll take that approach any day.
could've been a masterpiece if matsuno didn't lose it. the first chapter of the game is legitimately enthralling and full of potential
the majority of the game is very bland and boring, and the story goes nowhere
Characters were all uninteresting
Story was ok but it felt like it ended randomly. I expected way more
Game was super easy. Maybe 2 fights in the whole game required any input outside setting gambits
Why do you guys keep parroting the idea that the story drops off towards the end? Seems to be pretty structurally sound to me. Clear beginning, middle and end.
Basch was overrated. He barely contributes anything and people falsely attribute stuff to him because of a decades misinfo campaign that Matsuno himself had to correct.
It's the best Final Fantasy and the last good Final Fantasy, but it will be forever marred by the fact it wasn't finished by the original director/producer. Honestly though, as-is it's a testament to the strength of the team that was built around Matsuno in that era of Square. The fact the game was finished at all and remains just shy of being a masterpiece is an accomplishment in itself.
Finished it like 2 weeks ago >The story is incredibly dogshit, it's an absolute disaster. >The characters are an absolute bore and literal whos most of them >The combat is an automatized walking simulator you set up with "strategy commands" yet it's so limited and the game so easy anyways that it isn't even necessary. I honestly pity anyone who played it without the turbo because holy shit the combat is such a piece of shit and slow as hell. >The art/designs etc ingame looks terrible, it's by far the ugliest game in the franchise and has a lot of the worst versions of classic enemies. >Music is decent I guess
I have to say, it's admirable how a lot of people have built this image around the game being this "political and mature uncomprehended masterpiece" in the franchise
...did you just not play the game? it's incredibly freeform, Zodiac Age specifically. probably the most RPG-esque game in the franchise. this is like asking why you'd play Dark Souls 4 times.
Dark Souls is free form. How is FFXII free form? It's a linear story and with so many party members you can basically do all the class combos you could want in one go
8 months ago
Anonymous
okay so you didn't play the game, gotcha. saying XII is a "linear story" and therefore isn't freeform is like saying Dark Souls is linear because Anor Londo is a prereq for the end of the game.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Explain how I'm wrong please. Unlike Dark Souls, FFXII doesn't have different paths to get to the same objective
8 months ago
Anonymous
no, but it does expand quite a bit after tomb of raithwall. You can get to the necrohol pretty early on and get some mid-to-late-game spells and gear quick, trying to get through areas on low levels or NG- with sub-par gear can be pretty fun. Nihopalao early is also pretty cool, and shikari with all 3 remedy lores can stop most mooks. You can also try and farm the level 80 Archaeoaevis in Zerrtinan for Emperor's scale to get best gun in the game in the bazaar. Going without a white mage (or white magic in general) is fricking brutal if you wanna try that. Monoclassing can go from pretty fun to fricking agonizing.
you just gotta stop being a stick in the mud and try some new things out
8 months ago
Anonymous
None of those things are really mutually exclusive though. What's stopping you from doing all of that on one playthrough?
8 months ago
Anonymous
I can't very well get through the necrohols with my shitty low tier single class group, and I sure as hell can't use the gun if I don't have a machinist. You gonna chide me for playing dark souls and only focusing on intelligence in one playthrough and then strength in another?
8 months ago
Anonymous
youre not supposed to wander through Nabudis mindlessly looking for items, there are like 3 spells and 1 weapon in there you beeline for, then you get the FRICK out the way you came and not out the otherside
8 months ago
Anonymous
>I can't very well get through the necrohols with my shitty low tier single class group
Have you tried?
8 months ago
Anonymous
I have, and I died a dozen times so I just went elsewhere before coming back with an appropriate level
8 months ago
Anonymous
skill issue
8 months ago
Anonymous
Indeed, there are many different ways to complete the game, and I took the path of least resistance on one of my 5 playthroughs. How egregious of me.
8 months ago
Anonymous
alright, youre talking shit heres why, you can just up and take an airship to main cities, failing that you can walk through Ozmone Plain and you have access to several concentric circles of locations from there. even if they are not connected, looking down your street from your bedroom window and going "WOWWW, ITS SO LINEAR" isnt some kind of criticism as though you need 19 different ramps and ladders to go to the store for it to be a cool street.
the argument wasnt that Dark Souls is interconnected the argument was that you wouldnt call Dark Souls linear just because theres a set number of things you need to do to finish it and fawning over being able to not go straight there, but instead pass through other areas is tardy and the same is true in reverse for FFXII
it doesnt really matter, if you need to go to Phon coast you go to Phon coast. if you need to hunt White Chiggin in Paramina you go to Paramina.
This was back when people usually only talked about games they liked so they were the only ones talking about it. Reviews seem to aggregate as a solid 8/10.
I think it's getting lubed up and dick-crazy so you frick like a demon until it hurts enough that you slow down, with the last three maybe implying edging/orgasm denial.
>Grin attempted to change the art style to fit more with traditional Final Fantasy games, but still did not receive any positive feedback. In response, Grin sent Square Enix an image of one of the latter's own games, Final Fantasy XII, and were told that it does not look like a game in Final Fantasy's style. Following that exchange, Grin came to the conclusion that there was no longer any way to satisfy the publisher.
kek, the Enix merge was such a fricking disaster
My first FF. Loved it, wanted to frick Vaan, Fran, Penelo, Ashe, and Larsa so dang bad when I was a kid. Never hated Vaan and the deluge map of the desert area was my favorite. Frick the area with the floating platforms in the Mist though, always got lost there.
Never bothered getting Zodiac age since I had sunken hundreds of hours into the original PS2 version. But damn it was good.
>wanted to frick Vaan, Fran, Penelo, Ashe, and Larsa
And also Reks, gotdang I was mad he died, but being a kid it took a while for me to realize Vaan and Reks were different people.
Could never get a stronger sword beyond Ragnarok also, and the area that belonged to Ashe's dead husband was always fricking difficult even with a level 99 party. I made all my money chain farming skeletons up in Mount Bur Omisace, or whatever it was called, but holy frick, screw that place and the Mist map.
>Vaan's early name was "Aqua" (アクア, as seen in Akihiko Yoshida's concept art) and intended to be an Iyashi kei character (癒し系, "therapeutic type", a kind of Japanese stock character). Vaan is known for going over several personality changes over the course of development, originally written as a rugged and world-worn character until the developers reconsidered the target demographic and Vaan was rewritten to be more effeminate. After Kouhei Takeda was cast as his voice, the developers rewrote Vaan to match the energetic personality his voice lent to the character. The executive producer of Final Fantasy XII, Akitoshi Kawazu, has said in an interview that character design is one of the areas the developers mull over extensively, and is one of the most difficult things to decide on.
This is also concurrent with stuff like Vaan's original being one of the first characters to be designed and Vaan being one of the first characters to be revealed to the public along with Ashe who's the actual MC of the overall plot. Not to mention that if you consider other narratives by Matsuno such as FFT and TO, you'd know that Ashley Riot is an exception to what he usually does where you control some teenager that's in over his head while the rest of the world moves around him. Vaan's thing is that his equivalent of Chapter 3/4 FFT/TO doesn't happen in FFXII and we have to wait on RW for it to happen.
the environments fricking suck and ALL yes ALL of the party members are gay as frick >OOOH A PIRATE NEAT....OH HES A FRICKING gay >OOH A WARRIOR NEAT....OH HES A FRICKING CRYBABY >OOH A SEX RABBIT.....OH THERES NO HARDCORE SEX SCENES >THE ORPHAN TWINS....WHO FRICKING CARES >THE JUDGES....UNDERUTILIZED AND FRICKING GAY
the whole game is such a stupid fricking let down
I got bored of it half way through the game. Too many boring dialogues. Game felt longer than it should have been. Didn't find any character appealing. It was ok for a FF game I guess.
this and if youre gonna do desert shit for most of the game you need to either have real vibrant popping colors enough to break it up or you need the desert to be more orange and yellow than frickin brown and beige >but that would frick up the atmosphere of the game
well the atmosphere fricking sucks, the character models suck and look chinky, and the story is dull and even when it pops off its shitty. Notice that not one person can praise this game for its story
You know the music is pretty bland too, a definite step down from 1-10. It's fine to listen to while you're playing but not a single track sticks with you once you turn the game off
>got the steelbook which came with some poorly fitting sad pop song >bought dq8 for the xii demo >fell in love with my first dq thinking ff12 can only be better than the experience I just played >hated it
I thought the music was technically really good but the problem is it was all equally bombastic and epic instead of just being used for moments where that'd be called for so it all kind of blends together.
Like this https://youtu.be/u2hLJLQfwSI?t=83 isn't a theme for wandering aimlessly around a desert killing fricking bunny rabbits.
really wanted to get into it, but gambits are just not a fun mechanic. wish you could just turn them off and play the game normally. no clue why they thought making the player program ai to automatically do what the player would do anyway is a good idea. im not a quadriplegic. i can switch characters to cast healing or use an elemental weakness myself.
You can turn them off, you fricking moron. You're explicitly told this, and forced to do it to demonstrate the example, in the gambit tutorial.
I think you're misremembering, gambits are not mandatory at all. In fact you can turn them off in the battle menu.
the ai is fricking moronic though. theyre specifically made to act like lobotomites if you dont use gambits. i assume its a combination of punishing the player for not using this amazing new mechanic and the devs making a justification for its existence. if you dont use them you spend every battle babying all your party members.
if it has to be non-turn based, yes. i didnt play 13, so maybe it has it too, but 15 is how 12 shouldve handled party members. its one of the few things i didnt hate in that game.
to say one is shit and the other is good is ridiculous to me. XII has bad bones, adding some extra content and giving american players the european or japanese skill system doesnt magically make a shit game good
no. 12 has half-competent writing. 16 was written by an imbecile or, potentially, a monkey
8 months ago
Anonymous
XII literally has the main antagonist not even be aware of your presence until the final confrontation. That alone puts XII in the dumpster on the story front
8 months ago
Anonymous
and it's still miles better than anything in 16. Imagine that
8 months ago
Anonymous
What are you talking about? Vayne and Cid knew about Ashe the entire time, they just didn't give a shit.
8 months ago
Anonymous
its another case of Ganker being illiterate morons and thinking "who are you" is meant literally instead a "who the frick are you" despite Vayne absolutely knowing who the fricking princess of Dalmasca is and one of her former royal fricking guard for obvious reasons
8 months ago
Anonymous
Don't bother, the dude comes into XII and XVI threads often with the sole intention of starting shit, he's got a burning hatred for Matsuno and is likely a Nomurakek or some derivative
8 months ago
Anonymous
I don't know who you're talking about, but I don't hate Matsuno. I like tactics, but I hate ivalicegays that circlejerk themselves about how deep Ivalice is and that people just don't "get" XII and that's why people shit on it
8 months ago
Anonymous
>and that people just don't "get" XII and that's why people shit on it
When the entirety of the residual Final Fantasy fanbase is a bunch of drooling animetards who've played literally the most gimped JRPG series in existence for upwards of 15 years it really isn't that much of a stretch
8 months ago
Anonymous
See this is that pseud shit I'm talking about
8 months ago
Anonymous
I mean I can't help that it's the truth, FFXIII sold 4mil+ more units than XII solely off of the fact it's animetrash. The proof is in the pudding, anon.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah and XIII is shit too, and everyone agrees. That isn't the gotcha you think it is
8 months ago
Anonymous
>Yeah and XIII is shit too, and everyone agrees.
And it still sold 4 million more units, lmfao. What aren't you understanding? Are you going to argue that XII is a worse game than XIII?
8 months ago
Anonymous
>muh sales
im not a board member, i dont care if liquid shit sold 50 million copies
8 months ago
Anonymous
Now you are just getting way off the topic
8 months ago
Anonymous
What aren't you understanding? Sales don't equate to reception, which is why despite selling more XIII is rated lower.
You're getting into "underrated gem" territory here when XII is anything but
8 months ago
Anonymous
>hmmm yes, all other final fantasy games are low class drivel! unlike my high art XII with its underdeveloped story and characters with very little motivation to do anything
kino
8 months ago
Anonymous
8 months ago
Anonymous
something doesn't have to be deep for morons to not get it
I don't really see xii apologists calling it deep ever btw
8 months ago
Anonymous
>Don't bother, the dude comes into XII and XVI threads often with the sole intention of starting shit, he's got a burning hatred for Matsuno and is likely a Nomurakek or some derivative
or could be Barry trying to get two sides to fight, he got caught doing that shit before
8 months ago
Anonymous
stfu right there homosexual don't try and bring Barry into even XII threads now.
The story is the least interesting of all Matsuno games and the gameplay was largely spent on mindlessly combing dungeons and fighting slow-ass, automated battles.
Great ideas but less than great execution.
The director (Matsuno) left halfway through production and it shows. It feels unfinished.
The combat lacks spice. It's just your basic ATB except in real time. There's no gimmicks to keep things interesting like in the previous games. The license board is the most boring growth system in the franchise (the "jobs" in the zodiac edition are just lipstick on a pig, it's just splitting the board into fragments).
There's good aspects to the story but it devolves into macguffin hunting and lacks enough human elements.
>all of a sudden normal JRPGs are frickin boring
contrarianism at work. im not so invested im going to ask what all of your favourite RPGs are but i also dont really believe any of you are arguing for any other reason than the sake of it
The most underrated FF game, but only if you play Zodiac Age
Do hunts as you unlock them and your enjoyment of the game and the gambit system will go up significantly
I'm too autistic if I miss something in the early game that will make me miss out on the ultimate weapons. Is it the case for the zodiac age edition? Do I need to use a guide?
Holy shit a group of empire soldiers just raped Penelo on the front steps of Migelo's Sundries in Rabanaastre and Dalan was the one who set it up! >Verification not required
This game sucks. It's one of the worst FF games after 13. Anyone who thinks it's good is stupid and anyone who thinks it's a masterpiece is a fricking moron.
Ok guys. What's the recommended way to play this? >original >IZJS >Zodiac Age >Struggle for Freedom
I played and 100%ed this years ago. Yiazmat took 10 hours over the course of 3 days
Zodiac age.
I did the same with the Yiazmat on PS2 but it took me 9 hours. My friend and I went for McDonalds and when I came back he was just about to go into his "spam instant death" phase where I had to change strategy.
Zodiac age.
I did the same with the Yiazmat on PS2 but it took me 9 hours. My friend and I went for McDonalds and when I came back he was just about to go into his "spam instant death" phase where I had to change strategy.
I will say I fondly remember the 12 hit Masamune combos with Berserk Ashe at less than a quarter HP
it still has the PS2 framework meaning things like CT slots are still limited, meaning big spells are ass to cast and nobody can do anything while stuff like Holy or Ador is queued up
It's irrelevant isn't it? IZJS just gives you one license board per character and in TZA you can just choose to not pick up a second. Neither really add anything interesting to the game imo except the updated graphics
TZA has a x4 speed option and IZJS only has a x2 speed option
I see. Then it does seem that Zodiac Age + SFF is the "definitive" way to play. I'll see about grabbing both later on. Thank you.
It's still a broken game with a bunch of pointless tacked on shit that is against the original vision. I would argue the original is still the definitive version of the game.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Well I beat the original 100% already, so I am in a good place to judge ZA+SFF in comparison if/when I ever get to playing it
8 months ago
Anonymous
That's fair, I beat the original a few times but never 100%'d it
8 months ago
Anonymous
game isnt really broken at all, everything works and some bosses- get this, some bosses are actually vulnerable to status effects in this entry.
theres literally nothing tacked on in FFXII at all that any normal player is going to find and find issue with. its literally just Hunts, normal obtuse JRPG sidequests and Espers.
nobody is going to discover the "fishing" and go "theres so much bullshit in this game"
8 months ago
Anonymous
I dislike the speed multiplayer a lot and think it's just a really lazy immersion breaking way of adding sprint, my biggest issue with the game is the balance. I don't think the original license board where everyone eventually maxes out everything was perfect or even good but at least the difficulty was built around it. TZA is incredibly easy and even in struggle for freedom there are gamebreaking things like being able to control guest party members. The balance is just non existent in TZA
8 months ago
Anonymous
the main issue is that IZJS/TZA are both attempts at walking back a gutted game, the end product is still better than the original gutted product however
8 months ago
Anonymous
i see, so how long did it take you to beat Trial mode. im being facetious of course and some of the stages are actual ass and near rigged but my point is that theres plenty challenge to be found in the game and not interacting with it when your issue is difficulty is me going to have to just accept youre just talking for the sake of it
8 months ago
Anonymous
>when the 5 Judges chad stride towards your party exactly like the opening
8 months ago
Anonymous
There might be challenge to be found in the trial mode but I'm talking about the actual fricking video game lol
8 months ago
Anonymous
so you didnt play it, sick, thanks for wasting my time to talk for the sake of it
Give sauce senpai
8 months ago
Anonymous
The mere existence of a trial mode does nothing to address the problem that TZA MAIN GAME experience is too fricking easy. It's an extremely common criticism you're trying to dismiss outright. I am going a step further even and suggesting that the struggle for freedom mod is too fricking easy because of the changes. You're being >unironically >disingenuous
and should probably just >fricking kys
8 months ago
Anonymous
>"the game is too easy" >heres a mode with some challenge >"THATS NOT PART OF THE GAME" >"y-youre being DISINGENUOUS"
dont know what to tell you, you lil moron, spout all the c**tshit baby buzzwords you want, i dont care about your arbitrary spastic requirements for what counts as DA REAL GAME™. dont give a frick about common criticisms either, you have the information now and youve chosen to suck wieners instead of use it, not my problem
It's irrelevant isn't it? IZJS just gives you one license board per character and in TZA you can just choose to not pick up a second. Neither really add anything interesting to the game imo except the updated graphics
>Neither really add anything interesting to the game imo except the updated graphics
You can get the Wyrmhero blade (and other equipments) via the trial mode without having to grind forever for them.
If they just talked between each other while you are doing dungeons every couples minutes to comment on the sights, recent story developments, small talk, etc it would do so much to endear people to the characters and their party.
Look at the Xenoblade games. Look at the Dragon Quest games with party chat in them like 8. There must be other games like that, but those are the first ones that come to mind.
>forest full of magic rabbits >he wants the functionally deaf one
granted you probably actually cant get there but i imagine with the few dozen around its still not thatm uch of an iss- oh right wait, ass out for 60 hours nvm u good, i dont blame you
Trash dog shit. Unplayable without 8x speed. Not worth automating the fights almost. The stupid second version they made the zodiac shit just made the game worse because you had to pick classes instead of everyone having open skill tree. Kinda fun running around and some tall bunny babes, plenty of pointless side bosses and moronic mc. Idk weird fricking game.
What are some fun class combos? I wanted to do something with Foebreaker I like the idea of shattering defenses but I don't know what to combine it with
anything+Knight with White Magic unlocked by Esper or otherwise is completely self sufficient.
Monk+ any mage job for the absolute meme of having your physical damage directly powered by your magic stat
Shikari + Time Mage to snort cocaine magic for no reason
the reason zodiac is easy is because you can have one or two optimised party members max and then breakdance in the background with the third doing silly buffs.
Do yourself a favor and mod in the original license board. Then you can make your own classes without worrying about any gay shit the game tries to pull.
No? Even if you have everything your equipment and Gambit usage is going to result in vastly different characters. By design too since with the low 3 party limit they all need to specialize instead of running the same exact shit.
zodiac age is the definitive version
it’s the best final fantasy
>zodiac age
too easy
IZJS is objectively better than Zodiac Age
Played 12 as a kid for the first time, and absolutely loved it, played Zodiac age recently, still absolutely loved it. It's my favourite Final Fantasy and generally one of my favourite games of all time.
Final Fantasy isn't exactly a difficult series. There are difficulty spikes here and there but nobody is playing the series for its extreme challenges.
This is the version I played recently and I loved it. Not sure how different it is from Vanilla.
This but the dungeons are so long and boring they had to include a fastforward option.
I'm going to say something really autistic and people are going to be mad but I don't care
Zodiac version is better than the original but the fast forward feature shouldn't be there, it makes the game almost unplayable for me
Even the zodiac version with the struggle for freedom mod is too easy comparatively. What breaks the game for me is being able to control guests and spam infinite OP technicks.
I would say the original license board is great while you're still exploring it. Near the end it's not that good, but I had a lot of fun with it in early to mid game.
You reveal the tiles, do a guesswork of which route each character should take, then just go from there. Maybe it would benefit from being bigger, but I liked it a lot.
The only thing bad about zodiac age is the letterboxing during cutscenes. Absolutely atrocious.
Everything else is a huge upgrade over older versions.
"Too easy" is not an argument. You are not forced to pick a 2nd job. If your fun can only be attained by everyone else having the same limitations as you in a singleplayer game, you're a fricking loser.
>"Zodiac age is too easy"
>so do New Game Minus
>"n-no its artificial difficulty"
cant win with these people
theyre just straight up shitc**t children. its not enough to not like it, anyone who does like it is [5th grader tantrum]
>You are not forced to pick a 2nd job.
Someone picking up the game for the first time is not going to realize that the game isn't balanced around 2 jobs.
It was perfectly fine for difficulty. If anything, it's closer to the original.
not when FF3 exists
They got rid of the soulful text font. Other than that, no complaints.
Isn't there a font replacement mod?
fippybippy
I really liked it when I was younger but I haven't revisited it since
It is my favorite final fantasy but I haven't played anything before 8
It doesn't hold up at all, but are these games meant to? It wasn't really received all that well outside of the hardcore of the hardcore FF fans.
Great game on its own, but a lame mainline final fantasy title.
Why is that? You really think shit like FF8 or 9 are better?
they are clearly more in line with the original vision of the franchise
12 is more like a ivallice alliance spinoff game
>original vision of the franchise
lmao what is this shit
6,7,9 are the best ones in my opinion
>You really think shit like FF8 or 9 are better
YES!
ff12 took a turn towards single player mmo and a different gameplay feel. i would have rather had something like ff x-2 but with an actual story and characters
FF8 is the best FF
you have never played them
12 is such a departure from FF, it had cities that were too big in which a lot of it is just a waste of your time, and gambits are just auto-battle.
9 was fantastic
even X was fantastic even with it's linearity.
>12
>cities too big
>a cross shape is too big
>a small loop is too big
Some of the field areas are absolutely too big and a slog to get through but that's not the worst problem in the world to have.
It's also not a game that demands a lot of backtracking to finish the main story. You're only to be reexploring an area if you want to do the side content.
yes anon, too big for what it offers you.
Lindbulm in 9 felt a lot better, you get to see how the people lived and they felt a lot more memorable to me than 12's npcs.
Despite me vastly preferring Tactics ogre/ffxii artstyle.
you want the capital city of the main antagonistic force to be one screen with 4 fleshed out npcs in it?
this is nostalgia and lack of memory talking because Archades has a literal class divide involved in the main story progression and you start by entering the city from the frickin literal ghetto- same as Rabanastre, a desert market city
the entire time youre there you learn about how close to ruin every upperclassman in Archades is and how terrified they are that theyll lose everything and the Merchant and Profession Hub that Rabanastre is. you simply dont remember much about XII and have just assumed "9 NPCs better" over it.
bro I played and dropped the game like 5 times
I remember a lot of it and not because it's memorable.
And don't put words in my mouth that's you getting mad at made up scenarios that you created you fool.
I did not say anything about only 4 npcs.
Fool.
>i remember it
>but it wasnt memorable
>fool
>f-fool
shut up you blabbering c**t lmao.
It's really long, everywhere is fricking huge and a bit of chore to get through, the story is interesting but very broken up between frick huge dungeons so the flow is odd.
Vaan and Penelo are useless to the narrative and take screentime away from Balther, Basche, and Ashe
This game would be so much better if they just cut the crap and had Balthier take centre stage like he is suppossed to.
>balthier
is not very interesting. Basch on the other hand should have been the protagonist
The only reason why the cast got together in the first place is a result of Vaan's actions. Penelo is down there with Fran for party members that barely do anything outside of their one moment. Blaming her for screen time stealing is moronic.
Basch would have been a boring MC and Balthier's role works best as a secondary character. If anyone should get the role of permanent MC and PoV character it would be Ashe because she's already the closest thing to a MC narratively anyway.
It's one of the weaker entries because it's new features are all rather boring and the plotline is generic while not feeling like a nostalgic callback like FF9. It's not a bad game but it's only memorable because of it's mediocrity and being probably the most graphically impressive PS2 game.
I loved the plotline. I wish someone would make a HoI4 mod about it.
People who want the games to be a nostalgic callback are the lowest iq fricking vermin
16 is better
It’s even worse than 13. Lightning is objectively a better character than Vaan.
Vaan isn't a character, he is a narrative device.
I wouldn't even go that far. He's a self-insert for Japanese mean who can't identify with suave womanizers or gritty heroes.
he's there for the jap chicks to swoon at, not for the guys to identify with
ps. i don't think he was great for that either, but that's why they added him
Vaan was literally created very late into script development because the Square executives believed the Japanese audiance wouldn't be able to relate to Basch or Balthier. This is one of the most well known facts about the games development.
It's also worth noting he was written in by the main writer for the Kingdom Hearts series, if that gives any more perspective to the situation.
Incorrect. Vaan wasn't added to replace Basch or Balthier at the last minute. He's what eventually became of a character that's no longer there.
>Vaan wasn't added to replace Basch or Balthier at the last minute.
Yeah I never said this
I'm just saying that Matsuno debunked the rumor about Vaan being added to replace Balthier/Basch.
It's unclear what the exact series of events were because an interview with Minagawa from 2007(?) was where the "rumor" was originally sourced. Matsuno uses Google TL for his tweets, and I don't even remember the source of the Minagawa interview, so there's really no telling exactly what the situation was. The development of XII was so long and turbulent you can't really date particular characters to a specific point, as we don't even know what the scope of the content Matsuno left the team when he departed was. All that existed of Vaan could've very well been just a character design.
Matsumoto is back peddling
>>>Q: With regard to the design of the game, Matsuno's departure and the exit requirements, I would like to know if they are completely satisfied with the final result or if his ideas that were really close to his heart had to be handed over for lack of time or means?
Hiroshi Minagawa: Like any video game between the moment you decide on a project when you then see the final version of the game, of course there are always things that change. For Final Fantasy XII, it was like for the other games, there are a lot of things that have changed but I would say that there have not been huge transformations compared to what we had planned to do. There are just little things that have changed from right to left. On the other hand, if you want an example of something that has changed a lot: basically, Final Fantasy XII was not supposed to look so much like Vagrant Story in design, we had rather planned to return to big-headed characters.
To give you an idea also of the evolution of the atmosphere of the game, the first character we had created and who was basically the hero of the story was Bash, and finally the heroes of the final game as we know it today who are Vaan and Penelo, they were last and we added them at the end.
Nobody is saying Vaan was intended to replace Basch or Bathlier as both characters still have way more agency with the plot. Vaan was simply the self-insert for beta Japanese men. He was a tacked on addition; not a replacement. Only fricking tards who can't read think otherwise.
>Spends the early game in jail until when Vaan spergs out uncontrollably on sight causing the cell to become unhinged and the cast drops into Barheim
>After Barheim, he returns to Rabanastre and we undergo a quest to deliver a sword to the resistance. None of them wish to team up with Basch for obvious reasons and its Vaan who convinces them to give him a second chance because the people couldn't believe that Reks' brother would believe in Basch
>No one actually wants to go to Bhujerba to help Basch save Ashe, it just happens because Balthier felt bad after getting Penelo kidnapped (which once again happens because of events that Vaan caused early on)
>We go to Raithwall with the Vossler shit and its Basch's one big moment
and then the guy proceeds to do frick all because Gabranth is elsewhere for almost the entire game and the two boss fights are less about Basch and more about Gabranth doing other stuff.
Basch was a big wet fart with more hype than action. The characters who carried 12's plot the most were Vaan, Balthier and Ashe.
I appreciate they didn't make him really matter to the overall plot, he's just along for the ride and trying to help.
incredibly flawed game but its one of my favorites
i thought Vaan was really cool until you rescue Penelo in Bhujerba, afterwards he's essentially removed from the story
Everyone is. Even in central parts of their storyline the characters that step up have like two fricking lines, party banter comes to a complete halt after larsa leaves.
Worst story
Worst characters
Worst character design
Worst soundtrack
Worst battle system
Worst growth system
Worst side quests
Not even the much praised exploration was all that good (no world-map, no airship, boring copy-pasted dungeons, mogged by any Xenoblade in terms of scale)
The story is the best in FF and the characters are great
dude, even Seymour is a better villain than vayne
>he thinks Vayne is a villain
He’s an antagonist, but he does literally nothing wrong at any point. He’s every bit the immaculate emperor he portrays himself as and usurping the Occuria would only be a good thing. The war with Rosaria that the protagonists are working to prevent wouldn’t be a conflict of Good versus Evil, just human politics.
it has the best setting though. I need more ff games set in ivalice !!!
Characters were all uninteresting
Story was ok but it felt like it ended randomly. I expected way more
Game was super easy. Maybe 2 fights in the whole game required any input outside setting gambits
The worst FF game
That's not FF 4
I dropped 4. The bosses all seemed like random tricks you were sure to fail the first time, and they would be behind an unskippable 5 minute mini boss you had to redo every single time
15?
terrible game, never listen to ff fanboys.
Ashe is the hottest FF girl
Only in promotional art. Her ingame model looks terrible 98% of the time.
found the gay
Penelo needed a bigger ass
Dogshit walking simulator where you run around in turbo mode while your gambits kill everything
Even in turbo the game is abysmally slower than a dehydrated dog taking a shit
10/10 voice acting
6/10 story
7/10 cast
It shouldn't have been a numbered final fantasy at all since it's an ivalice game but its ok. I didn't play it during release but like 3 years ago and it was surprisingly enjoyable.
>7/10 cast
Basch, Gabranth and Balthier are like the only good characters
frans va was pure sexo but yeah
What about Cid?
He's better than XIII Cid so I guess that's something
XIII had a Cid?
not sure if you're serious but yes, he was the dude that wanted to overthrow the Sanctum and publicly execute the l'cie, he was also the only good antagonist of the trilogy besides Caius and had a cool and decently challenging boss fight
he gets executed by a literal who though
It's cool but I don't know if I'd ever play it again.
One of my favorites. Love the music, system, ambiance/world (Ivalice fan), graphics, enemies and lore. Some of the characters are good, but the story is it's weakest point (though it has some good parts). I remember playing with the camera so I could get a better angle at Ashe and Fran's butts.
Story is whatever but it's fun and comfy running around a fully 3D Ivalice and looting shit. Every JRPG should have gambits. And booba buns.
Eruyt village... home
But where were all the male bunnies?
they didn't exist when Squeenix wasn't a bunch of fujo-pandering spineless slugs
Kuja
tf does that dickless nerd have to do with FFXII
Kuja was approximately 9 purple pixels in his game. any 3d render of any character before 8 is basically fanart
Good thing 9 comes after 8 then
what im saying is i wouldnt exactly call a ps1 midriff "fujo" tier and it started far later than PS1, the implication that kuja being a purple satin frickboi in 240p means Squeenix was pandering, is a little weak.
who the frick was i imagining in 7, 6 and 5. to say "before 8", ive completely forgotten since posting
Let's take a look at Kuja then......... Oh.
>Baphomet with no breasts
What the frick were the asiatics doing?
VII was pozzed with all the israeli shit, VIII was probably pozzed with something that I don't know about, but IX had Kuja, and Baphomet for the first time. It was the beginning of the end.
>VIII was probably pozzed with something that I don't know about
Doomtrain, Occult books, Mike Tyson, Robin Williams, Michael Jackson, Squall's gay outfit etc etc
Also Rinoa cucking you with Seifer
kuja is from 9 i think you're thinking of kefka
female only forest. Males canonically apparently just show up and bang occasionally
Why aren't there any mods for the PC release that restore the original difficulty?
Not sure how the IZJS release compares on that front.
TZA with a single board is basically IZJS. Everything they added was made to cater to people who complained about lack of subjobs/free reclassing due to fear of commitment.
The story is fine but once you get to the trip to Archades arc, everyone not named Ashe pretty much only exist to chime in when the plot remembers them. Which ends up making stuff like Balthier vs Cid or Basch vs Gabranth feel underwhelming. Not to mention that Vaan whose role was to be the one who sort of helped to ground Ashe in quest for revenge kind of just feels like it was unfinished after the Garif village talk.
>TZA with a single board is basically IZJS.
Neat. Guess I'll do that.
better than X and everything after it. could have been the best final fantasy but the last third of the game is kind of shit.
Played it recently. Cool concept for the time it came out. If I would have played it back then I would have enjoyed it. Nowadays I just don't have time for that much busywork though. I dropped it at the part where they're crossing the giant machines in the desert and the sand people shark things attack them.
Quick
Post your favorite location
Eruyt village
for very obvious reasons, but Archades is a close second
Best FF.
very boring, "plays itself" is not a meme, but god's honest truth
More RPGs need to automate combat. If I've already figured out the optimal series of commands for an encounter then they might as well cut out the busy work and let me activate it with one button instead of several.
might as well cut the game entirely if the player has no meaningful input
The input is the decision making, but once that's done it should be as simple and quickly to do as possible.
It's just menu shit. There's no skill behind navigating them.
>There's no skill behind navigating them
yes, that's the problem. automating the navigation does not solve the problem. again, might as well cut the game entirely if the gameplay is trivial.
Actually, that would solve a problem. There's more to the gameplay in these games than just the random battles.
the only gameplay really is walking around or changing your gambits for harder bosses
Top 3 worst FF game.
white/time mage too OP
set gambit to Protectga + Shellga, Bubble and Haste, Dispelga on sight and Curaja when <50% health and you basically can't die unintentionally
How do you not run out of MP immediately? Serious question, I don't remember the wrinkles of this game at all.
you can pretty much sustain yourself with just the MP augments (gain MP on hit/kill) and a Charge/Syphon/Ether gambit for emergencies
Ahh right, now I remember those.
Beaten every boss except for Omega Mark XII
going through this thing gave me a brain hemorrhage
Im2dum hume pls occuria
To date it's the only FF I've beaten.
Is a replay worth it after only 2.5 years?
pure joy, love this game so much.
original > zodiac age, but ZA isn't so bad.
Fran is my wife.
it wasn't perfect, but I really did like the gambit system. would be nice to see it refined rather than abandoned
A return to form after 8 and 10. Felt closer to games like 4 and 6 in terms of setting and aesthetic. Definitely the best of the nu-FFs, MMOs excluded.
Favorite FF personally, honestly prefer the old version to Zodiac Age.
could've been a masterpiece if matsuno didn't lose it. the first chapter of the game is legitimately enthralling and full of potential
the majority of the game is very bland and boring, and the story goes nowhere
Not many people seem to mention the great side quests and shit like monster hunts that this game had. In terms of scope and varied terrain and enemies it really all felt like a huge adventure. I did everything in this game as a teen except the Omega and Yiazmat battles.
Because they weren't great at all. They were content padding
People complain about it for being too much like MMO stuff, but I'm glad they went back to making the sidequests all about combat and exploring after FFX's atrocious minigames. I'll take that approach any day.
It sucks and I don’t know why so many of you suck its dick so hard.
Great until the final part on the Bahamut. That part really doesn't add anything.
Also love any music from Hitoshi Sakimoto
>Bahamut
You mean the ending?
Why do you guys keep parroting the idea that the story drops off towards the end? Seems to be pretty structurally sound to me. Clear beginning, middle and end.
Basch was overrated. He barely contributes anything and people falsely attribute stuff to him because of a decades misinfo campaign that Matsuno himself had to correct.
baby making sex with the brown rabbit girl
true
most importantly, it has a great gilgamesh fight
It's the best Final Fantasy and the last good Final Fantasy, but it will be forever marred by the fact it wasn't finished by the original director/producer. Honestly though, as-is it's a testament to the strength of the team that was built around Matsuno in that era of Square. The fact the game was finished at all and remains just shy of being a masterpiece is an accomplishment in itself.
It was fun to set up a good algo and mindlessly grind while I did bong rips. Don't remeber the game very well, do remember setting up my algorithms.
Finished it like 2 weeks ago
>The story is incredibly dogshit, it's an absolute disaster.
>The characters are an absolute bore and literal whos most of them
>The combat is an automatized walking simulator you set up with "strategy commands" yet it's so limited and the game so easy anyways that it isn't even necessary. I honestly pity anyone who played it without the turbo because holy shit the combat is such a piece of shit and slow as hell.
>The art/designs etc ingame looks terrible, it's by far the ugliest game in the franchise and has a lot of the worst versions of classic enemies.
>Music is decent I guess
I have to say, it's admirable how a lot of people have built this image around the game being this "political and mature uncomprehended masterpiece" in the franchise
filtered
Low iq dipshit filtered
it's ok I guess
Is that in one playthrough?
I think 4 or so regular playthroughs and a NG- playthrough with some trial modes inbetween
How the frick could you play a game like FFXII 4 times
I like da gambits
...did you just not play the game? it's incredibly freeform, Zodiac Age specifically. probably the most RPG-esque game in the franchise. this is like asking why you'd play Dark Souls 4 times.
Dark Souls is free form. How is FFXII free form? It's a linear story and with so many party members you can basically do all the class combos you could want in one go
okay so you didn't play the game, gotcha. saying XII is a "linear story" and therefore isn't freeform is like saying Dark Souls is linear because Anor Londo is a prereq for the end of the game.
Explain how I'm wrong please. Unlike Dark Souls, FFXII doesn't have different paths to get to the same objective
no, but it does expand quite a bit after tomb of raithwall. You can get to the necrohol pretty early on and get some mid-to-late-game spells and gear quick, trying to get through areas on low levels or NG- with sub-par gear can be pretty fun. Nihopalao early is also pretty cool, and shikari with all 3 remedy lores can stop most mooks. You can also try and farm the level 80 Archaeoaevis in Zerrtinan for Emperor's scale to get best gun in the game in the bazaar. Going without a white mage (or white magic in general) is fricking brutal if you wanna try that. Monoclassing can go from pretty fun to fricking agonizing.
you just gotta stop being a stick in the mud and try some new things out
None of those things are really mutually exclusive though. What's stopping you from doing all of that on one playthrough?
I can't very well get through the necrohols with my shitty low tier single class group, and I sure as hell can't use the gun if I don't have a machinist. You gonna chide me for playing dark souls and only focusing on intelligence in one playthrough and then strength in another?
youre not supposed to wander through Nabudis mindlessly looking for items, there are like 3 spells and 1 weapon in there you beeline for, then you get the FRICK out the way you came and not out the otherside
>I can't very well get through the necrohols with my shitty low tier single class group
Have you tried?
I have, and I died a dozen times so I just went elsewhere before coming back with an appropriate level
skill issue
Indeed, there are many different ways to complete the game, and I took the path of least resistance on one of my 5 playthroughs. How egregious of me.
alright, youre talking shit heres why, you can just up and take an airship to main cities, failing that you can walk through Ozmone Plain and you have access to several concentric circles of locations from there. even if they are not connected, looking down your street from your bedroom window and going "WOWWW, ITS SO LINEAR" isnt some kind of criticism as though you need 19 different ramps and ladders to go to the store for it to be a cool street.
the argument wasnt that Dark Souls is interconnected the argument was that you wouldnt call Dark Souls linear just because theres a set number of things you need to do to finish it and fawning over being able to not go straight there, but instead pass through other areas is tardy and the same is true in reverse for FFXII
it doesnt really matter, if you need to go to Phon coast you go to Phon coast. if you need to hunt White Chiggin in Paramina you go to Paramina.
oh, I played dark souls till NG+12, I just like replaying games, it's why I 100%'d all the versions of ff12
Only thing I didn't really like about FFXII is the story felt unfinished, like there was one more major act left but nope that was it.
Why didn't Penelo and Vaan frick?
isn't that the plot of revenant wings?
Oh yeah, that thing. I never played it but people seemed to like it.
>people seemed to like it.
Where? Who are these people?
me, I'm this guy
I like ff12
This was back when people usually only talked about games they liked so they were the only ones talking about it. Reviews seem to aggregate as a solid 8/10.
It isn't an 8/10. I played it and returned it and I loved XII
Me
RW >>>>>>shit >>>
why would she want to frick him when balthier and basch exist?
I don't care what people say, this was one of my favorite areas in any final fantasy game ever
>dude sand people lmao
>dude s-
>IS THAT A FRICKING GIANT BALL OF LIGHTNING, HOLY FRICK ITS LEVEL FORTY F-
What does the gambit refer to? I don't get it.
the chessboard character builder.
Explain.
idk, gambit is a chess term, your characters skill shit is on a chess board. thats as much as ive ever put together
I think it's getting lubed up and dick-crazy so you frick like a demon until it hurts enough that you slow down, with the last three maybe implying edging/orgasm denial.
forcing the Dawn Shard out of her ass
Wait a minute....this better not be the type of porn I think it is
explicitly said Dawn Shard, shoving things in women is normal porn
Give sauce senpai
>mfw i continue typing after pressing post and the timer runs out before i go find the sauce
https://files.catbox.moe/vajxte.png
Kinda disappointed she wasn't hiding it in her anus.
Last good FF, at least where mainline games are concerned.
>Grin attempted to change the art style to fit more with traditional Final Fantasy games, but still did not receive any positive feedback. In response, Grin sent Square Enix an image of one of the latter's own games, Final Fantasy XII, and were told that it does not look like a game in Final Fantasy's style. Following that exchange, Grin came to the conclusion that there was no longer any way to satisfy the publisher.
kek, the Enix merge was such a fricking disaster
Never forget.
Unironically the most ambitious Final Fantasy, series hasn't been good since
That's actually probably true. I hated it at first too, but over time my opinion has changed.
Basch and Ash should have been the main characers.
Everyone else was cool but Vaan.
>4 simultaneous Final Fantasy threads up on Ganker
Did something get announced recently or something, what's happening?
Yeah they're shilling the new gacha mobile game that's going to die and fail in a few months.
I actually wasn't aware that a new FF gacha game came out, that makes sense.
Zack's abs.
people talking about fricking VIDEO GAMES? on MY Ganker?
see?
pretty sure all 4 target different parts of the fanbase and 1 of the 4 is likely a schizo XVI thread, although I haven't looked
I'm in 3 of them plus /ffg/.
My first FF. Loved it, wanted to frick Vaan, Fran, Penelo, Ashe, and Larsa so dang bad when I was a kid. Never hated Vaan and the deluge map of the desert area was my favorite. Frick the area with the floating platforms in the Mist though, always got lost there.
Never bothered getting Zodiac age since I had sunken hundreds of hours into the original PS2 version. But damn it was good.
>wanted to frick Vaan, Fran, Penelo, Ashe, and Larsa
And also Reks, gotdang I was mad he died, but being a kid it took a while for me to realize Vaan and Reks were different people.
Could never get a stronger sword beyond Ragnarok also, and the area that belonged to Ashe's dead husband was always fricking difficult even with a level 99 party. I made all my money chain farming skeletons up in Mount Bur Omisace, or whatever it was called, but holy frick, screw that place and the Mist map.
>stone and petrify do the exact same thing
>cured by the same thing
>have to use two gambits to notice both
one of them is instant and one of them is a countdown. why they let the player use both but Aqua is the only water spell ill never know
>Vaan's early name was "Aqua" (アクア, as seen in Akihiko Yoshida's concept art) and intended to be an Iyashi kei character (癒し系, "therapeutic type", a kind of Japanese stock character). Vaan is known for going over several personality changes over the course of development, originally written as a rugged and world-worn character until the developers reconsidered the target demographic and Vaan was rewritten to be more effeminate. After Kouhei Takeda was cast as his voice, the developers rewrote Vaan to match the energetic personality his voice lent to the character. The executive producer of Final Fantasy XII, Akitoshi Kawazu, has said in an interview that character design is one of the areas the developers mull over extensively, and is one of the most difficult things to decide on.
This is also concurrent with stuff like Vaan's original being one of the first characters to be designed and Vaan being one of the first characters to be revealed to the public along with Ashe who's the actual MC of the overall plot. Not to mention that if you consider other narratives by Matsuno such as FFT and TO, you'd know that Ashley Riot is an exception to what he usually does where you control some teenager that's in over his head while the rest of the world moves around him. Vaan's thing is that his equivalent of Chapter 3/4 FFT/TO doesn't happen in FFXII and we have to wait on RW for it to happen.
>brutal and worn rouge Vaan
could've been kino
i was filtered as a child by this dude, i was too dumb to realize you didn't even have to fight him if you just ran through the feywood lol
I was filtered as a child by Cid.
I realized while replaying on a PS2 emulator yesterday for the first time that you're meant to fight him with larsa constantly healing you.
the environments fricking suck and ALL yes ALL of the party members are gay as frick
>OOOH A PIRATE NEAT....OH HES A FRICKING gay
>OOH A WARRIOR NEAT....OH HES A FRICKING CRYBABY
>OOH A SEX RABBIT.....OH THERES NO HARDCORE SEX SCENES
>THE ORPHAN TWINS....WHO FRICKING CARES
>THE JUDGES....UNDERUTILIZED AND FRICKING GAY
the whole game is such a stupid fricking let down
Short answer is wasted potential. It could have been the best FF but it sits there in the middle. I would elaborate but nobody likes walls of text.
Elaborate
Elaborate but don't post a wall of text.
Elaborate but in haiku form
Final Fantasy
The 12th could have been better
Characters all same
Midnight illusion
Too trifle a tale
A gambit forsaken
My gripes with it are repeating enemy models and nonsensical enemies with nonsensical lore (Sleipnir breed with metallic armor as part of its body??)
Also lack of unique loot containers
Enemy respawns within the same screen are also awful
The story and voice acting are terrible.
The voice acting is good, the story has it's moments but it's pretty unmemorable.
>good
no
?si=F-I2fc9Qh1exFb_4
Don't believe in Ondore's lies!
This is more of a writing issue. What he's saying doesn't even make logical sense.
I'm THE hacker named Ganker!
>ITS THE WRITING!!!! THE VOICEWORK IS ACTUALLY REAL GOOD
oh frick off
If you want bad voice acting, look at troy baker and the entire cast of XIII homosexual
>12 bad
>12 not bad because 13 bad
no, both bad anon....both bad
Listen to that fricking soundtrack. Goddamn.
good thing the game is propped up by combat that is.....barely marginally better than its siblings
Balthier was badass in both languages. Other than that, you're right.
I got bored of it half way through the game. Too many boring dialogues. Game felt longer than it should have been. Didn't find any character appealing. It was ok for a FF game I guess.
XII would have been better as a 3d remake of Tactics with xii's combat
No what the frick
It’s the textbook definition of mediocre. Unremarkable in every way
>hub world
>the most amount of content in any FF game
I Kneel...
don't forget
>an actual RPG
I think the Maya aesthetic is just an ugly design choice.
this and if youre gonna do desert shit for most of the game you need to either have real vibrant popping colors enough to break it up or you need the desert to be more orange and yellow than frickin brown and beige
>but that would frick up the atmosphere of the game
well the atmosphere fricking sucks, the character models suck and look chinky, and the story is dull and even when it pops off its shitty. Notice that not one person can praise this game for its story
Easily the worst game in the series including spin offs and ots not even close. Spirits Within is a better FF
>Spirits Within
>better
kys
I said what I said and I meant what I said when I said it
>played the ps1 games with my dad
>rented spirits within when it came out
>shut it off halfway through and returned it
>killed squaresoft
You know the music is pretty bland too, a definite step down from 1-10. It's fine to listen to while you're playing but not a single track sticks with you once you turn the game off
You just don't like Hitoshi Sakimoto's style and that's okay, but I sure do remember many of the game's songs and I haven't played it in like 10 years
It certainly doesn't help that the rest of the game around the music is pretty boring and forgettable too.
>got the steelbook which came with some poorly fitting sad pop song
>bought dq8 for the xii demo
>fell in love with my first dq thinking ff12 can only be better than the experience I just played
>hated it
I thought the music was technically really good but the problem is it was all equally bombastic and epic instead of just being used for moments where that'd be called for so it all kind of blends together.
Like this https://youtu.be/u2hLJLQfwSI?t=83 isn't a theme for wandering aimlessly around a desert killing fricking bunny rabbits.
really wanted to get into it, but gambits are just not a fun mechanic. wish you could just turn them off and play the game normally. no clue why they thought making the player program ai to automatically do what the player would do anyway is a good idea. im not a quadriplegic. i can switch characters to cast healing or use an elemental weakness myself.
I play without gambits
the ai is fricking moronic though. theyre specifically made to act like lobotomites if you dont use gambits. i assume its a combination of punishing the player for not using this amazing new mechanic and the devs making a justification for its existence. if you dont use them you spend every battle babying all your party members.
So you want ai companions but don't want to set gambits?
if it has to be non-turn based, yes. i didnt play 13, so maybe it has it too, but 15 is how 12 shouldve handled party members. its one of the few things i didnt hate in that game.
Genuinely, Kingdom Hearts has the best AI party member system in Squeenix's games
never played them because i cant break the "this is a baby game made for babies" barrier, but ill take your word for it.
before you get totally shit on, I agree
You can turn them off, you fricking moron. You're explicitly told this, and forced to do it to demonstrate the example, in the gambit tutorial.
I think you're misremembering, gambits are not mandatory at all. In fact you can turn them off in the battle menu.
OG version is shit. Zodiac Age is decent, though.
to say one is shit and the other is good is ridiculous to me. XII has bad bones, adding some extra content and giving american players the european or japanese skill system doesnt magically make a shit game good
It was never shit. You were too stupid to get the gameplay or the story.
>matsunogay thinks the game is deep or difficult
Many such cases
go back to the XVI thread
XVI is better than XII
okay
no. 12 has half-competent writing. 16 was written by an imbecile or, potentially, a monkey
XII literally has the main antagonist not even be aware of your presence until the final confrontation. That alone puts XII in the dumpster on the story front
and it's still miles better than anything in 16. Imagine that
What are you talking about? Vayne and Cid knew about Ashe the entire time, they just didn't give a shit.
its another case of Ganker being illiterate morons and thinking "who are you" is meant literally instead a "who the frick are you" despite Vayne absolutely knowing who the fricking princess of Dalmasca is and one of her former royal fricking guard for obvious reasons
Don't bother, the dude comes into XII and XVI threads often with the sole intention of starting shit, he's got a burning hatred for Matsuno and is likely a Nomurakek or some derivative
I don't know who you're talking about, but I don't hate Matsuno. I like tactics, but I hate ivalicegays that circlejerk themselves about how deep Ivalice is and that people just don't "get" XII and that's why people shit on it
>and that people just don't "get" XII and that's why people shit on it
When the entirety of the residual Final Fantasy fanbase is a bunch of drooling animetards who've played literally the most gimped JRPG series in existence for upwards of 15 years it really isn't that much of a stretch
See this is that pseud shit I'm talking about
I mean I can't help that it's the truth, FFXIII sold 4mil+ more units than XII solely off of the fact it's animetrash. The proof is in the pudding, anon.
Yeah and XIII is shit too, and everyone agrees. That isn't the gotcha you think it is
>Yeah and XIII is shit too, and everyone agrees.
And it still sold 4 million more units, lmfao. What aren't you understanding? Are you going to argue that XII is a worse game than XIII?
>muh sales
im not a board member, i dont care if liquid shit sold 50 million copies
Now you are just getting way off the topic
What aren't you understanding? Sales don't equate to reception, which is why despite selling more XIII is rated lower.
You're getting into "underrated gem" territory here when XII is anything but
>hmmm yes, all other final fantasy games are low class drivel! unlike my high art XII with its underdeveloped story and characters with very little motivation to do anything
kino
something doesn't have to be deep for morons to not get it
I don't really see xii apologists calling it deep ever btw
>Don't bother, the dude comes into XII and XVI threads often with the sole intention of starting shit, he's got a burning hatred for Matsuno and is likely a Nomurakek or some derivative
or could be Barry trying to get two sides to fight, he got caught doing that shit before
stfu right there homosexual don't try and bring Barry into even XII threads now.
ok, barry
the anon im responding to said
>OG version is shit
>zodiac age is decent
if the first is true, the second certainly isnt
The story is the least interesting of all Matsuno games and the gameplay was largely spent on mindlessly combing dungeons and fighting slow-ass, automated battles.
Great ideas but less than great execution.
The director (Matsuno) left halfway through production and it shows. It feels unfinished.
The combat lacks spice. It's just your basic ATB except in real time. There's no gimmicks to keep things interesting like in the previous games. The license board is the most boring growth system in the franchise (the "jobs" in the zodiac edition are just lipstick on a pig, it's just splitting the board into fragments).
There's good aspects to the story but it devolves into macguffin hunting and lacks enough human elements.
>gameplay
Fun. Enjoy all the side content and secrets
>story
Don't even remember. The bad guy is working with other worldly beings for some reason and you end that shit
>The bad guy is working with other worldly beings for some reason
To stop the other other worldly beings
the combat feels like some barely better than world of warcraft shit
its literally just normal JRPG combat except 3d and you can move.
yeah, thats what he said
still frickin sucks
What is good gameplay? And give examples explaining why.
any dragon quest game and no I will not spoonfeed you
"Normal JRPG combat" is boring. Good JRPG combat has gimmicks to make things interesting.
>all of a sudden normal JRPGs are frickin boring
contrarianism at work. im not so invested im going to ask what all of your favourite RPGs are but i also dont really believe any of you are arguing for any other reason than the sake of it
I'm pretty certain it was built off of FF11's design philosophy
The most underrated FF game, but only if you play Zodiac Age
Do hunts as you unlock them and your enjoyment of the game and the gambit system will go up significantly
Wasted potential. It's a very, very boring game that is the favorite of autists and pretentious hipsters.
Is there something like FF XII, in that it's a massive world with tons of shit to do, but with better combat?
no
I'm too autistic if I miss something in the early game that will make me miss out on the ultimate weapons. Is it the case for the zodiac age edition? Do I need to use a guide?
>Do I need to use a guide?
the answer is always yes
Nothing is missable in Zodiac Age as far as I'm aware, even the stuff that you could potentially miss in the normal game is obtainable in trial mode
I miss Episode Duscae
>Episode Duscae
apparently it was too hard for Tabata and demanded it to be casual friendly
It had some really good ideas that ended up being executed poorly. It also had some bad ideas. The result is a mediocre game.
Holy shit a group of empire soldiers just raped Penelo on the front steps of Migelo's Sundries in Rabanaastre and Dalan was the one who set it up!
>Verification not required
This game sucks. It's one of the worst FF games after 13. Anyone who thinks it's good is stupid and anyone who thinks it's a masterpiece is a fricking moron.
Ok guys. What's the recommended way to play this?
>original
>IZJS
>Zodiac Age
>Struggle for Freedom
I played and 100%ed this years ago. Yiazmat took 10 hours over the course of 3 days
Zodiac age.
I did the same with the Yiazmat on PS2 but it took me 9 hours. My friend and I went for McDonalds and when I came back he was just about to go into his "spam instant death" phase where I had to change strategy.
>Yiazmat took 10 hours
You must have played the original version
I did, yes. Forgot to mention it in my post.
I will say I fondly remember the 12 hit Masamune combos with Berserk Ashe at less than a quarter HP
The original or Zodiac with struggle for freedom mod. Those are your two choices.
Out of curiosity, why not IZJS?
it still has the PS2 framework meaning things like CT slots are still limited, meaning big spells are ass to cast and nobody can do anything while stuff like Holy or Ador is queued up
I see. Then it does seem that Zodiac Age + SFF is the "definitive" way to play. I'll see about grabbing both later on. Thank you.
It's still a broken game with a bunch of pointless tacked on shit that is against the original vision. I would argue the original is still the definitive version of the game.
Well I beat the original 100% already, so I am in a good place to judge ZA+SFF in comparison if/when I ever get to playing it
That's fair, I beat the original a few times but never 100%'d it
game isnt really broken at all, everything works and some bosses- get this, some bosses are actually vulnerable to status effects in this entry.
theres literally nothing tacked on in FFXII at all that any normal player is going to find and find issue with. its literally just Hunts, normal obtuse JRPG sidequests and Espers.
nobody is going to discover the "fishing" and go "theres so much bullshit in this game"
I dislike the speed multiplayer a lot and think it's just a really lazy immersion breaking way of adding sprint, my biggest issue with the game is the balance. I don't think the original license board where everyone eventually maxes out everything was perfect or even good but at least the difficulty was built around it. TZA is incredibly easy and even in struggle for freedom there are gamebreaking things like being able to control guest party members. The balance is just non existent in TZA
the main issue is that IZJS/TZA are both attempts at walking back a gutted game, the end product is still better than the original gutted product however
i see, so how long did it take you to beat Trial mode. im being facetious of course and some of the stages are actual ass and near rigged but my point is that theres plenty challenge to be found in the game and not interacting with it when your issue is difficulty is me going to have to just accept youre just talking for the sake of it
>when the 5 Judges chad stride towards your party exactly like the opening
There might be challenge to be found in the trial mode but I'm talking about the actual fricking video game lol
so you didnt play it, sick, thanks for wasting my time to talk for the sake of it
The mere existence of a trial mode does nothing to address the problem that TZA MAIN GAME experience is too fricking easy. It's an extremely common criticism you're trying to dismiss outright. I am going a step further even and suggesting that the struggle for freedom mod is too fricking easy because of the changes. You're being
>unironically
>disingenuous
and should probably just
>fricking kys
>"the game is too easy"
>heres a mode with some challenge
>"THATS NOT PART OF THE GAME"
>"y-youre being DISINGENUOUS"
dont know what to tell you, you lil moron, spout all the c**tshit baby buzzwords you want, i dont care about your arbitrary spastic requirements for what counts as DA REAL GAME™. dont give a frick about common criticisms either, you have the information now and youve chosen to suck wieners instead of use it, not my problem
Is the mode the game? No? Then shut the frick up.
Struggle For Freedom sucks.
It's irrelevant isn't it? IZJS just gives you one license board per character and in TZA you can just choose to not pick up a second. Neither really add anything interesting to the game imo except the updated graphics
>Neither really add anything interesting to the game imo except the updated graphics
You can get the Wyrmhero blade (and other equipments) via the trial mode without having to grind forever for them.
TZA has a x4 speed option and IZJS only has a x2 speed option
All XII needs is party chatter.
If they just talked between each other while you are doing dungeons every couples minutes to comment on the sights, recent story developments, small talk, etc it would do so much to endear people to the characters and their party.
That's probably true.
Look at the Xenoblade games. Look at the Dragon Quest games with party chat in them like 8. There must be other games like that, but those are the first ones that come to mind.
I just wanted to frick Fran
>forest full of magic rabbits
>he wants the functionally deaf one
granted you probably actually cant get there but i imagine with the few dozen around its still not thatm uch of an iss- oh right wait, ass out for 60 hours nvm u good, i dont blame you
>wanted
>-ed
You disappoint me
better than the hallway simulator that 13 is
anyone have any tips for the final 5 judge challenge fight? it's literally the only trophy i have left
I think you can one shot them using the Zeromus esper, fighting them normally is basically impossible.
just b urself
Emulate or Zodiac Age?
Trash dog shit. Unplayable without 8x speed. Not worth automating the fights almost. The stupid second version they made the zodiac shit just made the game worse because you had to pick classes instead of everyone having open skill tree. Kinda fun running around and some tall bunny babes, plenty of pointless side bosses and moronic mc. Idk weird fricking game.
The T Rex in the first area kept beating my ass, so I quit.
What are some fun class combos? I wanted to do something with Foebreaker I like the idea of shattering defenses but I don't know what to combine it with
anything+Knight with White Magic unlocked by Esper or otherwise is completely self sufficient.
Monk+ any mage job for the absolute meme of having your physical damage directly powered by your magic stat
Shikari + Time Mage to snort cocaine magic for no reason
the reason zodiac is easy is because you can have one or two optimised party members max and then breakdance in the background with the third doing silly buffs.
Do yourself a favor and mod in the original license board. Then you can make your own classes without worrying about any gay shit the game tries to pull.
That doesn't work man. You easily fill out the entire board then everyone becomes the same. Job combos is way more fun
They'll only end up the same if you intentionally make it that way.
>They'll only end up the same if you intentionally make it that way
The only way you avoid it is if you stop getting licenses
No? Even if you have everything your equipment and Gambit usage is going to result in vastly different characters. By design too since with the low 3 party limit they all need to specialize instead of running the same exact shit.
Star Wars Episode XII: A New Fantasy
>Sucks ass and is nonexistent in the main game
>Surprisingly good and kinda based everywhere else
how does this happen?
Start of the end
If you played TZA, you didn't beat the game. Simple as.
>if you played the definitive version, you didn't beat the game
I bought it on a Steam sale earlier this year and haven't played it yet. Saving it like a fine bottle of wine.