Final Fantasy XII is a PS2 exclusive game created by Square-Enix in 2005, to hit shelves in 2006. The final fantasy franchise was its busiest it had been for a long time around this period with many games released very close to one another (Namely 12, 4 Advance, Advent Children, and Dirge of Cerberus) however this game was by far the biggest game title to be released.
Story
Ok so its time to start of the full review, and maybe start off by explaining the cut-scene at the beginning. In this cut-scene the whole affair starts with preparations for a wedding in the Royal City of Rabanastre, in the small Dalmascan Empire. The wedding is between Lord Rassler of Nabradia and Princess Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca (or Ashe), the only daughter of King Raminas.
Shortly after this wedding, Rassler is called into war between Rozzaria and Arcadia over the city of Nabudis, just on the outskirts of Rabanastre. Joining Rassler on this campaign is the Captain Basch fon Rosenburg, and together they lead the Nabradian Army to war. The war scene is fairly brief but incredibly action packed, including air-ship battles with Remoras and on ground battles which are reasonably graphic.
During the confusion Basch and Rassler ride fowards on none other than the mighty steeds called CHOCOBOS. Basch calls to Rassler to fall back, "Not while the Paling still stands!" cries Rassler, just as another cut-scene shows men chanting in a tower to keep the barrier surrounding Nabudis strong, the tower is seiged by Arcadian soldiers and the enchanters killed. And so Rassler and Basch are forced to fall back, although Rassler is hesitant about turning back. In amongst all the indecision an archer gets a lucky shot, and hits Rassler right in the neck.
The next scene shows Basch desperately trying to recover his lords body while fighting off hundreds of soldiers, a lucky explosion allows him to escape and the screen changes to show Lord Rasslers funeral, with the Widowed lady Ashe.
And so the action is finally bestowed upon the player, where he controls a character called Reks, a simple soldier in the Nabudis army who has some connection to later characters. Anyway, this early level is a tutorial level and as this character isnt used any more in the story, except as a reference, there is no point in levelling him up. In the mid-point of the level the player will witness his first AND EASIEST boss fight. Easy because you could literally stand around and not touch the control pad and STILL win. Because as soon as said boss is at 50% health Basch will unleash a QUICKENING, explained later, and take it down to 20% health and thus win the fight. After this the level is more tutorial explaining save crystals and the very useful FLEE feature.
And so we come to yet another cut-scene revealling a shocking twist in the storyline during which the King Raminas is murdered and your own character Reks is also murdered, both by Basch (seemingly oops!) Following this there is a spoken prologue by the Marquis Ondore, explaining how Arcadia won over Nabudis and Basch was locked up and sentenced to death while Queen Ashe killed herself... yada, yada, yada.
And finally the first part of the game is complete, and a whole new story begins, the action returns to the royal city of Rabanastre only 2 years later and the Arcadain army has truly made an impression by putting up thousands of banners and positioning hundreds of guards to keep the "citizens" in check.
Another, thankfully much smaller, cut-scene shows 2 Arcadian soldiers bullying a shop-owner, when a street urchin runs into one of them, suddenly one of the soldiers calls out, "My wallet!, Hes stole my money!". The camera now moves onto the street kid and he meets up with another one, a girl called Penelo. I say kid but really they are around 17. Our street-man friend is finally given a name, Vaan, and it is revealed that he is Reks' brother. The city of Rabanstre is expecting a new mayor from the Arcadian empire, the son of the Emperor.
The main part of the early game is simply involving running errands for a few people in and around the city of Rabanastre, including the start to a side mission that goes on for the WHOLE GAME. The story begins to get interesting around an hour in, when Vaan plans to break into the palace where the new mayor, who is called Vayne Solidor, is being celebrated. He plans to steal something of importance and slip out unnoticed, as do two other mysterious characters.
None of them expect to be caught in the middle of a fire-fight when a group of the resistance against Arcadia, also tries to break into the palace for altogether different reasons, namely assassination. Vaan and the other two theives are forced to flee through the waterways under the palace. The two theives are introduced as Baltheir (or Ffanram Mid Bunansa) and Fran, a viera from Eryut Village. Together the three move through the waterways as your first proper party and eventually meet up with Amalia, a member of the resistance (who looks vaguely familiar).
Eventually this group is captured by the Arcadian Empire and sent to the Nabudis dungeons, under the city of Nabudis. Here they meet up with an unlikely character, a certain Mr fon Rosenberg. Vaan gets angry and jumps on the cage holding the prisoner, and together He, Basch, Balthier and Fran fall into the Barheim Passage and so escape.
After some long trekking and a quick airship ride we arrive in Bhujerba, the Sky City. Here we meet a new character in the name of Lamont, a young boy who is too posh for his own good. We also meet a new antagonist called B'gamnan, who is after a price on Balthiers head. After escaping, Lamont leaves, and the team sneaks aboard a ship called the Leviathan. They meet up with a guard captain, Vossler, who was friends with Basch two years ago. Finally they find a person they have met before, Amalia, who turns out to be none other than Princess Ashe! You have nearly made it out of the airship when you again meet Lamont and Penelo, who is there for some reason I cant remember. And so your party is completed with the 6 main characters: Vaan, Balthier, Fran, Basch, Ashe and Penelo. Lamont, who is really Larsa, and Vossler turn up again in the story as guest characters, but your first objective should be getting off the ship, as the way is blocked by Judge Ghis, one of many Judges who are very evil and powerful but also seemingly expendable.
The story takes you to many different locations such as a Tomb way out to the west, a large open plains to the south, the city of Arcadia in the north, and an enourmous tower called the Pharos in the East. Lastly there is a port very late on in the game called Balfonheim where you meet the only other character to act as a guest, a pirate called Reddas, who rules, and you which could stay with you forever and ever.
The absolutely final point I have to make involves a point much earlier in my review where I stated Basch "seemingly kills the King Raminas and Reks." I say seemingly for a good reason. Basch has a twin brother, Gabranth, who has been corrupted by the Empire and turned against his home country, he took on the role of Basch when he was captured and killed the king, then pretending to be captured later on.
Gameplay
Gameplay in Final Fantasy is traditionally an RPG adventure where battles are thrust upon when you are wholly unexpecting it. The fighting element in Final Fantasy 12 is COMPLETELY different and yet somehow still holds elements of tradition. No longer do you run around on an empty world map, instead the maps are split into two categories, Cities and Field.
City maps are simply where the game takes you inside a city or village and the screen only shows Vaan as the character moving around. You are able to talk to many of the inhabitants and interact with lots of objects such as gates and doors. Weapons are not shown and there is never any threat of fight. Field screens differ in several aspects. For one thing there is now your whole active partyof three visible as you move around, one character is the leader and he is the one you control. The other memebers simply follow around like obidient dogs. That is until an enemy is spotted.
As I said before battles are no longer random, (nearly) all enemies are visible before you are attacked giving a small chance of running away before a battle even begins. This can be a valuable asset to the game as sometimes some enemies are just too powerful or you are trying to CHAIN enemies. Enemies are also given some element of personality, which are driven simple by whether they are neutral or aggresive. Neutral enemies will ignore you until you attack them, or occasionally other conditions are met. Aggresives enemies will attack as soon as they see or sense you. Of course depending on a targets max range this can vary quite a lot.
Which now brings me on to another new aspect of the game, Gambits. Gambits are like a kind of rules which you can make your characters abide by. They are created by unlocking Gambit slots on the LICENSE BOARD, and by buying Gambits from specific slots. Gambits consists of two parts, target and action. This is farily self explanitary, assuming the target is set to NEAREST ENEMY, and action is set to ATTACK, then the character will attack the nearest enemy. Every character has his or her own set of Gambits that can be set in over 1000 different ways and combination. Gambits are also stacked, meaning that the first gambit is given highest priorety and the lowest will only be used if no other gambits are active.
Gambits allow for a good use of strategy but cannot be used without a set of actions to be used with them. Some actions, such as attack and items, can be used straight away. However many others have to bought and unlocked on the LICENSE BOARD. The license board acts as a new way to unlock abilities in Final Fantasy 12 and is used by spending LP. LP is gained by defeating enemies in the field. Most enemies only drop 1 LP, however bosses and MARKS drop much, much more. Every character has their own license board and every license board is identical, however it would take a very, VERY long time to unlock everything so its best to specialise charcters upon seperate routes to start off with.
The license board controls the magic(k)s, accessories, armour, weapons, TECHNIKS and AUGMENTS that a charcter can use or equip. As soon as a character has bought the piece on the board they can start using whatever is on it. That is assuming that you have bought the item that it is connected too. Preety much everything is goverened by buying the item first from a shop, from Magic to Techniks, not to mention weapons. In fact there are very few things you dont have to buy in this game. Now to mention two parts that you may be confused about and wondering what the hell they are.
TECHNICKS are special moves that are different to magics as they do not require Magic Points to cast them, these include a scan like technik called LIBRA, and skill like techniks such as STEAL. Augments are one of the only things that are used as soon as they are bought on the board. They govern your characters base stats and open up gambit slots. Most of these are not worth getting early on n the game such as the gambit slots however some are indespensible, such as swiftness, which speeds up the ATB bar, and HP+, which is self explanitary.
The last thing to mention about the license board is there are secret squares such as Quickenings and Espers. Quickenings grant the character a POWERFUL magic based attack that can be chained together and conclude into an even more powerful finishing move. Espers are similar to summons, but these are monsters who must be defeated in order to add them to the license board, and then your arsenal. The only other point on the license board is that although you can tell the type of sqaure, you cannot tell what is on the square until you unlock a square next to it. However the board is grouped together very nicely and it makes sense as the easier items are in the middle whereas the best squares are on the edge.
Finally we move onto Magic itself. In this game magic is referred to often as MIST. Your MIST charge decides how often you can use magics and this bar gradually refils as you around, or perform other actions when you get certain augments. Max Mist gradually increases as your character levels up, but it can also be doubled, and even tripled when Quickenings are gained and add another mist gague (a max of three quickenings per char). Mist is also used to govern Espers and Quickenings, and these will be the most damaging to your remaining MP, one Quickening or Esper can consume 1, 2 or 3 whole mist gagues.
Other tahn that gameplay follows very closely to traditional Final Fantasy RPG elements. There is still an ATB (Active Time Bar) that must fill up before your charcter performs an action. Magic is governed by the rules of weakness and strengths, bosses are exceptionally powerful and have ridiculous amouts of HP in later stages, and the Max damge per normal hit is 9999! Max health is TECHNICALLY 19998 because of a magic called bubble which doubles HP.
Graphics
In terms of overall graphics this game is very well made, a lot of detail is used when creating cities and the fields, monsters move as you would expect them too, even if they look supremely strange. Characters are slightly poorer in animation but still a lot better than most games on the PS2. The cut-scene graphics are really impressive and the English dubbing is very close to what you would expect to be normal.
Where this game truly comes into its element is in the sheer size of the game, when you first move around in the ruined gorunds of the Nabudis place you can see the detail stretching a long way all around. This becomes even clearer when you reach open spaces such as the Dalmasca Estersand or the Tchita Uplands. This is contrasted very well by some of the more constricted levels such as the Great Crystal or the Pharos. All in all the entire game could be considered to be like the enormous map that you can see on the world map screen, even though you only explore a small part of some of the areas, it is clearly enough. Any more and it would be too much of a slog through repetitive landscapes. Despite the size of it already the developers have done well to make every part look and feel unique, every map has a different layout and each part of the map is detailed in a different way.
I now move onto the areas such as towns and the citizens. Although you can clearly tell that all the women/men/children/moogles have been modelled upon the same sprite, the diversity of the detail means that every place seems to have its own cultural status that is clear to see, and the dialect adds to that touch (although why Cockatrices are Cockney I'll never know).
Sounds
So now we move onto the music and sound effects of Final Fantasy. The main music for this game goes back to basics and sounds very reminiscent of Final Fantasy 1, 2, 3 and 4. The title music for this game was created and produced by Nobo Umetsu who had recently moved away from Square-Enix and so this was his only contribution. Overall music is normally based upon the terrain and does fit in very well, although some of the tracks can be rather repetitive and some tracks are used in more than location, also some of the tracks can be quite annoying to listen to too long while some are drowned out altogether with Sound Effects.
The Sound Effects however are very near to perfection, footfalls sound like foot-falls and are affected by sand, snow, echoes and such the like. When swords connect they make a satisfying THWACK sound. Blocking gives the sound of metal on metal while dodges yield a light yet effective whoosh. Characters makes realistic noises when they swing swords or are hit, and the monsters sound like they should do in the same way as they move like they should do.
One aspect of sounds where I am very indecisive is in the voice acting. In general the voices are very good, with some exceptional performances, namely Gideon Emery as Balthier "The leading man." There are still some low points. Vaan suffers from main character awkward voice symptoms as seen with Tidus, Raiden and Sora from KH. Fran has an annoying speech impediment that you feel the game could have done better without and the Arcadian Army is VERY BRITISH. All the voices also suffer from an echoing seemingly from recording that is glaringly obvious. It makes me wonder if it's only due to the dubbing and the original Japanese version sounds alot better, but as I'm not likely to find out I'll leave as a low point.
Lifespan and Replayability
The story in Final Fantasy 12, as you may have gathered, is very long indeed. In fact even for some of the more expert gamers they will be looking at 60+ hours at least! And that is not even including the side-quests. In total there are 23 side-quests in the game, ranging from a small quest requiring you to sell bottles of beer to a full scale game of Monster Hunter style that runs through the whole game. The fact is that these side-quests are COMPLETELY optional, except for the start of The Hunt, and all but 1 can be completed at any point in the game. Some are actually best left until the later part of the game, especially a certain MARK, as part of The Hunt, that has 50 MILLION HP.
Including these side-quests the game easily exceeds the 100+ hour mark, but the fact is that this does not make the game boring. Sure some of the battles begin to get repetitive, but the endless supply of monster and the vast bestiary of monsters allows for new strategies to be tried and adopted, then changed. As the license board does take a good 80-90 levels to fill out completely you wont have access to eveything until at least the end of the games enjoyability rating, and that is high!
The only problem with this game and pretty much every Final Fantasy is guilty of this, is that in the final battle it is IMPOSSIBLE to go back. When its over, it is over. There isnt even an option to start again with new modes. All it does is show a game over screen, staring at you until you soft reset or turn your console off all together. Mind you after playing 150 hours worth of RPG you may have forgotten the finer parts of the story and which to re-imburse your memory with that EPIC BOSS BATTLE. Or maybe you made a mistake so you couldnt get the ultimate weapon in the game, so you have to start again. At least there is more than 1 save file, in fact theres 50, so you can keep your ownage file and just start a-new.
Ratings
And so we come to the final part of my review, the all important ratings. If I was being biased I could easily give this game a 10. But as I am impartial I will have to accept the good and the bad. The good, a truly epic and incredibly vast story. Supremely good animations. Remarkable size and open-ness of the field. Excellent Sound Effects. The Bad, some poor voice acting, lack of replayability, occasionally repetitive.
And so now for the all important score...
I give this game...
9.7
I feel this is fair and I have come to the end of my review, final words... fond of RPG's? Got a PS2? GET THIS GAME!
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