Do you enjoy watching a good movie or playing a deep and immersive RPG? Yes? Don't play this game then.
I never played the original 2006 FFXII game, but I have played around other 4 FF games (no MMOs) and many others RPGs and JRPGs and I can confidently say this is the worst thing I have laid my hands on from SE.
Whereas the artwork and music (this one specially in the remaster, fromDo you enjoy watching a good movie or playing a deep and immersive RPG? Yes? Don't play this game then.
I never played the original 2006 FFXII game, but I have played around other 4 FF games (no MMOs) and many others RPGs and JRPGs and I can confidently say this is the worst thing I have laid my hands on from SE.
Whereas the artwork and music (this one specially in the remaster, from what I have heard) is fantastic and distinct from previous FF titles, the positives ends there. Playing this game you can already feel the snowball effect that would make FFXIII the disaster that it was, mainly because of the boring story and completely forgettable, arbitrarily chosen and devoid of meaning names (places and characters) that make the boring political story hard to follow, specially when at various points the cutscenes consist of characters exposing plot points or other characters' actions rather than the game actually showing it to us. There's nothing attractive from the story-telling side, not even the protagonist, Vaan, or his interactions with the rest of the cast. The game has different prototypical characters that could interact with each other in many interesting ways, but the game is too afraid to make them talk to each other except when it comes to the soporific plot. Despite this, FFXV surprisingly ripped off half of its core plot concepts from this game, making a weird frankenstein from this game and the original concept of FFXIII Versus.
As for the game itself, it can be described as a pointless grind. Yes, the game offers a fast-forward feature for you to skip any dragging moments you want, but that already points out the inherent flaw of the game: you don't play the game, the game plays itself. Except when you need something, then the grinding is on you. You have to spend too much time programming all of your characters' AI (no exceptions) for them to do simple things and then, when an enemy has a slight change in its attacks, like casting different de-buffs or absorbing an element, you have to pause the game mid-fight, change the Gambit system of your characters, and then resume watching. Adding to this, another big problem I have with the characters "independence" is that they move on their own once they're engaged in battle, even your leader, which makes them move around and sometimes go into a corner where the camera looks down and impedes you to see anything.
This is the usual except, of course, when it comes to bosses: you may feel like you're grinding too much as you kill different basic enemies and they don't even damage you, but suddenly you'll face a boss that kills your entire party no matter the healing counter measures you apply to their AI, after which you'll be staring at the "Select the new leader of the group" or "Your party has been wiped out, select the back up members to fight" messages as you're left mouth opened and thinking you should just eject the disc and throw it out the window.
What's more, when you eventually defeat a boss you are rewarded basically nothing whereas when you defeat a hunt objective (side missions' mini bosses) you are rewarded something, just not anything worth the time you put into going to the locations and defeating the special enemy.
I have played a couple of the Souls series games and felt they were not difficult at all, and dying in them felt like a mild inconvenience and not like a time wasting scam. This game's unfair development of battles evokes in me a pure and unadulterated anger, as not only I am removed of any sense of agency one should be entitled to when playing a videogame, but the game also wants you to spend too much time grinding so that you can spend more time inside the menus unlocking things like what objects your characters can equip. If you haven't figured out why, the game actually wants you to do this as to avoid you realising you're not really doing anything except micro managing and grinding. This is, without a doubt, an unrewarding game.
Usually JRPGs need you to invest a lot of time but the fun factor never disappears. Dragon Quest XI hooked me for 110 hours, and so did Persona 5 for other 100+ hours. And yes, they are newer games, but I also completed FF X-2 back in the day, a slightly older game than this one, and got the same fun out of it. I am sorry to all its lovers, but with FF XII, I have been unable to spend more than 2 or 3 hours playing it until I got mad or bored and had to stop playing it for a day or two.
I usually play games to experience a good story, have a sense of accomplishment, complete challenges that force me to think or be skillful at the game, or for overall escapism. This game has given me none of that in the 20+ hours I dedicated to it. Instead, all I got was an uninteresting story, bland characters, a boring game loop and an unfair battle simulator. If you appreciate your time and like having fun, play any other FF game or any other game at all except this one.… Expand
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac AgeYour Score0 out of 10User Score
