Post by Bridger - Retired Paladin on Dec 31, 2006 13:36:24 GMT -5
FFXII Review
Alright, so I’ve been playing FFXII, I bought it what I came out, and I figured I’d write my own little review and post it on EO. The EO site isn't used much anymore, and I figured there would be no harm in posting this in General Discussion as opposed to the Gaming section.
FFXII, let’s talk about the Pros and the Cons of this game.
The Pros
- No more running around hoping you do or don’t get attacked by monsters that pop up where you are suddenly in a battlefield screen. Now, like FFXI, you can run through a zone, see your enemies, and choose if you want to attack them. Or they choose to attack you if you get too close. Usually they give up on following after a little ways, so it’s not like they chase you until the end of time (like in FFXI). +5
- Square/Enix went really mid-evil with this game. The characters have been given slower than normal speech and the dialogue fits a mid-evil setting more than an previous FFXII games. +1
- Gambit System – you automate your characters to do things such as auto cure / auto buff / auto fix status and auto attack. I really liked this system. I thought it far better than I can setup my characters to do simple tasks such as auto-raise or auto-cure and I can move on and focus on other concerns. +1
- No longer do enemies drop tons of inexplicable gold. Now they drop items which you sell to merchants for money. +1
- You can have “Guests” which are NPCs which do pretty much whatever they want. So you can be up to 4 characters. I think 4 characters is much more fun than 3, unless of course I have no control over that 4th one, and he actually becomes a liability. Might be fun for some, but I’m disappointed that I can only fight with 3, and have 3 sitting out. On the positive side, my 3 characters can be wiped, I can call in the other 3, who will raise the original 3, then I can switch back to the original 3, and be back in business. +1 to eliminating wiping, -1 to making the Guest uncontrollable, and not allowing me to use one of my other characters in my 4th slot.
The Cons
- Treasure chests now hold a variety of items, and there is a certain probability of it holding that item when you come upon it. The chests however do repop. -> Retarded. If I find my chest with my item, I want my item. Not this crap where I must zone in and out for a couple of hours to get my Excalibur. -1
- The Bazaar system has some fundamental flaws which come from outright poor programming. So in the Bazaar, you sell items, which merchants use to make special items which you can by back. You can also screw up if you don’t buy/sell items properly and loose credit for having turned in the item.
Example:
Empyreal Soul
- Trade with High Arcana x1, Soul Powder x1, Wargod's Band x2
Now lets say you trade 2x Soul Powders, 2x High Aracana, and 4x Wargod’s Band for 2 sets of Empyreal Soul. Guess what, you just got hosed. You will only be able to buy 1 Empyreal Soul and not 2. To buy two of an item like this, you must sell 1 set, buy the item, then sell the next set. If you screw this up, you loose 1 entire set of items (some of these are very hard and time consuming to get). That’s piss poor programming SE. -5. A -5 might seem harsh, but a highschool kid could have programmed that better. That should have been fixed before release.
- Boring ass storyline. This is just personal opinion, and I rated how they did the storyline very good, but the depth of the storyline was very disappointing in my opinion. A bunch of people are all about loyalty to free their imprisoned country. Who gives a shit!?! I want a love story! I want to know that one of my FF characters will be getting laid by a beautiful girl! I do not care about a bunch of characters just trying to save their country.
- Unavailability of Spells/Gambits until the end of the game. There’s a lot of spells/gambits which you can’t until before the last 2 levels of the game. I understand there are some restrictions, but I mean SE really went overboard. You don’t have any really strong spells running through the game, I was almost never in danger of running out of magic because my spells didn’t cost much mp and also weren’t particularly strong. I think the balance here is flawed.
- Summons/Limit Breaks are a liability. Both summons and limit breaks chew up your MP. The limit breaks aren't clear. I beat the game, and still don't have the limit breaks figured out. I call my character who does crappy damage, I mash on buttons and anywhere from 1/3 to all of his MP is gone. Often this is just a waste of MP. The summons are worse as you call out your summon, use 1/3 to all of your MP, then your other 2 characters retreat, so it's just you and your summon, the summon you can't control. If your original character dies, your summon also dies. So that character that called the summon must be highly adept at survival. Overall, the summons are pretty worthless.
- Zodiac Spear. There are 2 ways to obtain this weapon, 1 way is from a chest, where there is a 10% probability it will pop and a 10% probability of the item being in the stupid chest for a 1% probability upon entering the zone that you will be able to get it. ~ Retarded. The other way is to not open certain chests throughout the game, and then it magically shows up in a certain chest. ~ Retarded -1
Overall: 6.5/10
The rating may seem harsh, but I really don't want to play the game again based on its downfalls. The Bazaar screwup is a big one, and I am one of the people who fell victim to it the hard way, by selling too many rare items for no credit. Not to mention that I won't be able to use my summons through the game again, calling them out, especially during a hard boss fight is dooming yourself.
Alright, so I’ve been playing FFXII, I bought it what I came out, and I figured I’d write my own little review and post it on EO. The EO site isn't used much anymore, and I figured there would be no harm in posting this in General Discussion as opposed to the Gaming section.
FFXII, let’s talk about the Pros and the Cons of this game.
The Pros
- No more running around hoping you do or don’t get attacked by monsters that pop up where you are suddenly in a battlefield screen. Now, like FFXI, you can run through a zone, see your enemies, and choose if you want to attack them. Or they choose to attack you if you get too close. Usually they give up on following after a little ways, so it’s not like they chase you until the end of time (like in FFXI). +5
- Square/Enix went really mid-evil with this game. The characters have been given slower than normal speech and the dialogue fits a mid-evil setting more than an previous FFXII games. +1
- Gambit System – you automate your characters to do things such as auto cure / auto buff / auto fix status and auto attack. I really liked this system. I thought it far better than I can setup my characters to do simple tasks such as auto-raise or auto-cure and I can move on and focus on other concerns. +1
- No longer do enemies drop tons of inexplicable gold. Now they drop items which you sell to merchants for money. +1
- You can have “Guests” which are NPCs which do pretty much whatever they want. So you can be up to 4 characters. I think 4 characters is much more fun than 3, unless of course I have no control over that 4th one, and he actually becomes a liability. Might be fun for some, but I’m disappointed that I can only fight with 3, and have 3 sitting out. On the positive side, my 3 characters can be wiped, I can call in the other 3, who will raise the original 3, then I can switch back to the original 3, and be back in business. +1 to eliminating wiping, -1 to making the Guest uncontrollable, and not allowing me to use one of my other characters in my 4th slot.
The Cons
- Treasure chests now hold a variety of items, and there is a certain probability of it holding that item when you come upon it. The chests however do repop. -> Retarded. If I find my chest with my item, I want my item. Not this crap where I must zone in and out for a couple of hours to get my Excalibur. -1
- The Bazaar system has some fundamental flaws which come from outright poor programming. So in the Bazaar, you sell items, which merchants use to make special items which you can by back. You can also screw up if you don’t buy/sell items properly and loose credit for having turned in the item.
Example:
Empyreal Soul
- Trade with High Arcana x1, Soul Powder x1, Wargod's Band x2
Now lets say you trade 2x Soul Powders, 2x High Aracana, and 4x Wargod’s Band for 2 sets of Empyreal Soul. Guess what, you just got hosed. You will only be able to buy 1 Empyreal Soul and not 2. To buy two of an item like this, you must sell 1 set, buy the item, then sell the next set. If you screw this up, you loose 1 entire set of items (some of these are very hard and time consuming to get). That’s piss poor programming SE. -5. A -5 might seem harsh, but a highschool kid could have programmed that better. That should have been fixed before release.
- Boring ass storyline. This is just personal opinion, and I rated how they did the storyline very good, but the depth of the storyline was very disappointing in my opinion. A bunch of people are all about loyalty to free their imprisoned country. Who gives a shit!?! I want a love story! I want to know that one of my FF characters will be getting laid by a beautiful girl! I do not care about a bunch of characters just trying to save their country.
- Unavailability of Spells/Gambits until the end of the game. There’s a lot of spells/gambits which you can’t until before the last 2 levels of the game. I understand there are some restrictions, but I mean SE really went overboard. You don’t have any really strong spells running through the game, I was almost never in danger of running out of magic because my spells didn’t cost much mp and also weren’t particularly strong. I think the balance here is flawed.
- Summons/Limit Breaks are a liability. Both summons and limit breaks chew up your MP. The limit breaks aren't clear. I beat the game, and still don't have the limit breaks figured out. I call my character who does crappy damage, I mash on buttons and anywhere from 1/3 to all of his MP is gone. Often this is just a waste of MP. The summons are worse as you call out your summon, use 1/3 to all of your MP, then your other 2 characters retreat, so it's just you and your summon, the summon you can't control. If your original character dies, your summon also dies. So that character that called the summon must be highly adept at survival. Overall, the summons are pretty worthless.
- Zodiac Spear. There are 2 ways to obtain this weapon, 1 way is from a chest, where there is a 10% probability it will pop and a 10% probability of the item being in the stupid chest for a 1% probability upon entering the zone that you will be able to get it. ~ Retarded. The other way is to not open certain chests throughout the game, and then it magically shows up in a certain chest. ~ Retarded -1
Overall: 6.5/10
The rating may seem harsh, but I really don't want to play the game again based on its downfalls. The Bazaar screwup is a big one, and I am one of the people who fell victim to it the hard way, by selling too many rare items for no credit. Not to mention that I won't be able to use my summons through the game again, calling them out, especially during a hard boss fight is dooming yourself.