What was the name of that main character again?
Firstly, there are some things I really like about this installment. Battle is taking place in real time - and while this can make fighting foes really frustratingly hard at times, it feels like a fresh wind in this series. It also means all enemies can be seen (and also be avoided) on screen - no more random encounter pop-up fights!
You have a team of four where you use one at the time and let AI control the others. But there are more to it than that. With something they called "gambit system" you can now program all characters in a way that seems similar to what Bioware later did with "Dragon Age".
Some examples; if a char reach 50 % health you can program that char to heal itself (or another). If someone dies - use a revive spell or item. It even works as a tool to fight enemies. If a foe is weak against fire, you can program chars to use fire spells at them. And so on.
It is really working well, but takes some time to learn as it is really complex. These "gambits" can be seen as schematics of some sort - and most you buy but sometimes they can also be found scattered around FFXII huge world.
Even if fighting monsters in FF12 mostly is rather fun i can get tedious when you have to level-grind. And you have to, because some bosses is not easy to come by and demands that you come prepared. For every defeated enemy you gain points that you spend on a thingie called the "License Board". I will not go into explaining so much about how it works, but after the initial chock when seeing it, it gets rather easy to use and understand.
The story is, as always, epic. But at same time somewhat confusing and at times even uninteresting. There are tons of characters you get to know in this game, besides the 6 you have in your party, that I can be hard to keep track of all of them. For diverse reasons I took me over a year to complete the game (mostly work issues) so it could be almost a month between some game sessions. And the complex story with all it's twists and turns made it rather hard to "get into things" when I got back to play the game. But maybe I should blame myself more for that than the storytelling.
One big problem I had with this game though, was the 6 main characters. An more boring and uninspired group of created pixels has rarely been seen. And for me, having interesting main characters is a bloody MUST in an RPG. Firstly the main (who's name I forgot) is the true example of typical generic RPG character. Only this time they made it the games protagonist. The rest of the bunch is bland but some stand out a little bit - Balthier, a rather arrogant sky pirate and and his female cohort Fran - let me get back to her.
One thing a felt when playing FF12 was that it both feels and looks more mature than previous games. That shows mostly in character and monster designs. Sure you still going to encounter cactuars and a couple of equal silly things in true FF spirit, but most monsters are not as "cartoonish" as usual. There are dinosaurs, giant birds, wolves, bigger wolves and humanoid creatures. A little holding back in the fantastic fantasy department.
And that is also the case with your main char bunch. But that is not a good thing. I miss the nuttiness and wackiness of previous installments. The bunch here feels so stale and rightdown boring. I did not care for any of them and that did not help my interest for the story either. In that perspective the female feral creature named Fran felt out of place. She is a viera, a creature of the woods. She looks like a playbunny with her rabbit ears and high heels and I cannot take her seriously. In an earlier FF game she maybe would have been lost in the crowd but here she stands out like some silly eye-candy.
One a side not one has to wonder why the games designers choose to make the main cast a bunch of blonde photogenics. I can not stop thinking that they look like some aryan dream. The games main villain has, of course, a more darker hair colour. This is getting old fast.
A shame to see such a huge and beautiful world go to waste because of weak character design and an abstract story. The real time battle system is a nice fresh installment, as long as you do not have to overdo it.
Graphics are top-notch for a PS2 game - not unusual when dealing with a FF game. I was more impressed with the cutscenes from FF10 though.
Soundtrack is good as usual, but nothing really stands out.
In the end this is the only game I played in the Final Fantasy franchise that has disappointed me. It shows a beautiful face but just feels shallow.
Sad.