Final Fantasy XII Retrospective: The Departure (Spoilers)

Final Fantasy XII: The Departure (As Usual... SPOILERS)

Introduction:

Well I got another game finally finished (With about 150 Hours of game time to do a 100% run...) and with that it's time for yet another Retrospective, this time on Final Fantasy XII a game that... to be honest I don't really know the general Reception of. Unlike the other games in the series which have a pretty obvious following or hatred, Final Fantasy XII seems to sit somewhere in the middle. A lot of fans just couldn't get past the differences from the rest of the games in the series, while others that go through it have declared it as one of the best (if not THE best) game in the entire series. From what I've heard, most long time fans played the game for a couple hours, saw it was 'different' and put it down, in fact, that's what happened to me the first time I played it (when I got it day one with my preorder after highly anticipating it for years). The usual story I hear from the Final Fantasy Fan populace is that it wasn't until the second time they tried playing it that they really began to enjoy it and see how well crafted it truly was, because of this, if you aren't a fan of the game, I urge you to try playing it again, it's true you still may not like the game and that's more than fair, people have different tastes, but it seems that the game has been kind of panned because it gives off a bad first impression.

Now to fully understand Final Fantasy XII and why it is the way it is, you have to understand the state of Square-Enix at the time. I titled this review 'The Departure' for more than one reason. The obvious is that Final Fantasy XII is a departure from both the storytelling style and the game play style of the other main line Final Fantasy Games (though the departure isn't nearly as big as people have made it sound). But the other reason is because this is when a huge shift in management took place at Square, during this games development Square lost both Hironobu Sakaguchi (and half of the development team with him) and Nobuo Uematsu, the two people who made Final Fantasy What it was from the beginning, Leaving only the talents of Yoshitako Amano (the character designer for most of the mainline final fantasy games) and Tetsuya Nomura (known mostly for his leading involvement in Final Fantasy VII and the Kingdom Hearts series). The lack of these two key players really put more pressure behind the scenes during the creation of Final Fantasy XII, but that wasn't the only problem facing the company. Around the beginning of the development of this game, Square made a big misstep while making the box office failure 'Final Fantasy The Spirits Within' a movie that failed so badly that Square actually went bankrupt and they had to be bought out by the rival company Enix (which they gracefully labeled as a 'merger'). With all of this going on the game had even more struggles while three completely different game directors were forced into the leading chair, all of varying degrees of skill. One very fondly known for the lead design of the Ogre Battle series and Final Fantasy Tactics, and on the 'bad' end a man who got his start with the Final Fantasy Legend games who is known for purposefully making game design choices that piss off the player (you know the whole 'don't pick up these four chests or you can't get the Zodiac Spear thing? Yeah.. that was him...). All things considered this game should have been a complete mess, and knowing what I do now, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this were not only the worst game in the series, but one of the worst RPGs ever made...

The reason I gave you this history lesson is to tell you how much was stacked against this game from the very start, let alone how fans received it (which is interesting considering it still sold pretty well), and the most amazing thing of all is that despite all of these problems, Final Fantasy XII stands as an amazing RPG with some minor flaws that will bother some people more than others. That being said, now that learning time is done, let's move on to the actual review, starting with the games presentation.

Presentation:

I know this is going to be a surprise... considering it's a mainline Final Fantasy game and all.. but Final Fantasy XII has amazing graphics, in fact, for the PS2 I would consider them nearly flawless. The level of detail in the characters and environments are unmatched on the system. The animations look extremely life like for characters and the creatures that inhabit the world. There are a couple very minor complaints I have about the games graphics though, one being the lip synching is much better than Final Fantasy X, but it's still not perfect. Honestly this doesn't bother me at all, but I know it's an issue that bothers others so I feel it needed to be pointed out. My other complaint is that I wish the draw distance were a little better as your characters can't seem to see that far in front of themselves, this is a very minor nitpick as my preference would be maybe a couple more meters of vision in game, and it's obvious that the game was done this way because the ps2 just couldn't handle anymore than that but hey, I have to find something to nitpick about so I don't seem to fan boyish right?

Now we move onto the sound design which is actually a place of debate for many people who have played this game. The games voice acting is the first topic of debate. I find the voice acting in this game to be one of of the games strong points with a few exceptions, the most notable sadly being two of the main characters, Vaan and Penelo. While I will talk about the characters themselves later, I feel the voice acting is rather flat for both. Vaan has a rather nasally tone to him that I find a bit annoying but can look past, the real problem Is that the voice actors who played these characters do NOT know how to emote. Penelo has the most unemotional voice in the game and it's probably one of the least emotional I've ever heard in ANY game. On the other end of the spectrum though, almost all of the voices were amazingly well done with notable voice overs being Balthier, all of the Judges, Dr. Cid, Vayne, and even characters as small as Old Dalan. It's really amazing to me how good the quality is with almost the entire cast yet two of the main characters are rather lazily done. I should point out their voice acting is no where near the WORST I've heard, but the fact that the rest of the cast is so outstanding really helps to highlight that they are on the poor end of the scale, especially since they are the first two party members you get and you spend so much time with them. Another notable thing about the voice acting is that the compression used to fit it on one disc can make it so the characters sound like they 'have a cold', but I never really noticed this and it certainly never bothered me.

Finally we come to the music which has fans split once more. Now it's important to note that Final Fantasy XII takes place in a sort of spin-off series/realm to the rest of the games called the Ivalice Alliance, which also consists of such games as The three Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings and even Vagrant Story. All of these games take place in the same world and have very similar graphical styles (as far as design goes of course, not graphics, though if you play Vagrant Story you can see rather direct influences in character design, though the Tactics games take a bit more imagination). All of these games also share one key Music Composer: Hitoshi Sakimoto. There is no denying that losing Nobuo Uematsu has really hurt the Final Fantasy Series as a whole, as his music was one of the key elements that made a lot of fans like the games, and If I'm being honest, I don't really feel that Sakimoto's compositions hold a candle to Uematsu's in over all quality (and a lot of people share that mentality, though comparing them is like comparing a modern day painter to Da Vinci.. or some other creative metaphor here, make your choice) BUT... and this is a big but.... I don't feel that losing Uematsu hurt Final Fantasy XII in the slightest, and that's not because he was brought in to write the theme song for the game (Kiss Me Goodbye). Final Fantasy XII is first and foremost and Ivalice game.. and it SOUNDS like an Ivalice game. Hitoshi Sakimoto has a VERY specific style that many people enjoy but it generally has a feeling of.. ambiance to it that makes it work much more in the background than too actually set a tone for a scene which was Uematsu's strong point. Sakimoto's style (though very formulaic.. a lot of his songs seems to blend together for me, not just within Final Fantasy XII but within all of the games he composes for... when I pop in a game where he does the soundtrack I can instantly tell, as I'm sure many others can) fits the needs of Final Fantasy XII perfectly. The 'open world' of Final Fantasy XII wouldn't be nearly as effective if every time you walked up to a mob of enemies the music suddenly changed. The fact that his songs sort of fit the area instead of the precise emotions of the scenes most times really makes the world feel more alive. It's kind of hard to explain, and if this comes out as jumbled as I feel it is I will gladly try to explain better in the comments below, but basically what I mean to say is that no, Sakimoto isn't Uematsu, and Square will NEVER be able to replace that kind of talent, but Sakimoto's style fits perfectly into the world of Ivalice, and in fact, if Uematsu HAD composed this particular entry in the series, I feel it would have altered the experience in a way that very well could have been negative... and this is coming from someone that idolizes the ground Uematsu walks on.

I think it's pretty obvious that I like the presentation, next I will move onto the characters and story.

Characters and Story:

Next we have the characters which leaves me once again with something I need to address before moving on. A lot of people do not like the characters in Final Fantasy XII, and in the case of Vaan and Penelo I completely agree, The rest of the cast however is pretty good in my eyes. I think a huge part of the problem when people view the characters in this game is that they are looking at it from the wrong viewpoint. Many of the games in the Final Fantasy Series are Characters stories, written to focus almost entirely on the characters themselves while the plot itself isn't necessarily and after thought, but it does take a back seat to the character development. This is MOST Prevelant in Final Fantasy X, a game that is a fan favorite. Since Final Fantasy X was so character driven, I think it became even more jarring when people played Final Fantasy XII, because Final Fantasy XII is NOT a character story, it is a world story. I think the focus on the grand scheme of things in Final Fantasy XII has been confused for a lack of character development which simply isn't the case. It is true that the characters spend far less time standing around talking about themselves than they did in Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy VII or hell especially Final Fantasy VI, but that's because Final Fantasy XII is more realistic in this sense. In Final Fantasy XII the characters have a much more important goal and they act accordingly. They are trying to help Ashe reclaim her kingdom, not become friends and form romances, in this sense I feel that the character development was done very well, but it is a legitimate argument to say you don't prefer this form of story telling as opposed to world stories, in fact I generally do too, but I feel it's also good to change things up once in a while you know? Well that explaination aside, let's ruin my entire argument by beginning the game with a character that truly is pointless to the story: Vaan.

Vaan: The 'main character' of Final Fantasy XII is in my opinion (and many others for that matter) the weakest protagonist in the entire series. This wasn't helped when rumors left Square that Vaan was only the main character because play testers didn't like playing as the older character Basch, so theoretically both Vaan and Penelo were thrown into the game fairly late in development as a means to simply appeal to more players. I don't know how this played out in Japan but it certainly failed here, and his lack of importance to the plot is extremely obvious. This blatant rip off of Aladdin is a 'street rat' and an orphan who dreams of becoming a sky pirate. He plays a similar roll to Tidus in that he's used as a pair of fresh eyes for us to see the world through, but considering most of the exploration is done in environments that MOST of these characters haven't been to yet, this isn't needed, and his placement is very rarely used as a means of exposition either. The only significant plot point he has is thinking that his Brother was killed by Basch in the last war, but this bit of drama is completely resolved in only a few hours, meaning after that point Vaan's inclusion is no longer needed. You can complain all you want about Tidus being annoying but at least he had motivation and a reason to be in the story, Vaan, does not.

Penelo: Even less important to the story is Vaan's best friend Penelo, a fellow orphan whom he grew up with. Penelo... is KIND of annoying... but not as much as say.. someone like Selphie or Vanille. She's annoying in the naggy way, constantly telling Vaan to eat his vegetables and to pay attention. (okay... never those exact conversations but it's the same damn tone of voice). She has even less motivation to be in the story except to babysit Vaan and be the damsel in distress when the plot demands it (which I think was only once this time... so good for them for not using multiple kidnappings a way of moving the plot forward).

Balthier: Next is Balthier, the fan favorite from this game and one of my favorite characters in the entire series. He is an Ex-Judge and a sky pirate who runs into Vaan while searching for a certain treasure. Balthier is instantly likable, having a level of confidence and a skill with words that is unmatched in the party. Often claiming to be the 'leading man' he is a character that you constantly want to root for. He actually is very useful to the plot, he has the most knowledge of cities in Ivalice which makes since to the plot because he's an ex judge. His father is the evil scientist Dr. Cid who created the 'manufactured nethicite' a weapon the empire is using to try and take over Dalmasca and start a war with Rozzaria. (You see, now things are getting complicated and interesting).

Fran: Fran is Balthier's partner in crime (quite literally). She belongs to a race of bunny girls called the Viera, which are essentially the Elves of the Ivalice world in the fact that they commune with nature, often seperate themselves from society, they live nearly forever and have a strong connection to the world's source of magick, 'mist'. Fran often gets a lot of flack for how scantilly clad she is dressed, but I was pleasantly surprised with the lack of fanservice she is used for. I can't remember a single moment where she is used in such a way intentionally, her clothing is just how her species dress, and considering the workings of the village she was raised in, it makes sense. She isn't quite as developed as Basch, Balthier, or Ashe, but this is on purpose, and it's obvious she only really confides in Balthier. She is a well of knowledge when it comes to the workings of magick and nature which makes her an invaluable member of the party.

Ashe: The princess of Dalmasca who had to go into hiding once her country was taken over by the empire. Ashe as a character... plays out far more like a Celes than say... a Dagger or a Rosa, but I'm sorry to say she's not nearly as interesting as Celes. It is nice to see a princess that Is proactive though, working with a small resistance group to try and retake her country. Most of her character development stems from what she feels is right and wrong when it comes to taking back her country. She struggles through most of the story between whether or not she should use the power of Nethicite (magic crystals of immense power that essentially explode with the strength of an atomic bomb) against the empire to win back her country. Her dilemna is well portrayed and the story is mostly driven by her and her desire to reclaim her country, so really SHE should be the main character, and yet she was never really considered to be so.

Basch: The last party member is Basch, a man who's been imprisoned for years for treason. He was thought to be the one who killed the king of Dalmaca when in reality it was his twin brother Gabranth (the same person who killed Vaan's Brother). Basch is a rather rugged but very honor driven, swearing it his duty to protect Ashe under any circumstances and bring Dalmasca to it's former glory no matter who stands in his way. His involvement in the plot is obvious and more than warrented and I think he makes a strong addition to the cast and I wish he'd remained the main character. In fact, I would have liked Balthier, Basch or Ashe to be the main character, but instead they created Vaan. Anyway, enough of that, let's move onto the other characters.

Vayne: The figurehead of the empire and ruler of Dalmasca. He's the obvious antagonist from the first time you see him but that's not a bad thing. His main goal is to force Rozzaria into a war by making them and the resistance strke first. He is a cutthroat person and will do whatever it takes to take control, including killing his own father. I find him to be an interesting and intelligent villian, but he doesn't deal with the party enough directly to have as much of a pressence as say, Kefka from Final Fantasy VI.

Larsa: Vayne's younger brother who is being raised to have power in the empire. Unlike his bloodthirsty brother however, he wants only to stop the shedding of blood on all fronts and to make peace with Rozzaria and dalmasca. A bit naïve but always well meaning and wise beyond his years, Larsa is yet another character that is developed rather strongly.

Gabranth: One of the five judges working for the empire and the twin brother of Basch. He too has a high level of honor but it lies elsewhere. Gabranth is an amazingly well written character, especially for a villian. You see his inner struggles as he does Vayne's bidding despite his better judgement, at one point even having to kill his best friend just so he can keep protecting Larsa, Vayne's younger brother and the person Gabranth REALLY keeps loyal too.

The Occuria: All right this is very heavy spoiler territory but they are worth mentioning. The Occuria are essentially spirits in the world of Final Fantasy XII who have been pulling the strings of the world from behind the scenes. They aren't really characters so much as beings that effect the plot in other ways. Their inclusion adds a layer of depth to the story that changes it from a war between countries to a struggle against the gods themselves.

I think that's enough for the characters and I should move onto the story. The games story is actually rather complex and analyzing it out would take a lot of time and effort. As you can probably guess from the character section the story revolves around Ashe's struggle to reclaim her kingdom and more importantly to protect it from the imending war. Rozzaria and the empire are at a sort of stale mate, each waiting for the other to strike for political reasons and Dalmasca is a small country placed between the two that would be completely crushed should the war take place. This puts a deadling on the party as the Empire could strike at any time.

I find it strange that many people don't like the games plot as I think it's one of the best parts about it. I've already addressed the fact that the game is a world story instead of a character story but I don't think that alone is enough for people to dislike it. Is it because people don't understand all of the things that are happening? It is written in a way that gives a lot of information at a time and there are a lot more characters to keep track of than in other Final Fantasy games but that doesn't make the story any less strong, in fact I think it improves it. I also really enjoy the fact that this game focuses more than any other on the villians as well as the heroes, so you really get to see all the sides of this brewing conflict. Though Vayne is a cut and dry villian, most of the Empire are well represented to be actual people with their own thoughts and opinions and it really develops into something so much more than just 'Your the heroes, go stop the villians!' I would argue in fact that FFXII's story is more in depth and interesting than any other game in the series. It's one thing for FFX to show a curropt church/government, FFXII actually goes in depth and talks about WHY, and the 'why' is such an important part of storytelling that the Final Fantasy series seems to miss out on.

The only real complaint I could put towards the story (besides the characters that I already tore into) may be the pacing. The game is based mostly around exploration and because of that you can spend hours at a time going from one location to the next with not much happening in terms of the story. There is always a logical reason for why not much is happening within the context of the story, but I can still see that being a reason for some people not enjoying it.To keep this from getting any longer I will skip the true place by place analysis and instead move onto the gameplay section of the review.

Gameplay:

Final Fantasy XII is easily the BIGGEST Final Fantasy game in the series and has by far the most gameplay included, but it is also rather contreversial. A lot of people say that FFXII plays like an Offline MMO... and in a way it's easy to see the resemblence but I tend to disagree with the comparison. I am NOT a fan of MMORPGs.... I see them as pointless, irriatingly long slogs of boredom and grinding with no story or pay off on any level. When the only goal the game gives you is, improve your stats and get to lvl 80 I instantly lose interest. It's the same reason I hate Monster Hunter. On top of this, though I really enjoy RPGs, grinding is something that I usually don't enjoy. That being said, I have to argue that FFXII is like an MMO in only a visual sense, and even more surprising than that is the fact that this game made me ENJOY grinding. I'm not really sure why I started the gameplay section in this way, but they were the first things that came to mind and I had to get them off my chest, so I will continue now in a more organized manner with Exploration, Combat, and the infamous license board.

While Final Fantasy X focused on it's combat, Final Fantasy XII focuses on Exploration above all else. Final Fantasy XII makes a full fledged world in a way that the Final Fantasy series has never before attempted. Towns bustle with NPCs that are visibly living their daily lives and not just standing still waiting to be talked too. There is no 'world map' so every location is connected not only visibly but realistically by terrain. It is a masterfully crafted expanse of land. It is not completely open ended though, the game artificially locks you out of entering certain areas to early in the game from rock falls or enemies that are too strong for you, but I feel this creates for the perfect balance. I was always encouraged to explore, but never so much so that I'd end up biting off more than I could chew. The game also encourages you to explore more through a series of 'hunts'. This game has a chain of sidequests that take the form of hunts, or quests where you go out to slay monsters, most of which are strong enough to be bosses and make for really entertaining fights. This accounts for about 1/3 of FFXII's total game time, but it's completely optional so it's not something I can give any complaints about, and honestly with a few annoying exceptions I highly enjoyed the hunts. The only downside to the exploration is how big the world is, it can take you several hours at a time to get from one location to another if you are truly thorough with your exploration, and that can be a bit too much for people who prefered the faster pacing of the previous games, but to count it as a flaw here when it was obviously the games intent seems a bit insulting.

The combat is arguably the biggest departure from the rest of the series, though I argue that nothing has been taken away and there have only been optional editions. I hear all the time that Final Fantasy XII plays itself for you.. too which I say, 'Then don't use the damn gambits! The game is completely playable from beginning to end without them, I'd know, I've done it, which means that it plays exactly the same as every other ATB combat game that the series has had to offer. The gambit system is a COMPLETELY OPTIONAL means of making the game easier to manage, not easier to play. A well set up gambit system makes it possible to streamline the combat by making it so that you don't have to enter in every command manually if you don't want too. Besides, the gambit system does not function without player input, so no the game does NOT play itself for you... if you want a game that plays itself for you, check the next main entry in the series, Final Fantasy XIII.

Well now that I've gotten all my ranting out of the way, I will move onto the combat balance. I love the level of strategy that Final Fantasy XII allows you to employ. This game includes the most impressive use of buffs and debuffs in the entire game and there are numerous ways to take down the enemies you face. This is one of the games that makes it possible for every character to be a blank-slate combat wise, and Final Fantasy XII doesn't really give you a reason to make your characters specialize with their types of abilities, but it never bothered me in Final Fantasy XII because there were enough levels of strategy without it. The only other amount of strange balancing is that the game is very Melee focused, and damaging magic isn't all that useful in the long term, but as I said Buffs and Debuffs fill that role, and this game requires more skill and strategy than most of the others in the series with that alone.

The game over all is really as challenging as you make it. Of course just like any other RPG if you get stuck you can just grind, but I find the general difficulty of this game to be higher than most of the series, though that's not really saying much in the grand scheme of things considering most Final Fantasy games are already rather easy. The last thing I want to talk about when it comes to combat are the quickenings. I have shown my distaste for the limit breaks in the past games already and quickenings... leave me somewhere in the middle. You can get through most bosses throughout the story by spamming these quickenings, but there are consequences should they go wrong. They work on a sort of slot machine mechanic so no attack after your first is garunteed, and casting a quickening uses up all of your MP, meaning if you don't take out the enemy in the span of the attack you very well could have dug yourself a hole. I still don't approve of the super powerful to the point of being broken attacks, but I feel FFXII has done the best in the series when it comes to the consequences and rewards of using such an attack, helping to balance the system even further.

The last thing to talk about as far as the gameplay is the License board, a thing that I often here being talked down too. The sphere grid is the games way of letting you gain new abilities and the ability to equip new armor, giving you free reign to customize your characters as you see fit. The biggest complaint I here is that it's 'stupid to have to get a 'license' to wear certain pieces of clothing... as if their characters are too dumb to know how to put on clothes correctly. This is a valid complain in a logical respect, but I feel it is a stupid complaint over all. If you are going to complain about that, why not complain about how the characters can take several lightning bolts to the face and still survive. The license board is stupid in a logical sense but it's absolutely genius from a gameplay perspective. The open world structure of Final Fantasy XII makes it so you are capable of getting very powerful equipment early in the story if you go looking for it, but the license board keeps it so you are using equipment that is at your level, making it, once again, Balanced when it comes to gameplay, and it works perfectly in conjunction with the rest of the games mechanics, allowing for customization while also keeping things fair.

Edit: There were two key negative things I forgot to mention while writing this retrospective. The first is the implementation of summons in this game. Frankly I forgot to write this section because they are so damn useless that I forgot that they existed at all. They make for very fun boss battles, but their use once you've aquired them is not only limited, but almost entirely useless.

The last thing is that I absolutely HATED the Pharos (which is the second to last area in the game and works essentially as this games final dungeon) It is not difficult, it is just long, monotonous and boring. I have even more bias against this area because after the initial (and only mandatory) trip to this location (which took about three hours and wasn't THAT terrible) I had to go back again and spend ANOTHER three hours there to take on the Seer hunt... the location is very dull in style, the puzzles are not interesting and it drags the game to a halt right before the ending. I feel like I'm mostly holding this grudge because of the seer hunt, but even without that the game requires you to spend far more time at the location than is necessary, and it's the only time I feel the pacing in the game TRULY fails.

Conclusion:

A lot of fans of the series believe that the magic in Final Fantasy left with Hironobu Sakaguchi, and I've got to say it's a hard point to argue against, in fact I felt that way for a long time, but there is one piece of evidence against this, and that evidence is Final Fantasy XII. The fact that one of the best games in the series was made without any of his input is simply amazing, and it's the one thing that has continually left me with the slightest shred of hope that Final Fantasy may once again find it's way (though I've been proven wrong time and time again). It's true that this game isn't for everybody, and it definitely requires more skill and patience than a lot of other games in the series do, but over all I found it to be a highly rewarding experience and it should get more credit and recognition that it has.

As usual I encourage discussion and this is an environment where spoilers are allowed so feel free to let your opinions fly! Now after spending 4 hours on this review I'm ready to return to this games Sequel! Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings