Reviews VideoGame / Final Fantasy XII

I agree, the battle system was terrible. Real-time combat and menus go together about as well as peanut butter and the fuzz you pick off the carpet— so the only solution is to remove player interaction until it becomes simple again. (I did NOT like the Gambit system, although Your Mileage May Vary.)

I did like the Quickenings, too. The License Board had promise (making things priced slightly differently for everyone would make it an excellent level-up system), but for the most part everyone just turned out the same. The story was interesting enough to warrant a second playthrough, but the required grinding left a bad taste in my mouth when I remembered, "Hey, isn't it supposed to be fun to play video games?"

I wouldn't recommend Final Fantasy XIII for you, either. It has the same mix of real-time/menus as twelve does, with no halfway-decent story to back it up. (It sure does look pretty, though.)

So here are two people who didn't find the "pause while using menu" option?

"And whose idea was it to control a real-time system with menus?"

It's not real-time. It's still turn-based in that both you and your enemies have to wait for a gauge to fill before you can attack, cast a spell, etc. If you feel you need more time, you can always turn the Wait option on in settings.

"Six Static Characters chortling about Character Development that never happened? Sorry, not buying it."

There was a bit of character development in Vaan and Ashe (which are the only two we should be expecting to "develop"), but really, FF 12 is a plot-driven story not a character-driven story, and there's nothing wrong with that.

"I had problems with the Point Build System. There are players who enjoy making identically-invincible characters; I prefer an interdependent party of specialists. But LP are so plentiful, there's no reason not to just max out your builds."

You're contradicting yourself. If you prefer everyone to have their own unique skills, stats, equipment, etc., then THERE'S YOUR REASON to not give everyone every license... or at least not to USE them identically.

His point is that they give you so many license points that by the middle to late game then there's basically no difference even if you tried to use them differently. If you have to deliberately not level up your characters to maintain a sense of identity then that's a fault of the game and not the reviewer

Seeing as this "sense of identity" is in the player's mind, I'd say that puts them at fault either way you look at it. And we are not talking about leveling up but choosing which skills, stats, equipment, etc. each character can have. Deliberately skipping licenses is the same as me simply choosing not to learn how to wield a sword in real life. Just because it's available to me doesn't mean I have to, or should even feel like I have to, learn this skill or any other.

This game is about freedom. Freedom to choose. There's no way to have this level of freedom plus maintain this forced "sense of identity". Even in the international version, you are in fact giving up your freedom when you choose job classes. That is, the freedom to change your mind. Also not very life-like because I can change jobs any time I want in real life.

A sense of identity is an important and real thing designing the combat characteristics of a character within a game. People's impressions of a person aren't segregated between cutscenes and gameplay and how a person acts in combat does have important implications for who they are. The Mass Effect series understood this really well and realised that making sure that Wrex could eat bullets all day long and was most useful when charging straight into the enemy, was something that gave him a strong characterisation. Strong enough to make him a fan favourite even when his actual story and dialogue characterisation is very skimpy.

Equally this is something that has been present in most other Final Fantasys and most good party-based RP Gs. Auron's badassness was strengthened by his ability to tear through heavily armoured opponents, whereas Wakka's status based and accuracy attacks put him as someone who isn't necessarily strong or the leader but is a reliable supporter on hand to give help.

It even bleeds over into non-party based RP Gs. Dante's moveset in the Devil May Cry's has been carefully designed to give him just the right amount of cocky-bravado and showboating. If instead of surfing around on an enemies back, his move set involved just shooting people in the head effectively, he'd have felt like a completely different person.

And FFXII does have distinct characters with distinct roles and personalities. So it's not unreasonable to expect the game to design it's combat in a way that reflects those roles. It's not a game with a faceless protagonist like Skyrim where you don't expect the game to tell you things about those people. So it's not a game about absolute freedom in the way that Skyrim or another faceless protagonist game would be.

However I agree that freedom to explore and create characters as you choose is a good strength and one that FFXII was going for. But balancing it so that everyone had every ability by the end of the game is not a good way to do that at all, it is a failing when the game does not provide you with interesting choices and you have to deliberately gimp yourself to create your own interesting choices. At the moment you get to either have interesting choices and play the game at a difficulty level the designers didn't design it to have, or you don't get to have interesting choices.

The better solution would be to design it so that you wouldn't fill out the licenses on a normal playthrough, but you could with grinding. That way the best way to experience the game would actually be the way the designers created but you still have the choice to artificially impose a challenge on yourself or fill out the whole board if you want to grind.

There is a balance between freedom and characterisation and it's a problem designers need to solve. But FFXII solved it incredibly inelegantly sacrificing all characterisation in gameplay for the sake of freedom. I don't believe this was a clever solution and I'm almost certain you could preserve almost the same level of freedom whilst increasing the characterisation with only a few smarter decisions. If the board was dividing up into chunks and each character started off in a different chunk where the options around them suited their characters, then you could make it so that any character could cross over into another chunk with a minimum amount of effort, but the easiest and most efficient way to spend licenses would be to initially stay in the region that the character started in.

That way if you didn't care about the freedom then the characters would naturally express who they were through their movesets. But if you did want to change things up then there would be very little to stop you. And if you wanted to min-max then finding the best areas to take characters into would be a fun challenge

"A sense of identity is an important and real thing designing the combat characteristics of a character within a game. People's impressions of a person aren't segregated between cutscenes and gameplay and how a person acts in combat does have important implications for who they are."

You are entirely speaking for yourself. I for one DID separate the characters' roles in the story from any implications about what they did in battle (that would be based entirely on expectations that were either made up out of thin air or based on some earlier game). And I've played FF 12 several times through in which I gave my characters specific roles in battle which I personally thought suited them better. This "sense of identity" thing doesn't have to be forced upon us, we can resolve this (non-)issue on our own.

"And FFXII does have distinct characters with distinct roles and personalities. So it's not unreasonable to expect the game to design it's combat in a way that reflects those roles."

It is in MY opinion. I will always favor freedom in my RP Gs over being forced to use any given character a certain way in battle. I can understand the story not being customizable, but there should be loads of freedom in terms of character skills, stats, equipment, and roles in battle. And anyone who feels that Basch's "correct" role is a tank and Fran's "correct" role is an archer is 100% free to play the game this way; but I was glad to finally have a game (since the earliest F Fs) that let me choose without penalty.

"it is a failing when the game does not provide you with interesting choices and you have to deliberately gimp yourself to create your own interesting choices." If choosing not to give Fran a gun or Balthier a two-handed sword is "gimping" them, that means almost every Final Fantasy character in the series is "gimped" as well. Your argument is not consistent. Just like in real life, you don't have to know everything to not be disabled. The fact that the Licenses are there to acquire means absolutely nothing.

"The better solution would be to design it so that you wouldn't fill out the licenses on a normal playthrough, but you could with grinding. That way the best way to experience the game would actually be the way the designers created but you still have the choice to artificially impose a challenge on yourself or fill out the whole board if you want to grind."

I don't see how that's "better". To me, it's always going to be very simple. If I don't want Fran to learn anything but archery, I just won't give her any of the other licenses. If I don't want her to know white magic, I won't teach her any. You don't have to impose limitations on other gamers just because of the way you personally prefer to play a game. And even if there were any merit to the whole "sense of identity" argument, it wouldn't be enough to justify sacrificing this freedom in gameplay for.

"If the board was dividing up into chunks and each character started off in a different chunk where the options around them suited their characters, then you could make it so that any character could cross over into another chunk with a minimum amount of effort, but the easiest and most efficient way to spend licenses would be to initially stay in the region that the character started in."

They got as close to doing that as should be desired. What you're talking about is hindering the player from really truly making their own decisions. Making it harder for Basch to learn white magic or for Ashe to learn to wield a two-handed sword = a hindrance to any player wanting to do either of these things. Sure, they CAN still do it. But it'd be a bit like in FF 13 where if you choose to fight any given battle the way YOU want, you get a 1 star rating and miss out on maximum item-collecting potential.

And people already complain that it takes too long to grind for L Ps. It's a criticism I disagree with, but your suggestion would only make more people complain about this other non-issue.