Having beaten XII

RPGC Community The FFCompendium Forum
#1

<h1>My quick and dirty review</h1>

<b>Battle System</b>

<u>Pros</u>

  • No random encounters
  • You build your own strategy and your characters follow it and your success is based on that, but it’s still flexible enough for you to choose your own commands when you need to
  • Weapons are well balanced and different ones work well in different situations. I found myself using almost every type at one point or another, except staves, maces, bombs, and measures.
  • Mist chains were innovative

<u>Cons</u>

  • Characters have to stop walking to recast spells like haste, protect, libra… These interruptions are far more annoying than they sound
  • You can’t open doors or treasure while your characters are casting something. This is especially annoying when you have 4 or 5 powerups to recast in a row, and all you want to do is open that fucking chest, but you can’t, because you’re not libra’d yet. And no, turning gambits off to open a chest isn’t an appropriate solution
  • Gambits have a tendency to be inefficient
  • Enemies can hit you with any attack at any range in any direction. Moving around does nothing to evade attacks
  • Espers are useless
  • Black, Green, and Arcane magicks are borderline useless
  • Tecks are useless

<b>Story</b>

<u>Pros</u>

  • None

<u>Cons</u>

  • It sucked

<b>World and Atmosphere</b>

<u>Pros</u>

  • The world was absolutely gorgeous. Places like the Cerrobi Steppe, the Salikawood, Bhujerba, The Phon Coast, and even the Sandsea take your breath away.
  • Changing weather made the different lands you travel through less stagnant. Whether it’s a fullscale change like the Giza Plains or just rain in Cerrobi, weather added new dimensions to the beauty of the game’s landscapes.
  • There are dozens of people to talk to in almost every town, and a good number of them actually have something relevant to say.

<u>Cons</u>

  • Some marks are stupidly hard to find. I absolutely refused to use a guide while playing this game, and because of that, I never killed the Lyndwyrm, Gilgamesh (I couldn’t find the Site 11 Key), and a handful of other marks I wanted to see dead. It was by luck alone that I even made it back into the Barheim passage to kill the Blood Wing.
  • In spite of the game’s overall beauty, the Feywood still managed to look fucking horrendous. And not in an “it’s supposed to be eerie” kind of way. Someone really dropped the ball on that area. Disgracefully low quality.
  • Some other areas were too filled with mist to really be striking, like the Nabreus Deadlands
  • You never get to go to Rozarria, or even see a single Rozarrian other than the guy who shows up in Bur-Omisace.
    <i>- THERE ARE NO MALE VIERA.</i> Did anyone else notice this?

<b>Music</b>

<u>Pros</u>

  • In general, the music fit very well with the places it was assigned to. The bgm from the Phon Coast, the Lhusu Mines, Eruyt, the Necrohol, the Salikawood, and the Cerrobi Steppe were my favourite tracks.

<u>Cons</u>

  • The music, while good, takes a while to get stuck in your head. It’s not very memorable and a lot of it really was meant to be endlessly looping bgm, and not actual stand-alone music.

Ehhhh I’m done for now. If anyone has comments or questions we shall discuss :open_mouth:

#2

There are never any male viera. Female viera do take male husbands from other species, but it doesn’t seem to be that common.

#3

On the music front, I just wanted to say that as underwhelming as some of the music has been so far, I’ve been humming the Ozmone Plains theme for months now. Gosh darn did I find it to be beautiful.

One thing I didn’t like either was how the new battle system wasn’t expanded in some ways. In particular, the fact that you can’t cancel attacks was kind of a letdown. In Grandia II, when I knew an enemy was readying an attack, I could stop it. It gave the games battle system another layer of strategy. In FFXII, when the game warns me that an enemy is readying an attack I just shrug. What’s the point of even telling me that a boss is about to pull off it’s major attack three seconds before it does it when I can’t do anything about it anyway?

#4

Originally Posted by Hades Shinigami
I never killed … Gilgamesh (I couldn’t find the Site 11 Key)

Man! Why do so many people have so much trouble with this? I’ve already covered this before so I’ll just provide you with a link to my previous comment, and let you view it at your own discretion.

http://agora.rpgclassics.com/showpost.php?p=572843&postcount=139 :hint:

#5

Apparently you missed the part where I said I refuse to use guides. I don’t care what you’ve “covered.”

#6

Because it’s a tiny-ass shinning pebble in the middle of the humongous Phon Coast, and not even close to the actual beach. Not to mention that while looking for places things might have “drifted off” to, the banks of the Nebra were also a good choice.

#7

For once I wholeheartedly agree with SE. It’s not hard to figure out it’s on the Phon Coast by what Bhujerbans tell you about the Key and dropped items. The hard part is combing every damn inch of the place for a tiny speck of light in the sand.

#8

Did you do the Bottle Message hunt? If you feel like that about the key, you’ll LOVE that one.

Motherfucking windmills.

#9

I didn’t bother with the bottle message one without an FAQ. Completely impossible.

I did find the key by myself, though.

#10

For the record, I’m 140 hours into the game, at the Pharos Lighthouse. However I stopped midway there due to having to work again and coming home late and tired; I’ll continue by the weekend. I expect to finish by next week.

So far, my impressions are very similar to Hades’, though I have a few more comments to add. I’ll wait until I finish tho.

#11

i agree the graphics were flawless espcially on a hidef tv

#12

480 resolution games look flawless on HDTV? I dunno, XII looked great on my old standard def television, but shitty on my new one, upscaled from my ps3.

All this rambling about XII has me pretty close to playing it again. There were a few things more I wanted to do, one of which is beat Yiazmat.

#13

I have no intention of ever doing that. -_-

#14

I’m playing it again right now, but this time I’m making it a little harder on myself. I’m playing in active and not letting any of my characters use swords of any kind. Those two things alone make it twice as hard x_x

Also, HD sucks very very hard. Even for HD material. It will pixelize images that look smooth on a 12 year old CRT.

the beauty of HDTV
#15

:hahaha; comedy

It’s the same as saying black and white television is more lifelike than color television.

#16

They’re both pretty lifelike, assuming they’re not on a TV that makes everything but Blu-Ray and next-gen gaming look like poorly compressed youtube videos.

HD has its strengths, but it’s not superior all-around. There is a lot of shit it’s very much worse at than an old CRT. Like watching DVDs or prime time cable.

I have a better analogy for you: Watching LD material on an HDTV is like playing SNES games on an emulator. There’s something not quite right about it, and if you have a discerning eye you’ll be able to figure out exactly what it is.

#17

Anything is gonna look bad if it’s upscaled. If you’re watching an HD signal or something in an HD format it’ll look great. Hell, we have an antenna on our roof and we get HD signals for a bunch of non-cable signals through it. Maybe you’ve just looked at some shitty TVs, I could never go back to a CRT now.

#18

And anything you’re gonna watch on DVD and most things you’ll watch on cable or satellite are going to be upscaled. Hence my post.

The only HD programming we get here is sports. And even then, watching HD on an HD TV still looks like a bad mpeg if you’re not sitting about 20 feet away from the TV.

And no, the HDTVs I looked at weren’t shitty. Unless every HDTV you’ll find in any store or anyone’s house, ever, is shitty.

In order for me to buy an HDTV, absolutely everything I’d be using it for would have to be in HD at at least 2160 res. I don’t want to see pixels, bottom line. And believe me, if things can be pixelated on my 17 inch monitor at 1280, they can be pixelated on a 50 inch TV at 1080.

#19

Standard def movies with a 16:9 aspect ratio (widescreen) look absolutely amazing after being upscaled on my 46" Sony Bravia XBR3. I also output my PC to the television at 1920x1080 resolution, and it’s incredible.

Standard aspect ratio (4:3) just doesn’t look very good, though. I haven’t played around with the settings for it much, but I don’t really watch any std def content anyways so I don’t care.

He’s either never seen HD content on an HD set, or he’s just trolling. Which is really the same thing, I guess. “HD sucks hard” - this guy is funny.

#20

He’s either never seen HD content on an HD set, or he’s just trolling.
I have seen HD content on an HDTV, and I was not impressed. Why?

Because I can draw a jagged line on an HDTV screen where the outlines of subtle gradients aren’t supposed to be. Some things were meant to be blurred. Some colors were meant to flow into each other. Like, you know, in real life. CRT does this very well. HD doesn’t do it at all.

Which is why you have to sit 15 to 20 feet away from an HDTV to get a good experience, even with HD content from major networks like The CBC. Hockey Night in Canada never looked that brittle and washed out on a tube, I can say that much from experience.

I’ll admit that if all you do is play 360 and watch Blu-Ray, HD is awesome. Just don’t give me shit about LD upscaling well or network television looking better if you’re hoping not to convince me you’re either in denial, or a complete fucking moron. Everything has it’s pros and cons. HDTV’s pros don’t include watching anything on TV or DVD or doing any previous-gen gaming.

Pce out homies :smiley:

Also, because I’m short on time, I’m gonna be blunt here: Talk about FFXII in this thread or shut your mouth.