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.
i agree the graphics were flawless espcially on a hidef tv
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.
I have no intention of ever doing that. -_-
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.
:hahaha; comedy
It’s the same as saying black and white television is more lifelike than color television.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 
Also, because I’m short on time, I’m gonna be blunt here: Talk about FFXII in this thread or shut your mouth.
I think you were probably watching an SD broadcast of hockey night in Canada stretched to fit the HD screen or something. I don’t get CBC in HD, but I watch hockey on NBC HD or Versus HD, and it’s crystal clear / fall off your chair awesome from 6-8 feet away. And yeah, you’re better off keeping your topic on the game, as opposed to a television format you’ve obviously never seen set up properly. I’m tempted to post your comments on avsforum…much hilarity would ensue.
Real HD content on an HD TV = awesome. I have a 40in Sony Bravia and it is fucking amazing. The 360 is wow. FFXII however was FUCKING PAINFUL to watch. I simply can’t play the game.
I second Locke’s point that the signal your friend has is most likely not HD and it is also possible he doesn’t have a really nice HD TV. HD is pretty overrated. I found that when I went shopping, the vast majority of TVs looked pretty shitty, esp compared to the awesomeness of Sony’s material.
Most HDTVs only offer 1080i (540 vertical resolution with double the framerate) as a way of saving money.
I agree with Hades. 720x480 Divx movies look a lot better when I hook the PS3 to a tube rather than a HDTV for upscaling. Digital technology puts too much “definition”. Meaning it defines “This line must go here” instead of gently fuzzing it over as analog does. Out bodies are the most analogue (yes, I spelled it both ways for your lovers and haters) devices we’ll ever have, and they tend prefer to see things where the motion blurs a little and the pixels are not to sharp.
Mind you, I’m only saying this for standard def content. Standard def content just looks like crap on an HDTV.
I do like some HD content but Blu-ray discs are such a waste of money. 2-4 times the cost of DVD. I will wait a few years before I actually buy any. But I will let Sony send me my 5 free Blu-Ray movies in the mail.
Back to FF12.
I bought the Collector’s edition when it came out. I was disappointed and could not finish the game. I subsequently lent the game out and now want to finish it but I’ll have to wait for a bit.
1080i doesn’t mean 540 vertical resolution, the vertical resolution is still 1080. The i stands for interlaced scan, which means that the screen is split into odd and even rows. The rows are drawn alternating every 1/60th of a second, effectively giving you a max of 30 frames per second. Progressive Scan on the other hand draws all the rows in order at the same time. However because all the lines are being drawn at once, the television needs double the bandwidth of interlaced scan when rendering the image
I agree that the Espers just plain sucked, and I liked the new Babylonian? names a bit, they fit better in FFTA, but give me the old summons any day. It was cool that they could walk around with you and weren’t just a single attack, and replacing two party members would have been a fair compromise had they been any good to begin with.
I don’t agree that Black, Green and Arcane magics were uselss though, well you said borderline, and maybe there were only two or three spells from each that I ever used… but that was just my playstyle. Like you said you build your own strategy, I may just have a thing for putting monsters to sleep and hitting them with Flare.
I found it most frustrating that even when I started to use a mark faq it was still bloody hard and time consuming to get there. I haven’t given up, but the only reason I keep going back to the game for a few days every month is cause of the F F in the title. I’m a junkie.
We generally say its useless because casting those spells (sleep, flare, etc) is so much slower mp inefficient than just running through like a lawnmower. Its not that it doesn’t work, its that its impractical and annoying.
The Zodiark fight is an excellent example of why offensive magic sucks. You can shave off like 90% of its HP by bashing, but can only take out the remaining 10% by spamming Flare on his ass. Now, even if you take away the pailing-on/pailing-off shit, the last stretch is really goddamn annoying. Why? Because Flare does essentially as much damage as a regular strike, consumes MP, takes about twice as long and has cooldown time.
and that only covers the part when you’re not forced into wait mode while the game is processing your commands all the while Zodiark freely rapes your collective asses using the attack command (which is the only action in this game to always be completely unaffected by wait mode), or lines up his mega death spell at which point you had better have either already casted a spell/use an item that might enable your survival or have healthy characters in reserve.
The Espers were useless, the story was great, the plot and character development was nonexistant, and a lot of the sidequests are impossible w/o a guide. The time, green and arcane spells were useless save protect, haste, shell, and bubble, and they didnt last all that long. There were a couple final black magic spells that were great, forgot the name of them though. Overall, prolly my 3rd least favorite FF along with X-2 and IX.