FFXII: A Few Hours Played Review

I’m one of those who can spend hours upon hours when playing games such as the Final Fantasy-series or the Metal Gear Solid-series since they literally kick ass. So yesterday I finally got my own copy of FFXII for my tiny PS2. I love the feeling of a newly-bought game when you tear off the plastic, pop up the cover and put the disc into the console. It reminds me of a commercial of some sort, though I’m not healthy and got flawless teeth. I just kick ass.

So I got to play FFXII for a couple of hours yesterday, especially after my girlfriend went to sleep and I moved one of the good-chairs in front of the TV, connected my KOSS SB45 (picuture of SB45) to the TV and filled up a glass with cola. I had fun allthough I was perhaps a bit brave when it came to battles as I got the “Game Over”-screen three times. (And that’s from playing about 2+ hours where I focused mostly on killing beasts and trying the combat system.) That’s when I figured not everything was as great as compared to what has been told. But I’ve only played it for approximately 4 hours alltogether so I can’t really expand your horizons much with what I’ve got. But I can enhance it and sell it as a good product that every home should have, eh?

Here’s my “A Few Hours Played”-Review for Final Fantasy XII (equals 12, idiot)

Graphics:

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not the kind of guy who goes around yelling that all games should have better graphics, this game’s graphics made my eyes swell up in tears. The graphics for this game is absolutely astounding. There’s only one game that I can think of that could compete with FFXII in graphics for PS2, and that’s MGS3: Snake Eater. It’s just so clean and without lots of pixels. But since I’m no rambler for graphics I’ll move on.

Music:

As what was done in FFT and Vagrant Story, the japanese man known as Hitoshi Sakimoto is the guy behind the music in FFXII too. Since I consider myself a huge FF-fan, I won’t consider a FF-game where the music wasn’t composed by the guru Nobuo Uematsu, as a real FF-game. Lucky for me that Uematsu was the composer for FFXII’s main theme, so I can approve FFXII as a valid Final Fantasy game. When I was playing last night, I was using my SB45-headphones connected to the TV so I got a very good and acute sound. It was bad that I found out some of the background music was annoying. Almost as annoying as a civil service worker eating lunch loudly. I hope for someone’s sake that it’ll improve once I get to sit down and play some more.

Story:

The story takes place in Ivalice, which is the same world as in FFT and Vagrant Story. Besides from that last fact, the story starts with a war between the two ruling countries. Our main character Vaan is first introduced to us two years after the war, when the dreaded Empire has taken over Rabanastre (the city that Vaan lives in). I generally like stories of Empires with capital Es that takes over cities, heck even planets for that matter. And I also like my Empire with a hint of a Death Star. Though I don’t believe the Empire in FFXII have a Death Star, they do got soldiers who talks with an Australian accent and treats the inhabitants of Rabanastre rather bad. There’s nothing more to say than I like where this is heading.

Combat:

A large amount of the time used in FF-games is when you’re fighting monsters or villains who’ve burned down villages 5 years ago. Allthough the FF-series was known for their transition from story-mode over to battle-mode, it got a tad boring in the end when you didn’t need all those experience points to kill the last boss. In FFXII they changed that, so now you walk around and you can see the monsters, lock on to them and slay ‘em without changing into high beats-battle music and graphics. It was written that this was also meant to be because the new generation of gamers out there don’t have the patience we oldschool FF-gamers do, so this was their remedy. I’ll write more about the combat-system when I’ve digged hard into the Gambit-system. But I was surprised on how easy it was to begin with, and how good it actually felt, even for a oldschooler like myself.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got to write about FFXII for now as I’ve only played it for a couple of hours. I’m actually sitting at work and I should be heading home - hell, I should’ve headed home for about 1 hour ago - so I can get myself a pizza, a coke and play FFXII till I drop.