FFXII: More Hours Played Review

As a good week have passed since I wrote my A Few Hours Played Review and I’ve had the time to play FFXII more, which I have mind you, I thought it was time to write the second more deeper part – hence the More Hours Played Review. I do got to warn you that this review could contain spoilers or other features that you might want to discover for yourself. But if that’s okay, let me continue:

Combat System – Live and Running:

Though it didn’t feel right at first, it does now. There is nothing better than running around, seeing a monster then, by using the Gambit-system, dropkick the monster’s ass. As all RPG/Adventure-games all characters starts with a set of numbers. The point in these games is first of all to maximize these numbers. That’s why I did a heavy leveling when I first got into the Lhusu-mines as an average level 9-party. Before I ran into the boss there (and come on people, just focus all attacks on the guy with the circle-saw-kind-of-spear and even burn all your Mist-abilities on him) and had fun with him and his henchmen. I also got my personal chain-kill record up to amazing 300 with my girlfriend as my witness. Man I was pissed when I got to know that I only got an award by passing the 50-chain. So when I finally left the Lhusu-mines my characters was all level 19 had a good increase in HP/mana and physical damage. It can be somewhat annoying when/if you get a Game Over-screen thrown in your face because you didn’t get to heal yourself in time, but that’s how the game was made.

The Gambit System – Lazyness Served Hot:

“What is the Gambit-system?” you might ask if you haven’t been playing long or not at all. Well let me explain you what it is and how it works. When you first get it activated (if you haven’t yet, you need to follow the storyline a little bit more) you get three available Gambit-slots per character (through the License-system you can get more slots). These slots are configureable by yourself, where you put in easy If-statements that your characters will follow when the system is activated in combat. Let me try to enhance this explanation by showing you two of the easiest If-statements set in the Gambit-system:

if AllyHealth<50% { cast: Cure; }

if MonsterType=Air { cast: Fire; }

It does not look exactly like this when in-game, but it’s easy to understand and every programmer will recognize the logic instantly. So the first example is explained like this: if any of your ally’s health drops below 50%, you will cast the spell Cure on the ally. The second is explained: if the monster type is Air (for example bats or big dangerous pigeon), you will cast the spell Fire instead of attacking with your weapon. If you didn’t understand the examples above, I recommend you to seriously sit down in a dark room and re-think your life. The Gambit-system is very, very easy to get into and, I belive, even harder to get out of (if you’d ever want to). When you first get it you only have like two different if-statements, but worry not as you can buy shitloads of ‘em when you get back to a Gambit-shop (I bought ‘em all when I first got there just to maximize the number-of-gambits-counter), and you will also need to pay attention to hidden treasures everywhere you go as you get some unique gambits there. Remember also that the system uses a priority-order by always checking the if-statements from top-to-bottom. This means that if you want your character to be a kick-ass-first-then-heal you must place the gambit-slots like this:

if MonsterIsNear { Attack; }
if AllyHealth<50% { cast: Cure; }

Then it’ll first take care of all monsters that’s nearby and when the combat is finished it’ll cast cure on any ally that has less than 50% health. If you’re going to do some hardcore leveling (for instance in the Lhusu-mines) I’d advice you to make one of your characters a dedicated healer by setting all your gambits to heal and cast protect/shell on the other characters. To sum this up, the Gambit-system has come to stay. It simplifies combats and the only thing you’ll have to worry about (if you’ve configured it correctly), is getting your character from point A to point B on the map. Lazyness Factor equals 9/10.

License System:

Instead of having those pesky pre-set classes like in FFIX (and yet again, you morons don’t understand that it means 9), you are now free to give all characters the same abilites, except from the Mist-abilities. So this means that in some way it’ll feel alot more like FFVII, where anyone can cast Cure or Dark or maybe use Steal on a monster. The License Board, which bears a resemblance of a regular Check-board, is the board that gives characters the ability to use different weapons, armors, spells and it even strengthens your magick (yes, spelled with a k) and physical attacks. Every monster yields at least one License Point (LP), but some rare spawns, bosses or marks can give you more (I’ve only experienced 5 as the highest so far). If you’ve played FFVII, you won’t have any problem stepping into and using the License Board and you’ll experience, like I did, that it’s got great potential to make all your characters more God-like.

A tribute to FFT and VS?

As I’ve mentioned, the game revolves alot around the combat and it’s systems. Sometimes I’ve gotten the feeling that the story is pushed to the side, and the combat gets the main attention. Of course it helps having a Great Sword to kill some monsters, but isn’t the story supposed to be the primary concern when playing a RPG/Adventure? For me it is but then again I’m not everyone and you’re not either. I think that where I am now in the game, the story haven’t developed to it’s full outline, so I’ll just have to play it a bit more then. In FFT you have the Guilds-go-hunt-marks, and now it’s in FFXII. In Vagrant Story you’ve got the hit-combo-chain (I managed to pull a 44-chain once, was tired and nervous after the first 25) and in FFXII you’ve got the kill-chain (the higher the chain is, the better is the loot). I know, by reading about the game on Wikipedia, that alot of the team members that was working on both FFT and VS was also working on XII. I don’t really think that this must be why I get the FFT/VS-feeling alot. I “blame” that entirely on the producers and storywriters.

As I’m going to go home from work, wash some clothes and maybe do the dishes, I’ll be playing FFXII more after that. The only hope I’ve got is that the story will unfold some more. Ohh and the hope that if you’ve read this, you’ll post a comment or even point out how amazing I am. And there is another Skywal….