They just don't stop coming, do they? Final Fantasy is the gift that keeps on giving, should you be a fan of the JRPG series with far more entries and versions and spin-offs than I'm even aware of. I'm still very much an outsider, even having played a few for this 1001 list, but you can't not know about FFVII, or FFX, or FFXIII.
You can picture the art style, you can have a pretty good guess at who the main characters are, even if you don't know their names... but when I tried to remember anything I had come across for Final Fantasy XII, I was drawing a complete blank. No characters sprang to mind. No look, no environments, no mechanics. Nothing. Was this the black sheep of the family?
For once, I'm actually going into an FF title completely blind, rather than mostly. What will I find?
Fun Times
The CG intro reveals little. I really don't have Final Fantasy XII in my mind, but it looks interesting. No idea what's going on, but I'm looking forward to it.
The city of Rabanastre is celebrating in full force for the marriage of... hang on, I've got to look this up... Princess Ashe of Dalmasca and Prince Rasler of neighbouring Nabradia. FFXII is set in Ivalice, which meant nothing to me until I looked that up too, and found that Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story are set somewhere in here. That's neat. Anyway, this marriage isn't going to end well.
Under attack from... the Archadian Empire, and fearing his father killed, Rasler rides a Chocobo into battle but does not survive an arrow to the chest. Between a rock and a hard place, Dalmasca isn't best placed nor equipped to survive such an invasion. The King... Raminas... gets ready to surrender and negotiate terms of peace.
Frustrations
Which is sadly presented to us in lots of text voiced by a narrator who flipflops between accents in an attempt to sound unique and different. It, and the names, are a little offputting. I can't concentrate on anything. I can follow the faces, but the names leave the window at the earliest opportunity.
It is a time of war, I've understood that much. The King wants peace, and when the gameplay opens up, we, a young soldier called Reks, are in search of that very King.
Controlling yourself in FFXII is about as standard as late-PlayStation 2 games get. Full analogue support for walking and running on the left stick, camera control (unfortunately inverted) on the right stick, with interactions on the X button. Simple.
The combat? Not so much. The game has a few ways to fight, but the default system is to select a target and an action - attack, more often than not - and then walk up to them and wait for your action bar to fill up and enact that action. All in real-time.
The result is that you choose to attack someone, run up to them, realise your attack hasn't charged up yet, stand there looking like a dork, finally swing, realize that your target is still standing, then wait for the bar to fill up again for another attack. All in real-time, with other characters walking around and attacking and whatnot.
It's like your entire fight is taking place on the Moon, but you're in ground control back on Earth and there's a three-second delay on everything you want to do.
In the downtime between attacks, you can run around, preferably out of range of an enemy attack. Sometimes I automatically block attacks. Most of the time I don't, so running out of reach is the better course of action, but I usually get sliced in the spine whenever I do. I fear this is a system that will annoy me to no end.
It won't annoy Reks for very long, as, upon discovering bloodshed and a dead King, he is stabbed by... Basch. Gah, these names. He seems rather miffed that the King would go down without a fight, so he killed the King in an attempt to stop the peace treaty?
Two years later, we're introduced to Vaan and Penelo, two street kids, apparently, living in a Rabanastre where foreign soldiers roam the streets. The place isn't what it used to be, and Vaan obviously dreams of some sort of escape from his circumstances.
These are our lead characters. Vaan looks like a skinny, grubby-looking Tidus. Anyway, after killing some rats, he's free to explore post-war Rabanastre as a peasant.
Further Fun Times
Rabanastre looks not only pretty good but pretty large, too, full of NPCs eager to offer their thoughts on the state of the nation. The incredibly English Archadian Empire quash the locals at every opportunity, effectively treating them as a lower class of citizen in their own home. Not surprisingly, a lot of folks don't like that, even after two years, but nothing has been done about it. What could be?
As such, we're preparing a feast for the incoming consul. Gotta put on a good show for our evil overlords, right?
First rats, now a fetch quest. We're in an RPG alright. Won't be too long before we're distracted by something, though. Will it be from chatting to the locals? Maybe. I don't really fancy doing so, though. There are so many! I've got things to do, and chit-chat isn't one of them.
Hunting sentient tomatoes, though... that's an activity I can get behind. Indeed, it's an activity I must get behind. The desert outside the city walls is portrayed as a place you don't want to find yourself wandering through alone and unprepared, and it is feared that a merchant with food for the feast has already been caught - or worse - by the desert.
Vaan wanted to go and find out what happened but was advised against it. Two minutes later, we're told to go into the desert to fight a tomato. What's going on here?
Further Frustrations
No, wait. What's going on here? I can't equip an armband because I haven't got a license? What are you on about, FFXII?
Well, it turns out that character progression - skills, abilities, and what you can equip etc - takes place on this weird Chessboard that aims to show what licenses your character has. If you don't have a license, you can't cast that spell or swing that sword or wear those clothes. No, really. Ironically, perhaps, I have a license to steal...
Now, this is of course just a form of a skill tree. Lots of games have skill trees. They allow you to branch off in whatever direction you want, unlocking what you feel is more important to how your character plays or what you need them to do right now.
In a nation under control by an invading empire, having licenses makes a lot of sense. Especially because they sound rather British. But surely there's a better word for it. I don't know, a minor quibble.
The deadly desert is full of little cacti fellas and desert wolves, giving me plenty of opportunities to get used to the combat system. I have no idea how best to avoid an attack. Quaffing potions afterwards won't be ideal going forward. Casting spells would be an option if I unlock enough licenses to do so. How to get more licenses? Experience from killing monsters. Monsters like cacti, wolves, and tomatoes.
I do learn where the lock-on button is and can circle strafe my foes now, but I still end up taking almost as much damage as I dish out. It feels like I have no defensive options available to me, and I just want to rain attacks down on these targets, but it's a weird turn-based system, and I can't do that.
I'll just have to get used to it. Strangely, perhaps, for such a game that barely registered to me in the last decade, I'm playing FFXII for an unusually a long time. By the time I'm finished with my first play, I think I'll have played it for longer than I did any other FF title. For a game with a combat system I can't quite get my head around, and characters I'm not terribly entertained by, that's quite something. What's going on?
Upon killing a tomato, Vaan spots some flowers growing in the desert and takes more interest in them instead. We even get a splash screen notification that they're in our inventory, which is incredibly strange when, in the very next cutscene, they get trampled by Chocobo arriving into the city for the consul's arrival.
And after that, another CG treat.
Further Fun Times
Alright, it's not full of explosions like the first few, but these CG cutscenes hold up really well, even after all this time. This is... Vayne Solidor, the Archadian consul, pleading with the people to do the right thing. Yes, we've overthrown your country and have made your lives miserable, but think of your dearly departed King and Princess - who killed herself after losing both husband and father - and embrace the peace we find ourselves in.
Clearly, then, he's evil. We just don't know how evil. Time will tell, I'm sure. He's the guy who our boss is preparing a feast for, but we're not invited, obviously, being a peasant and all. Not to be deterred, Vaan has plans to sneak into the palace.
We need a crescent stone to be recharged by a sunstone, which is a shadestone that is powered by something, ugh, it's not important. We need to get the doodad to do the thingymajig, and it takes us to the south of Rabanastre, into the Giza Plains, another open area full of monsters and treasure.
Final Fantasy XII was seen by some as being a little bit like a single-player MMORPG, and I can sort of see it. The world feels pretty big, with the Giza Plains chunked up into four or five parts, much like the city before it.
But Final Fantasy titles are all about the party, and it's finally time that we get another soul fighting by our side, none other than Penelo.
We're now told about the Gambit system, another one with a funny name, but one that interests me. Sadly, I wasn't able to fully explore it - I must not have the bloody license to do so - but the system is simple.
With fights taking place in this weird real-time way, you could micromanage the hell out of your party, issuing orders as and when things need to change. Or, you could turn on the Gambit system, a massive 'if this, then that' set of instructions for your party to follow on their own.
If the enemy is near, attack it. If I am close to death, heal me. If something is weak to fire, burn it. Naturally, the system grows in complexity as your characters get more licenses and skills and spells and whatnot. I've seen videos of the system being tweaked and organised in the menus, but I must not be far enough into the story to get that menu option for myself.
It is, however, really interesting to me. Perhaps it'd overwhelm me, but I would at least hope that it'd give me the option to tackling opponents without them immediately hitting me back. Go attack my party, that's right. Leave me be, while I circle around you and attack from behind...
Sunstone in hand, we can return to the town beneath the city to travel through the sewers to the secret entrance to the palace. Right after we get a hint at a love story between Vaan and Penelo. But why oh why was it framed so that her midriff was doing all the talking?
Final Fantasy XII just continues to baffle. Why have I been playing it for close to two hours? I'm not a huge fan of the combat, the characters aren't knocking me out of my socks, the story is... eh, I'm not sure about the story yet. It hasn't really gotten going yet, really.
I can't just be sticking around for the looks, can I? I mean, this is emulating incredibly well for me, bar one funny looking shadow, I think. It's not for the voice acting, which isn't bad, but sometimes feels like the artists don't know which accent they want to go with. The script is a little funky in places, too. Trying to sound all noble but not quite getting there.
Everything about FFXII is a little off, a little weird, a little awkward, but something is pulling me through it. Not dragging me along, because that implies that I don't want to be here. No, something is urging me to continue playing, and I don't know why. Curiosity?
You! You were in the tutorial bit. Not the one that stabbed me, the other one who said one line then disappeared. I know you. I think. Oooh, what are you up to?
Final Word
I simply had to save and call it quits for the day. Two hours of FFXII was not what I was expecting, but it was what I found myself doing. Yeah, the whole sunstone thing was a bit rushed. I avoided fighting just so I could get the damn doodad, but that's fine. No random encounters to worry about, so why not?
Probably silly of me, actually. I need the grind to get licenses. I need the licenses to wear anything fancy, attack with anything of decent quality and cast the elaborately flashy spells that are bound to be a part of this Final Fantasy as well, regardless of how grubby or realistic the game looks.
What plot am I barrelling my way into, unprepared and underskilled? I don't know. I've no idea. Rebels versus the Empire? Political struggles? For the first time in a long time, it feels like a Final Fantasy title won't result in me saving the world from the big bad evil guy. But maybe it will. I hope it doesn't.
I have no idea why I'm attracted to Final Fantasy XII, but I am. I want to see some more of this for sure, even if it turns sour or I get to frustrated by it, I want to see where this one goes. For a game that appears to be the 'worst' or the 'forgotten' of the Final Fantasy series, that's gotta stand for something.
Probably just reinforces how ridiculously well made and well-loved the series is - even the stinkers don't stink.
Fun Facts
Inspiration for the gambit system came from an unexpected source: American Football. Everyone has their job to do in a certain play and enacts their part as best they can for the benefit of the team.
Final Fantasy XII, developed by Square Enix, first released in 2006.
Version played: PlayStation 2, 2006, via emulation.