Also, one of 2 Cids from (the fucking horrible) 12 was a straight bad guy IIRC.
That said, is it just me or does Vanille lose more clothes the more screens she's in?
He shouldn't be allowed to join this time until he does
Selphie from FFVIII you just kinda hoped would fall off a cliff or something, same with Yuffie (bitch took my materia, no forgiving that). I still want her to die in every game she appears in because of that materia theft >.>;
Alright, maybe that is asking too much.
*goes back to reading War and Peace*
Yes, I am a member of both the FFVIII and FFXII Defense Squads. They're both in my top 5 FF games.
Oh, and FFXIII looks more and more amazing with every screenshot. .
FFXII and FFVIII have very integrated systems and to get the most out of them and appreciate them, you tend to have to do everything. You can't just plow through the main quest for the full experience. If people find that off-putting, well, they can go read a book or watch TV if they want things to be that linear.
FFXII also had a mature story, too. None of that weeabo crap they usually do. Instead of there just being this Evil Empire bent on casting the world into oblivion, you had a human face on the Evil Empire that just wanted revenge on the gods, same as the "heroes" if you can actually call them that.
This was the team that did Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story, after all. If you went in expecting FFVII or FFX, you were bound to get burned by the lack of blatant melodramatics.
I'm willing to give Kitase the benefit of a doubt on story here, he's had the chance to sit out of the main series for two installments now. FFXI and FFXII were much more political in scope than other games in the series and it could potentially rub off on FFXIII. Some of what I understand about FFXIII seems to be in-line with those two, so we'll eee.
FFXII was a breath of fresh air for the series at large and makes me wish they handed the series over to a fresh team every time
I STRONGLY disagree with you there. This is probably the worst story of all the main 12, and the most non-existant and dull cast of them all. When the "main character" (Vaan) is overrun by his partner and friend (Balthier and Fran), I wouldn't even single out a main character.
"there was a mountain of content"
Most of it was good (like fighting Gilgamesh), until you realize that farming items for the Ultimate Weapons was just a chore unlike any other, and quests were redundant later. You needed to cast Bubble like every 5 seconds, or have a Bubble item equipped to stay alive in the late dungeons, and summons had no incentive for being cast of even fought in the game. Maybe nostalgia's sake, but that's it.
Vaan wasn't the main character. The fact that you can't realize this only proves the point that people don't understand that story telling is not a one formula method or that stories have to be extremely character centric to the point where you know everything about them down to their preferred sex position. I'm sorry, but I like having characters who aren't giant walking billboards of emotion and past woes. For once the characters aren't so odd that they start spilling all their troubles into the other party members laps like it was a therapy session.
Anyway, back to my point, based upon your understanding of stories, The Great Gatsby's main character Nick Carraway. Not Jay Gatsby.
As for your note of the monotony, that's in every RPG I've ever played and not just inherent to JRPGs. Its sad to say its pretty well accepted that late game you're going to be doing the same thing a lot. The fact you felt the need to bring it up at all is odd.
"Hecatoncheir" in greek means "he who has 100 hands"... Also, "eidolon" means "image".
I know a lot of you don't care (well, you should) but I couldn't resist.
I love you. You're the first person on the Internet who actually understood Vaan is not the main character. We need more people like you. :D
Also, FFXIII still looks sweet.
Allow me to say this.FFXII's story and premise are great.Its execution,on the other hand,is piss poor.Gameplay still somewhat rocked.
Can't wait to play FFXIII..........
I'm doing a playthrough of FFVII on my PSP at the moment and loving every moment of it :-D though sometimes it has some serious graphical glitches on the PSP, which sux obviously :-(
However, redheads. Argh, why do you make it so love/hate, Squeenix?
I personally dislike both of them because there wasn't one damn reason for me to care about pretty much any characters in either game. 12 DOES look fantastic, and it DOES have a metric fuck-ton of things to do, but unless the stry gives me some reasn to give a damn about it, why should I keep playing it past the mindless item farming?
I don't think I need to bring up the entire "perpetuating the timeloop" portion of FF 8, not to mention the other changes I found absolutely pointless in it. FF8 is the prime example of making changes for changes sake.
But at least it wasn't Final Fantasy VIII. I can't understand anyone defending that game. Selphie and Zell were the only characters in that game that had a personality, and they still weren't terribly likable, the combat system was extremely broken and you could become god-like just from playing cards a bit and then converting and junctioning them making the game's difficulty a joke. The plot was ridiculously slow, with almost nothing interesting actually happening until the start of disk 3, and even when things did happen there were massive amounts of inconsistency, plot holes and irrelevant Macguffin being tossed around like nobody's business. Almost every disk ends with some BS cliffhanger that is completely forgotten as soon as the next disk gets rolling. Even the characters react in shock to the cliff hanger events, but then are totally unsurprised when those events literally undo themselves. It has some of the worst and laziest writing in an RPG let alone a final fantasy game. The only positive thing I can say about the game is that it is graphically impressive for the time.
Sure, Vaan and Penelo were sort of tag-along characters, but even they had reasons to do what they were doing (Vaan craved adventure and the opportunity to become a sky pirate, and Penelo would have followed him anywhere to keep him out of trouble). Anyone who has played the game should already know what motivated Ashe, Balthier, Fran and Basch, and they all seemed like sensible reasons to me.Yes, Vaan could have died and the later story wouldn't have changed that much, because Vaan was not the main character. Guess what? Gau could have died in FFVI and that wouldn't have changed the story much, either.
I loved FFXII because for once there was a world where your characters were important, but there were still huge events going on that you were not directly involved in. It was a bit more complicated than the FF stories that are mainly about a single person, but I would hate for the plots of every FF game to be similar to each other.
I'm completely ok with anyone who wasn't interested in the story of FFXII, but to say that it was horrible is just silly. The Red Badge of Courage isn't horrible just because I can't make it past page three, it's just not my kind of book. FFVI was the first Final Fantasy that I loved, and I guess that's why I like stories better that focus more on a group of individuals (like FFVI, FFVIII, and FFXII), rather than one or two characters mainly, with the other characters being loosely involved (FFVII and FFIX).
And let's not even get started about FFVIII. I would be here all day.
On 12 part I hate when people say the main character is a fruit queer bitch cause there is no main character people don't know that basch was the main character and vaan was added later for i forgot the reason they did but everyone in FF XII was a main character. While saying that i do agree that the story was grand and probably epic. it just wasn't in the the same. When i think of FF i think of a great story great characters u get a connection with all of them. they are all there for a reason. and they are unique. FF XII i felt no connection it felt more like a Star Wars rip off and to be honest you could switch penelo and vaan with Npc # 45 78 109 whatever you know what i mean and i would've liked them better
Gameplay wise, the gambit system was wonderful (besides that you had to buy them, which was silly). Yes, the party could fight on auto-pilot, but you had to program the auto-pilot for specific situations, which was complicated in some fights. The License Board was solid, too, though...I wish it were the sphere grid. And XIII is basically doing that, so the number-cruncher in me is pleased. The Sphere grid was a wonderfully illogical method of leveling.
Basically, XIII, if it builds on XII's successes (and missteps some of its failures. I'll admit, Vaan *and* Penelo were occasionally a bit much), will be the best in the series, and I'm as pumped as possible.
There are still parts in the story which don't make sense or were never explained. For example, take the Great Crystal. What exactly is it? Who made it and put it there? Who exactly were these "gods" and where did they come from? Are they going to get revenge on Ashe for not following their orders?
IMO, the battle system was REALLY good. As long as you set up the right rules, you didn't have to be focused 100% on battles - unlike other FF games. It was more strategic in that sense.
Overall, I'd call FF12 a good FF, but nowhere near the best. Maybe the people who glorify FF12 in such a way never played the earlier ones, but I simply can't see how one would call FF12 the undisputed BEST of ALL the FFs.
On topic, I'm looking forward to FF13. The more I see of it, the better it seems to get. Provided they can avoid the usual moody melodrama that seems to plague most FFs, I think this one could be really special.
After seeing the Japanese Final Trailer for XIII, I'm more excited about. It looks like there's a lot of melodrama and super awesome cutscenes.
You're kidding, right? I've played FFIV-FFX [skipped X-2 and XI] FFXII, FFT, Vagrant Story, Einhander, Xenogears, and Chrono Trigger/Cross. And those are just the Squaresoft end and not the Enix side of the equation.
Apparently I just have a broader appreciation for video game narratives. If it really must be said, FFIX and FFT are my favorites of the series, but even on the PS2 Shadow Hearts 1 & 2 are far and away the best RPGs on the entire system. The fact the series went under as a result of poor sales because the general JRPG contingency didn't have the balls to enjoy a series that dared to be dark and macabre in nature only increases the overall disapproval I have following the wake of outcry from the weeaboos of the world following FFXII.

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