The Silent Protagonist

FFXII was low on jailbait, Penello wasn't really slutty or annoying - just not interesting. FFXI had three different jailbait characters (Lion, Nashmeira and most notably Lilisette). Fikku from FFX is an easy Mark.

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 >.>;

Amnesiac

Here's hoping this game doesn't turn out as crap as XII.

Lakai

March 9th, really? Goddamn I wish I could play it in December.

bickle

Drakenguard, I would've said the same about FFVII :D

Drakengard

FFVII wasn't that good. It was cool. I won't call it trash, but it was standard JRPG tossed into a steampunk atmosphere.

HEL105

Geez, the amount of hate for FFXII is ridiculous. If you didn't like how it was different from some of the other FF titles, that's fine. But to say it was horrible is just retarded. The story was great, there was a mountain of content, and the graphics were some of the best that the PS2 produced. Just like with FFVIII, a game isn't automatically bad just because it's different from what came before.

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. .

The Silent Protagonist

Thing about FFXII is it brought back some more involved gameplay elements. For all the people that talk about its "autopilot" gameplay, a hell of a lot of personal work goes into making it shine, just like Junctioning in FFVIII.

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

Los255

"The story was great"

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.

Drakengard

@Los255

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.

Lucca

@Drakengard

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.

desuka

@CaptainBright

You have a spacebar, use it.

jasondm300

For xii just battle yiazmat. I micromanaged that battle. No autopilot there. 15 hours later, victory. One of my greatest video game achievements. Dr. K from Lost Oddysey will be my next prey...someday.

kaizokuonii

@everyone defending FF 8/12

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.

seventhevening

I liked FFXII. Well, mechanically. It was pretty and it played well, and it was a completionist's wet dream (or worst nightmare). It's combat is quite deep and enjoyable to tweak and optimize. However, it's still one of my least favorite because of the story. The story was extremely impersonal and emotionless after only a couple hours in the game when Van is demoted from main character. Then beyond that the entire plot was mostly political and was totally devoid of warmth. All the characters became entirely pointless. Van could have died half way through the game and the plot wouldn't change. In fact, all the characters could have died other than Ashe and nothing in the game would change, they were that irrelevant to the plot. So I never cared about any of them.

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.

HEL105

How was the story of FFXII cold or impersonal? Remember Basch? Balthier? There was nothing cold or impersonal about some of the events they faced. Fran and Ashe faced some truly personal and "human" situations, as well. FFXII was no more cold or impersonal than was Vagrant Story or Valkyrie Profile.

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.

tobalito23

lol i love how people talk about how you can make FF VIII difficulty a joke, you can over level in any final fantasy game and it will be a joke. VIII was prolly one of the harder ones because you couldn't just one shot everything that came your way they leveled with you.and the junctioning system while not my favorite, still added alot of depth to the game should you utilize it in the right way. and there was so much happening in that game from the start or have you already forgotten the attck on dollet, president mission, The Sorceress parade on disk 1? Or the attack on balamb and the war between balamb and galbadia in disk 2? point is there is plenty of stuff going on in the game the entire story is great and yes i am a FF VIII defender. i feel like thhe reason FF VII is as great as it is is just because it was the first 3D Final fantasy game many of you played and you have those memories. FF VII was not my first so i just see it as another JRPG.

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

Grandmas Boy

Dood I am soooo stoked for this! March is too far!!! Must invent time machine...

Lucas Says

FFXII was basically the best game in the series (well, up there with VI, VII, and the mythical PS1 version of Tactics that was translated correctly). Vaan and Penelo were the main characters inasmuch as you could identify with them, because they had very little personality of their own. They were, in a way, Gordon Freeman: characters who really didn't have feelings about things, and were along for the ride, who the player could put themselves in. Once you get over that very small hurdle, the plot is the only one in a FF game that couldn't have been a manga aimed at eleven year olds. Story wise, it was the only game besides VII that actually had any feeling or emotion behind it that wasn't generated by childish overwriting. VIII and IX were basically the pinnacles of this: there was no story to care about, just things happening, and the characters feeling sad because...things they shouldn't care about logically happened. X was overwritten to the point of hilarity. XII, like VII, felt real and human, underneath the occasional bullshit.

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.

CrocBox

Cute redhead riding a hundred machine guns with legs. Brb fapping

chronomitch

I really enjoyed FF12 (oh noes i used regular numbers!), but I completely understand why people didn't like it. Although the characters were interesting, and the plot was decent, for some reason I didn't feel as invested in their fates as much as in other FF games. It felt more like I was just watching a film or was just going along for the ride, rather than actually driving the story.

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.

Gee-Man

I guess I'll jump into this argument as well. While I liked FF12 to a certain extent, I can totally see why a lot of people don't like it, and sometimes those points resonate with me as well. I can't put my finger on it, but something about the characters did not particularly appeal to me (except for Balthier and Fran of course). Didn't help that some of the character design did not work for me. I could except Tidus, but Vaan took the metrosexuality up to a whole new level.

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.

seventhevening

To a degree, I want that melodrama that most people are complaining about. Almost all of the Final Fantasy games have that melodrama and romance, and that's part of what makes the series enjoyable. If I DIDN'T want melodramtic or romantic plotlines, I'd go play something else. It seems silly to complain about something that's an established mainstay in the series. It's like complaining that Atelier games have too much alchemy or that Megami Tensei games are hard and contain Satan. But I digress.

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.

Drakengard

"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."

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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