Final Fantasy XII Impressions (Spoiler-Free)

.... I accidentally left my PS2 at my parents house across the state. I have the powercords, video cables, memory cards, and games... just no actual PS2. So I've been going on FFXII withdrawal. As a substitute I picked up Enchanted Arms for the 360 and have been steadily getting hooked on that.

FFXII has spoiled me. Enchanted Arms is arguably prettier, it certainly has more pixels, but the world has that same empty shell feeling you would get running around in previous FFs.

Points where Enchanted Arms dropped the ball and made me long for FFXII:
-Combat arenas. Each area in Enchanted Arms has ONE combat backdrop. So even if you were just swimming across the river, if you get attacked your party will haul ass up to the path and fight it out, and then rush back to the middle of the river. It's all instantaneous, but it really pulls you out of the game. Running along a crane several high above a warehouse. WHOOOSH. Now we are fighting in the center of the warehouse floor. WHOOOSH. Back balancing on the crane. Boo.
-Conversations. It has happened on several occasions where my OCD made me talk to people that would reveal clues and information about characters that were then promptly forgotten by my party. Helpful Man: "Information A regarding Person B" Party Member: "Dude, that's awesome!" .... several conversations later (but this time voice-acted as part of the story line). More Important Character: "Information A regarding Person B" Party Member: "Dude, I've never heard of that before, that's awesome!" It has happened more than once, otherwise I wouldn't bring up something this nitpicky, but goddamn it. If you're going to sprinkle clues about the story around the NPC characters, REWARD THE PLAYER FOR FINDING THEM BY ACKNOWLEDGING THAT WE HAVE FOUND THEM! Grrrr. It 'felt' like talking to NPCs just wasn't worth it. Nothing I learn will actually help. On the other hand I seem to recall several points where talking to NPCs in FFXII would actually help you, even when it wasn't some artificially constructed task to talk to NPCs.
-Learning Skills. I can only 'remember' five main skills at one time? And I have to choose them before combat?
-Being treated like a {ableist slur}. FFXII guides you into new skills and activities, Enchanted Arms hits you in the face with a brick. I don't remember the exact wording but this was an exchange had by the characters at one point: "Now What? We hit a dead end!" "Dude, you're a moron! There's a ladder there." "A ladder? How does that work?" "ahem... To use a ladder you must first approach it and then push A, then move the L stick up or down. Do you need me to repeat that?" "Dude I totally knew that!" "No you didn't, smacktard." BTW you will have this conversation with the exact same instructions for operating doors, buttons, switches, elevators, magic rappelling spots, heal spots, shops, and bathrooms. EVERY ACTION USES 'A' and the game bashes you in the face with a brick to ensure that you remember that.

Despite all that I'm having a great time with Enchanted Arms thanks to my OCD. I'm 30 hours in and I'm looking forward to playing again after work. But here's what I'd like to see: A blend of the maturity of story and interface of FFXII with the slightly more humorous twists and 'collecting' aspects of Enchanted Arms.

FFXII took a lot of control away from the player when using the Mist abilities. To the point of rendering them almost useless during big fights. With Enchanted Arms (and previous FFs) you lose the seamless integration of the battle arenas and the world, but you gain the ability to truly control the action.

Synopsis: I miss my PS2 and FFXII.

I'm about 85 hours into XII now actually, and very near the end of the story, but I have a ton of sidequesting and solid amount of exploring left to do. It's great; I've never taken this long to complete an FF game on the first playthrough (usually it's in the 30-40 hour range the first time), and I've never felt like any of the time I've spent has been just "padding content". I've only done some grinding once or twice, and then only for about an hour each of those times. The rest has been pure gameplay.

I'm sure that part of what's rounded out the time is that I speak to every npc and read everything (every entry in the bestiary, hunt records, etc).

Absolutely fantastic game. I could have just this and Dragon Quest 8 and they alone would justify owning a PS2. Fortunately there's been a slew of other fantastic games on the system as well!

Mom wrote:

I have yet to HAVE to grind.

I'm at the Stilshrine (which shouldn't be a spoiler since WTF is a Stilshrine?) and I've been progressing by running into one room, using a summon, running away, healing, repeat. Maybe it's that Vaan is using a ninja sword that does Dark damage and half the monsters there are healed by Dark? I can't find ANY real use for Penelo and at this point even my summons get killed pretty quickly. I know I need to tweak my gambits as there'll be times when the fight could be ended in a single blow but everyone's too busy healing one another. The enemies here are around level 30 and my group is level 20-24. Did I miss a big chunk of the game or something? I'm saved right before the boss and I somehow doubt I'll emerge victorious without doing a little leveling. I've also been stealing from everything since the beginning of the game so I don't think that's the problem.

How do you use a quickening, BTW? What do you press? I don't understand the "shuffle."

I think a lot of the levelling many of us got in place of grinding is from the time spent hunting Marks, Lobster. Least, that's what worked for me, I can't speak for the others. Some people only stuck with three party members and never levelled the other three, but I've kept all six of mine relatively even throughout the game, which slows my levelling a bit but has actually allowed me to keep pace with the level of enemies. As I've neared the end, I've actually fallen behind a bit in my party's level compared to the enemy levels for the first time since the early game. But that's fine; I don't want to be overlevelled, and this keeps the Mark hunting a nice challenge for me.

What I did was split my party into two separate "groups". Balthier, Fran, and Basch in one group while Vaan, Penelo, and Ashe are in the other. Despite each group having a main caster and a main fighter, they each fight quite differently, allowing me to handle different situations as needed. Vaan's team is the bruiser team - he and Penelo focus on melee combat while Ashe is primarily an offensive caster. All three have healing & defense magic, but only Ashe is particularly handy with it. Balthier's group finds Basch as the only melee combatant, while Balthier focuses on ranged fighting with guns and status-affecting magic against enemies, and Fran uses her bow and works as a druid (lots of white, green, and time magic).

Everyone is given licenses for everything that can be useful, including at this point pretty much every spell out there. But only the dedicated casters are particularly good at magic, leaving the other characters to use it more in a pinch than anything. And yeah, I don't have to play the characters in the roles I've given them, but I do it because it's fun. I've read many complaints that the license board makes the characters too generic, but if you think about it, it's much the same as in Final Fantasy VI. In that game, I always had every character learn every spell they could, just like I've done in FFXII. And as in XII, in VI the dedicated casters were far better at spell-slinging than the melee/ranged types.

On top of that, even positive status spells like Haste can fail to "hit" a party member, and both their chance of success and their duration is dependent upon the magick skill of the caster, so not every character can use even those spells to quite the same effect. Which is great, and really rewards the player for specializing each character.

I don't actually make heavy use of Gambits; enough to easily get by without interfering much in regular fights, but any major combat, even against the nastier "regular" opponents in the late game, still requires a fair amount of intervention on my part, and I like it that way.

Quickenings are rarely used by me, I suck at the timing on those things. I rarely combo higher than 4, and the highest I've ever hit was 7. I also think that if they're used too effectively, they kind of take away some of the challenge of the big fights, so I tend to use them more as desperation moves than a real battle tactic.

Quickenings are rarely used by me, I suck at the timing on those things. I rarely combo higher than 4, and the highest I've ever hit was 7. I also think that if they're used too effectively, they kind of take away some of the challenge of the big fights, so I tend to use them more as desperation moves than a real battle tactic.

I've chained up to 15-16 now, and it's kind of neat to see all the effects. I really do hate it when I use a big quickening chain on something, and their lifebar hardly moves. That's scary (Stupid Ringwyrm!).

Despite my initial skepticism (really really hated the demo), I have done a full 180 on FFXII. It's a lot of fun!

Tyrian wrote:

Despite my initial skepticism (really really hated the demo), I have done a full 180 on FFXII. It's a lot of fun!

I don't think I've ever had such a stark difference of opinion on a game versus its demo like I did with FFXII. I was excited about the game until I played the demo with DQ8, and I loathed that demo so much that my interest in the game completely died. I stopped caring about it pretty much at all. It wasn't until after the Japanese release and people were starting to say that the real game was much better that I even started to care about it at all again.

I'm very, very happy with the final product, and it couldn't be farther from what I expected based on that atrocious demo.

Lobster, I've posted volumes of strategy throughout the two threads on this game, so if you are interested you are welcome to take a look. However, I will say three things real quick here.

First, you are massively underleveled. As Farscry said, most of us never felt like we were "grinding" because we were rabidly trying to complete the optional hunts, and thus extra levels came easily and naturally. However, I get the feeling that if you don't take the time to fight the optional monsters, it is probably easy to find yourself in the situation you are currently in. The good news, however, is that I believe you are at a point in the game where you can get ahold of the accessory that increases the rate at which you gain LP, and perhaps even the one that increases your ability to gain experience, so if you choose to go level up at this point you might be able to get a little extra oomph our of your efforts.

Second, you probably don't have enough gambit slots at that level to be able to set up some creative strategies, but the one thing I would suggest is to set up a gambit to keep your main melee character constantly berserked. You will obviously not be able to control them, but the extra damage will make your life much easier, I assure you. Also, they won't go attacking "green" monsters, so you don't really have to worry about them drawing the attention of the tougher monsters who would normally ignore you. You may even consider keeping your tank constantly under the effects of haste as well, because particularly if you are underleveled you really, really need to focus on destroying monsters as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Third, if you haven't already done so get your primary spell casters to three quickening spots as quickly as possible. The extra MP will be invaluable, as being underleveled will make it even more important to keep your status enhancements constantly active. Have your casters set to keep protect active on all your party members at all times, and add in shell whenever you are in an area with monsters that cast a lot of spells.

Oh, and any caster that you want to use a fire spell with, make sure to teach them Oil too.

Actually I got a question about quickening as well. A lot of them look like Elemental attack... but does that element base applies to actual damage? I mean, if I attack a creature with Water Elemental weakness... will a quickening with water type attack do a double damage... or more damage?

Also, I notice that after a short chain in quickening... there is a final Elemental attack like Inferno, does that add any damage/elemental damage?

Also is there a cap on quickening chain? I got my up to 20 and I was not able to get anymore... I try to shuffle few times and it just would not make any more available.

Nei wrote:

Actually I got a question about quickening as well. A lot of them look like Elemental attack... but does that element base applies to actual damage? I mean, if I attack a creature with Water Elemental weakness... will a quickening with water type attack do a double damage... or more damage?

From what I understand, yes, although I don't think it works quite the same. I've never seen an opponent absorb damage (healing itself) from a quickening.

Also, I notice that after a short chain in quickening... there is a final Elemental attack like Inferno, does that add any damage/elemental damage?

Yes. It's elemental, and it deals a little extra damage not only to the creature you targetted, but also to the surrounding creatures as well.

Also is there a cap on quickening chain? I got my up to 20 and I was not able to get anymore... I try to shuffle few times and it just would not make any more available.

I just assume chance isn't with you, and you didn't get anything. I'm amazed you got to 20 and had that much time left.

Jolly Bill wrote:

...other info...

Thx for the info.

Jolly Bill wrote:

I just assume chance isn't with you, and you didn't get anything. I'm amazed you got to 20 and had that much time left.

I think it was more of luck than anything... I didn't have to shuffle until i got to like 16, from there it just continue giving me options. However once I hit 20 I only had a chance to shuffle twice before time run out. I think final damage was around 40,000. The thing is that once the quickening animation stop and gives you an option to select in the next chain... there is like a a tiny pause before it would start the count down again... and I just hammer on the button that needed.

Holy cow! I think I managed a seven-chain once. But I don't use quickenings very often. And I've only Summoned twice.

I do a lot of the same thing Farscry did, only my groups are Balthier, Basch, and Vaan in one and Fran, Penello, and Ashe in the other. Balthier and Penello are my ranged attackers with guns, Basch and Ashe are my heavy hand-to-hand guys, and Vaan and Fran handle heavy support magics and attack support as they can. Fran, Penello, and Ashe have their gambits set up to make the first focus of their actions restoring the other guys because they're my backups in boss fights. I didn't pick it like this; it just happened naturally based on who found Quickenings on the board first. I used them a lot more in the earlier levels and it was the guys who found them first.

I didn't find anything to do with Ashe for a long long time. She annoys me. She needs to stay with the one-handed swords or poles. I know it's tempting to give her the Treaty Sword once you get it but she can barely pick the thing up. And if you want Penello to be useful give her a gun. She kicks butt with a gun and the rest of her gambits set to support.

I don't know about the Hunting/levelling thing. You wouldn't believe how behind I am on the hunting quests. Being thorough enough to lay waste to the entire area before you go on has pretty much done it for me. Of course, then I read up there and see level 70 and my eyes bug out. My Vaan just hit level 44 last night and we got Embroidered Tippets for everyone when they first became available and all three of my active party wears them constantly.

I'm about ready to leave for the final series of battles. I thought I was there yesterday but it turned out there was one more thing to do. I might be about to get my arse kicked.

You want some practice with Quickening combos, fight the King Bomb, you'll get good real quick.

Sinatar wrote:

You want some practice with Quickening combos, fight the King Bomb, you'll get good real quick.

i *HATE* that guy.... I got him down to a sliver of life and before I could hit him again poof... all the way back up. I fought him for like 20 minutes before I gave up and decided to come back later.

Oh, and Rezzy - I also heart Enchanted Arms. I thought it was a great addition of strategy that really livened up a old gameplay mechanic. Though I hear you about Atsuma being treated like an idiot. It tones down later on in the game. Have you seen the closing cinematic yet?

Jolly Bill wrote:
Nei wrote:

Actually I got a question about quickening as well. A lot of them look like Elemental attack... but does that element base applies to actual damage? I mean, if I attack a creature with Water Elemental weakness... will a quickening with water type attack do a double damage... or more damage?

From what I understand, yes, although I don't think it works quite the same. I've never seen an opponent absorb damage (healing itself) from a quickening.

Also, I notice that after a short chain in quickening... there is a final Elemental attack like Inferno, does that add any damage/elemental damage?

Yes. It's elemental, and it deals a little extra damage not only to the creature you targetted, but also to the surrounding creatures as well.

Also is there a cap on quickening chain? I got my up to 20 and I was not able to get anymore... I try to shuffle few times and it just would not make any more available.

I just assume chance isn't with you, and you didn't get anything. I'm amazed you got to 20 and had that much time left.

Actually, despite their apparent elemental qualities the quickenings (including their finishing Concurrence attacks) deal physical damage only. They don't have any elemental effects, and they're effective against any enemy that is not immune to physical damage.

A 20-hit quickening is awesome. I've never made it past 14.

doctre wrote:
Sinatar wrote:

You want some practice with Quickening combos, fight the King Bomb, you'll get good real quick.

i *HATE* that guy.... I got him down to a sliver of life and before I could hit him again poof... all the way back up. I fought him for like 20 minutes before I gave up and decided to come back later.

Here's a strategy for the king bomb:

[color=white]General stuff: Cast decoy on one heavily armored, tough party member, and if possible equip them with a fire resistant shield. Use the other two members to heal the decoyed member as needed, with potions whenever practical. Equip accessories that prevent oil, and/or set up gambits that use handkerchiefs to remove the effect immediately. Set gambits to attack enemies with the lowest HPs, or do so manually. Don't attack King Bomb until you've defeated the smaller bombs.

Water magic works, but if you've got the 1000 needles technic, it works great here. I had all 3 of my party equipped with 1000 needles and they tore him to pieces. The thing is, he'll fully restore his HP several times when he gets down to about 1/4 HP. The key is to wait until he's just before 1/4 HP, then quickly finish him off with a quickening. Make sure you're using 3 fully MP-charged party members to do so, even if you have to do a quick party swap right before the quickening. Using decoy on the main party member helps here, as it keeps the two other members untargeted and swappable.[/color]

I beat the game last month with an underpowered party. I usually try to rush through the game the first time to witness the story, then go back and do the optional stuff. The biggest complaint I have about this game is that you mostly wander around really big dungeons fighting and opening doors, with little interaction between your party members. The dungeons themselves are dark and lonely without much to interact with besides the monsters there. I suppose some of you may be tired of the FF dialogue; FFXII lacks the "talk to everyone before heading out" mechanic. But I think it makes the games more lively when you have the option of learning about everyone's backstory.

Great game though, I'll definitely play it again once I'm finished with my backlog of PS2 games.

momgamer wrote:

Oh, and Rezzy - I also heart Enchanted Arms. I thought it was a great addition of strategy that really livened up a old gameplay mechanic. Though I hear you about Atsuma being treated like an idiot. It tones down later on in the game. Have you seen the closing cinematic yet?

I'm taking a quick Ramen break from Enchanted Arms. I have not seen the closing cinematic. 34 hours in and I am at 46% complete. Atsuma is standing at the gates of London, ready to head to Kyoto for the first time.

EDIT It sounds like my little brother might visit me this weekend to check out all the new stuff in CS:S and may bring my PS2 home! Hooray! I need to finish the story line on FFXII so I can finally get some closure.

Maybe a spoiler wrote:

[color=white]I am about to board Bahamut. I'm not sure how close to finished that is, but I'm getting a pretty penultimate vibe from it. [/color]

Mail may be short coming from me as my wireless router is suddenly rejecting my DS, giving me an "incompatible IP" error code? This happened after I just hooked up a signal repeater and turned off SSID broadcast. Perhaps it's because I'm not on Ch. 11 for my signal? I don't know.

I think we're in the same place, Rezzy. I went past it last night, but I died. Nastily. Multiple times. I'm going to try to take another look at it tonight.

momgamer wrote:

I think we're in the same place, Rezzy. I went past it last night, but I died. Nastily. Multiple times. I'm going to try to take another look at it tonight.

I'm in the same place, but I was off doing hunts and other stuff (trying to take down Gilgamesh, getting slaughtered a couple times by a rare spawn named Dismal)

Now you guys have me excited, I guess I'll go try it tonight.

Jolly Bill wrote:

I'm in the same place, but I was off doing hunts and other stuff (trying to take down Gilgamesh, getting slaughtered a couple times by a rare spawn named Dismal)

I ran into that guy immediately after I beat Gilgamesh with my party still battered and beaten from that long ass fight. I think it took me almost as long to drop Dismal as it did Gilgamesh himself.

If you've beaten Gilgamesh and survived the monsters that spawn in the area near him, the final battles will be a cake walk.

Either this game is a lot of fun or they sprinkled cocaine in the game's case because I sat down to play last night and when I looked up at the clock it was 4am! Haven't had that much fun in a long while.

Got my arse kicked again, but I made it farther. I only had time for one try thanks to my son bogarting the TV in the living room last night.

Before I try again I might just go ahead and hike up the Phon Coast and back from Balfonhiem and pick up a level or two and some more stuff to prevent being hit with status ailments rather than just trying to cure from them all the time.

I'm starting to get bored with the combat. Maybe I grinded (ground?) too much this weekend. I just finished the boss in the mines, I only used Quickenings once, no one died and I never had to swap characters. I'm desperate for something new to do in combat. It's cool that you can limit your attacks to a specific type of monster (called chains) and get better drops, plus stealing has allowed me to stay relatively rich, but I'm not making meaningful decisions in combat. I'm pretty sure there is a lot more to this game, I just don't know about it yet. I've been looking for an FAQ on the techniques, but haven't been able to find one.

What have you guys done to keep the combat from getting stale?

What have you guys done to keep the combat from getting stale?

Been thankful that the stale combat only took seconds at a time, with no separate battle screen?

Usually when I was getting bored, I'd start switching out weapons to see new weapons on different characters affected them. More likely, I'd sign up for a couple hunts, move on to a new area, or continue the storyline. If you're STILL bored, I'd say stop grinding and just hit the storyline or hunts hard until the difficulty levels catch up.

Like I said above, anytime I started to get bored, I just thought of how much more bored I was when it wasn't an active battle system.

Well I just hit Lv.60 and I just got to Phon Coast. Way over leveled... I think but I did it out of revenge against the skeletons in Deadlands(?... the place that is past King Bomb.) I had to do a mark and those bastards just kept on spawning... I killed the mark but had to run like hell because I was chased by 15-20 skeletons. I level a bit and went back to grind their boned into powder... felt pretty good!

I think to keep combat a bit less repetitive is to set some goals while you at it. Like I went for 200 monster chain... got to 215, got 5000 pebbles. Unfortunately it only allows to carry 99!

I must have those pebbles!

Do some hunts or explore some places that you aren't supposed to have reached yet. No matter how much you may have overleveled in relation to the story fights, there are ALWAYS monsters out there that will give you a serious run for your money and force you to fight strategically.

zeroKFE wrote:

Do some hunts or explore some places that you aren't supposed to have reached yet. No matter how much you may have overleveled in relation to the story fights, there are ALWAYS monsters out there that will give you a serious run for your money and force you to fight strategically.

I'm level 64 (Vaan, everyone else at 57), and I went to the subterra below the Pharos at Ridora... and got my ass handed to me. I easily went through the last battle (although people did die a couple times to the major attacks), but I was having trouble just staying alive at times down there.