November 6, 2008 - There are certain series in the gaming world that are simply beyond criticism. Every Zelda, Mario, Metal Gear, and Final Fantasy game in the last 15-20 years has scored in the 90s from nearly every major gaming publication and website. Some people just don¡¯t like change, I guess.ffxi gil The problem with the Final Fantasy series is that it prides itself on being drastically different as each Roman numeral draws uncomfortably close to the XX mark. The stories and characters are different, that much is to be expected, but so is the gameplay (and I use that term loosely), Buy gold on wow with each installment having different battle, magic, and leveling systems. How then, can reviewers justify giving FF12 a similar score to FF7, 4, and 3? Is it impossible that the minds at SquarEnix are capable of bad decisions?

The reality is simple; the FF series hasn¡¯t changed a lot in the 20-odd years it¡¯s been around. While it may represent the pinnacle of the Japanese RPG, that isn¡¯t saying much this day and age. Japanese game design and RPGs in particular seem to have this stubborn refusal to evolve in any meaningful way. Where Western developers seem to have grasped that people like to make choices in games, Japanese developers are still living in their fantasy world from 10 years ago where they briefly reigned due to extremely high production values as a result of riding the coat tails of the success of FF7. There is a reason game design has favored Western developers in recent times and thanks to Square I don¡¯t have to outline a detailed history as demonstration because now I can simply point to FF12.

Final Fantasy XII is a bad game, even by the low standards of its genre. ffxi gil I¡¯m not just saying that because I don¡¯t like JRPGs (I just wrote a review of FF7 claiming it as one of the best games ever) but because it is true. Some games are just bad; you can tell from the start what kind of experience you¡¯re in for. FF12 opens with the now standard 15+ minute CG cutscene homage to all things Star Wars along with an obnoxiously large amount of expository dialogue, detailing the history of roughly two countries as well as royal families and the inner workings of the political system. This is a long, boring story which seems to ¡°borrow¡± heavily from the Star Wars prequel trilogy (not such a great starting point) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, only filtered through the completely out of touch mind of a few Japanese programmers in desperate need of human contact. I don¡¯t even know where to begin as the story is aggressively convoluted and all but impenetrable to anyone who isn¡¯t taking notes during the cutscenes.

The series¡¯ trademark overblown, ffxi gil ridiculous and increasingly plot-hole-providing art direction hits new highs with this installment. Trying to figure out how characters could possibly dress themselves in this game is half the fun. Do the art directors just design these characters as some kind of perverse ¡°dare¡± to cosplayers the world over? The technology presents a few problems to the story. How is it that these countries have massive fleets of airships, yet have only discovered a small part of the world? In one hilarious sequence, our heroes decide that it would be preferable to just hike across a desert, up mountains, and through forests to get to the villainous capital city (fighting a near infinite amount of battles) instead of flying because it would be ¡°safer¡±. Then they see a small unit of three enemy airships and sigh in relief that they didn¡¯t have to fight them. It¡¯s insanity! The player is essentially tortured while playing this game. The combat is ENDLESS and there is almost NOTHING more to the game. You run from town to town, cutscene to cutscene, and fight battle after battle after battle, and that¡¯s it.

Do you know how expensive it is to make a Final Fantasy game nowadays? How can Square be so inept and completely out of touch with what is ¡°fun¡±? Furthermore how can anyone (game reviewers especially) hold this kind of crap up as some sort of example to the industry? Chrono Trigger is ten years older than FF12 and is better in almost every way. FF12 is bloated, an example of too many cooks in the kitchen; overblown, overproduced, over directed, and just plain overdone. Square excels at spectacle and we are given glimpses of it here in the phenomenal graphics, which are likely the best on the console, but so what? There is NO compelling reason to play this game. The combat system represents Square¡¯s utter hatred for the player and gameplay in general. As Penny Arcade so eloquently put it, ¡°this game masturbates!¡± You can essentially ¡°program¡± your party to fight for you with the new Gambit system, effectively negating nearly 90% of the ¡°gameplay¡±. At least you can still run around ¡°talking¡± to people except that the player is given no dialogue options. NPCs just talk at you; pure exposition at the expense of interaction which, if I may remind you, is what games are all about. To gain skills you have to buy licenses and equipment, you have to level up, and in some cases it¡¯s just scripted so sometimes grinding doesn¡¯t even work. The rest of the time it¡¯s grind for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The battle system is poorly designed, heavily favoring melee combat at the expense of magic. It is easy to let the majority of characters fall behind due to the incompetent experience system.

The one good idea behind this battle system is that there are no random battles, which hopefully the series adopts from now on. And while they¡¯re at it: no more turn-based battles or save points! These only ever existed as a result of hardware limitations. They reward putting an inhuman number of hours into the game and nothing else.

There are so many clich¨¦d design decisions that I¡¯m almost embarrassed for Square. It¡¯s hard to really define a protagonist in this installment. FF6 had a similar problem but with that game it was because every character was given an equal amount of screen time and backstory, in FF12 it¡¯s because there is so little character development. I suppose it¡¯s Vaan, the character who stretches the definition of ¡°male¡± to its absolute limits. The rest of the characters are entirely stock. We get Princess Leia, the Han Solo wannabe complete with a Chewbacca-esque partner, only with less hair and a bigger rack, and the remainder fitting comfortably in their roles as ¡°the fellowship rejects¡±. There¡¯s even a castle that you have to sneak into in this game and if you guessed that the only way to do that is to sneak through the sewers fighting giant rats then congratulations, you¡¯re officially qualified to be a game designer! You get your standard temples, forests, desserts, lava pits and other standard RPG locations. The special moves take longer than Christmas to play out and there are summons only this time there are only 12 and they¡¯re completely new. Well actually they¡¯re lifted from the FF Tactics series, as is this stupid, stupid world. So basically I¡¯m only hurting myself by trying to think of anything original in this game.

But alas, I think I¡¯ve realized why the FF series has always and will always garner perfect and near perfect reviews and that is because of the fans. Final Fantasy is no longer a game, but an event and, regardless of how stupid and boring the design decisions, people will always try and justify them. Chances are you already know if you like FF12 because of the deep ¡°brand loyalty¡± that either has or has not been forced into your mind over the last 20 years. So in some sense giving the game anything other than a favorable review is futile because this series belongs to the fans now. That¡¯s why we have the compilation of FF7 and that¡¯s why, in 2006, we¡¯re still playing a multi-million dollar game with turn-based battles and save points.