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psettle's Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
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| [January 25, 2008 02:20:05 AM]
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Gameplay:
I have played another 4 hours and have come across two new party members, Balthier and Fran. When I finally got these characters, the game introduced what were called Gambits. Gambits are like battle commands you give your party, except they are defined by you and the party member automatically executes them within battle. Gambits have different parts to them, such as whether to perform this action on a enemy or party member, whether to attack, use techniques, or use magic, and finally a certain condition to perform this action. So for example, I gave Fran two gambits. The first one was to use the cure spell to heal Vaan whenever his health fell below 70% and the other was to attack all enemies the Vaan had targeted. This allowed me to fight battles without having to stop and give battle commands to my other party members while in the middle of a battle.
Another cool aspect of the game that I have come across is the usage of what are called Licenses. Licenses in FFXII are what the name entails. Whenever you receive a new weapon, armor, spell, or accessory, you need to have the correct license for it. Now some people might not like this new element in the game, but I find it quite fascinating. First off, you change your license through the use of License Points. You obtain License Points by defeating enemies, and you always have a enemy to fight, so upgrading your license isn't that demanding or limiting in the usage of certain equipment. One reason I love the license feature is that you can customize your party to focus on certain weapons, such as Vaan using more swords and Balthier using more sword guns.
Design:
One thing that makes FFXII's design so rich and interesting is the vast amount of detailed artwork and animation that you come across while playing the game. The detail in the levels you walk through is amazing and allows you to feel like you are actually in the royal city of Rabanastre. The game is full of magnificent cut scenes that look like they come from an animated motion picture. The cut scenes are also amazing because they take a very important part of the story and give it that little extra touch to make it quite exciting to watch. One of my favorite cut scenes so far is when I come into the castle and the resistance is trying to take over the castle during a royal banquet. They invade on a hover ship and well the entire scene is quite awesome to watch.
Another element in the game that I also found innovative was the use of these dashed blue lines to split a large area into a much smaller area. Whenever you entered say the sewers, you would every so often come across a blue dashed line. This would take you to a new area but you are still in the same sewers you were when you entered. I found this interesting because you could focus more on discovering hidden items and not be worried about becoming lost in the area. Did I say that the level design was something to fascinate over? Overall the game uses magnificent artwork to really bring this imaginary world to life and it pays off because as a gamer I am drawn into the world and am curious to see what the next game session on this has to offer. I'm off to save Ivalice!!!
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| [January 24, 2008 11:56:58 PM]
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Final Fantasy(FF) XII is a role playing game where you take control of Vaan Ratsbane, a young boy in the royal city of Rabanastre who joins a rebellion against the Archadian Empire. Throughout the game, you accumulate party members and go through the fictional world of Ivalice destroying evil monsters and soldiers of the Archadian Empire as you try to ultimately defeat the evil empire.
Gameplay:
I had heard many rumors about FFXII, most of them being that this was one of the best FF games out there and a couple saying that it was way to complicated and just mimicked what the other FF games on the Playstation 2 did. After playing the game, I would have to agree that the rumors of it being a great game were actually true. I had never played any of the PS2 FF games, such as X or X-2, so this allowed me to experience the game without a certain bias.
The first thing that I loved about the game was it's storyline. It was very complex and the game began with a long and detailed background of the Archadian Empire and it's oppression through Ivalice. While playing the game, I discovered that the battle system was unlike any other FF game I had ever touched. First off, it isn't turned based. You can freely move and lock onto enemies, but from there you can choose to attack or use techniques or even magic. This made the battles seem more real because depending on where you attack, you can deal more damage from the back then the front. The environment also becomes more realistic because you aren't constantly going off to another screen to battle, like previous FF games.
I kept playing the game due to the beautiful landscape and areas that I traveled through. Even down in the sewers felt like you were traversing a ornate castle. The enemies were quite unique as well, including a side mission where I had to defeat a "rogue tomato", and potentially fight a T-rex like creature that had the same size and dimensions as a potential real-life T-rex. All of these aspects had very detailed drawing and artwork, so it felt at all times that you were emersied in this beautiful and chaotic world.
I have had friends watch me play and they all have PS2's, and from what I hear, all of them hope to rent copies from the library as soon as they come back in. I myself can't wait to put in another 4 hours tomorrow so that way I can finally get some party members.
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psettle's Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
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Current Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along
GameLog started on: Sunday 20 January, 2008
GameLog closed on: Wednesday 20 February, 2008 |
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