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rpblocker's Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
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| [February 23, 2007 03:36:31 PM]
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The narrative storyline in this game is absolutely superb! After my last post I began paying more attention to the storyline and was very impressed. Final Fantasy XII’s storyline is very involving with a very great story. On top of just having a great storyline the storyline seamlessly ties together with the action in the gameplay. The game seems to move from player controlling the action to narrative driving CGI videos and back to the player controlled action without making the two seem like discrete realms of the game, i.e. the game play and the video clips. One method that I noticed that adds to this effect was that the NPCs and the environment are in the same place and in the CGI videos as they are in the actual game play.
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| [February 23, 2007 03:21:49 PM]
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I am about 30 hours into Final Fantasy XII and the game still has not gotten old or tiring. I particularly enjoy how the game designers designed the narrative progression of the game. From as far as I can tell the designers planned the game to have a loose narrative progression in the beginning then slowly make the story line more and more prevalent in the game play. Originally in the beginning of the game I was sort of left wondering what was the driving plot behind the game because I was just doing odd jobs for NPCs in the game such as Old Dalan, but for the most part I was allowed to just freely explore the game world until such things as an impassible object such as a river in the Eastersands or mobs that were just to high leveled for the players characters to handle at that point in the game. Then as the game moves on the narrative story becomes a bigger and bigger part of the game to the point that I am now where I no longer explore much but am more focused on following the storyline. This was very well done as I never noticed the slow transition from open exploration to a primarily storyline driven game. This was an ingenious design strategy because it allowed players such as myself who love to explore the game world a chance to get that out of my system, then move onto the main meat of the game.
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| [February 1, 2007 05:56:07 PM]
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In Final Fantasy XII, I have completed the first part of the dungeon which ended in a battle with a Firemane (a horse made of fire) and I am now in what seems to be the second portion of the dungeon which literally is a dungeon under the fortress of Nalbania. One aspect that I particularly liked and forget to mention earlier was that before entering this dungeon sequence the save points would warn the player that they are about to enter into an area that may be difficult to escape and recommended creating a duplicate save file. I thought this was really smart design move on Square-Enix’s part because it allowed players to create an almost salvage point for their game if they happen to have jumped the gun and entered the dungeon way to underpowered to make it out or to have an enjoyable experience. I am thoroughly enjoying all the steps that the developers of FFXII took to improve the game play experience such as the gambit system, the more real time battle system, and even the little things such as the information that save points give you about dungeons.
That’s all till next time, hopefully I’ll be out of this dungeon by then.
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| [February 1, 2007 02:31:50 AM]
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I played Final Fantasy XII for a few more hours today and I final reached the first area that could be considered a dungeon, i.e. the waterways under the castle in Dalmasca. The dungeon was a standard dungeon type for an RPG where the player navigates a sort of labyrinth looking for the end goal and treasure and having to deal with mobs along the way. Nothing really new or exciting in the design aspects of this dungeon, although it does give time to fine tune the recently acquired ability of the gambit system (talked about it in my last post) and the introduction of guest characters. A guest character is a character that accompanies your party but is not under the player’s control and acts upon its own gambit system that the player cannot change. I thought that it would be great to have another character on my side until I discovered that my lack of control over the guest character meant that the guest character was always getting them self into danger or bringing to much agro on the party. Although there was a miniboss battle that was not to tough except for the time it took to kill it (the miniboss had roughly seven times the health of a normal enemy) and trying to keep the guest character alive (the guest character tended to get beat up a lot). Even though there was not much worth mentioning design wise about this dungeon, the dungeon did serve as a medium to advance the storyline and plot through the use of cut scenes.
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| [January 31, 2007 01:59:43 PM]
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I have played about two more hours of Final Fantasy XII and I could not be happier than to waste my time playing this game! I am thoroughly enjoying all aspects of play in this game especially the use of the gambit system. The gambit system allows a player to predefine how the AI characters in the player’s party will behave. This system alleviates one of the most annoying factors of game play in an RPG which is the constant repetition of battles (The reason I had to stop playing Xenosaga). In most RPGs when a player goes into battle they usually go through the same menus, selecting the same options, and defeat their foes in the same usual manner. The use of the gambit system allows most of those actions to be automated freeing the player from the mind numbing agony of constantly flipping through the same menus to perform the same feats. Also the implementation of this gambit system coupled with the new battle system where the player battles in the real world rather than separate temporal and spatial instance allows for quicker game play. Where the player is free to engage multiple mobs, have the AI players attack, and interact with the environment with a fluid live action feel to it. I believe that Square-Enix’s design team came up with a great innovative solution to the problem of mind numbing repetitiveness of battles in older RPGs through the use of the gambit system.
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| [January 30, 2007 12:07:40 PM]
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I am a long time fan of the Final Fantasy series (since I was 5 or 6 years old) and I have recently acquired a copy of Final Fantasy XII which to my delight was purchased for educational purposes (I think this is the first video game purchase that can be considered tax deductible as an education expense, I just love that). So far I have been playing Final Fantasy XII for about 5 hours and I have been thoroughly pleased, but before I get into how much I like the game lets exam the game design that I have seen thus far.
The game Final Fantasy XII begins with a fairly long narrative cut scene (which is now customary for most Square-Enix games) that provides the player with necessary background or history of what is happening in the game world of Final Fantasy XII. The introductory narrative cut serves the purpose of drawing the player in and aiding in the player’s attachment to the characters in the game by allowing them to better understand what they are going through. For instance in Final Fantasy XII the introductory cut scene reveals that the in game Kingdom of Dalmasca has fallen under the power of the Arcadian Empire and that the main protagonist Vaan (not absolutely sure if he is the main protagonist as I have not progressed that far through the storyline, just an assumption though) is on a heroes quest to save his Kingdom from the empire. The use of creating a narrative story around a hero’s quest focused on Vaan and his companions allows the player to become emotionally invested in the success of the characters and their goals, which is a very effective means to motivate the player to beating the game.
The game play experience is the epitome of an RPG in which the player will spend most of their time progressing through the storyline or plot, exploring the game world, leveling up their characters, or fighting mobs. This game exudes the key elements of a progressive game design in which the players will travel from area to area to complete quests given through the use of the in game narratives while dealing with random mobs strategically placed throughout the game world and the occasional puzzle or boss battle. The most apparent and prevalent difference that I have noticed between Final Fantasy XII and other RPGs is the battle system. For most RPGs (at least in the Final Fantasy series) battles use a mixture of challenge, temporal, and spatial segmentation from the rest of the game, i.e. the battles almost take place outside of the rest of the game world, but Final Fantasy XII took an unconventional approach to the battle system. This unconventional approach uses a challenge and quasi-spatial approach to the battle system where the player will be challenged by in game mobs if they come within a certain range or attack the mob but the player remains in the game world (as opposed to before where the player battled in a separate battle instance) and also allows the characters to move around while still infusing the time based turn system of previous Final Fantasy titles.
More to come once on the battle system, powering up, and what I am really curious about…the gambit system!
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