Friday 11 January, 2008

[Part 1 of 2]

Being a fangirl of the Final Fantasy titles, I started this game with a few assumptions in mind, some for the better, some for worse. It’s an RPG set during a particular time of the FFXII timeline called the “War of the Lions,” a battle for supremacy between two differing factions. Basically.

Some cons:
1. I’m sorry, but the dialogue is like a high school attempt at Shakespeare. It’s great that the writers were trying to match the language with the overall fantasy theme, but the result sounds incredibly stilted and made serious moments into hilarious ones.

2. The characters are flat. Ramza (the main hero, thus far) is an earnest, brave knight-in-training…and that’s about all I know. But I’m not quite willing to pass judgment yet, since there’s still plenty of time to make him and his colleagues more interesting.

3. Instead of having a free-moving camera during battle, it can only move certain ways, making it difficult to see that damn goblin behind the tall tree.

4. What happened to the Random Battles ™? It used to take half an hour to get anywhere on the World Map, but at least it leveled you up quickly. Not so here; at least, not yet.

Pros:
1. The artwork of the cut-scenes is absolutely beautiful. I think I’ve watched the beginning six or seven times by now.

2. You can assign different jobs to each character as you want. I can default and leave Ramza as a Squire, or I can turn him into a Mage, a Chemist, an Archer…and there’s a nice selection of choices (enough where I’m starting to panic and look for a cheat online.)

3. The battles are turn-based rather than real-time, but is based on a point system rather than a predetermined turn pattern. So if your character can’t do anything productive on its turn, you can choose to [Wait], save that last 20/100 points, and then not have to sit around waiting for the battle to cycle through every other fighter/enemy. (I hope that makes sense. I don’t particularly pay attention to technical terms, so feel free to correct me on that.)

4. It’s part of the FFXII universe. This game was designed for the people who have played the original PS2 game, but also those that haven’t. Since I haven’t gotten to FFXII yet, I appreciate that it has a rich back-story without leaving me lost in the dark.

Being a massive FFT fan, I decided to comment. Hallo!

1. I haven't played the retranslation, but anything's an improvement over the poorly edited mess of the PSX original. Can they at least keep the character names consistent now? Or have things make a lick of sense? (the sad part is, I'm not kidding...)

2. To be honest, Ramza and party stay pretty flat. FFT is odd, in that most of the story isn't about you and your group, but about the country and politics around you. You'll see later.

3. Yeah, I can see how that would be annoying. I just chalk it up to technical limitations or something.

4. They're still there! Every time you move over a place on the map that's not a city or anything there's a chance for a random battle. Try moving back and forth across Mandalia Plains, though be wary. While plot battles are at a fixed level, random encounters scale to your level. Grind too much and a few high leveled chocobos can really ruin your day.

And a minor point, since I'm not sure what you meant with your last pro...do you mean that FFT was designed for people who played FFXII? Because technically, it's the other way around. FFT was first, on the Playstation, then followed up with Vagrant Story (also on PSX), and FFXII was that last bit. But the port and retranslation definitely have their share of FFXII fanservice. Not that FFXII doesn't have a bunch of FFT fanservice itself...

Well, I hope you have fun with FFT. It can be a pretty confusing game, so don't be afraid of looking stuff up online and asking for help, I know it can be overwhelming and there's a steep learning curve. My first time through, I stopped dead on the third plot battle. But once you get the hang of it, it's great fun.