Jotari randomly reviews Final Fantasy XII (mostly spoiler free)

[Jotari]

  

So I played Final Fantasy XII on release many, many years ago. And if you'd asked me back then what I thought of it I would have told you its a travesty of a game that shouldn't have been released under the Final Fantasy main numbered brand. Yet despite that I still put a lot of time into it, I think I even played it twice as I remember skipping the Elder Wyrm using a chocobo and getting the Zodiac Spear (which basically no player would ever find without using a guide in the original version, as it involves ignore every player's instinct and not opening certain random innocuous chests the game places directly in your path. It was a scummy move probably done to sell player guides back in an era where everyone didn't use the internet to answer all their queries). I even played the little known DS sequel which I think most people ignored. And a month or so ago I saw it on sale on the Switch and decided to get it to see how it holds up now. The fact that this is a new updated version of the game to the original was a selling point too, being the Zodiac Age release which was Japan only for years. This version added some really nice quality of life changes. Like a turbo button which really helps the battle speed. I think it triples it and it feels like the game needs it, playing without turbo feels agonizingly slow now that I've played with it. The character's walk cycles look a bit funky, but otherwise it feels like the game was always meant to be played at this speed. It also adds an auto save feature which is really appreciated. As it's the kind of game where you could just stumble upon a new area long before you're meant to reach it or encounter a really powerful enemy in a weaker area that you're not meant to fight. So randomly dying in an unexpected fashion was always a possibility. Going back to your last save point could mean losing a lot of save time. Especially if it were retained this way on the switch where you might not bother to save. In this release however, death just means going back to the entrance of the area, a significantly less amount of progress to lose, but still a decent enough penalty as some areas can be quite big.

 

One of my original issues with the game was the gameplay. And I admit a large part of it stemmed from "They changed it, now it sucks" rather than a fair judgement. But not entirely. One of my major complaints was about the difficulty. Namely that the game was super easy for the first half, and then super hard in the second half. The reason I felt this was down to bad habits the game made me form with its Quickening System, which is like the Limit Break super attacks your characters can use. And they are ridiculously effective in the first half of the game, taking out pretty much all the bosses before Arcadia in one or two chains. But then suddenly they fall off really hard and do piss all damage to the point they're barely even worth using. But my simple teen mind had been conditioned to think that this was the best way of fighting so I stubbornly kept on trying to use them. This time round I mostly ignored them and ended up having the inverse problem. The earlier bosses, while not really hard, were surprisingly difficult and put me on my toes a bit. But then as the game went on I got more powerful spells and it quickly became clear than launching spells over and over was the most effective way to deal damage (something I wouldn't have invested in much the first time around as the quickening required MP to use in the original release). The point where the game became super hard before was now the point where it became super easy, even though I had only one primary spell caster. And this leads into another issue I have with the gameplay, not only is it easy if you just use magic, but it's far more mindless than it should be. The game has a tonne of spells and skills and different weapons that deal damage off of different stats, but it doesn't seem to have any idea how to actually make battles challenging. As the go to response is always just to buff stats further. Sometimes it plays around with monsters being temporarily immune to physical or magical attacks, but largely it's just buffing health and damage output of the bosses. Which means even if you're dealing a tonne of damage it still takes long to kill something. And even if you have good armour and are at a high level, your units can still go down in just a few attacks. To compensate for this, reviving and healing characters is really easy. Which means pretty much all battles devolve to you constantly casting raise and cure while pounding really tanky enemies that, despite constantly KOing your party, don't really ever stand much of a chance of taking you out provided your at a decent level. It's just a real shame the gameplay devolves to this so easy as they provide so many different options for cool status affects and ways of dealing damage that ultimately only come in useful once or twice in the entire game.

Also on the subject of gameplay it has something called the Gambit system, which I absolutely love. It basically allows you to code the AI of your characters. So if someone is dead, another can automatically use a phoenix down to revive them without you having the implement the command. Course what this means is you can have lot's of fun prioritizing which automatic commands to give your units, but when it comes to actual gameplay it just results in the previously noted "It's mindless repetition of the same actions until the boss is dead" problem all the more apparent as you don't have to do anything. You can tell the game to play itself. This could be tweaked if only recovering health and mp was less easy for the player and enemies dealt less damage. There's a spell that recovers all HP to all units that I've never once had to use, because the spell lower than that level pretty much restores everyone's health from the lowest they can be right to the cap, effectively doing the same thing for less MP. But the gambit system is great, in fact I wish it were more in depth as it only lets you have a single "If [condition] perform [action]" statement which you can prioritize from a list. It'd be great if it allowed for negative conditions and AND or OR conditions too. Something like this gambit system could actually be cool to use in Fire Emblem for green units, and maybe there is an SRPG that let's you do something like it out there.

Last issue with the gameplay to bitch about before I start complaining about the story (I swear this was meant to be a review talking about how I was wrong in the past and the game is better than I remember) is the summons in the game. Like Final Fantasy X you can summon monsters and actually control them in battle (well in the original release they were just AI controlled allies but in this one you can control them directly). You get five our of thirteen in the course of the story leaving seven optional ones. And by god are they all way harder than they should be (except Ultima, the supposed second strongest one who is way easier than she should be, mainly because she rewards Excalibur too). Ardmalech is the worst one as he becomes available to fight pretty early in the game, when you're at around lv20, but you have to be around lv40 to beat him. And they're pretty much all like this. And saying they're hard doesn't contradict what I said before about the game being too easy, because they're only hard because they're stats are just way higher than they are compared to when you're able to encounter them. Once your at a reasonable level you can take them out easy. The challenge never comes from the gimmicks they try to pull in battle. I get that some of the stronger ones should be tough challenges, but even the easiest of the optional ones available near the start of the game will just mop the floor with you. And because of how the license board (how you gain new equipment and abilities essentially) is laid out in the Zodiac version they're actually cutting you off from not only using them as summons, but also certain items and equipment you might want to use. To the point where you finally can beat those bosses the equipment and abilities they were blocking off is now pretty much useless to you (I have a much better idea how they could have handled the license board in this regard but I won't make this block of text get any bigger by going into it in the OP. Might espouse upon it later if anyone is remotely interested). And the espers themselves tend to be pretty useless in the player's hands, outside of the first one you get in the story who can take on several of the sidequest enemies on his own for a good portion of the game before he drops off.

 

Okay so the story, that's another thing I wrote off as really bad back in the day and...well a lot of the problems I had with it before definitely do stand, but I also appreciate what it was trying to do a lot more (this will mostly be spoiler free analysis as I won't get into specific details). One of the well known criticisms of the story is that the main character has no reason for being there. And this is absolutely true. It happened because of marketing reasons. Basically they wrote the story to be about these other characters and the executives didn't think their character designs and concepts were marketable enough (which translate to they weren't generic enough), so he was created as the main character, and yeah, he's really out of place. It feels like even his personality they couldn't get right, with him being a happy go lucky team spirit in one scene, yet a blood knight seeking revenge in the next with no connecting strings. But really the issue isn't with him alone, as the main party really struggle to be relevant to the plot of the game at all. And the concepts of the plot is good. It's about what a nation is to do once they lose their sovereignty. The story focuses on a nation caught between two super powers and how larger countries use smaller countries as pawns in their wars (think all those governments the Soviets and the USA collapsed during the cold war). The empire of the game manages to hit all the tropes of the evil empire, yet the game does a fantastic job of also depicting it as a realistic place where people live without battering you over the head with it. It then poses the question is wiping out an enemy completely justified to preserve the sovereignty of your own nation. And that's a fascinating question that really speaks to me, coming from a country that only has independence via violent rebelling (no I'm not American, it's a more recent violent rebellion). It really does a great job of asking whether the price of war is worth it, all the while the empire has their own somewhat noble higher goal of putting the destiny of man in the hands of humans themselves (instead of jerkass gods) via industrialization and they don't care who gets stamped on in the process. And they have reason to be as authoritarian as they are as the other super power (who remains sadly underdeveloped being never visits and having all of one voiced character to represent it) is making it clear they that was is inevitable.

The problem is that it does a great job of posing these question, but really, really fails at actually answering them. The party isn't involved in the politics of the issue and instead just travel from one ancient temple to another acquiring ancient artifacts that largely end up useless to them. There's a moment before the final battle where the designated main villain asks the protagonists who they are, and he means it metaphorically, but he very easily could have meant it literally as they have so little connection to each other on a personal level. The game does at least come out and say nukes are bad without suggesting any alternative, but then it wraps up all these political thread anyway in one ending battle that doesn't actually manage to strike at the core of the issue (and that other super power remains completely intact and waiting for an excuse for a war which they've already tried to enact with at least one false flag operation). Maybe it fails to make an actual resolution to it's thematic questions because there is really is no easy answer to the question of retaining sovereignty. Because violent revolution often is the only answer. And if not violent revolution, than a very, very long political process that a story would have a hard time translating into a narrative without being boring. Still it's a great idea to explore the plight of a smaller country caught in the wars of a larger nation and to have an evil empire populated by real people who should be spared the horrors of war as much as anyone else. I just wish the game knew more about what it wanted to do with the concept and actually did it instead of having the protagonists wander about for forty hours finding some way to help the situation and failing in very unspectacular ways.

Oh also, air ships feature heavily into the plot and aesthetic of the game, yet the game arbitrarily doesn't give you an airship of your own to use until near the very end despite a character in your party owning one and the game already having a perfectly fine in lore justification for it not to be able to fly everywhere until later points of the game. It absolutely could and should have been implemented as a fast travel option long before you get it.

 

  

Edited January 14, 2021 by Jotari

[Punished Dayni]

Huh, guess I don't have to fear the story improved too much from when I played it.

I'd heard about how our protagonist was forced by marketing before, but it is a bit disappointing that even in it all your party doesn't really register on the big bad's radar, though I suppose that would make sense because you're just some speck that's in their proxy wars.

Me, I played XII and immediately hated the concept of gambits. I just could not understand why the game was trying to make your allies AI controlled and why they charged you for the pleasure of getting more commands when it was enough to just be getting new spells and equipment. And the game's built around it for sure, I felt like playing by controlling the party directly was always stiff and awkward. I doubt I got far enough to hit that brick wall.

I ended up stopping on some airship fight (you have a guest with you, it's still early on, but after the meme)

[Interdimensional Observer]

Almost finished Final Fantasy XII, but it was continually frustrating and disappointing. Eventually, I gave up at the second to last dungeon I believe, whose idea was it to give enemies an ailment you can't cure with items until after it is completed? Zodiac Job System was a great lie, having MP annoyed me, and things never quite clicked. How sad it was, to learn my high point with the game was the title screen where the music made me want to shed tears of nostalgic joy. I had gone in with such hopes.... 

[Lightcosmo]

Wait, that game was hard?

Jokes aside, i won't say much on the story since alot of that is purely preference, but the gameplay is more than generous, with the exception of treasures, which aren't at all fun to grind out the rare ones.

For example, anything can be cheesed with decoy ----> reverse. Well, decoy is broken in any scenario, but that one especially. Bubble spell makes tanking a breeze. And if using trial mode, the game is a breeze throughout.

[Zanarkin]

3 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

Wait, that game was hard?

Try the struggle for freedom mod! It is a mod that rebalances the entire game and makes it more challenging and interesting. It also changes some spells and techniques to make them more useful. For example Renew is now insta-cast, while still keeping its insane cost.

 

Quote

Oh also, air ships feature heavily into the plot and aesthetic of the game, yet the game arbitrarily doesn't give you an airship of your own to use until near the very end despite a character in your party owning one and the game already having a perfectly fine in lore justification for it not to be able to fly everywhere until later points of the game. It absolutely could and should have been implemented as a fast travel option long before you get it.

Teleport stones are not that hard to get. Bats drop them like candy. And they are also rather cheap. Thats your fast travel option. Airships are basically that but completely free.

 

Also, the original game was meant to be beaten with a guide I'm pretty sure. Most of the really good equipment is hidden in chests that no one would be checking. Or certain vendors changing their wares and having more useful stuff later. Honestly who would have gone right back to the start of the barheim passage to go talk to the merchant again... 😕 Not to mention their bazaar is quite useful but if you don't know what to sell most of the stuff you can get will be quite underpowered for that time in the story.

 

Also Espers are one of those things that are hard at first, but once you know what they do they are a cakewalk. Except Zodiark. Dude just sneezes and boom 50% of death

Edited January 14, 2021 by Zanarkin

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Yeah, why didn't they incorporate airships? I didn't get far enough in the game to see them. But "they wait really long before giving you the airship" feels like a valid criticism of...every Final Fantasy game with the lone exception of 3.

My playthrough of FF12  almost 10 years ago got pretty far. My party was around level 40. I think I just got bored. Maybe I'll nab the zodiac age one of these days and give it another shot. From what I remember, I loved the gameplay. I like buffing before a fight, so that buff spells don't take up precious space in the gambit menu. I liked tweaking my boss fight or "generic enemy" gambits throughout the game as my spells got more varied. And if something just wasn't going right, you can take manual control of your party members. Back on PS2, FF12 seemed perhaps too complicated, especially since you're inundated with hundreds of equipment pieces and spells, but I've played other RPGs with similar battle systems and they just seem inferior to FF12's mix of pre-battle strategy and potential to adapt to a bad situation by allowing the player to take the reigns. So my opinion of FF12 has grown higher over the years not by playing it, but by playing its pretenders. FF13 really tried to simplify it with its auto-battle only framework and cutting down on how many moves there are to manage, but it was missing core features, like being able to switch which party member is the leader in battle. Or just allowing the player to freely create a paradigm on the fly rather than being stuck with whatever's equipped before battle. Pre-battle prep is such a big deal in that game, that even random enemies have a free restart option for when you realize you're screwed partway through.

The license system of character progression is still very funny to me though. Whaddya mean I got to have a license to wear a hat!?

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Almost finished Final Fantasy XII, but it was continually frustrating and disappointing. Eventually, I gave up at the second to last dungeon I believe, whose idea was it to give enemies an ailment you can't cure with items until after it is completed? Zodiac Job System was a great lie, having MP annoyed me, and things never quite clicked. How sad it was, to learn my high point with the game was the title screen where the music made me want to shed tears of nostalgic joy. I had gone in with such hopes.... 

I'm not sure what status you mean, but I'm guessing it's Disease, which can't be cured by Esuna and needs its special Cleanse spell. The really annoying thing about that is that it's found in one chest in an optional late game area with a 25% chance of spawning. Having important items be randomly spawned isn't something I like, but I can tolerate it for the highest level equipment in the game that verge on easter eggs to get. But the fact that they do it with several spells in this game is quite annoying. It's not my fault I don't find these things when I check these areas. I just need to check them twice -_-

Disease can also be cured my remedy if you have the right License though.

10 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

Wait, that game was hard?

Jokes aside, i won't say much on the story since alot of that is purely preference, but the gameplay is more than generous, with the exception of treasures, which aren't at all fun to grind out the rare ones.

For example, anything can be cheesed with decoy ----> reverse. Well, decoy is broken in any scenario, but that one especially. Bubble spell makes tanking a breeze. And if using trial mode, the game is a breeze throughout.

Yeah I was going to bring that up but I thought the OP was getting a bit to prolix. Reverse is hilariously broken. Although as a strategy it only really applies to the elite marks and stuff as you're not going to get it until you've done most of the hunts by which point you're already far stronger than anything in the story. Though Reverse Motes do exist. I think that might have been how I beat Zeromus (though instead of decoy it was literally Ashe by herself slugging spells).

7 hours ago, Zanarkin said:

Try the struggle for freedom mod! It is a mod that rebalances the entire game and makes it more challenging and interesting. It also changes some spells and techniques to make them more useful. For example Renew is now insta-cast, while still keeping its insane cost.

 

Teleport stones are not that hard to get. Bats drop them like candy. And they are also rather cheap. Thats your fast travel option. Airships are basically that but completely free.

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Yeah, why didn't they incorporate airships? I didn't get far enough in the game to see them. But "they wait really long before giving you the airship" feels like a valid criticism of...every Final Fantasy game with the lone exception of 3.

Oh yeah the game has a very useful quick travel function. My complaint isn't that there's no quick travel. It's that the quick travel isn't via an airship. Now this wouldn't be something that bothered me as much if A) Balthier didn't own an airship that you actively use in the story near the start of the game to travel and B) The game didn't have an already perfectly valid excuse as to why the airship can't fly every where (place airships can't fly and steadily increasingly powerful technology that is getting around that limitation). {and I guess you can also throw in C) the artificial main character is airshipsexual and learning to fly it is meant to be this big thing for him but apparently it all happens off screen} But instead of actually letting me use the airship I own, those excuses for not using it in the plot also apply to me not being able to use it for any general travel. The gameplay doesn't require an airship because it has gate crystals (which incidentally also means when you do get the airship it's pretty useless as there are gate crystals everywhere), but it bugs me when a game gives me something in canon but then neglects to let me use it at all in gameplay until an arbitrary point in the game. In otherwards, the Strahl is Ragnell in Path of Radiance. Only they actually tell you you have it early on and still don't let you use it.

7 hours ago, Zanarkin said:

Also Espers are one of those things that are hard at first, but once you know what they do they are a cakewalk. Except Zodiark. Dude just sneezes and boom 50% of death

Zodiark I actually didn't find that hard at all as by the time you're able to fight him you're already at end game and have beaten all the other espers (and gotten excalibur from Ultima) so you have a party strong enough party to handle him. Which also translates to he goes down pretty easily to Reverse and Scathe cheese.

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

The license system of character progression is still very funny to me though. Whaddya mean I got to have a license to wear a hat!?

I'm surprised there was never any "Arcadia's taking away our guns!" memes popping out. Given that this game also has guns, and thus gun regulation.

Edited January 14, 2021 by Jotari

[Zapp Branniglenn]

46 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I'm surprised there was never any "Arcadia's taking away our guns!" memes popping out. Given that this game also has guns, and thus gun regulation.

Oh wow, my dumb teenager brain somehow never even thought of that.

"Final Fantasy 12 has stricter gun regulation than 21st century America" is a juicy take.

[Lightcosmo]

The one thing that annoys me in FFXII Is that stats dont generally make a difference besides magic. Like, what does speed do? And I've raised strength to max and it doesnt do much compared to a character with 50. Like, cmon Square.

Not counting power and defence, obviously since those are useful.

[Jotari]

8 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

The one thing that annoys me in FFXII Is that stats dont generally make a difference besides magic. Like, what does speed do? And I've raised strength to max and it doesnt do much compared to a character with 50. Like, cmon Square.

Not counting power and defence, obviously since those are useful.

Since there's no real way to raise individual stats beyond levelling, I don't have much to say on the value of each stat, but I can say that different weapons scale their damage off of different stats. So the reason strength might not be doing anything is because the weapons your using literally don't take strength as a factor (while some other weapons do indeed take strength as a factor). Now how you're meant to know this I haven't the faintest since it doesn't mention them in the weapons description. Maybe on the help menu somewhere, but even if they do do that they should mention it when you first start getting different weapons and whenever you're equipping weapons. Even knowing the weapons work this way I couldn't tell you what does what off hand. Just that katanas use both speed and magic, guns ignore enemy defense (and I'm not sure if it uses any units stat at all or if it's like FE1 tomes and basically deal set damage) and hand bombs deal ranzomized damage (within an upper and lower limit I imagine).

[Lightcosmo]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Since there's no real way to raise individual stats beyond levelling, I don't have much to say on the value of each stat, but I can say that different weapons scale their damage off of different stats. So the reason strength might not be doing anything is because the weapons your using literally don't take strength as a factor (while some other weapons do indeed take strength as a factor). Now how you're meant to know this I haven't the faintest since it doesn't mention them in the weapons description. Maybe on the help menu somewhere, but even if they do do that they should mention it when you first start getting different weapons and whenever you're equipping weapons. Even knowing the weapons work this way I couldn't tell you what does what off hand. Just that katanas use both speed and magic, guns ignore enemy defense (and I'm not sure if it uses any units stat at all or if it's like FE1 tomes and basically deal set damage) and hand bombs deal ranzomized damage (within an upper and lower limit I imagine).

Well, I know for a fact 1H swords go off strength formula. Sure the weapons inherent attack power makes a difference, but the strength stat doesnt add to it properly. 

I can say that Daggers and Ninja Swords do get extra damage with more speed, but not much. Maybe that's the issue, the difference isn't noticable enough. 

Ah well, wouldnt be the first time they couldn't code a stat to work right!

Edited January 15, 2021 by lightcosmo

[Jotari]

27 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

Well, I know for a fact 1H swords go off strength formula. Sure the weapons inherent attack power makes a difference, but the strength stat doesnt add to it properly. 

I can say that Daggers and Ninja Swords do get extra damage with more speed, but not much. Maybe that's the issue, the difference isn't noticable enough. 

Ah well, wouldnt be the first time they couldn't code a stat to work right!

Indeed! Final Fantasy VI's accuracy not working making the blind status just a pair of cool shades is particularly notable. And they somehow never managed to implement the ignored crit rate on weapons in Final Fantasy I even when they remaked it several times. Instead crit is determined by a weapon's index number. Meaning all the lower level weapons have virtually no crit and all the end game weapons have super high crit completely offsetting the balance.

[Interdimensional Observer]

On 1/14/2021 at 6:26 PM, Jotari said:

I'm not sure what status you mean, but I'm guessing it's Disease, which can't be cured by Esuna and needs its special Cleanse spell. The really annoying thing about that is that it's found in one chest in an optional late game area with a 25% chance of spawning. Having important items be randomly spawned isn't something I like, but I can tolerate it for the highest level equipment in the game that verge on easter eggs to get. But the fact that they do it with several spells in this game is quite annoying. It's not my fault I don't find these things when I check these areas. I just need to check them twice -_-

Disease can also be cured my remedy if you have the right License though.

Correct on it being Disease. Apparently the Bubble buff negates it, except to get that, I needed to kill a bunch of Marks to get it to appear in a shop. Except, I tried a Mark or two early on, got pulverized, and by this late point in the game, I didn't want to travel around anymore! The Teleport Stones were such a dated idea to me too, even if they were buyable at a point, I felt I was usually short on Gil in this game. And why should I need a consumable at all for quick travel, what is the reason for that over it being totally free? I almost never quick traveled because of this. Back to Disease- why doesn't the ailment wear off once you've been KO'ed like the great majority of them in JRPGs? And maybe I could've tried running around and away the Malboros, which expectably wouldn't be easy in the dungeon setting, except FFXII took a little too long to successfully flee from enemies, even when outdoors in a big open area.

I hadn't the slightest modicum of interest in getting the optional summons and skipped them all. I never used summons, nor Quickenings, which went unlearned because I wasn't sure which of the four board tiles I should leave unlearned, even though this latest rendition of the game lets me reset the entire board system at any time at no cost.

It wasn't one thing that sunk FFXII for me, it was many little things that for some reason were irritating. It almost makes me want to say this game is story > gameplay. Except for the fact when I was told the tomb was like halfway into the story, I was in total disbelief, because it didn't feel like I had been having a weighty adventure at all, I could've bought the notion I was a quarter of the way in, but half? Nope.

-Not like I ever wanted things to work out this way, they just unfortunately did. What I wanted, was a good fun class-centric experience like FFTA/2 or FFV or BravelyD/S. Thats peak FF gameplay to me.

 

On 1/14/2021 at 9:05 PM, lightcosmo said:

The one thing that annoys me in FFXII Is that stats dont generally make a difference besides magic. Like, what does speed do? And I've raised strength to max and it doesnt do much compared to a character with 50. Like, cmon Square.

Doesn't this sorta make sense with a Hard Mode that locks everyone into being level 1 for the entire game. If the stats you can level were too important, I'm not sure this would be possible.

 

On 1/14/2021 at 7:15 PM, Glennstavos said:

Oh wow, my dumb teenager brain somehow never even thought of that.

"Final Fantasy 12 has stricter gun regulation than 21st century America" is a juicy take.

Is the License Board system something that is sufficiently woven into the game's narrative though? I know it was created by Square because the Judges suggested laws were so important in Ivalice, but I don't recall the License system being anything more than a gameplay mechanic. If the License Boards were something that was seriously integrated into the game's world, the way Laws and Law and Antilaw Cards in FFTA were, then I'd expect the game's early battles vs. Judges would be over with in a minute because the evil Judge used the "Unregistration" command to instantly strip the heroes of all their Licenses.

 

On 1/14/2021 at 4:27 PM, Glennstavos said:

Yeah, why didn't they incorporate airships? I didn't get far enough in the game to see them. But "they wait really long before giving you the airship" feels like a valid criticism of...every Final Fantasy game with the lone exception of 3.

I'd add FFIV to the exceptions, the first airship comes online at a fairly reasonable time. You might say "Oh, but the trip to Mist!", thats literally the first thing in the game, gotta teach you to walk places to start, even if it's logical the game could let you airship to there before denying it afterwards until Cagnazzo's slaying. Since Baron has all the airships in the game, the lore makes sense.

FFXII had a serious "why do repairs from one explosion take so long?????" issue. Which is egregious by FF airship delay standards. "Loooooooore!" usually "excuses" the rest, and is a stronger one.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

12 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Correct on it being Disease. Apparently the Bubble buff negates it, except to get that, I needed to kill a bunch of Marks to get it to appear in a shop. Except, I tried a Mark or two early on, got pulverized, and by this late point in the game, I didn't want to travel around anymore! The Teleport Stones were such a dated idea to me too, even if they were buyable at a point, I felt I was usually short on Gil in this game. And why should I need a consumable at all for quick travel, what is the reason for that over it being totally free? I almost never quick traveled because of this. Back to Disease- why doesn't the ailment wear off once you've been KO'ed like the great majority of them in JRPGs? And maybe I could've tried running around and away the Malboros, which expectably wouldn't be easy in the dungeon setting, except FFXII took a little too long to successfully flee from enemies, even when outdoors in a big open area.

I hadn't the slightest modicum of interest in getting the optional summons and skipped them all. I never used summons, nor Quickenings, which went unlearned because I wasn't sure which of the four board tiles I should leave unlearned, even though this latest rendition of the game lets me reset the entire board system at any time at no cost.

It wasn't one thing that sunk FFXII for me, it was many little things that for some reason were irritating. It almost makes me want to say this game is story > gameplay. Except for the fact when I was told the tomb was like halfway into the story, I was in total disbelief, because it didn't feel like I had been having a weighty adventure at all, I could've bought the notion I was a quarter of the way in, but half? Nope.

-Not like I ever wanted things to work out this way, they just unfortunately did. What I wanted, was a good fun class-centric experience like FFTA/2 or FFV or BravelyD/S. Thats peak FF gameplay to me.

 

Doesn't this sorta make sense with a Hard Mode that locks everyone into being level 1 for the entire game. If the stats you can level were too important, I'm not sure this would be possible.

 

Is the License Board system something that is sufficiently woven into the game's narrative though? I know it was created by Square because the Judges suggested laws were so important in Ivalice, but I don't recall the License system being anything more than a gameplay mechanic. If the License Boards were something that was seriously integrated into the game's world, the way Laws and Law and Antilaw Cards in FFTA were, then I'd expect the game's early battles vs. Judges would be over with in a minute because the evil Judge used the "Unregistration" command to instantly strip the heroes of all their Licenses.

 

I'd add FFIV to the exceptions, the first airship comes online at a fairly reasonable time. You might say "Oh, but the trip to Mist!", thats literally the first thing in the game, gotta teach you to walk places to start, even if it's logical the game could let you airship to there before denying it afterwards until Cagnazzo's slaying. Since Baron has all the airships in the game, the lore makes sense.

FFXII had a serious "why do repairs from one explosion take so long?????" issue. Which is egregious by FF airship delay standards. "Loooooooore!" usually "excuses" the rest, and is a stronger one.

That's another thing I would have said before, that it does a better job than most to make money a resource worth considering. So many RPGs and Final Fantasys in particular make money essentially infinite. Aside from maybe one late game super purchase you almost always have more than enough money than you need. This time however I had a gambit "Foe: Hp=100; Steal" so I was constantly stealing from enemies essentially doubling my loot gained and thus removing all money problems. So while I ended up in a money situation like other Final Fantasy games, I do think it better designed in terms of money handling given I had to take extra actions to earn that Gil (it also makes more sense in terms of logic given you get loot from enemies which you sell rather than every inhuman monster in the world and even other universes carrying the same currency).

[Zapp Branniglenn]

16 hours ago, Jotari said:

That's another thing I would have said before, that it does a better job than most to make money a resource worth considering. So many RPGs and Final Fantasys in particular make money essentially infinite. Aside from maybe one late game super purchase you almost always have more than enough money than you need. This time however I had a gambit "Foe: Hp=100; Steal" so I was constantly stealing from enemies essentially doubling my loot gained and thus removing all money problems. So while I ended up in a money situation like other Final Fantasy games, I do think it better designed in terms of money handling given I had to take extra actions to earn that Gil (it also makes more sense in terms of logic given you get loot from enemies which you sell rather than every inhuman monster in the world and even other universes carrying the same currency).

I'm often looking out for this balance too when playing an RPG. Super Mario RPG was a recent replay, and you hit the maximum of 999 coins so quickly. One dungeon in particular, the sunken ship, will max you out on its own due to the abundance of 100 coin blocks. The only big thing to spend money on is more fireworks (500 a piece), which make for an inconsequential bonus to the ending graphics. Equipment upgrades are never very expensive, even at the end. I think 21st century rpgs are generally better about money balance than NES/SNES era, though in the last ten years of rpgs, it's more like money is just one of many resources that one must manage between crafting/cooking materials that are all equally important for character progression and pre-battle prep.

[Lightcosmo]

On 1/16/2021 at 9:05 AM, Interdimensional Observer said:

Doesn't this sorta make sense with a Hard Mode that locks everyone into being level 1 for the entire game. If the stats you can level were too important, I'm not sure this would be possible.

 

 

Then why am I buying heavy armor to wear? For the strength bonus that doesnt really add to my damage output? Just seems dumb to me. 

And I don't think they balanced it around hard mode, as levels dont really affect much anyways except magic and HP. Sure it gives MP, but equipment can remedy that easily.

[Zanarkin]

On 1/18/2021 at 8:21 PM, lightcosmo said:

Then why am I buying heavy armor to wear? For the strength bonus that doesnt really add to my damage output? Just seems dumb to me. 

And I don't think they balanced it around hard mode, as levels dont really affect much anyways except magic and HP. Sure it gives MP, but equipment can remedy that easily.

In normal playthroughs i think it is mainly for the defense stat since Heavy armor tends to offer the best Physical defense. Plus the bonus stats might not seem significant, but it does offer some change, like if using a weapon that uses str purely in its damage calc and you have 100 atk power against an enemy with 50 defense,

Assuming the character caps strength (99) using the grand helm (+12 bonus to Str in Zodiac age) and is at lvl 1 you'll do the following amount of damage:

Lowest roll: 1984

Highest: 2479

Without the Helm:

Lowest: 1545

Highest: 1932

So at most the extra bonus strength is a difference of ~1000 damage. At worst the difference is 52 HP. Since the damage is random this might not amount to much in the general course of the game, but in fights like Yiazmat and the other high HP dragon, you'll absolutely want to maximize your output as that is likely to matter a lot more then. I'm curious to see how this might affect average battle time against Yiazmat and shit, but I don't know enough about probability and how this would look like in a prolongued battle scenario and I'm too lazy to learn it.

I should note characters are not going to max str at level 1. This was merely done to see limits.

Out of curiosity, as your level increases the gap between max stat and not maxed increases by quite a bit:

With helmet at lvl 99:

Lowest: 3879

Highest: 4848

Without Helmet at lvl 99:

Lowest: 3211

Highest: 4013

 

So overall the difference can be fairly significant, specially as your level and att power of your weapon grows. However the randomness of damage calculations can make the difference seem non-existent and confirmation bias can make that worse.

[Lightcosmo]

On 1/20/2021 at 1:47 PM, Zanarkin said:

In normal playthroughs i think it is mainly for the defense stat since Heavy armor tends to offer the best Physical defense. Plus the bonus stats might not seem significant, but it does offer some change, like if using a weapon that uses str purely in its damage calc and you have 100 atk power against an enemy with 50 defense,

Assuming the character caps strength (99) using the grand helm (+12 bonus to Str in Zodiac age) and is at lvl 1 you'll do the following amount of damage:

Lowest roll: 1984

Highest: 2479

Without the Helm:

Lowest: 1545

Highest: 1932

So at most the extra bonus strength is a difference of ~1000 damage. At worst the difference is 52 HP. Since the damage is random this might not amount to much in the general course of the game, but in fights like Yiazmat and the other high HP dragon, you'll absolutely want to maximize your output as that is likely to matter a lot more then. I'm curious to see how this might affect average battle time against Yiazmat and shit, but I don't know enough about probability and how this would look like in a prolongued battle scenario and I'm too lazy to learn it.

I should note characters are not going to max str at level 1. This was merely done to see limits.

Out of curiosity, as your level increases the gap between max stat and not maxed increases by quite a bit:

With helmet at lvl 99:

Lowest: 3879

Highest: 4848

Without Helmet at lvl 99:

Lowest: 3211

Highest: 4013

 

So overall the difference can be fairly significant, specially as your level and att power of your weapon grows. However the randomness of damage calculations can make the difference seem non-existent and confirmation bias can make that worse.

So from what i see, it hardly makes enough of a difference really. Now magic on the other hand, i can notice the difference easily.