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Final Fantasy XII Combat Info
1up.com has a few precious details on the combat system to be used in Final Fantasy XII. From the article: "The semi-realtime, semi-ATB battle system of FFXII is finally sounding like it's got some real depth now as these new features are coming to light. First of all, a "Chain" system has been revealed. Basically when you keep attacking enemies of the same race without killing enemies of a different race in between, your Chain counter increase. Increasing the counter will lead to getting better and even rare items from the enemies as they fall."
That sounds awesome. I can't wait to tr
y out this new ATB/random-combo stuff when the game c
omes out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Even game kid could make random, error-riddled posts better than that--no wait, I AM game kid, and I MADE that parent post...*shudder* I suck at posting.
Cue the "We knew that, game kid" posts...
--game kid
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Then, repeat the process.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Duh. That's the point.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I can see the Congressional hearings now on FFXII promoting race-based violence.
You don't have to play the game like that. In fact, it's often more enjoyable and challenging to try to speed through the game, with minimal "grinding." Most of the FF games don't require you to be anywhere near max level to beat the final boss. Side quests and optional bosses, though, are another story.
I honestly have liked the random battle system. It keeps it interesting. As long as they give me a flyable air-ship instead of the point and click system in FFX, I will be happy.
The random battles can add a lot of depth in the mini-games (such as the Monster Arena in FFX). Every change Square makes to the FF series is always met with hesitation, but they listen to their fans and if it sucks not having random battles, then it will be changed.
I'm looking forward to a new installment, random battles or no.
The last "grind" I had to face in an FF game was the entirety of FFVIII, since I had a compulsive need to stock 100 of each new magic for everyone.
I can't remember the last time I had to grind solely for Gil or XP, and I've just finished up FFVI, FFVII, and (almost) FFIV Hard-type--admittedly, the latter's getting hard now that I'm on the Moon... but, hey, that's what "fast forward" is for.
The FF grinds I've seen tend to be for rare items or Blue Magic. I guess FFIX's "do this 1000 times to get a more powerful skill" gimmick counts, but I only did that for Freya, and it was only 100 dragons (and I was most of the way there by the time I needed Dragon's Crest to do major damage).
Unless, of course, you mean the original FF.
I think "precious" is a bit far to go in describing the tidbits of information offered us by this post.
The 6-hit-combo thingie the article mentions seems to be just their tried-and-true "critical hit" system with some extra graphics... The hit combos were in FF1, by the way. I believe one could, with luck and a good weapon, get anywhere between one and six hits.
The new shield-guarding ability? They've had an "eva" (evade) stat since FF1 and introduced the shield as the primary blocker in FF6.
The enemy-fighting-enemy flair could add quite a bit to the game, though. After gamers erupted with joy in response to scenes of Covenant and Flood battling it out before their eyes in Halo, we've seen a new resurgence of this "I'm not the only one doing all the fighting" addition to games.
[Not to say that Halo invented the idea, of course. They were just the first, IMHO, to do it breathtakingly in these latest graphical environments.]
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
The chaining sounds like how parties gain exp. I'm not sure I like the idea of monsters fighting other monsters. It sounds amusing to watch. Although, if you can't train monsters onto others it becomes the annoying kill stealing, loot denying mob. I'm pretty sure they arn't going to have monsters loot other monsters.
What I'm looking forward to in FF12, is if and how they will handle airship battles.
You know, I did that too for some reason. I don't know why, as it was rather unnecessary and tedious, but I felt compelled. (Although I didn't do it for "everybody", just for three, and then transfered all the magic when I changed party members).
I remember in FFVIII how easy it was to get to level 99 very quickly. As soon as you can reach the islands closest to Heaven and Hell, just have someone cast Aura on Squall and have him unleash his limit break. Since the monsters there are always lv.99 and it always takes only 1000 experience points to level up, you could get to level 99 pretty damn quick compared to most FF games.
This sounds like a modified version of various FFXI mechanics (which isn't much suprise). In FFXI, you can get "Exp chains", which means if you kill things fast with little delay, you get bonus experience on the kill. (This only counts for things at or greater than your level.) The required time between kills goes down the more you kill, making it harder to keep them up, and the amount of exp you get eventually caps at 200-350, but it sounds vaguely similar. Different incentive (items vs exp), but it makes more sense in a 1-player RPG that way.
What would be cool is if they keep Skillchains. This is one thing that makes FFXI battles cool: if you use weapon skills in the right sequence, you do additional damage with neat effects. (You can even toss the right spell on the end for a magic burst for even more damage.) It helps encourage coordination between players, and it really helps. Good parties with the right skillchains do a lot better than those without.
If FFXII has some of these battle mechanics, expect a lot more depth. Since they're doing the .hack-style command-your-allies rather than traditional select-everyone's-action, it has a lot of potential. With the recent NPC-friend feature in FFXI (which apparently is working quite well), they may already be experimenting with these mechanics in production.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
yeah FFVIII was the only one I've had a level 99 game in aside from tactics.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
FFX: Dodging lightning bolts. Took about a half-hour of straight play doing the SAME THING, 200 times. You had to press X right after the screen flashed. If you messed up, you got to start all over again.
:-)
Anyway, this game sounds like it will be taking a lot of things from Final Farming XI - sorry, Final Fantasy XI, one of which will be inane farming for pointless items. Yay.
Final Fantasy XI's combat system sucked - the less FFXII has in common with it, the better. Anything that requires something this complicated to fully use is a bad thing.
The thing that really sucks is that while Final Fantasy XI was a terrible game, I really liked the world it was set up in. It had so much potential, but the gameplay just made it so painful. I'm really afraid that FFXII will wind up the same way.
Oh well - I'm not gonna be getting it on release. I'll let other people play guinea pig on this one.
Looks like the series is still dead for us SNES nostalgics. Chain combos? How about a game without FMV's, a solid storyline, and limited treadmilling? I'm not a hamster, you know.
I did that whole cursed ring thing in FFVI. I don't remember exactly, but this ring gave you every status ailment, but if you fought 255 battles with it, it transformed into something better. (I combined al those fights I needed with getting Gau more Rages on the Veldt.)
I agree with your post, but I just wanted to take this off on a tangent.
What did you think of FF8? I loved the story and the characters - I thought it was a breath of fresh air for the FF series to have a game that more or less revolved around the romance. But I absolutely *loathed* the GF/Junction system.
I could get most characters their best/second-best weapon before the end of Disc 1. Refining Tents into Curaga, you could get insane amounts of hit points early on. And because all your stats were linked to your spells, it was a *disadavantage* to cast spells from your stock, and I very rarely did.
So, was just wondering what your opinion was, as someone else who played 8 all the way through.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I think I'm more pissed they're going back to ATB. Don't get me wrong, I loves some old school FFs, but I really liked it when they went to fully turned based in FFX.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Agreed...I hate leveling, and it's not really necessary if you use decent strategy when fighting. However I do save in doubles, flipping back in forth, just in case I do need to do a little leveling to beat someone.
;)
Although I will admit for example that the end boss in FF6 took me forever to beat with the my level 60-ish characters, while my wife whipped him real quick with all here level 99 guys
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
The problem with FFXI isn't the gameplay; that works perfectly well. Skillchains aren't complex; you don't need the entire chart to find one, and there are people who have set up programs to produce them if you give the weapons in the group. I'm unable to give linkage, but if you look around enough, you can find them.
Getting back to gameplay, it's major problem is the same thing you'll run into with any MMORPG. This is the existence of other people. You find it in all of them, from EQ to UO, from AO to WoW. The existence of other people means that in that group you will have people who grasp game mechanics and such well, to those that don't. You'll have some of the nicest folks on earth, to people who are totally shitfaced assholes. I love the game, but by and large, find myself hating a good portion of my fellow players as I start getting into the higher levels. Looking at your complaints, I think that's your issue also.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
"Basically when you keep attacking enemies of the same race without killing enemies of a different race in between, your Chain counter increase."
Having to train on the same monster endlessly has now become a feature>/i>. Are they just trying to cash in on MMORPG training strategies?
The enemy vs. enemy fighting looks to be pretty cool, I'm looking forward to camping their kills for loot.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You mean like if I keep picking white victims rather than mixing between victims who are black and white? Are we sure we really want to see games like this?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Why would you want to do all that lightning dodging? I can't imagine any reward (short of a good sum of money. Real life money, that is) worth doing something that boring.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I actually like FF VIII. The juntioning system was broken, but it was interesting. And it was still possible to play the game as it was intended. One just had to be conscious not to abuse the system and power your party up via junctioning.
e2 | LJ
I was at the same time _afraid_ and _compelled_ to level up.
I was scared of leveling up, because that meant the whole entire game was going to get harder from there on out. I had to wonder if there wasn't some point I would reach where I was too high in level without the corresponding support of good junctions, weapons, and items, and so wouldn't be able to proceed without a whole lot of backtracking or searching for stuff. Having a limited supply of Gil didn't help matters, because I was afraid to buy anything I didn't absolutely need.
Of course, I was compelled to level up because, well, I sorta enjoyed the random battles. Yes, I know, I'm one of those FF fanboys who likes a backwards and retarded system, but sometimes it's enjoyable for me to run around for a few minutes and beat some things up. Besides that, I never seriously considered trying one of those "low XP" games which are more possible in FFVIII than any other FF game, I imagine. That, and level progress is just one of those things that you expect from an RPG, especially one where you traditionally want to be a high level character.
That's why they just removed access to that feature. It's on the disc though; it needs a patch from a hard-to-find place--like the Web or something.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
In FF1 I thought the 'G' after the price was another zero (really old TV) so I kept saving and saving to buy Nuke and was ready to do the same for asskick white magic spell too, but when I purchases nuke my gold barly went down. I figured out I was a dumbass and then baught everything I could and went to fight Chaos. My level 40 something characters (max was 50) beat him in 3.5 rounds.
I remember thinking the hardest part was the air tower where I was continually ganked by 5 air elements in a maze (before massive gold/leveling too).
Anyway, high level makes it very easy.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Oh, hell. I never finished FFVIII. I got to Disc 4 and put it down because of that Time Compression nonsense.
In the last two years I've played through:
...and I'm currently working through V. Final Fantasy VIII was quite possibly the worst turn-based RPG I've ever played. I had trouble with the final boss and after looking at a few strategies online, I realized I missed out on a very powerful and important GF earlier in the game.
Final Fantasy: Tactics Advance
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy I
Final Fantasy II
Final Fantasy IV
Could I exit and go get it? No. I was trapped in the "endgame" world. I actually bought a used GameCodeSharkBreaker thing to finish it. I'd never used one before and I felt kind of cheap doing so. In my opinion, that's a serious case of terrible game balance.
If you could be anything you want, I'll bet you'd be disappointed.
Me too. I don't like twitch games and it's not fun for me to feel "under pressure" in combat. Sometimes I like to pause and think.
The turn-based combat system was one of the things that I liked best about FFX.
demi