Final Fantasy XII U.S. Demo

Tim Butler writes "1UP has posted a massive blowout on the U.S. demo of Final Fantasy XII that ships with Dragon Quest VIII next week. They're definitely impressed, saying 'This is not the old-school Final Fantasy action you've come to expect -- but the trade-off is a fast-paced, combat-intensive game with a vast, contiguous world and danger on all sides.'"

Comments

Stopped caring

[faloi]

I haven't worried about Final Fantasy in a while. I played FFX, and got tired and bore of the whole thing. A long gaming experience shouldn't be that way because one has to walk mindlessly through the one path available for number of hours. FFXI was better in terms of a game experience, but then it has to be because it's a MMORPG. If FFXII is going to be the worst of both worlds, I don't need it. Without more information, I just don't care.

It's probably great if that's the kind of game you like to play, but I like the illusion of having some choices on how to proceed in a game.

Re:Stopped caring

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the illusion of having some choices on how to proceed in a game.

Exactly! Morrowind rocked my world once I got used to it, since there were SO MANY choices, and I'm dying to get its sequel, but I could not stand FFVII or FFX for just the reason you explained. FFI at least seemed interesting enough to want to explore, Dragon Warrior I would let me roam almost the whole map from the beginning of the game, but FFVII and since feel like I'm having my hand held, and the only real danger in the game comes in the form of boss battles, and not even all of those are very difficult. And cut-scenes galore keep interrupting my fun as if the developers are telling me "No! Stop imagining on your own! THIS is what you are supposed to get out of this game! There is only one story here, and you may only get out of this game what we give you."

Re:Stopped caring

[jchenx]

Wow, Morrowind's openness is exactly why I DIDN'T like the game, and prefer "hold my hand" traditional RPGs (FF-series, Xenosaga, etc.). Those games are supposed to wrap you up in the story so much that you want to see what's next. The choices that you ARE allowed to make are generally restricted to how you want to develop your characters' skills. Granted, if the plot doesn't intrigue you in the first place, then yeah, I definately see it becoming a chore.

With Morrowind, I felt like I was given no direction at all. Not that its a bad design or anything, since obviously a lot of people prefer that type of game.

Re:Stopped caring

[Reapy]

A lot of gamers are very specific in what they like. My wallot is cursed by my enjoyment of them all.

I loved all the elder scrolls games for their openness and ability to do what you wanted. I actually never followed the main plot in any of those games but clocked many hours to them.

I also loved final fantasy for its ability to tell me a great story and presnet it very cinimatically for me. In the newer ff's, the cut scenes were a great reward for me when i finally go to one, as I have always enjoyed squares ability to render a good movie.

The are both two different games, and no one is forcing either of you to buy or read about the other. But nobody is stopping you from sharing your opinions either :) Share on :)

androgynously delicious

[xenomouse]

Is it just me or are the main characters in each new FF slowing morphing into a single gender?
(maybe with exception to FFIX, which had a conquistador and a rastafarian it it)

Re:androgynously delicious

[Big Sean O]

About a year back, I brought home a copy of Final Fantasy X (my first excursion into the FF series) and described the box to my wife as "the one with Meg Ryan on the cover".

MMORPG-ishness

[Spleener12]

The resemblence of the system to an MMORPG is entirely coincidental- MMORPGs happen to have real-time battles on the same screens that the players explore, that's all.

Remember, the whole reason why RPGs had battle transitions in the first place is because the technology wasn't there for them to make the battles look as pretty as they wanted to on the same screens that the players explored (imagine FF1 if the battles took place on the map screens. Now imagine FF1 if you walked on the map with the same character sprites you had in combat. Get the idea?) It's an abstraction that we don't need anymore, so they got rid of it, since keeping tradition for the sake of tradition is just retarded.

Re:MMORPG-ishness

[jeblucas]

There's a point at which "tradition" becomes branding. Everyone that's played a Final Fantasy game knows there's battle transitions. It was for technical reasons before, no it's for branding. If there wasn't this transition, we'd start to compare Final Fantasy to a zillion other games that let you walk around and collect crap and attack wee beasties...and it might come up short. Final Fantasy's characters and stories have been all over the place, so there's no brand continuity there--all they have is the name, some consistant lingo (gil, etc), and certain play characteristics--like battle transitions.

Re:MMORPG-ishness

[bateleur]

Branding might be the reason for battle transitions, but it definitely isn't this which stops FF being compared to things. ...because FF does get compared to things constantly. The series is the benchmark against which PS2 RPGs are judged. Many of the individual games in the series are flawed in various ways, but still nothing else really comes close. Love it or hate it, FF almost defines a genre of its own.

Stupid Blurb

[Rocketship Underpant]

What the heck is a "massive blowout"? Did 1UP explode? Argh ... let's use words with meaning, Slashdot editors.

Re:From a Dragon Quest fan

[jclast]

Why do these HTML articles have more than one page anyway? We're not reading a magazine with physical pages.

hahaha

[Joe the Lesser]

"In fact, all the skills featured in the demo should be familiar to FF veterans. The one exception is the summon Hasmal's groaningly named skill Roxxor, about which the less said the better."

That's priceless.