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In Defense of FFXII
Next Generation has an article defending many of the somewhat 'controversial' decisions made in the design for the newest chapter in the Final Fantasy series. While it recieved a 40/40 from Famitsu, Final Fantasy XII has recieved some harsh criticisms for straying as far as it has from the Final Fantasy norm. From the article: "With Gambits turned on (and configured with just five minutes of commonsensical thought), battles go at least twenty times more quickly than in any other RPG. At their best, Final Fantasy XII's battles resemble rollicking fights in fantasy movies. The player merely directs his party through an area, freezing the action when he sees fit to make adjustments on the battle plan (stronger enemies appear, et cetera). This alone should be enough to qualify XII as a 'videogame.' The controller's vibration, for example, provides wonderful feedback. Yet players feel betrayed. They say, 'I want to press buttons.' They say, 'I don't want to watch my videogame.'"
Link to TFA?
I find it just a bit odd that Final Fantasy is seeming to be trending more towards the story aspects of the game, while the latest D&D isn't much more than a button masher.
Good for them!
The television will not be revolutionized.
Since when has the FF series ever been about gameplay?
Isn't it's major selling point the whole story line and cinematic visuals. Having played a few of the more recent ones I think this feature would be really beneficial when you get about 3/4 of the way through and spend hours tediously looking for fights to level up before the final battle.
Collector's Edition
Maybe it's time that the mainstream Final Fantasy games take a cue from FF Tactics, and add a little more strategy to the game. I wouldn't mind seeing a Zelda style, action oriented Final Fantasy game either.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I've played Grandia III and the battle system is superb. Classic turn-based, no "active battle system", but the battles are fluid and full of motion and strategy. The demo for FF XII seemed exactly as the quote described (although a link to the article would have been nice...): the game plays itself.
I like RPGs not just for the story, but for the challenge of beating some bad guys using some tactical thinking. The demo didn't offer any thinking. I'll watch a movie or read a book instead if there's no meaningful interaction with the game.
I think you forgot to "a href=."
People act like watching a video game is something new, when the Final Fantasy games have generally been more about bashing a button than thoughtful gameplay since at least FF6. Now-a-days you play FF for the story, and FF12 does nothing to make that any more or less true.
Rob
Is it just me, or has pretty much every FF game changed something major that pissed off the fanbase to no end until they played it and possibly found it groovy? People bitched and moaned about FFX's sphere grid and Blitzball, FFX2's lack of blitzball, FF7's steampunk-over-standard fantasty, FF9's standard-fantasy-over-steampunk, the dress-up, the card games, the battle systems, etc, etc, etc...
I'm an RPG fan in general, and a Final Fantasy fan in particular. I like some of them more than others. The one's I'm not much of a fan of - wait for it, this is the good bit, the bit with "+1 insightful" written all over it - I don't play with anymore.
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get your post in line at the bottom like everyone else who wants to post at +2
Here Is The Article
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
people will still buy Final Fantasy in record numbers and it will still be in the top three games purchased in Japan and Asia this year.
There's the game the critics want.
There's the game the designers want.
There's the game the marketers/vendors want.
My guess is the first game (critics) would be unplayable, the second game (designers) would be really cool but not break even, and the third game (marketers) would be totally unoriginal but have snippets that make you wish they did it right.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Way to go for promoting a comment on an editorial without any source link provided. */smacks Zonk with a large trout*
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
I think the critics have something correct to say. I absolutely hated KOTOR and found it completely unplayable due to the fact that it never felt like I was controlling the character. The controls for battle were completely disjointed from the on-screen action. If the new FF has the same schema, I think it really will alienate the die-hard fans. Of course, it could also help pick-up all those XBox players that made KOTOR game of the year . . .
Disclaimer: I've only ever played Final Fantasy VII, and I don't generally like RPGs.
So, I was thinking about the gambit system, and I have come to the conclusion that it sounds great. RPG combat (from what I've seen, and the games I've seen other people play) is not really a battle of brains, but situational timing. And so being able to program how I would play ahead of time, sounds pretty cool.
I wondered how much this would translate to MMO play. I decided it would make for a horrible game, where you just continually ran forwards and hoped your gambits didn't suck. But what if the gambits were perhaps meshed to a trading card battling type thingy? Maybe that's too geeky.
But if you could program a gambit system for World of Warcraft... I think it would be worryingly simple for some classes like the Rogue. This makes me question my whole love of WoW: why do I love something so very... repetitive? Guild chat and stuff is why I keep coming back, so maybe gambits *would* be better, then I could just sit in the chat room and see whether I live or die.
It's an interesting system, and I'll definitely give the game a rental when it arrives, just to see how it all plays out.
If you haven't noticed, Zonk, the signal to noise ratio for comments on your stories is very low; in other words, you really bring out the trolls. Remember Michael Sims? He had the same problem, and, uh, well - just ask Taco.
/. meme.
C'mon, man - I really don't want to create a ZONK IS A PYLON
In FFXI you start to see Enix's influence. Its a subtle change, most of FFXI is still very much a Squaresoft dominant game, but game elements like missions and the rank system are Enix influences.
FFXII is the first Single-Player FF game since the MMORPG was released. Square and Enix have settled into their new role as a combined company, thus ideas from both sides will unsurprisingly be incorporated into the game. So, future FF games will start to look like a cross between FF and Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest VIII is a darn good game and seeing some of the gaming conventions from DQ in FF will add to the game rather than ruin the experience. Future FF games will be very different from those we are more familiar with, but that's not a bad thing. I look forward to the future of FF.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Setting the strategy and watching rather than button-pounding is something I've been wishing more RPGs would do for AGES. Some of us have RSI and don't like doing pointless repetitive things. Hearing about this new battle style makes me want to play the game even though I lack a console...
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
It's about min-maxxing. It's about coming up with the best variety of skills, and using the strategy to beat the baddies. There are a couple of facets to jRPG gameplay. (Not just Final Fantasy, but everything in general)
#1. Setting up your characters in the right way for the situation at hand. Practically every jRPG since..FFV? Has featured some sort of ultra-involved and flexible character setup. Limiting it to FF series alone..it's about having the right Jobs, having the right Espers, having the right Materia, having the right Junctions, having the right Abilities, or having the right Gambits equipped.
#2. It's about the strategy and timing of the battle. Should you heal or attack? Buff or Defend? In some FF games, X in particular, it's about party formation and speed stats relative to the enemy. Fun stuff.
#3. The rapid advancedment of your average jRPG is fun. Very fun in my mind.
I already wasn't planning on getting FFXII (it's obvious that the people behind the FF games people enjoyed playing left ages ago), but this article just cements that.
It starts out mentioning that the first enemy most players meet is unkillable and can kill you instantly, and completely dismisses those facts as irrelevant because you don't have to attack it. Apparently it serves no point other than to irritate. In most RPGs, if there's an enemy you can optionally attack, choosing to fight it grants some reward. Instead, FFXII just offers instant death. No thanks.
Then we get this gem:
Yet players feel betrayed. They say, "I want to press buttons." They say, "I don't want to watch my videogame."
No shit, really? People like playing video games and don't want to watch them?
In removing the need to constantly press buttons, the game changes completely.
Yep. It's no longer a game, for one.
Seriously, reading this article (and seeing the absolutely terrible screenshots from the game) have cemented what I already knew: I will not be buying this barely-interactive movie.
With games like Oblivion available now and FFXII coming out who-knows-when, I can't imagine that Square-Enix will be selling many copies outside of Japan. I know no one interested in this non-game.
Then why are you playing Final Fantasy?
...I have to say, the gambit system is just a little bit of genius. The thing is that, to maintain an active, well-paced battle system, you have to have some automation. That said, the people who see the gambit system as some huge, new, radical thing are complete idiots. This is the exact same way you've always played an FF title. You make your choices in advance, then your characters follow through on those actions. Honestly, did you need the freedom to tell your mage to cast ice on an ice elemental? No. Set that shit up in advance and control the less tedious actions of the game. I usually don't even use gambits on whoever is my lead character at the time and let the other 2 rock whatever we're fighting however I told them to. And if you really wanted to go the tedious route and tell your character "use a regular attack" or "steal" or "cast fire" or "heal me", the option is still there, it just slows down the gameplay back to those FF7 and before speeds. Every round would require you to input your commands. They didn't take anything away from you. This article is just shouting for the sake of shouting. Just like this comment.
'I don't want to watch my videogame.'
This is a joke, right? Are they actually talking about Final Fantasy games? Outside of Xenosaga, the FF games have the highest ratio of watching : 'playing' I've ever seen. And the stories (at least in the later ones) are pretty amateur trash that hardly bears sitting thru. Although having said that, the only FF game I've really put time into was FFX, and the rock/paper/scissors gameplay of that game turned me off the FF games forever. Although I hear the earlier ones were better.
There is a Zelda-esque Final Fantasy. It's called Final Fantasy Chronicles and it's for the GameCube. Unfotunately, it's designed for multiplayer gaming, not solo action, and it really isn't all it could have been.
Perception is the thin dividing line between reality and fiction.
final fantasy series never had a whole lot of strategy and difficulty to it... the 99 limit in number of items, the endless casting of pheonix down and such made dying "just another part of the game". some of the "hardest" fights were fairly easy, and i've managed to defeat toneberries with little trouble when the walkthrough said they are impossible at that stage of the game. (in FF8's battle arena, in the last fight, i was berserked after being turned into a toad and mini'd, so i only dealt 1 point of damage without any way to get out of the infinite loop... turns out the monster didn't have physical attacks and i was totally immune to his magic, which he ran out after some time... so i left the tv off and playstation running for a week before winning o_O)
In comparison, i'm currently playing Star Ocean 3, where you have no pheonix down casting, and limit to 20 "revive-item" in the earlier part of the game, and i've actually ran out of those (or mp-replenish items) during normal map-walking... i also remember xenogears where one of the first boss i fought was close to impossible unless i upgraded my gears... so in that sense, the new system is welcomed... either that, or make the fights more tatically challenging, but not a button-smasher.
my list of completed rpgs include:
ff4-x2 (no tatics)
xenogears, xenosaga 1 (got kinda bored with xenosaga 2)
star ocean 2, (in the process of playing star ocean 3)
one of many dragon quests
one of many breath of fire
lunar - silver star story
chrono trigger, chrono cross
secret of mana
and probably one or two other ones i forgot about...
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
AnimeNEXT anime convention
Actually, this all sounds pretty good to me! I actually hate all of the menu popping in battle. And I mainly play FF games for the story. So I'll be grabbing XII asap.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
The most fun in the FF games/other single player 'party based' RPG's was that you had complete control. Your guy has 5 hp left, and the enemy is near death, what do you do? Heal, or make that last ditch attack to end him? Put all your hopes into that lucky roll that lands you a crit and ends the fight, or heal and hope he doesn't kill you in the next move?
This Gambit system just turned me off from the game entirely.
the endless casting of pheonix down and such made dying "just another part of the game".
Items such as Pick Me Up in Super Mario RPG and Phoenix Down in FF7 had the effect of turning dying into the equivalent of fainting. The Pokémon series just ran with this realization.
But I love the old FF games. I actually just loaded up LJP and played FF1 (yes, 1) all last week. Love it. I've got 2 and 3 loaded up and they're the next on my list.
Of course this might have something to do with the fact that I haven't had a game console since the N64. And even that was a hand-me-down from a friend.
Maybe I'm just getting old...
This is a good thing (TM). In many RPGs, the fighting engine ends up being nothing more than mindless button mashing. I game that removed that redundancy would really appeal to me. Change isn't always bad!
FF 12
Where The Spirits Within meets Progress Quest. (With 5 minutes of setup via GUI).
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
I've seen the Gambit system in action and its one of the best ideas to come out of RPGs let alone console RPGs in a long while. Compared to the archaic systems like Dragon Quest 8, Gambits make the fights move much faster in a franetic fashion that makes it move more like how you'd think a fight scene in a movie would go without the pestering you. Not the whole Xenosaga thing where you are watching the "movie of the game" but it is controlable. Considering that the game tries to present the other people in your group as "real", unless the activity is tedious or requires exacting precision why should I tell my party or subordinates each and everything thing they should be doing? I should be saying "We are going over here, kill that first" and instead of directing each minute detail of my side of the battle.
I really don't understand some of the bitching FF12 is getting. Some people are going "oh its the same old Final Fantasy". Have we been playing the same games? Ignoring the setting choices they use (and the name), each Final Fantasy is fairly unique and tries some experimental things that are not often reused (which is good and bad). Very few parts of this engine are from any other game so what about this is the same old FF "The game is too automatic! I want to push the buttons!" are probably the same people who thought Dragon Quest 8 was a great game but ignore the fact its a boring, if not flagulation of a game.
I don't think FF12 is the "best game ever!" but it does have interesting ideas and features that make it stand out and heck even recommendable for playing. Heck FF is actually gravitating towards making the player notice the story more than the combat engine. How is this a bad thing??
Square has made a few very good games in the past, few enough that they can be listed in their entirety right here:
1. Secret of Mana
2. Chrono Trigger
3. Final Fantasy 7
You should note that only *one* of those is a final fantasy game, and they have made 12 of them. The plots, dialogue, and characters generally suck. Essentially all most final fantasy games are is mindless mob grinding, and item collection. Sadly for square, this space has been taken over by MMORPGs, and arguably blizzard has taken the lead in this market.
What Square has shown in the past, is that they have the talent and raw resources to create really great games, but no real motivation to do so. Coming up with a good plot and dialogue that people over the age of 12 can enjoy is difficult and requires that they give someone smart a lot of creative freedom, which is always dangerous. It's easier for them to just throw lots of money at artists and developers to create a beautiful expansive world, to cover up how utterly mediocre their game is at its core.
My hope is that Blizzard now feels under a certain amount of pressure to buck their old demographic of obsessive compulsive gamers, and to appeal to an average joe like me who isn't really interested in random encounters, or ultimate weapons, but who just wants to play a genuinely enjoyable game with a cool story and interesting characters. I haven't checked out the latest final fantasy, but I'm hoping that all the whining I hear from the old guard suggest some improvements.
Quite frankly I really liked Dungeon Siege when I first started playing. Sure, some of the obvious problems showed up pretty early (e.g. the obvious linear road through the entire game, the lack of game balance, etc.) but when you were just controlling one character it felt like a fun, pretty Diablo II clone. As soon as you started adding party member though you lost almost all of your control. I often felt like I was merely playing the manager making sure they were stocked up with plenty of potions and in charge of breaking open containers every so often. The game stopped being fun because instead of actually playing it you just watched it.
Some people really liked Dungeon Siege (I know my girlfriend got rather into it), but to me it just didn't seem like much fun at all. I've played the US Final Fantasy games as they game out since the first one was released for the NES, but sometime around FFVII I just sort of dropped out as they felt the need to making increasingly large changes to the games and focus less on the the gameplay (plus, I've only owned a PC and Nintendo consoles). From the sounds of things Final Fantasy has jumped the shark.
Fans are critical when the director leaves, the musician leaves, the company goes bankrupt, and they change the fundamental system?
How totally bizzare!
May the wind be always at your back,
-Tim_Ceete_Smith
Check Wikipedia. FFXI came out about a year before the Enix merger. And FFXII isn't the first single-player FF since then: FFX-2 was released half a month before the merger, nearly a year after XI. Although DQVIII and FFXII were both published by Square-Enix, the actual staff involved in creating each game was completely different (DQVIII was developed by Level-5 vs. the in-house FF team). Simple things like DQ's lack of voice acting (completely absent in the original Japanese version, which is heresy by modern FF/Kingdom Hearts standards) help show how seperate the projects are. I'm not saying that interaction couldn't happen or isn't happening, just that if it is it's not quite located where you said it was...
Sendou Wave Kick!!
...and even though I haven't played the game yet, I still don't agree. There's better games out there, and even better plots if that's what people play FF for.
I also agree pretty much with this article, but it's directed at all of the series, not just XII.
the pokemon series was much more clearly marketed towards little kids - it doesnt sound good with kids yelling and screaming "DIE DIE DIE" to a pokemon in front of their parents, whereas yelling and screaming "FAINT FAINT FAINT" doesnt sound so bad - its not good to keep your game from getting bought cuz of parents that control what their kids buy cuz it "makes" them violent and want to kill stuff
Your scissor character could cut rocks and other scissors just fine and was no longer limited to just chopping at paper.
Just like Chuck Norris! He always chooses rock. If you choose paper, he punches you in the face with his clenched fist and says "I thought your paper was going to protect you".
It sounds like Progress Quest with a prettier interface. One of many available "fire and forget" rpgs.
When Grandia III came out half of the player base complained that it was too short and that some enemies were too hard (Melc Crystal, for example). Meanwhile, it has the most fun combat system I've ever seen. If these people would have just taken the time to rip through every monster on the way, they would have found the game long enough and plenty easy.
When FF7 came out, people complained that it didn't have a job system. Meanwhile, you can clearly configure any character any which way you want with the equipment and materia options so that any character can clearly be a damage dealer, magic dealer, magic healer, thief, etc...
I could go on with many other examples, but I'll spare you.
Now FFXII comes out and people complain about the gambits, and that the combat isn't interactive enough.
They're complaining about something they can turn off entirely.
I can't wait to play FFXII. To me, having the characters constantly attack without me pressing the X button every hit makes a lot of sense. I want to concentrate on giving orders that are out of the ordinary (debuffing at start of combat, performing special finishing moves, using items and spells when I judge it necessary...)
I liked the demo, even if it was a bit too easy. I really liked that the party's members are always on-screen and that there is no battle transition. It makes the experience a lot more immersive.
{See you again!}
Ok, the article is slightly misleading. First of all, the characters will only act on their own if Gambits (basically, the character's AI) are turned on. Also, there are two modes, active mode and wait mode. In wait mode, the game pauses when you open the menu, it doesn't in active mode. Although ill admit, playing active mode with all 3 characters having their gambits off is near impossible, but its more than possible to set the gambit of the character you are currently controlling off and control him well in either mode. Basically, if you play active mode with all character's gambits on, or only the lead character's gambit off, its slightly like a "rollicking fight in fantasy movies" as they mentioned, if you set it to wait mode and turn all gambits off, it plays very much like traditional Final Fantasy games. The best way to describe the battle system is that it's a faster paced version of FFXI's battle system, except you control three characters at once. When you go into attack mode, your character takes out his/her weapons and starts attacking. They have a delay how often they can use them, say, they can swing/fire their weapon once every 5 seconds, they will automatically attack every 5 seconds while in attack mode, but while they are doing that, you can cast a spell, use a skill, use an item, etc, basically you don't have to keep mashing attack, just concentrate on other strategies. When you use a spell, they stop attacking with their weapon while the spell charges up, once it does they cast it, then automatically go back into attacking with their weapon. If gambits are on, the characters will sometimes decide to use magic/items instead of doing nothing but attacking. All characters will enter attack mode if the lead character does regardless if gambits are on or off, and all characters will disengage and run if the main character runs away.
A train station is where a train stops. A bus station is where a bus stops. On my desk I have a workstation...
....is the ability to automate easily. The point of games is to be interactive, not to watch battles take place and have you gain experience. Why not just have instant battles if you're not making any of the decisions? Just to waste your time watching the same animations over and over again? Please -- I have better things to do.
My girlfriend and I are playing through Dragon Quest VIII and learning chess at the moment. In one, we set the thing on autobattle and watch animations. In the other, we make careful decisions whose execution takes a mere moment.
I would say the more easily automated the game, the less fun. People generally praise Starcraft, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Tetris precisely because the AI for them wouldn't be 5 lines to write and (to my knowledge) the AI is far inferior to a human player.
(And for those of you who say story is important in FF, I'd agree (having played all of them). But then why not just take out the battles entirely?)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
It was FFVII that turned me completely off the 'F*cking Tedious' genre of Japanese console RPG's - in fact until that demo I'd never returned to console RPG's - but this seems like a step in the right direction.
Now if only there were a 'jump' button.
If playing a game is what someone wants, then Final Fantasy, and RPGs in general, are the wrong place to go especially since that cinematic crapfest FFX.
---space.is.the.place---
I believe I have a good idea how the combat system works and I assume it's similar to Tales of Symphonia where you can tell the AI players kinda what to do. What I'd really like to see is several different methods of combat. Think along the lines of 7th guest RPG where you like maybe a handfull fights in a game and they are all significnatly different and actually challenging to the point where when you fail a few times in arow you don't just power level to make up for lack of skill.
WHile I do like the Tales of Symphonia's idea to merge a street fighter game into an RPG eventually you learn all the combos and it gets boring 1/2 into the game. Then the 2nd half you can pretty much just turn the full auto AI and let the computer do the whole thing.
Yet players feel betrayed. They say, 'I want to press buttons.' They say, 'I don't want to watch my videogame.'
I thought everyone who felt that way stopped playing FF years ago?
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.