Final Fantasy XII Pushes Envelopes

The anticipation surrounding Final Fantasy XII has resulted in Square/Enix's largest U.S. rollout for a title. Gamespot reports that 1.5 Million units were shipped to the country to meet demand. From the article: "Even if every last one of those copies has been sold, Square Enix still has a ways to go before the game duplicates the success it experienced overseas earlier this year. Final Fantasy XII has already racked up more than 2.4 million sales in Japan since its release there in March of this year." The game is pushing graphical as well as business envelopes; Kikizo has a feature talking with some of the game developers about the game's use of PS2 architecture. Essentially, the team says, FFXII is the best a game will ever look on the PlayStation 2.

Comments

Also boring

[Com2Kid]

The battle system is like playing a MMORPG, but you are by yourself.

Battles are horribly boring. Auto attack, who in the world decided upon that? Hey, you there, attack those guys! I'll just sit back and heal...

If they had included auto healing as well, the only thing the player would need to do is walk around between way points!

Graphics that great?

[Zinnian]

I was looking forward to the game, being a long time Final Fantasy fan. Unfortunately it looks awful on my TV. I have an HDTV and playing the game I keep thinking that this sure is last generation. It's jaggy, and frankly looks bad enough that my roomie's non gaming eyes can even tell it looks kinda bad. I long to be able to slide it into the Xbox360 sitting next to the PS2 and see the game the way it should be displayed. Maybe when I break down and get the PS3 in the next year or so (resold, as I'm not buying a new one from Sony) it will look better.

FFXII is pushing the envelop, but showing age.

[kinglink]

I recently got a 360 about 6 monthes ago. FFXII came out last month. The only thing I can say about FFXII's graphics is "this is last gen". It really does push the FFXII to a limit, but there's better graphics. By which I mean less jaggies, better looking, or more fluid. It's true FFXII is impressive in it's graphics, but it still suffers from FMV lag. If you watch the FMV and then jump back into the game the game's graphics look poor. FFX had slightly better ways of dealing with this.

Overall FFXII is visually impressive but coming out when it did it's showing just how weak the PS2 is to the next gen systems, and totally invalidating Sony's claim that it could have lasted 10 years. It could only have lasted that if people didn't care about graphics and they do. Early Gamecube games looked on par with some of FFXII's graphics and even first gen 360 games easily smoked it.

That all being said FFXII is an incredible game, and that's coming from a guy who really hasn't liked a Final Fantasy game since FFVI. It breathes new life into the game while retaining the same style setting it always had. If it wasn't for Gears of War, FFXII would be the only thing I'm playing. Both Gears of war and Final Fantasy XII are worthy of all the praise they have gotten as one is the final "great" game. And Gears is one of the first of the new generation.

If you enjoyed Vagrant Story...

[casualsax3]

... I think you're going to love this game. The score sounds like it's Vagrant Story 2, the animation and character models are like an upgraded version, the voice acting is stellar, the script is superb - and the battle system is so much fun once you really get into it. It's no surprise, since it's the same core team. Probably the best part about the game though is the actitechture and overall design - it's so very atmospheric, there's just so much mood to everything. The tone of the game is much more mature than previous FF's. I could go on but I'd rather get back to playing right now actually :)

Gabe from Penny-Arcade has a review of his first 20 hours with the game that I think is spot on.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/show/21973

This game does for Final Fantasy what Resident Evil 4 did for Resident Evil - it reinvents itself and succeeds in surpassing its predecessors in nearly every way.

Re:Pushing the envelope, eh?

[Reapman]

Honestly the gameplay is keeping me going more then the graphics, and i do like the graphics. I really didn't like the battle system in the demo, but being able to get used to it... I'm a believer in Gambits now. Yes the game can "play itself" almost... but you can also tone it way down. I'm actually wishing I had more gambits to customize the characters further (you get more as you can find / buy them). It feels like a lot of freedom... no more omg i better heal that guy asap, because I know my healer will watch him and keep him going. Quickinings (super attacks) were confusing initially... but now that I got the hang of it I can pull off some crazy stuff. This feels like the most polished one yet. If you can try before you buy thats always good, everyones got their own tastes... but i'm seriously hooked. Good voice acting. And I prefer the license system vs spheres in FFX. No "mini game" tho which is surprising... I'd like to see them return one of the card games from 8 or 9.

Played it in Japan, burned out 30 hours in

[patio11]

I have more affection for some of my non-plot characters in Disgaea ("Noooo, don't hit Margaret with the fireball, she only has 250 hp and is weak against OH YOU BASTARD YOU WILL PAY FOR THAT") than I do for any of the characters in FFXII. Not a single one of which I can name at the moment, incidentally. Vann or something? Vash? Whatever, whinny effeminate boy who is dating forgettable Japanese girl (who wears both the pants and the shirt in that relationship) and fated to rescue princess in distress, who currently hates his guts but we all know that will change. Throw in bunny-rabbit-who-looks-like-Storm, tank-straight-out-of-WoW-raid, and Air Pirate to round out the cast. They're trying to save the dutchy of whocares from the empire of whatever, which they can only do by gathering... what was it, I forget. Probably crystals. Thats generally a safe bet for a FF game, isn't it? I remember they spent some time in a mine. Was I trying to find a crystal? Or was I just trying to find the next cutscene? I don't know.

I notice one of TFAs says there is no main character, which is more or less true -- I was equally bored with all of them. The only time one shows a spark of that old Square spirit is when Air Pirate says, ironically, "I'll tell you who I am: I am the main character of this story!" And for a brief period of perhaps 15 seconds I was thinking "Alright, I have passed the boring prologue, now we are going to get to some ADVENTURE". Nope.

It was about 10 years ago when I played FFVI for the first time, and you can see how low Square has fallen in the plot and memorable character department. Compare Air Pirate Dude with Edgar. The very first time you meet Edgar, he shows more panache than the entire party has in the time I've played FFXII. I remember his lines from a decade ago ("First, I'm captivated by your beauty. Second, I'm dying to know if I'm your type. I suppose your... abilities are a distant third consideration.") FFXII, I swear, its been maybe two months and I would have to wrack my brains to dredge up anything related to the plot or characters. Marle? Marsh? Whoseherface, the princess. I remember her skill readout like it was yesterday (I was aiming for white mage with a sword). Can't remember a thing she ever said.