Few game series have received the combination of critical acclaim and popularity among gamers as Final Fantasy. The franchise currently holds fourth place on the list of top-selling video game series as well as myriad places on top games lists, both past and present. In the five years since the last release in the main series, the franchise has seen a spin-off, a sequel to a different spin-off, a true sequel, a shooter, and MMORPG and a three-part (so far) crossover with Disney. Despite going back to the basic numbering system, Final Fantasy XII is a departure from its predecessors in a number of ways – some good, one very important one bad – and stands as a good game which will derive the majority of its success from its illustrious name.
The game takes place in Ivalice, nominally the same world as Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Advance. The five major races from the latter are present: legion humes (humans), technically adept moogles, xenophobic all-female protectors of nature viera, wise nu mou, and expert hunter bangaa. A number of new races have also been introduced, such as the powerful seeq, tribal warrior garif and feline advisor rebe. Additionally, judges make an appearance in this game, though they have simpler roles as the heads of the military and enforcers of the legal system for the Archadian Empire, an expansionist nation led by the imperial Solidor family and their advisors, the mysterious, wizened senators.
However, this Ivalice will not be familiar from the Tactics games. Final Fantasy XII takes place in a high-technology world, where airships are common and devices as advanced as military computers exist. Of course, hand weapon technology lags behind as usual; guns may be perfectly reliable, but they are less powerful than the good old sword. The power source for all this technology is magicite, a crystallized substance containing magical essence. Though magicite is easily available (most monsters can leave some when killed), the best of it must be mined. Because of the proliferation of airships, Ivalice supports a number of sky pirates, independent airship operators who range from the pillagers and plunderers one would expect of the title to simple cargo haulers. Though not explained in-game, the game takes place centuries before the events of Final Fantasy Tactics; a cataclysm somewhere between returns Ivalice to a medieval progress level.
The story begins in Dalmasca, a country which was conquered by the empire two years previous following a bloody war which cost Princess Ashelia B’Nargin her new husband, Prince Rasler of neighboring country Nabradia, and treason, as King Raminas was murdered the very night a treaty was signed with Archadia by once-loyal knight Basch fon Ronsenburg. A new consul, Vayne Solidor (eldest living son of Archadia’s emperor, Gramis) has been appointed to Rabanastre, the capital of Dalmasca, and there is a parade and banquet to celebrate. Vaan, an orphan living in Rabanastre, decides to take advantage of the chaos and steal something of value from the palace. At the same time, two sky pirates, Balthier and Fran, try the exact same thing, and a Dalmascan resistance also chooses to attack the palace. Vann does get out with an unusual piece of magicite hidden in the castle treasury, but gets stuck with Balthier and Fran, who are willing to work with him out of necessity, but want the magicite.
During the attempted escape from the palace, the trio meets Amalia, a leader of the resistance. They were captured, and briefly thrown into the dungeons of Nalbina. They manage to escape from there as well, along the way freeing Basch, who claims that his twin brother was the actual person who killed Raminas. They head to the neutral city of Bhujerba to rescue Vaan’s childhood friend, Penelo, who was kidnapped by one of Balthier’s old enemies. With the help of Lamont, a boy they meet at the mines where Penelo is held (and actually Larsa Solidor, Gramis’ only other surviving child), they free her and arrange a meeting between Basch and Marquis Ondore, leader of Bhujerba and the man who announced Basch’s execution two years earlier. Though he seems sympathetic, he turns the group over to the Empire. They are brought aboard the imperial airship Leviathan, where they reunite with Amalia (in reality, Princess Ashe) and turn over the stone Vaan stole – deifacted nethicite, a substance created by the gods which could negate magic, among other powers – in exchange for their freedom.
The clichés mostly stop there as the story grows more complex. Ashe sets out to liberate Dalmasca, both by proving her royal heritage by locating the treasures of her ancestor, the Dynast-king Raithwall, and by gathering the strength to defeat the Archadians. In addition to the five party members, she is aided by Ondore (a resistance sympathizer) and antimilitarists Larsa and Al-Cid, son of the emperor of Rozarria, Archadia’s greatest rival. The story lacks any major surprises, though there are occasional twists to keep things interesting, and quite a few emotionally intense scenes occur before the game’s end. It’s also refreshing to see a story that doesn’t involve playable characters falling in love with each other just because they have the most lines. The only real complaint is that, after hours of depth in development, the ending seems forced and abrupt, both in terms of the story and gameplay involved.
Final Fantasy XII’s characters are generally interesting and well-developed. Balthier in particular is portrayed excellently, with both an interesting backstory and a brash attitude that vaults him to the top echelon of memorable characters from the series. The other playable characters have their own charms – Basch’s devotion to duty beyond all reason, Fran’s choice between her homeland and the world at large, Penelo’s relationship with Larsa, and, of course, Ashe’s ethical dilemmas as her quest continues. The only exception is Vaan, who is flat and hard to sympathize with, a disastrous combination for the game’s nominal main character. Many of the non-playable characters also get significant backgrounds which match their behavior perfectly. As an added bonus, no one in the game is completely good or evil; the motivations for everyone’s actions are reasonable and subject to some question as to their morality.
The game makes references to most of its predecessors. In addition to the aforementioned magicite, the summoned creatures are called espers, but tribute to Final Fantasy VI. Their actual names have mostly been co-opted as the designations for airships, though many of the optional espers are major enemies from prior games, such as Chaos from Final Fantasy I, Zeromus from Final Fantasy IV and Exodus (né ExDeath) from Final Fantasy V. Other notable monsters make appearances as marks. Cid makes his customary appearance, this time as a high-ranking Archadian researcher, and of course there are plenty of references to the two Tactics games. Experienced players will be entertained looking for all the nods to the series’ history, though it’s a shame that this title didn’t stay true to the series in more significant ways.
The battle system in this title is a major departure from the system with which Final Fantasy fans will be familiar. Called active dimension battle (ADB), there is no longer a separation between traveling in dangerous areas and actual fights, except for bosses. Instead, characters on both sides simply begin to take actions as soon as they are close enough to an enemy. As in prior releases, time runs constantly, and each character takes an action a set amount of time after it is selected. Monsters cannot escape, and your party must leave the map entirely to do so. You have the freedom to move your party leader around the battlefield, which can be useful for getting into or out of the range of area effect abilities, at the risk of drawing more enemies into the fray if you wander too far. Your position on the battlefield doesn’t matter for anything other than determining if the character is close enough to target or be the target of something, but it does give your left thumb something to do during battles.
This is important, because your right thumb will be watching from the sidelines. To complement ADB, Final Fantasy XII introduces gambits. Gambits are commands which are given to characters which specify actions to take and targets for them to be used on. When a condition is satisfied, the character performs the action (for example, if a character has the gambit “Ally: HP<50% Cure”, they will cast Cure on any ally whose health drops below half of the maximum). Both types of gambits are obtained during gameplay; they can be combined and prioritized on each character separately; and they can be turned on and off singly or en masse. The player can override gambits during battle, but usually a character with gambits on will act independently throughout all battles. You can have none, all or any subset of your characters with active gambits, though the most common setup is for the party leader to be manually controlled while his or her allies use gambits.
The motivation for ADB was simple enough – too many battles in the average RPG come down to selecting the basic attack command repeatedly until the enemy dies. However, the execution does nothing to make the grind of leveling up better. Instead of choosing all your characters’ commands repeatedly, you need only to select “Fight” once per enemy for your party leader, and the rest of the encounter will play itself out before your eyes. This actually makes the gameplay more boring than in the system this title attempts to improve upon. There is some challenge to setting up gambits for non-controlled characters, but a very basic setup will work for most everything from mooks to bosses. In the rare cases where some strategy is needed (usually done by the game preventing you from using a type of command, like items or magicks); there’s always a trick that can be reasoned out fairly quickly to make the fight easy. The only reason a player should have to fight an enemy more than twice is if they are rushing through the game and need to level up to match their foes.
The character growth system does nothing to add challenge to this game, and may make you long for Final Fantasy X’s abysmal Sphere Grid. In this game, each character has a giant checkerboard called the license grid. Each square represents an ability or set of items, and the character can only use things for which he or she has the license. This makes sense for magicks and technicks (“Final Fantasy XII, brought to you by pretentious spelling and the letter K.”), but not so for gear; do iron helms really work differently than bronze helms? Gambit slots and augmentations to stats and abilities also fill one easy-to-access section of the grid. Each character who survives a battle gains license points, and they are used to purchase new abilities. The catch is that you can only choose a license adjacent to one already purchased, and the layout is somewhat haphazard – for example, you need to learn how to use crossbows or hand-bombs and poles, daggers or ninja swords to progress from basic guns to advanced guns. Because of this, it’s difficult to make characters distinct; the sheer amount of LP you get makes it too easy to make them functionally identical and have all the useful abilities before the endgame.
Also on the license grids are quickenings, which remove the last shred of challenge from the game. Each character can buy any three of the 18 in any order with no change to the effect. Quickenings do two things: giving the character access to an extremely powerful attack, and (for their second and third) increasing the character’s maximum MP. A character with at least his or her base MP can use a quickening on a single enemy, which begins a chain of attacks. During each attack, the player can press a button for some or all characters to perform either another quickening or a mist charge (which refills their MP for purposes of the chain). If none (or simply not the desired character) are available, you can hit R2 to shuffle which options are available. At the end of the chain, there may be an additional attack that affects all enemies in an area. Despite appearances, quickening damage is non-elemental; the only factors in damage are how many of which level are performed and which convergence the chain ended with. The damage is immense, and the fact that a fully healthy party can perform two large chains in a row by switching party members makes almost every fight simple.
Summoning in this game also requires the character to have at least their full normal MP, and some require double or triple that amount (as do higher-level quickenings). Once an esper is obtained, it needs to be purchased on the license grid, and only one character can have the license for each esper. If the esper is called into battle, it takes the place of the summoner’s allies and fights alongside the character that called it. Espers have their own gambits which cannot be modified or deactivated. Espers remain in battle for a set amount of time or until they run out of HP or are dismissed. Most espers will perform a powerful attack at the end of their summon time in the former case.
Final Fantasy XII leads you by the nose through the plot – going so far as to highlight the next area on the map you should visit numerous times, and occasionally blocking your ability to teleport between save crystals with “a strong plot mist” – but there are plenty of distractions to lengthen the experience. The party can join a clan of hunters and track down powerful monsters for fun and profit. The clan also provides a primer, a book to track achievements which includes a bestiary to fill and a sky pirate’s den to fill with figures obtained by completing unstated goals. There are also eight espers the party will not meet during the normal course of play for the player to track down, and they provide most of the very few interesting battles in the title. This game also gives you one of the best reasons to follow the old tip “talk to everyone,” as a number of side quests are opened by speaking to the right person at the right time. There’s plenty in the game to keep the completists busy for much longer than the actual storyline would normally allow.
The graphics in the game are among the best one will see from the PlayStation 2. Backgrounds are intricately drawn, and the variety makes the world both more alive and, more practically, easier to navigate. The characters are realistic-looking and all of their animations are smooth. All outfits but Balthier’s have a quirk – Penelo’s pseudo-wings, Basch’s macramé bandolier, Vaan’s pointless vest, Ashe’s pornographically short skirt and the armor that totally reveals Fran’s posterior (which seems to have double the amount of muscles required during the many fan-service opportunities the programmers give you) but covers her navel with a diaphanous sheet. The only bit of ugliness is Vaan; during normal gameplay (but not pre-rendered video), his abs and many of his facial features look painted on, a sharp contract to the otherwise excellent visuals. Monsters are similarly detailed, and everything is glitch-free.
Fans of the Final Fantasy Tactics series will recognize the music style, as Hitoshi Sakamoto, who composed music for both of those games returns to provide the soundtrack for Final Fantasy XII. A combination of original tracks and remixes of classics from earlier games in the series provide an excellent backdrop to the story. The designers have done a good job matching music to the setting and mood, adding a level of immersion to the title. Esteemed franchise veteran Nobuo Uematsu did provide one song, the game’s theme “Kiss Me Good-Bye”, which is also first-rate. The voice acting is fairly good, though it would have been nice to have the option of using the better Japanese dialogue. The sound effects are accurate and add to the game experience without overwhelming the player. The audio quality of both music and sound effects are universally excellent.
There are some minor changes to make the game seem more rational. Possibly the most noticeable is that enemies rarely carry money or healing items like potions. Instead, when you steal from or kill them, you are likely to get magicite and/or part of their body that is useful (such as a wolf’s pelt), which can then be sold for cash. By defeating only a single type of enemy without visiting a save crystal, you can improve both the quantity and quality of loot dropped by vanquished foes. Additionally, the world is filled with shops that do not specifically cater to your party’s needs. Though they can’t be interacted with (so no buying more star fruit for Vann to nibble on), it’s refreshing to see a game world that acts like everybody is an adventurer. The designers missed one obvious chance to improve upon cliché, though, when they put the steamy jungle and snow-covered mountain next to each other with no more than a glowing dotted line between them.
A collector’s edition of this title was released at selected retailers. For shopping at the right place, you get a shiny metal box with a DVD in addition to the game. The bonus disc contains the standard uninteresting assortment of art galleries, developer interviews, and trailers (the latter of which does little except to show that the Japanese vocals were better and the developers briefly considered the mistake of using Comic Sans in the game). There is also a retrospective video which gives a brief description of each of the games in the main series. You can sense the not-so-subtle influence of Sony in the video, as there is next to no gameplay footage from Nintendo systems except for Final Fantasy III, for which they had no choice, and only mentioning Game Boy Advance re-releases in text that flashes briefly on the screen. The disc is error-ridden, from giving incorrect release information to skips in music during the art galleries. Special editions are generally wastes of money for the player, and this one is no exception.
It all comes down to this: the mechanics are what makes a game a game. Having a great plot and pretty graphics and sound are wonderful, but if that’s all you can offer, video games are not the right medium for your creation. I’d be happy to pay to see Final Fantasy XII: The Motion Picture, or tune in every week for Final Fantasy XII: The TV Series (and would consider picking up Final Fantasy XII: The Flamethrower – the kids love it!). But the play’s the thing, and in this title, the play is a chore to get from cutscene to cutscene. Though I’ve often snarked that this was how Square Enix designed the series starting with Final Fantasy VII, I can’t imagine this is truly what the designers wanted from their latest creation. The result is a decent but ultimately disappointing experience from this venerable series’ latest entry.
