Final Fantasy XII is the story of a world called Ivalice. You play as
Vaan, a young man who has dreams of becoming a Sky Pirate. Through his
adventures he soon meets up with several friends and together, you set
out on a quest to overthrow an evil Empire bent on domination.
The scope of this game is unlike any Final Fantasy game before. The
worlds are huge and very detailed. At times it is hard to really tell
when you are watching an FMV Sequence and when you are looking at the
actual game graphics. One new feature in this game is the ability to
control the camera. You are no longer limited to a fixed camera and a
fixed point of view. This allows you to scan the horizons for objects
and places as well as let you get a good view of the entire world around
you.
The music in the game fits the surroundings well. I believe it is a
different composer for this game, but I say "three cheers for the new
guy"! The voice acting is wonderful as well. (As a note: don't put the
sound on the Dolby 5.1 unless you actually have a good surround-sound
system. On mine, the sound was funny and the voices seemed hollow and
far away.)
There is one thing that really sets this game apart from the previous
games, and that's the battle system. Final Fantasy XII revolutionizes
the battle system with a completely new design: the Active Dimension
Battle system (ADB). What this means is that there are no more random
battles. When you're out in the world, you see the enemies and you can
run up to them and fight them. Your characters will surround the enemy
and attack it...and packs of enemies will surround your party and attack
you. It ads a whole new strategy to the battling in the game.
Because of the ADB System, you are actually only "controlling" one
character at a time. Yes, you can still select actions for each
character in your party to carry out, but only one character moves
around exactly as you want them to. The others will follow the leader
(that's you) around and carry out actions that are setup in the Gambits.
Gambits, another new addition, are like putting your party members on
auto-pilot. For example, you can set it to be: "Enemy: Party Leader's
Target >> Attack" meaning that the other characters will attack the
party leader's target. But that's only the beginning. You can set things
like "Ally: HP < 50% >> Cure" or "Ally: Any >> Phoenix Down". There are
hundreds (if not thousands) of possible combinations, and you can unlock
more Gambits per character on the License Board (see below).
Another new feature to Final Fantasy XII is the License Board. When
you defeat enemies, you not only gain Experience to level up, but you
also gain License Points (LP) to acquire new licenses. You spend these
licenses on the License Board (each character has their own) to unlock
new techniques and abilities. You also unlock "passive bonuses" such as
more Hit Points or Potions Restore More HP. You also need to spend you
LP to unlock the weapons and armor you can equip. When you get a new
piece of equipment, you can only equip it if that character has the
license for it. It's an interesting concept, and I like it. |