Final Fantasy XII Critique

There are many great things about FFXII. The graphics are great, voice acting great, the production is top notch, etc. However, there are some things I've been finding highly irritating about it lately. As an armchair game designer myself, here are my critiques:

• Dungeons are too long and boring. There are a couple reasons for this: They have you killing the same 2-3 enemies over and over. Plus many times the artists have recycled models and animations from previous monsters so they are not even that unique. Enemy AI is generally pretty dumb, but this is standard for FF games. Also, the save points are too few and far between. This forces you to play an extra 20 minutes in some cases just to save the friggin' game. This is 2006 people, why can't we save wherever we want? If companies really want to cater more towards casual game players, this is a good place to start. Though, I think most people would probably argue that this isn't a game for casual players.


• The towns are too spread out. It can take a minute or two just to walk to the store you want to go to. Why can't I just click on the map to go there?


• Combat is less strategic due to it's semi-realtime nature. Having a set turn order forced you to make interesting decisions. Now you can just set up some gambits and let your characters do what they want. This does save you from some tedium but also makes it feel like you're not really playing. We need to give the player something to do other than just watch health levels and heal at the right time. Like give damage bonuses for flanking your enemies, for using the environment to your advantage, for choosing the proper attack posture, etc.. Combat that is entirely based on stats and not on user skill/strategy is boring.


• Spell weaknesses aren't predictable. In FFX, you always knew that Fire based enemies were vulnerable to Ice, mechanical enemies are vulnerable to lightning, etc. It's rewarding to 'crack the code'. In FFXII you can't really guess, you have to use the Libra spell.


• Mostly random treasure chests sitting out in the open, with lame items. Getting 100 chests that each have 53 Gil in them is less satisfying than finding one hidden chest with 1000 gil or a nice item in it. The really good weapons are practically impossible to get without owning the strategy guide due to the complicated and illogical series of things you have to do to get them (for instance, you can only get certain items if you DON'T open certain treasure chests earlier in the game. WTF?). And:


• Almost everything can be bought in the stores (even most of the Bazaar items). Combined with the last bullet point, it kinda takes the fun out of exploration for me. In past FF games, you knew that exploring every dead end usually got you some kind of sweet item or some good money. Now you are lucky if you find a potion.


• The Bazaar, where you can unlock items by selling rare 'loot' is a nice idea in theory, but the thought of spending hours killing the same monsters, trying to find one really rare piece of loot, kinda churns my stomach.


• Too much walking around and travelling through areas you have already explored. Good level designs usually open up shortcuts so you don't have to walk as far if you are forced to backtrack. This rarely happens in FFXII. See Metroid Prime for an example of a game with huge environments that saves you from having to backtrack with good level design.


• The game is entirely non-linear in the sense that you can always revisit any locale. Also, it's up to you to choose when to pursue the side quests. This can be good and bad. Personally I always find it weird when a game lets you do menial side quests when there are urgent events happening elsewhere. It kills the suspension of disbelief for me.


• Thanks to the license board, you give all your characters the same skills. There's no reason why you wouldn't want to get all the spells for every character. This diminishes the sense of individuality of the characters and makes each one less strategically useful (since no one really excels at anything). The only differentiating factor is stats.


• Story starts out promising but gets a little bit hard to grasp and kind of 'Blah'. Ashe's motivation is difficult to understand. Yeah, she's supposed want revenge for her husband's death, but she never comes across as being very upset or angry about it. Van and Penelo are kind of just along for the ride - there's no real story reason why they should be there (though I think you could say the same for some of the other characters as well). Basch is pretty cool but he ends up being sidelined by the other characters. That said, all the characters are likeable which they deserve kudos for.

The bottom line: Maybe I'm just getting old, but I'd much rather have a 20 or 40 hour game that is consistently entertaining, rather than an 80 hour game that gets most of it's length from dungeon crawling (and re-crawling).