video game masturbation

shiram · Post by **shiram** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:22 am

or the story of i spent 15 hours watching a game play itself

... well not so much, and in hindsight, it might be a good thing... but still

Final Fantasy 12 has landed, and with it, a thrall of high score reviews
having been sick this week-end, i spared no moments on test-driving this latest offering from the Almighty Square-Enix.
And though i yearn for the days of old school rpg'ing, i looked upon it with an open mind, and hope that they'd either fulfill my nostalgia for the genre, or at least bring new exciting elements.

Well not quite so.

But lets start with the obvious, the production value of this game is immense, truly pushing the aging ps2 to its limits. Cut scene are made to flow naturally from normal gameplay, and while they do manage to add that bit of flair, they remain mostly eye candy. The normal graphics are quite nice, caracter move realistically, and are proportionned as humans. One thing that bugs me is how they made caracters eyes, wich basically are all brownish and uncompelling, making those meant-to-be-tragic closeups a bit weird.
I do as well have a personnal qualm with caracter design, and it plagues the whole genre, male lead caracters are always effiminate, so much so as they would likely pass for women if wearing a dress. Also, none ever have black hair, something i'd attribute to the location of the company vreating those games. But all in all, it is but a minor detail.

The voice acting is superb, and theres plenty of it, dialogue flows naturally, and each caracter has its own unique voice and accent. Of course, this being a translatiob, and a game, you cant expect the lips to be synched with the words. Subtitles are also available, but they often lack the full score of dialogue, and though you get full sense, it does bring a bit more into each caracters personna to see their hear their way of speech.

Alot of people like to complain about menu navigation in rpg, and feel its still an issue in FF12, but to me its irrelevant, and part of the genre. You have to setup your character, be able to check their stats, manage inventory and whatnot, and while it is a bit tedious, thats why your not playing a brawler when your playing a rpg. Beyond that the menu are clear in the game, and navigation is as most other game in this category, streamlined as it can be. I guess the one quirk people have is with the license system, wich touches on all the things your caracter can do and wear. The system is new, though it bears ressemblances to the one in FFX, its clearly based on giving the game a more realistic feel, wich is an overal underlying theme actually, basically it says anyone can wield that broadsword, or longbow, as long as they got proper training, and thats the license system. You acquire points and spend them where you want to devellop your caracter, wich in itself can take away the individual feel of each protagonist, as you could all make them basically identical, but wheres the fun in that?
I will say i prefer a normal level up system, where caracter gain strenght in fields specialized to them, and create a more unique experience, but the change in how its done is actually refreshing, and revealing new items, technicks in this way can be quite entertaining.

The world you get to explore is quite extensive, and extremely well rendered. The NPC's arent all talk-able, cutting short on repititve innane babble. The areas are large and extensive, town are divided into multiple locations interlinked and it can have you looking twice at your map to get a feel of where you need to go. Outside of town its even more open, yet retains the same general idea, huge portions of land to explore, interlinked. Monsters freely roaming, and encounters are real-time, with no transition screen between exploration and fight scenes, again wanting to abide to a more realistic feel. To me this a great feature, and one that should have come forth a long time ago. This also brings in the possibility of more mobs attacking you while already in combat, taking a page from MMORPG.

Combat has been redisgned in a way, and it seems to be the most novell of things, but not if you really think about it. You can play your fights as you normally would, issuing commands every turn for every caracters. Or you can set gambits, wich will make you caracter act out a series of programmed action. For example, a caracter can be set to fight monsters, and if an ally falls to a certain level of hp, cast a healing spell. And that in itself can make it so when you enter combat, you can simply put aside the controller and watch the marvel of your programming take apart the monsters. Of course on boss battles you'll want a tighter grip on the reins, but for the most part the gambit system is flexible enough to work on it's on, and you can always input individual commands when needed. And though this does take you a bit away from the game, if you think about it, most random encounter fights in rpg's are simple, you issue 3 fight commands, and your mage casts a spell.... now you just do the same but in programming, the game actually does it for you.
At first its very unsettling and annoying, but as your gambits get more complex, and you can get very complex, they get more interesting. Its still a marvel to see things act out so smoothely over such a new system, wich works flawlessly.

The story is deep, and there is not real center caracter, everyone plays a part in a grand scheme of war, politics, magic, love and friendship. The game has been noted as ressembling a star wars vs LOTR crossover, and to me that speaks highly of a feeling a get, that these games are more and more becoming like interactive movies.

So overall you got this game wich sucks you in with awesome graphics, detailled story portrayyed beautifully by complelling caracters, subtle yet fitting music, and an interesting new combat system, and on the other hand you miss pushing x so that your hero can go around swinging his sword, and i say that without a hint of sarcasm, but i do feel silly about it.
i'd rate it a good 8.5/10

shiram · Post by **shiram** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:37 am

wheeeeee thats a long one!
guess you can spell check that and chuck it on the front page roam??
or whatever

Bane · Post by **Bane** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 3:21 pm

Nice job, Shir!

RoamingMadness · Post by **RoamingMadness** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:49 pm

Will do, i need to get back rolling on it. Been sick the past week and i was crazy busy the past month.

Looks good too.

ZoSo · Post by **ZoSo** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 8:56 am

damn nice job shir!

RoamingMadness · Post by **RoamingMadness** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 9:40 am

I plan to be working on the site a bit this week. Shir would you rather me make you an account for you to post it. Or post it myself giving your Authors credit in the post itself?

Whatever you decide will be set in stone for everyone else.

shiram · Post by **shiram** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 9:51 am

the second allows me to be more lazy, yes

Bane · Post by **Bane** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 2:35 am

shiram wrote:the second allows me to be more lazy, yes

Hehe.. I would have said the same

shiram · Post by **shiram** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 10:06 am

this game will last over an 100 hours...
just wow
i set my characters on a hunt for a mark, and i programmed them specifially for the task
and its really to cool to see every working of your strat unfold flawlessly to kill the beast...
a one hour fight, with so little input, and it wasnt even boring!