Final Fantasy XII under attack

hahahahaha fanboys

I really hope the star wars criticism has nothing to do with the story line. If so, then I think it was entirely wrong to post a spoiler regarding the plotline of a game most of your readers have never had the chance to play. If not, then completely ignore me. I can't risk following the link to find out myself.

If nothing else, Final Fantasy started being a brand back in 1991, when Square renamed SaGa to be Final Fantasy Legend to be able to sell more copies. If it took you 15 years to notice, don't blame S-E for your ignorance.

Yeah I care to rebut.

Eight hours is far too long to wait for a game to start getting interesting when there's plenty of other games out there that are interesting from the get go. How 'After eight hours it starts getting good' is anything BUT a criticism I have no idea.

Here's One: Final Fantasy games have ALWAYS been sucky anime movies with gameplay as an afterthought.

I'm going to play Oblivion.

FFXII is to hard? FINALLY! All the FFs have been really easy after III/VI

Final Fantasy has been dead to me since the release of VII.. FF now is just over rated.

plagiarize: In comparison, most RPGs since FFX requires 80 hours or more, to your average RPG gamer 8 hours is barely the appetizer. And I don't know about you, but a game starting out with a wedding and then the groom dies from a war is interesting enough to get started with don't you think?

JonSCM: Go ahead and follow the link, Tim Rogers actually just does what S-E were supposed to do: leak a little about the story to draw people in. The complaint that it was too much like Star Wars is mainly due to paying too much attention to the trailers and then playing the game expecting things to unfold as in the trailers, which leads to Star Wars scenarios that has nothing to do with the story. Poor marketing on S-E part I'd say.

If FF12 is too hard, this will be my favorite game of 2006. Difficulty has been sorely lacking form RPGs for too long now.

i think thats the first Tim Rogers article i've ever read that wasn't full of odd twenty page tangents about his personal life, kudos

Tim Rogers' articles rebut themselves.

Put it this way - the Something Awful parody of Tim Rogers that they did a while back was not nearly as funny as any of his actual articles.

I don't know, I haven't seen a hard Final Fantasy since my time with Final Fantasy III. The actual FF3, and not the game in which every character could get every spell on top of absurdly powerful abilities like SwordTech and Blitz. Zeromus was not too tough, NeoExDeath was a pushover, Kefka was too weak to take advantage of Fallen One, Sephiroth is the biggest joke in FF final boss history beyond even the Dark King of FF Mystic Quest, Ultimecia was a bore, Necron was a clone of Kefka with all attendant strategy issues, and Yu Yevon was about as hard as the aforementioned Dark King. I like Final Fantasy, but not for its challenge.

32_Footsteps, did you find and fight Omega Weapon in Final Fantasy 8? There's a challenge.

Its about time people realize the Final Fantasy games are crap.

The average FF gaming session goes like this:

walk
random battle
5 min cut scene
walk
random battle
5 min cut scene
same random battle
5 min cut scene
same random battle
walk
5 min cut scene
walk
5 min cut scene
5 min cut scene
5 min cut scene
same random battle
..............boring as hell

Take out the random battle button pushing. What’s left is a DVD movie with a really annoying menu.


FF sales just prove that good packaging can sell anything.

#11 - Is there a reason that you can't have a hard final boss and a hard optional boss in the same game?

My friend told me that the second half of the game is the worst thing you have to endure. The story is boring and bad.

Fox makes sense. I liked FF but now. urgh. It's just regurgitated nonsense. All I'm looking forward to now are the old FF ports to new systems. bad when it was considered a good and respected series.

A FF that is TOO hard!? It's about time! To all the whiners and moaners that a game is too hard, the Japanese had a rerelease of FF VII because our version was harder than theirs. Seems a bit nice that America gets a little extra something wirthout having to shell out more $$ for what the game SHOULD have been. I agree with the other posts that FF has been getting soft and branded. It's about time we had a game that actually would challenge us. I still shudder that Back to the Future 3 for the Genesis was near impossible to get past even the first stage! THAT was hard.

plagiarize: If your attention span to a game is not worth waiting 8 hours for a story to develop, go post something positive on a game you might actually like. Japanese RPGs mainly develop their characters thru world events and not like American games which give the character more power to develop the story.

If you need to point to an optional boss to justify difficulty, then your game is too easy.

And Ozma in FF9 was harder than Omega in FF8 by a country mile. It's possible to take out Omega on the cheap. You have to earn it to take out Ozma.

I know I'm going to contradict myself here so bear with me :P

RPG's by definition can't be hard, if you can go out and level up then you can get yourself strong enough to take on any challege with ease, its a matter of patience.

now I like the fact that the final boss is usualy easy in S-E games (DQ8 final boss was a joke though) because I don't have 150 hrs to beat a game, I beat DQ8 just under the 60 Hr mark, and spent another 20 hours or so in the final (only appaers after winning) dungeon (without beating it). I would hate it if I needed to spend those 20 hrs or so just to beat the final boss I wouldnt have finished the game. and I probably never will if it were the case.

I may go back and finish the secret dungeon, I may not, but I finished the game thats all that matters.

Anybody notice what all these posts have in comon? Wether you like it or hate it we've all played it, so the game must be somewhat entertaining to us. Its not like S-E forced you to buy it. Difficult or easy who cares? Final Fantasy is about the story. It may as well be an interactive movie, but Id rather spend 60 bucks and get 30-40 hours of good entertainment out of it, then get to move on with my life. If you want more than that then go play World of Warcraft. Why does everybody have to bitch about this shit?

from my perspective
1: it's not impossible, so far places with main characters below lv50 bosses aren't hard with 15 to 22 combos. After lv 50 your weapons are much better at killing them.
2: there were some jar jar look like citizens walking in the game but who cares when they're not the main characters.
3: music is ok from places to places. i don't really like the royal kingdom music, but i do like the spooky music from kings tomb.
4: ff is about being the standard for all other company to match, and it hasn't fail so to me. maybe exception with 10...

additionally, it is good to see it has 3 different graphic modes. 1st is standard playable mode, 2nd is semi-play-cinema mode, and 3rd the full cinema mode.

It is well known that Next-Gen magazine is biased toward Sony. If Final Fantasy 12 came out on the Xbox or Gamecube, there would be no 'rebuttal'.

If you want proof of the biasness, look up Next-Gen's story on the death of the UMD. Next-Gen deliberately edits out the Reauter's direct quote of the Universal guy comparing the UMD to Blu-Ray.

As any journalist knows, you can't edit quotes like that. If Sony's fortunes fall, then Next-Gen is going to be nothing more than a huge apologist for their every 'stumble'. Just as Next-Gen is trying to defend consumers' percieved flaws in FF 12.

I don't care. I still want it. I will skeet all over the saleslady at circuit city when I buy it, too.

I have played about 10-15 hours into final fantasy XII and I think it is a great game. At first I was a little skeptical about the entire battle system, but once all the elements are introduced it actually works pretty well. As for the story, I thought they have done a good job so far. It leaves you a little in the dark for the introduction of the game, but I think that just makes a good hook to keep you interested through the introductions until you get to the real meat of the story. 10-15 hours isnt that far into a game like this, but if they keep the quality of the story going I think it may end of my favorite of the series

The way that I look at it, if your not a fan of the series then stay out of the conversation! This should be a discussion about a game that fans should debate. I agree with the remake that poster #2 made, shouldn’t there have been a warning about spoilers??? The final fantasy games have always had some sort of change to them. FF10 was a little simple I found that buy the time I got to SIN I was able to beat on him with ease. A harder game will keep me focused. With simple games (cough cough God of War cough cough), I seem to lose interest with.

Varian, regardless of how paranoid you may sound when you say a well respected bulletin is biased, it doesn't matter if they are "apologizing" if it makes sense. It's worth the read, and about time they make a final fantasy *hard*.

Other than that, I have yet to hear the music to criticize (but since it doesn't come from Nobuo, I don't expect much).

I don't care how much of a "brand" it is, I care if it is a good game. And by "Star-Wars" rip-off, do you mean similar creatures? Come on, that happens pretty much everywhere, and I don't give a shit if there is a vague resemblance that some random dipshit thinks there is if the game is good.

Yeah, I'm sure Square-Enix "bribed" Famitsu for a 40/40, and that 2 million japanese paid around 80 dollars for the game each just because they hate Xbox. LOL

I think it was a bold move by Square Enix to do this, well bold by Japanese standards, and I respect them for it, I hope this means the death of menu-driven game play...

One of my first playstation games was FFVII...It completely blew me away...I've tried to get into the Final Fantasy series since, but I've been bored to tears by every one of them (started and came close to completing- but never finished- 8,9,and 10..then gave up on the series)

Since 10 I've been waiting for that ultimate FF experience...but I haven't found it yet, and I don't blame the haters for complaining.

Going by numbers I suppose I'll just wait for either FFXIII for PS3(?) or FFXIV. Why?---FF7 was the first FF to the playstation...and FFVIII will be the first FF made for the PS3(?).
OR
FFXIV, simply because it would be the seventh installment of the series since the FF 7 I loved so much.

OR
Maybe I'll have to wait until FFXXX...just because of the painfully obvious sexual connotation...wonder what those crazy japanese developers will throw in THAT game to make light of that fact. (hot coffee mod in whore house from ff7 anyone?)

YOU ARE ALL MORONS!! THIS GAME WASN'T EVEN MADE FOR YOU NORTH AMERICANS WHO LOVE GRAND THEFT AUTO, JUST LIKE THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF AN AMERICAN. THIS GAME IS MADE FOR US JAPANESE PPL WHO ARE MORE INTO STORIES. GO BACK TO YOUR EVERYDAY KILLING OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN. AND STOP USING OUR POLLS FOR YOUR STUPID DS SALES AND LOOK AT YOUR OWN AMERICAN SALES.

DS fanboy: "well I'm from Iowa and I'm gonna stick to how sales are doing in Japan cuz I'm an idiot!"

In every RPG levelling should be natural. If you play well without rushing things each boss you encounter should be no problem, the final boss included. In that respect FFX was perfect and I'm afraid FFXII won't. I'm still at 16h in the game and my level is only 12. You gain very few EXP through each fight and I wonder if it's going to be like this till the end.
When I was a student I didn' mind playing for more than 60hrs but it's not posibble anymore, I have a job and a real life. Still I love RPGs and especially a good FF and I think the we should be able to chose the difficulty like in KH2 in order to please those who have time and those who don't.

Just hitting up number 4 -

I think people have forgotten Final Fantasies 3j, 4, 6, 8 X and 11. The Final Fantasy brand has been used, through most of its history, as a brand - to get people to give the game a chance despite the fact that it introduces quite sweeping changes to the formula.

Which is awesome. One of the things that people get very upset about is sequelitis, and the Final Fantasy series is the archetypal example of game sequels done smart. They could have released each game as a seperate game in a new series, but instead they've leveraged the brand and refused to crank out a formulaic update, and people have given Square the benefit of the doubt because it's Final Fantasy.

And I don't think I need to remind people that gamers will go for sequels and sure bets over the experimental games and new franchises. How many of you bought Psychonauts? Or Ico? Or Beyond Good and Evil? Or Xenogears? And how many of you bought Resident Evil 4? Or Half-Life 2?

Or Final Fantasy X?

Good sequels always win* over good new franchises, and that, my friends, is why there are no new franchises. That's why it's so important that there's gaming brands, so developers can innovate and screw with formulas without the audience abandoning them in droves.

*And it's a competition because gamers have only so much money. Honestly, would you give up Twilight Princess for some wacky new PS2 game?

I'm not even going to delve into the arguements (though the "music stinks" one intrigues me-- yes, it's not Nobuo for the most part, but Sakimoto's work is incredible on its own. Different? Yes, most likely? Stinking? Hah, don't think so.).

Fact is, fanboys have *always* complained about whatever the latest iteration of Final Fantasy is. And sure, some Final Fantasies end up being clunkers, but they're still generally better than most other console RPGs out there. Case in point: I can remember arguements about the Junction system (FF8), the superdeformation (FF9), the voice acting (FFX), the MMO aspect (FFXI), and the girliness of it all (FFX-2).

To expand on what Merus said, each and every Final Fantasy game is supposed to be *different*, and with FFX-2 and the Compilation of FF7, this seems to go for the spinoffs as well. That's the whole point of the series: have a few things consistent (Cid, chocobos, etc.), and change everything else! Sheesh.

With that said, I'm still looking forward to FF12, *especially* if it is as difficult as claimed :)

Tatsuya,
exp differs by locations in the game. once you pass kings tomb exp goes fast when enemies start coming in in groups. Specifically, large walking birds at the plain, those are about 300 per pop.

Calling FF an RPG is a gross misuse and misunderstanding of the term.

Jamesology: Are you *retarded*? First, stop using all caps, they make you sound even stupider than the words you typed. Second, they didn't make FF for the US? Then why the hell is it released here? Third, we aren't all a bunch of murdering idiots. Moron..

You know, I, uh, write for NextGen -- and I can say pretty definitively that there's no pro-Sony bias going around. Especially not on my end. At all.

anyone know how limited the weapon selection will be in 12? can you actually equip things or is it some lame ass "upgrade" system they've been pushing on us for the last few FF games.

what happened to the days of 50 different types of swordarmor?