It seemed like a pretty good game, but the constant grinding and long segments without any sort of story progression killed it for me.
it has the worst characters in my opinion, and that killed it for me, espeically when they give you Reks, this good acceptable character at the start, only to KILL him 5 minutes in, and you get stuck with his idiot brother.
Early Zodiac Spear, anyone? It sure is a fun spoiler when you can just put the wielder in berserk, one hit enemies and watch them destroy the very soul of everything that moves. It goes something like: >GETS ZODIAC SPEAR. >OPENS UP AN EIDOLON SLAUGHTERHOUSE. >GG. Other than that, Yiazmat just takes too damn long... Not worth it, imo.
[video=youtube;vSyfGm6wXgs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSyfGm6wXgs[/video] Because this is literally how the game goes.
XII was also one of my favorites. Maybe I just like politics a lot. :B DON'T BELIEVE ONDORE'S LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES! Bravery + Haste + Berserk + Zodiac Spear = GET OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY!
I wanted to like this soooooooooo bad. But the story was too...all over for me. And people bitch about XIII's story. Gawd. I had no idea what the F was going on and then I was like "oh its the final boss...hes dead now...cool...what was the point again?" #truestory
I' ve got a save file right at the beginning of the game : Vaan is still alone, and I fought so many dinosaurs and malboros that he' s level 60 and almost completed his license grid. I didn' t know the phoenix down trick back then, but what' s the fun in grinding that way. Anyway, when the other characters join Vaan they have as much exp and pp as him. Combined with what you said (which by that point barely improves my strength) I can skim through the game and just watch the cutscenes, which is why I did it to begin with. I don' t understand why the hell SE doesn' t implement a theater and a new game plus in all their RPG by now, it' s neither complicated nor time-consuming to implement. Maybe FF XII complicated plot would be less criticized if players could watch the whole "movie" without the lengthy in-betweens they don' t want to go through ever again.
VI. No random encounters and the bounty system makes XII much better in the gameplay department. Plus, the Final Fantasy with the least amount of JRPG cliches, +1 in my book. Game world, boss fights, writing, all top notch. I wasn't a fan of the characters, but I'll take characters that all feel like they're in the same universe over a standard cutesie adult-child girl, a Polynesian dude and Beast from X-Men any day. Vaan was an awful protagonist though, I'll give you that. White Aladdin over here was never in my party.
