I wasn’t initially planning on picking up Final Fantasy XII, having found myself unable to wrap my head around their combat system in the headache-inducing confines of E3. It seemed at the time that you merely ran towards an enemy and then Things Happened, which didn’t strike me as resembling a game in the traditional sense. Still, the ridiculously good reviews were impossible to ignore, so I scooped it up to see if Square and I still had any chemistry together.

I’m probably around the seven hour mark at this point, and the jury remains frustratingly out. There’s a lot to like here but Square takes their sweet time really getting into the game proper, and that long introduction phase is pretty excruciating to work through. FFVII started players on an exciting and obviously dangerous sabotage mission. FFX began with the destruction of your entire world and your subsequent exodus to an altogether alien place. FFXII starts the protagonist off by having him beat up on rats and killer tomatoes. One would imagine that after more than two decades worth of development in the RPG genre, developers would have picked up that killing rodents in sewers/basements/dungeons has never been fun, but no. Calling it “dire” and making it larger does not make the effort significantly more compelling. I suppose I’d be willing to negotiate on zombie rats.

The combat system is worthy of some deeper meditation, and indeed most of the discussion you see on this game is going to center around that topic. The gambit system can be described by a series of rules by which you can instruct all of your characters to act, but I think perhaps the most interesting aspect of it is that you actually unlock full access to the gambits. Each gambit involves a target and an action, and while the action is simply anything that particular character can do, the targets are actually drawn from a list with items like foes attacking the leader, foes targeted by the leader, allies with health under a certain percentage, etc. The list of available targets you start off with is actually pretty limited, and you unlock more of them by purchasing them at shops or even by finding them in treasure chests. Your character will process the highest available command on their list, although at first they only have room for two gambits and additional slots must also be unlocked. The system really does seem to speed up battles and I imagine that further into the game it will allow for some really fine-tuned controlling.

This isn’t to say that you can’t provide manual control, as you are able to interrupt and provide individual orders at any time, but I found the AI to occasionally be a little stupid in executing those orders. For example, during a boss fight I ordered one party member to attack a smaller side creature that takes two hits to destroy, and after the first hit he would run back and begin attacking the main boss again. It’s hard to think of a situation when someone might issue an attack order where “Hit him until he’s dead or I say otherwise” isn’t part of the implicit instruction. Likewise, you have to be very careful about monitoring how new orders involving precious commodities are actually working, as the wrong gambit can drain you of items like potions almost instantly.

Despite these concerns, I am admittedly at a point where I can see my enjoyment of the game on an upward trajectory, and would look forward to further exploration were it not for the grave misfortune of a launch date within a week of Gears of War and Guitar Hero II. It’s difficult to prioritize a game whose entertainment is an estimated future value over something with a known high quantity. Having whispered soothing good-byes, the disc has already been relegated to a nearby shelf, where I like to imagine that it will peer over at me longingly until we inevitably reconcile later in the month.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.