Final Fantasy 12 - Reviews

Seriously, I think 12 is the best in the series. Wait until you start getting Espers and Quickenings...

 

The espers are nothing compared to GF's , and the same applies for the Quickenings as opposed to the limit breaks IMO.

 

They are good for easy license points though...once you can kill them with 1 hit

 

Wow just noticed that I played 13 hours today...:
I didn't have school today so I thought hell let's play!
I progressed from the Tomb of Raithwall to the end of Stilshire of miriam and that includes about 5 hours of grinding for levels. My top guys are currently at level 38 and my playtime so far is 32h 44min. I grinded mainly because of the major ahole boss named Elder Wyrm, he had some very nasty battle tactics.

The story is pretty good, it's little weird though that there really aren't just a one or two main character. I think this game is a mix of old FF-games added with something new and the combo is pretty good, I think it's easily better than the last few FF games (FF IX, X and X-2)
Everything works smoothly and at certain points one can see that PS2 is really pushed as some of the scenes are rather amazing for a PS2 game. All in all the mature theme of this game is really apreciated here!

I have little problems with the quickenings though...
I look at the manual and it says

"a timer and a list of available quickenings is displayed. By pressing proper button compinations within the allotted time, you will be able to perform multiple attacks"

Well I see the timer, but I haven't seen any button compinations, could someone explain the quickening system for me

Also one thing that I find a bit odd is that my guys are equipped with War Hammers, which has a attack power of 65, and it has more attack power than any of the swords I have seen, even the last hammer I had, had more attack power than any of the swords or poles etc, on the licence board I have hammers 2 and 3 and much bigger numbers for swords. Are there any valid reasons to use swords that have less attack power than my hammer?

 

When you do a quickening, all 3 of your characters' portraits appear at the bottom, and each has a button corresponding to that character. Any of their quickenings can appear there, or you can get "mist charge" which refills their gague. If there are no commands selectable, hit R2 to "reshuffle" until one becomes selectable again. It's random. You'll get the hang of it.

Hammers and axes do random damage. You can potentially hit for much higher damage with them (relative to swords), but you can also get puny double-digit hits.

 

Or even single-digit . I have Basch using axes, and last night in a Rank 7 monster hunt, he did 4500 damage one round, then 6 (yes, six), then 3800. Of course, Vaan and Ashe are swordfighters who do a more consistent 1200-1500 per strike, so I'm not sure who really is the heavy-hitter overall.

 

I switched back to swords, also I noticed that my armors were a bit outdated. Now I have pretty good gear and the game feels pretty easy. I just arrived to Phon Coast and my top characters are on level 43... I have only leveled three characters basically. Vaan, Balthier and Basch, the rest are between 10-16, I hope this won't be a problem in the future, although the fact that everybody collects license points helps here.

 

I played through the entire game only using 3 characters. One strategy that some like to use, though, is to keep your reserve characters for mists/summons. You can bust out your reserve party, unleash a mist quickening, and then switch back to your main party with full MP.

 

I haven't played this game for over a week, it's starting to get a little boring.

Actually, I quit in disgust after the game totally fucked me over, I was crossing the desert, and on the way through my ENTIRE party got silenced, and no enemies were dropping cures, so I was totally fucked. In the middle of the desert, with no magic whatsoever. Whoever heard of a "Silence Bomb"? Bam, 3 of my characters silenced because of some retarded booby trap.

Even when killed, characters come back silenced, so what the hell was I supposed to do? I tried to book it out of there, but I had like 40 of those little sand bastards on my tail. I should've brought some potions to heal silencing I guess, but damn, this game has no mercy...

I realized that I should've changed my cure gambits over to potion, as I had about 60+ potions, but by that time I was dead, and I hadn't saved for probably 2 or 3 hours.... So ya, haven't played it for a while....bullshit

I think I'm gonna go back, but screw the main quest, I'm goin monster hunting...

 

Well I just bought a new armor for my team which has reflect as a feature, little did I know that it also reflect my own cure spells!!, making them totally useless, however I sold my old stuff and it's going to take a while before I get them back...

 

There's a ring or something you can get to allow you to cast through reflect.

 

I did the same thing. That's why I always save before I buy a bunch of stuff in case it's not worth it.

 

Echo grass? And why run over a booby trap? You can see these traps easily and avoid them, even set up a gambit to automatically cast libra on one of your party members. Esuna would cure silence in a jiffy, and you can spend a gambit on that. You can pretty much clear everything at a save point even if you don't save, and you can look at your map for the nearest one. Why wait for a drop? You can steal potions, ya know.

 

Sometimes you want to cast on a character with reflect.

 

1. I assumed it was an exploding trap like every other one I'd hit, so I just ran through it, thought I'd take the damage.
2. I didn't know you could cast libra on the traps, would've been good to know! I didn't even realize there were magic traps...
3. Don't have Esuna.
4. I had a gambit set to steal from enemies with HP=100%, that means that nearly every enemy I fought, I stole somethig from him at least once, nobody was giving up echo grass...

Save point would've worked, the problem was I decided to take the long way through the desert to gain some extra experience, so instead of going straight through I looped all the way up top, by the time I realized I was in a real bad situation, I was a long way from a save point.

I dunno, I just thought it was a cheesball tactic, if you're gonna have guys silencing me all the time, drop some freakin cures once in a while. I had like 7 people silenced at the same time, that;s just not called for!!

 

Well I must admit that this game can be a bitch if one does try to take shortcuts or doesn't take everything into consideration, I got killed few times on nasty circumstances too. And there have been a few bossfights that just came out of nowhere, die in one of those and whoopdidoo 1 hour lost... That's why I overlevel my characters so I can handle those nasty situations and I always save when there is a possibility to do so.

Well I played about 10 hours today also. I'm at level 48 now and just arrived in Archadia, luckily 6th of december is our independece day(meaning no school) so I get to play some more tomorrow...

I'm not sure about the gambit system though...
Why can't all the gambits be available from the start? Basically at the beginnin you just have to do more stuff manually. I think the system is bit over complicated, I mean if there is a flying enemy and I tell my team to attack it, they should automatically attack it with something that actually hits it, instead of swinging the swords in thin air forever... I know basically everything can be set using the gambits, but first you have to have them and if you make one change to them, it could mean that you have to rearrange the whole system again. I basically don't use the gambit system other than the bare minimum including attack and healing other stuff I do manually.

 

You can essentially have a gambit that targets flying enemies for those characters that don't use guns/crossbows/bows, and turn the gambit on/off accordingly, it's like turning off poach when you're fighting a boss.

 

Does anybody know at what point does the technik telekinesis become available?

 

You should have just used a reserve character with some white magic cure the silenced characters. Even if none of them have it, it's not expensive to get one of them that particular license. Unless you hadn't bought the spell from a magic shop... You should be able to fight your way out with your backups, anyway. But I never go anywhere without a modest supply of potions to cure every status effect. 5-10 of everything. And spells are important to have as a back up.

 

I'm absolutely loving this game. I really like the gambit system, saves me a lot of time. I even have the last one on heal self for every character so I don't even have to bother doing that after battle. However the game can be very unforgiving. Especially those monster hunts. I went to do the first one Montblanc gives you in Giza, and I got owned by petrify. I was only level 9 and couldn't even buy anti stone stuff. After I lost I managed to beat it next time, but it was seriously hard and I used up all my 51 potions and lots of phoenix downs. I know I probably should have leveled up first, but I just had to kill that clockatrice

Anyways, back to playing now I guess.