I pre-ordered the collector's edition of Final Fantasy XII. I picked it up a few days after it came out. Despite that, I remember it being mediocre, even at launch. The cost suck fallacy did not work on me.
The games start out looking absolutely beautiful, even fourteen years after the fact. There’s a beautiful wedding clearly involving high ranking members of society and we quickly learn it’s a princess and her, seeming, lover who is also royalty. It's nice that a royal wedding isn’t just about position. Quickly though, troops are forced to amass in front of the same castle where just days, if not sooner, a happy event took place. We then jump to a night battle atop castle ramparts. Everyone is wearing helmets except for the two people who are probably important. The guy who just married gets shot by an arrow as a castle pailing explodes and an airship hovers above a desolate field covered in blood and metal.
Next up is the tutorial dungeon where everyone dies because one of the guys not wearing a helmet suddenly changes his voice.
Then we meet the main character hunting rats and his love interest telling him he’s dumb and should be working in the shop. Women, right? Trying to be responsible and whatnot. Anyway, Vann is the worst main character in the game. He doesn’t add anything to the plot and is relevan is because his brother was the MC in the tutorial dungeon.
There’s a feast to honor the new leader of the Kingdom of Dalmasca, Vayne, who, despite being the son of the guy who declared war on Dalmaska, promises to bring peace. Nothing comes from this as Vayne starts acting evil for the sake of being the main villain. But only off-screen and via vague references.
Eventually, Vann breaks into the castle and gets stopped by the actual main character Balthier and his dark-skinned, seven foot fall Icelandic bunny girlfriend/cohort/dominatrix/unknown relationship. It’s never mentioned why they're together which is the M.O. of this game: Say nothing.
They break out of the castle and meet up with the should-have-been main character, Amalia (AKA Ashe) who looks a lot like the princess from the opening scene, but no one in this Kingdom knew who their leader was so they don’t dumbfounded.
They get caught and thrown in prison and met up with the guy who killed everyone when he changed his voice, but it’s normal again, and, anyway, Basch should have been the main character. There are now six party members and only two of them have plot relevance.
We head west to find proof that the princess is actually the princess and not some imposter pretending to be a dead girl who killed herself. They get a rock, a summon, and a sword. The rock quickly becomes a powerless McGuffin, summons are useless so who cares, and the sword is never brought up again. They get captured again because the cool guest party member was a double agent and Fran goes crazy from Mist which seems cool but is never brought up.
The party then goes south because the local religious leader is all-knowing. He tells them to get a sword. The sword is useless and it is never brought up again. Also, the local religious leader is killed by the main villain because the villain is EVIL! EVIL! The party then marches to Archades in the north, the capital of the EVIL empire.
On the way, Balthier is finally given plot relevance telling us he’s the son of Vayne’s right-hand man, Cidalfas. They break into the capital by making a lot of people happy, meet the coolest character in the game, Reddas, fight Cid, and they go to a city...crystal...maze...ancient something to find answers to questions that didn’t need to be asked. Everything is run by shadow ghosts, apparently, and has been since ancient times. You see, humans were created to be slaves for these shadow people, but they rebelled with the help of the summons and now one of the shadow ghost people wants to really free humans from their yoke even though I’m not sure how the shadow people who controlling things anyway.
Then we go to a lighthouse on the edge of the world to get another stone to take down the empire, but Princess Ashe finally has character growth, after 55 hours, and changes her mind because the stones are related to the shadow people. Reddas dies and then there’s the final dungeon. It’s short. The boss sucks. Ashe is Queen, Basch is her protector or something, Balthier and Fran are missing, and Vann and Penelo are still homeless orphans. Happily ever after.
Nothing happens on Final Fantasy XII. I know this seems overly truncated, but I barely left anything of importance out. XII is a game with five acts: the intro, going west, going south, going north, and the three dungeon climax is which is suppose to explain and resolve everything. The characters don’t grow at all. All six of them are the very same people at the end of the as they are at the start. Ashe is royalty who wants the kingdom back. Basch is a loyal knight. Bal and Fran are mysterious sky pirates. Vaan and Penelo are orphans with no plot relevance! Remove the last three from the game and it’s the same game.
Even the villain is bland. Vayne appears for all of twenty minutes, does no outwardly evil acts, and is just there. There’s a scene where people say he killed his brothers, but it’s never explained why. We see him standing over his father, who we think he kills, but it’s never explained why. He’s not over-the-top like Kefka, understandingly evil like Kuja, or even cool like Sephiroth. He’s just evil for the sake of being evil. It might have something to do with the shadow people and him wanting the remove humans from their grasp, but their influence is never explained. Even the final act of the game isn't evil. It's protecting his land from an invading force from the far west. Sure, he took the land by force, but it's still de jure his.
Everyone sucks, just like the combat...and everything else. There’s a joke about RPGs that you press X to win, but in XII, it’s press nothing to win. It’s all auto-battle. Sure there’s some pre-battle menu meddling going on but that's all. Buy tactics and program actions in; How exciting.
Character development is tied to a license board which makes everyone the same. The loot system is fully random. There is no reason to explore despite the game beauty and quasi-open worldness of the setting. The chests only have a certain chance of them appearing and only have an even less chance of them having anything worthwhile in them and maybe only if you have a late-game accessory equipped. RNGesus isn’t fun.
The music is lackluster, only having five tracks I added to a playlist. It’s probably better than that, but I’m not into the amelodic nature of the soundtrack.
The characters are one dimensional and most have no reason to be playable. I’d replace them with the guest characters, Larsa and Reddas.
The combat isn’t fun.
Character combat growth is unrewarding.
RNGesus rules the shadow people.
The plot only pretends to be deep, but is simple and then randomly confusing.
The most boring villain and main character in history.
There’s a decent amount of framework here and the game feels unfinished. I kinda feel like we entered a five-part sage in the middle of part four. Add a few sub-plots or subquests about a Pro-Arachaides faction. let us know more about Vayne's backstory. Give the characters time to talk to each other and becomes friends...and grow as people and you can make something out of the plot. Combat and randomness is totally broken, though.
Anyway, I only saved thirty minutes in this review, so I failed. I have given into rage. Maybe next time it’ll be shorter. Anywayer, I give Final Fantasy XII on the PS2 a less than II out of XIII. Second worst game I’ve ever played.
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