Squeenix Final Fantasy XII remaster

[Hobo Elf]

Gosh, Final Fantasy 12 would have been excellent if they had stuck to the original plan of Basch being the generic badass protagonist .

Guess it's time to post that image macro again.

Spoiler

 

[Jaesun]

Played this once. Vaan, jebus fucking Christmas.....

 

[SCO]

Do the Zodiac version make this game less boring and braindead? For me the original was 80-hour long running and watching simulator. And i have to say that FFXII was the only game in my life that i've truly hated.

It has a inbuilt frameskip button (that turbo mode) that you can use to fastforward in the the game, so it's basically at least 50% better about this.

Also there is a cheat to change jobs if you're annoyed about being limited, which works perfectly.

Still a pretty boring game though.

 

[deuxhero]

How many games have actually been improved by taking this demographic crap into mind when making the game?

 

[Immortal]

Played this once. Vaan, jebus fucking Christmas.....

I thought you like faggots..?


Question -

Does the Zodiac edition -just- lock people into class archetype grids?
How is that better than a classless system? Sounds stupid why do people like it?

 

[flyingjohn]

What do you prefer, everybody having everything and feeling the same or specialization that makes your party unique?
I know the argument is probably gonna be that you can make a more specialized party with the freedom to choose what you want,but for that to work you would need to have perfect balance(every skill being useful) and jrpg don't have that.
What you get with vanilla is the same problem you have with late ff x sphere grid.
Meaning everybody spamming the most broken op spell or ability over and over,considering there is no reason no to.

 

[Jaesun]

Played this once. Vaan, jebus fucking Christmas.....

I thought you like faggots..?

I like MEN, not Faggots....

 

[Morality Games]

Any game designers out there thinking of adding story to their game please note that making the player character an "observer narrator" to the game's actual protagonist is a negation of what makes games appealing, i.e., exercising player agency in a persistent digital environment. It's a compromised method in novels that writers concede to because it gives them the literary advantages of a first person perspective (expanding psychological atmosphere) while being able to threaten the novel's actual protagonists with mortal peril. The cost of this compromise is bloating the pages with a useless, buffer state character that interrupts the direct mental link between the novel's protagonists and the audience's ability to empathize with their them and their struggles.

It's bad then. In video games, its even more toxic because it pits the gamer's trained impulses that he can exercise agency through the mechanics of the game with the fact that the player character he supposed to identify with is a helpless non-actor in the actual logic of the world he inhabits and in the events of the story he is participating in.

Challenged characters who suffers setbacks and defeats is great. Useless non-actors is bad. Vaan is the worst example of the latter in a Final Fantasy game.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Read my post above. Vaan isn't a "useless non-actor". He's an important character; basically the yan to Ashe's ying. And, no, Vaan isn't the player character, he isn't there to be the eyes of the player. There is no main character in FF12 the same way that Cloud is the protagonist of FF7 and Cecil is the protagonist of FF4. FF12 has an ensemble cast. I guess sometimes people could make the mistake that the first character you play as is the main character, but Vaan isn't even the first playable character, Reks is. I never really got the hate for Vaan. Is it how he looks? The last time a FF protagonist looked badass was back in the 2D era but I don't see anyone bitching about Tidus. His personality is not as insufferable as Cloud, Squall or Tidus either. He's kinda mellow and ho-hum, not really an interesting character, but not offensive either to the point where I see so many people single him out for whatever reason. I don't think he's that great of a character, but he's not the worst either.

 

[Grimlorn]

I haven't played FF12 but isn't it possible if the main character was meant to be Basch and they changed it to Vaan that they may have simply split some of the character story stuff between the two characters to make it so Vaan had a story line? It seems pretty simple to come to a conclusion that the story may have been reworked to include a character that wasn't originally intended to be in the game. Making the argument that he's needed to be there for Ashe because the story wouldn't make sense, doesn't make sense when you consider that the story could have been reworked to include Vaan instead of Basch possibly being there. I recall people talking about Basch being the main character for years and the problems around the development of the game. I also remember a story where one of the main devs on the game couldn't even play it during a media promotion of the game because it had been changed too much.

 

[Perkel]

Thanks to this remaster new people will find how fucking boring it was how every "quest" was basically walking through long dungeon fighting chains of shitty mobs.

It is NWN of Final Fantasy games.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I haven't played FF12 but isn't it possible if the main character was meant to be Basch and they changed it to Vaan that they may have simply split some of the character story stuff between the two characters to make it so Vaan had a story line? It seems pretty simple to come to a conclusion that the story may have been reworked to include a character that wasn't originally intended to be in the game. Making the argument that he's needed to be there for Ashe because the story wouldn't make sense, doesn't make sense when you consider that the story could have been reworked to include Vaan instead of Basch possibly being there. I recall people talking about Basch being the main character for years and the problems around the development of the game. I also remember a story where one of the main devs on the game couldn't even play it during a media promotion of the game because it had been changed too much.

No, it's all wrong. Basch has a very strong story and I can't see how anyone could think that the stories of Basch and Vaan were split. The most important plot point in Vaan's story is that his brother is dead, for Basch it's that he is alive. There's no way that they could've slashed the stories in half because they are so different. Like I said, there is no single main character in FF12. Ensemble cast, people. Look it up.

 

[CryptRat]

If they wanted to make the player feel like there's no player's character I think that introducing Balthier, Asche/Basch and Vaan separately would have been better than Vaan gathering the party after a prologue involving his brother ; it didn't work on me, I always saw Vaan as the player's character.
However I tolerated Vaan more than Tidus and Squall because he's not a lover and his personnality was more tolerable too (he looks really bad though) ; I really appreciated not playing the lover (and that the love story is not there at all).

There were a lot of little things I didn't like in the game, but some of them are meant to be changed in the Internationial version, like the characters being all the same and the empty chests. I'm still really not fan of the combat system nor of the MMO pacing, but the version seems really better.

 

[Hobo Elf]

You forgot the best change of all: no more gayness regarding the Zodiac Spear.

 

[Morality Games]

Read my post above. Vaan isn't a "useless non-actor". He's an important character; basically the yan to Ashe's ying. And, no, Vaan isn't the player character, he isn't there to be the eyes of the player. There is no main character in FF12 the same way that Cloud is the protagonist of FF7 and Cecil is the protagonist of FF4. FF12 has an ensemble cast. I guess sometimes people could make the mistake that the first character you play as is the main character, but Vaan isn't even the first playable character, Reks is. I never really got the hate for Vaan. Is it how he looks? The last time a FF protagonist looked badass was back in the 2D era but I don't see anyone bitching about Tidus. His personality is not as insufferable as Cloud, Squall or Tidus either. He's kinda mellow and ho-hum, not really an interesting character, but not offensive either to the point where I see so many people single him out for whatever reason. I don't think he's that great of a character, but he's not the wor

A lot of this is kind of spurious. Reks is a false protagonist lifted straight from the wikipedia article, and the fact the narrative transitions directly from him to his brother sort of serves as evidence that Vaan is the main character -- because that's what false protagonists do, set the stage for the real protagonist. In this case, by giving Vaan some clearly defined beliefs and motives concerning the Imperial Occupation of his country.

Admittedly Final Fantasy is more of an ensemble plot like Avengers, but even Avengers focuses on some characters at the expense of others (Captain America and Iron Man are the main characters, with Nick Fury being a competing protagonist in the first one).

 

[LESS T_T]

Squeenix is doing a survey regarding this remaster: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FFXII

You know what you want to do.

 

[Morality Games]

You can tell it is a Japanese poll because there is no 'Other' option for gender.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[aweigh]

for what it's worth i think FF12 is the 3rd best Final Fantasy ever made in terms of overall experience. Number one for me is, obviously, FF6 followed (almost tied with) FF4 and in third place FF12. i think FF12's gambit system is one of the best RTwP implementations in a mainstream RPG second only to PoE.

Why? Because the japanese do not know what an RTS is so they made a RTwP system that plays more like a bastardized turn-based system. (Seriously, google RTS popularity in Japan: the majority of japanese players have never even heard of StarCraft). I very much enjoyed the RTwP system in FF12 and with some tweaking like limiting inventory access tweaking the action queueing and stuff it would be my favorite.

I find PoE's RTwP system good for the exact same reasons I like the FF12 one: Obsi did all they could to stray as far as possible from RTS gameplay mechanics, so while on the surface FF12 and PoE's RTwP systems may appear different they are really cut from the same cloth, and both games utilize RTwP systems drastically different from Infinity Engine games.

All that said, the FF12 encounter design and difficulty curves and pacing could all use serious work. Way too much trash mobbing and no difficulty to speak of.

EDIT: oh, right, yeah i also like FF12 because the Ivalice Team did a fantastic job in creating the story and the ensemble cast as mentioned above. It's the only FF game that you can play in the living room in front of your family or your room mates without feeling deep shame and embarassment whenever cutscenes come on, and that's basically its strongest saving grace.

 

[Perkel]

couldn't disagree more.
I played i 3 times. At launch on ps2, 2-3 years later and zodiac international edition like half.

- Story is simply boring. It is obvious that mid production they kicked out from project writer (write of Tactics Ogre no less !!) and they reworked story to fit kids. Thus you end up with weirdly paces story about sideline kid who wish to be sky pirate rather than playing bash as MC and story about vengeance totally killing judges importance to cast of characters.
- gambit system is great but combat system itself completely relies on healing. And i don't mean "healing" i mean constant chain of healing because regadless of version unless you are overpowered as hell you need all time heal or you die. IT is even bigger problem in Zodiac internation version because you can choose class combo which won't have healing spell thus rendering your squad entirely useless.
- wait time. Game is based on ATB but even with faster waittime you simply wait to fucking long for simplest of actions. Not only action took forever but also they lacked actual meanigful tactic behind them. It was just jrpg combat + free movement. Even FFX provided more actual tactic to game than FFXII.
- Absolutely dreadfull mmoish level design. Every environment felt like NWN1 garbage OC. Just either plains of nothing with enemies or long corridors of nothing with enemies.

There were good things like hunts and some skill mixing but that can't fix main problems with game.

To me FF6,FF7,FF8,FF9 and even FFX were far better games than FFXII even if FXII offered more pseudo fredom (game actually was exactly the same it therms of exploration like rest of FF games and compared to old ones even worse.

 

[Hyperion]

Call me crazy, but most, if not all of Matsuno's major games involve the protagonist being driven by vengeance, only to realize the eventual folly of it. Usually this occurs around or slightly before they realize someone is pulling the strings behind the scenes. Ultimately, some supernatural force ends up being the true evil driving said antagonist.

Turn combat speed all the way up, then put the game on active, and you'll be crying for slower combat until the end of time.

FFXII had, inarguably, the best exploration of any Final Fantasy made, except maybe the original. Once Raithwall's Tomb was completed, you could go anywhere except for like 3 overworld areas. You can make a case for FFVI, but the game gives you clear indicators on where you should go, and what you should do in a particular order.

Celes > Raft > Sabin > Serpent Trench > Try to get Terra > Edgar > Setzer > Game finally opens up a bit with a STRONG hint you should get Cyan.

The biggest problems with the game were trying to gear your characters up at the endgame felt impossible if you weren't on an emulator and character arcs could have, and should have been a little bit more fleshed out. The scene where Gabranth is forced to kill Drace is one of my favorite in the entire series, and the game really could have used a few more of that magnitude.

 

[aweigh]

Hyperion oasis789

that's a super common manga/anime trope. one of the golden rules of manga is to first make a hero and then make a rival for the hero who has a deep relationship with the hero and finally add conflict to the mix such as:

- making the rival start as an ally
- making the rival end as an ally
- combination of both

the second rule is that any rivals a protagonist has have to be twice as appealing to the audience as the protagonist and their motivations have to be internal rather than the external motivations of the protagonist. As for the supernatural forces that is just (literally) classic deus ex machina which comes from greek manga.

ETC, etc.

 

[Makabb]

 

[Hyperion]

Fuck, that looks even better than a 6x native resolution on PCSX2. May need to start another playthrough now.

I know they won't, but I wish they would make some small changes to the game. Allowing any of the characters to be the avatar in town in place of only Vaan would go a long way to dispelling the "Vaan as MC" complaints. Would LOVE a Judge Masiter Basch and Balthier costume unlocked in NG+ over that awful puffy shirt, or the open shirt and sandals for Basch. And for the love of Christ, give me Reks' (or Rassler's) outfit for Vaan, so I don't have to look at his shitty abs all day.

There's also no way in Hell anybody had fun gearing up in Cerobi Steppe, farming rare spawns for 1% drops, or trying for a rare steal from fucking Zodiark.

 

[jungl]

ff13 was the biggest fail in the jrpg world in my eyes. FF series is known for its entertaining stories. FF13 had the most boring drawn out story I have ever seen in gaming and doesn't help the entire cast sucks, the protagonists AND the villains. The gameplay itself is incredibly boring being entirely mindless shit based only on level and gear checks.

Xenoblade chronicles is like ff13 but without the problems. It has a good story and combat system.