Here's my bashing of Final Fantasy XII. (Note the lack of the very important word, review. My bashing is based purely on the first six hours of so of the game. ) If you've been reading my blog, you know I have quite the extreme hate for Final Fantasy XII. Why the extreme hate you ask? That's because I believe it is quite possibly the worst Final Fantasy I have ever played, and the only Final Fantasy so far that I have been unable to finish due to my gripes with it.
For one, the storyline sucks. It's weak and is a far cry from many RPGs. It doesn't take a genius to tell you what happens. From the first 5 hours, we can tell that chances are Ashe will be reinstated (after the world's longest journey to retrieve proof of her birthright), Larsa will become Emperor, Vayne will fight some stupid war for some stupid purpose (probably after accelerating the death of the emperor somewhat or the emperor just dies naturally) like world conquest, our dear Vaan will get his own airship, bla bla bla.
Next on the list, the music is hardly nice to listen to. I don't know about you, but it becomes just about as annoying as the game itself within just 5 hours. In fact, I've learnt to block out the music while playing within just 5 hours, so I can't even hum it. But I'll be honest, I've never liked Hitoshi Sakamoto's music much. It's just not up to par in my opinion.
Another gripe I have is with the dungeons. I highly dislike dungeons that look like pieces copied and pasted to form a larger dungeon. Yes, you see these in the first 5 hours of gameplay. I kid you not. First, we have the sewers of Rabanastre. I have never been so desperate to get out of a dungeon out of TEDIOUSNESS, REPETITION and BOREDOM before. And guess what? They repeat it later in some something-Yensa desert where they string together long series of rings with walkways. Yes, they look the same. No, there's no way besides the map to tell where the bloody hell you are.
That brings me to my next point - overly long and ridiculous names. Rabanastre, Archadia, Ivalice and passable, when you start passing off terms like Urutan-Yensa, manufacted Nethicite, Dynast-King, to support your ALREADY weak storyline. I don't even know if it was to create interest in the weak storyline that they used such pointless words. That is IN ADDITION to using the words Magick and Technick.
I would find fault with the battle system, but I now understand why people can play the game as it is. Without the gambit system, I'd say FF12 would be doomed. In fact, I think the only reason FF12 is any good is because it's battle system is a redeeming feature. But, you have to go without it for a good two hours, I think, because you can't set up gambits until then. And those two hours - are pure torture. Why? You can move around, but you can't swing your sword with a button press. You've gotta wait for the meter to fill up. And how often do you do this? Every time you meet a monster. How often to you meet monsters in your first 2 hours you think? I'd say about every 30 seconds when you're out in the desert.
With it's weak storyline and uninspired (and long-winded) dungeons, they might as well call it Final Fantasy Dungeon Crawling (60 hours of dungeon crawling guaranteed!). Which I think probably isn't too far away, considering how busy Square Enix is milking its cash cows these days. Final Fantasy XII easily has the worst first hour of gameplay of most games. They toss you large amounts of storyline with plenty of words, you start playing as the main character's brother, and chance upon what must be the ONLY plot twist in the entire damn storyline. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna play what is essentially Final Fantasy Dungeon Crawling with Scriptable Party AI.
Now if you would excuse me, I have .hack//G.U. Vol. 2 to finish.