"What a joke."

Final Fantasy is a series that I grew up with. I watched nervously as it evolved from 2D to 3D. Happily, that was somewhat successful. I also watched nervously as Square milked the series with spinoff games popping out left and right. From X-2 to Dirge of Cerberus, Square Enix shrouded fans with clouds of doubt. Die-hard fans blindly ate up the crap they were served, but fans with a little more sense were able to stand back and watch the massacre, or just run away from it. I was one of these who stood around and said, "Well, hopefully Final Fantasy XII will be better," and "I'm sure FFXII will redeem the series."

Well, here we are. It's been in production for...jeez...I don't even remember, it's been so long. And it's awful. God awful. If you're looking for a game that will further tarnish the Final Fantasy series and completely put an end to everything you think you know about conventional RPG gaming, this is your kind of game. If not, then join the crowd. I told myself back in the day that if Final Fantasy XII wasn't excellent, I would be done with Square forever. I was just getting sick of all their crap. Ever since the merge with Enix, it seems that Square doesn't even try anymore. Some of the useless nonsense they've fed us is just sickening. I gave them one last shot, and Squeenix crapped all over it.

GRAPHICS: 8/10
Lots of good stuff here. Square has always focused on making a good-looking game. Unfortunately, it seems that's ALL they've done here.

Final Fantasy XII boasts the same graphical stylizations as the other games in the series since FFX. Cutscenes look great.

My problem is with the game OUTSIDE of cutscenes. Everything looks very crummy and pixelized, if you will. Environments are anything but lush. Textures run together, the environments are usually dark and shoddy, and NPCs are either a.) choppy or b.) the exact same in appearance.

STORY: 3/10
The game collapses at its base in this department. Usually, Final Fantasy games are known for their superior graphics, character development, and storyline. However, this game is nothing like that at all. In fact, it's worse than most of the spinoff games like Dirge of Cerberus.

In a nutshell, everything is political. The whole game is based on a world war between races. The "story" REEKS of Star Wars. From the opening sequence, I was checking the credits on the box to see if George Lucas had helped with the creation of this game. Ironically, the story is just about as bad as the recent Star Wars films as well. Here's my main complaints:

1. Characters are not developed. No exceptions. Vaan has absolutely no motivation besides the death of his brother. That would be fine if they talked about it every once and a while. You hear a few words about it in the beginning, but then it's not mentioned for a long time, and when it is mentioned, nobody cares anymore or they've already sold the game.

I remember when Final Fantasy games used to have great storylines. I remember when I would play Final Fantasy IX just for the story, and nothing else. I remember when characters had meaning. I guess those days are over. It seems like Square was occupied or something, because this isn't even the worst aspect of the game yet.

2. Final Fantasy games are usually themed in one of two ways: a.) Medieval or b.) Futuristic. For some reason, we've got both themes going on here in FFXII. In the sky, you've got hi-tech floating vehicles on invisible freeways and bounty-hungry battle ships firing away at eachother (i.e. Star Wars) and on the ground you've got hand-to-hand battles of epic proportions, with swords, armor, arrows...the whole enchilada (i.e. Lord of the Rings).

Wait a minute. Back up. There are hi-tech flying machines in the sky....and the characters are fighting with swords?! Is that a joke? This stuck out to me as a HUGE misplacement. I mean, they use swords in all Final Fantasy games, but the other games stick with a futuristic theme or a medieval theme...they NEVER should mix. I don't get it.

3. Politics. Nobody likes politics. That's all there is here. A bunch of politics and nothing else. The ridiculous script and political babble make the game impossible to understand, and eventually, you just stop caring. When characters speak in a medieval fashion ("You must heed your feelings!")...but there are flying machines in the sky...you know something is just ****** up there.

MUSIC/SOUND: 3/10
I'm being generous.

Nobuo Uematsu was the best thing to happen to video game soundtracks. Now that he's gone, there seems to be no one who wants to even attempt to fill his shoes. There's no battle theme. WHAT?! NO BATTLE THEME?!

Somebody take this crap away and bring my Final Fantasy back.

The music, when you can hear it, is uninspired and boring. It reminds me of something written for a movie rather than a game. Final Fantasy games usually have great music, especially FFX...but I guess it's too much to ask nowadays.

There is no epic theme that makes its return in full orchestration at the end. The only thing that has been kept faithful is the FF Prelude, played at the very beginning of the game. That's all. If you're a real Uematsu fan, like myself, stay away from the soundtrack of this title.

No one really cares about sound effects because they're not difficult to put in anyway. They're fine, I guess.

Voice acting is lacking. What's new.

GAMEPLAY: 3/10
In old Final Fantasy games, you would run around proudly until you ran into a random battle. You would engage in said battle until you won, and you'd gain experience points, which would be used to gain levels. Each level gained would increase your stats.

But look at what happened here in Final Fantasy XII. Your character walks around and enters battle in a real-time environment, meaning random battles of the past are out. This, to some people, was a good thing. To me, however, it is a slap in the face. I still remember when I first read that XII would not have random battles. I figured, "Oh, it's okay. It'll end up more like the Kingdom Hearts battle system, then." Well, it didn't. It's much worse, actually. Here's an image for you:

You walk around and see an enemy from afar. You press X to open a menu and select a command. Your party of NPCs follows you (yes, you have a party that you can't control...) and begin attacking whenever they feel necessary, often doing ridiculous things like healing you when they shouldn't. After you make a selection from the command menu, you wait. You wait for a little meter to fill up in the bottom corner of the screen. It's identical to the ATB Meter of the past Final Fantasy games. However, the difference is that you're now in control of the character at all times using the left analog stick. This means that while your ATB Meter is filling up, you're running around like an idiot, staying as close as you can to the enemy. If you're not close enough to the enemy when the meter fills, you won't attack it, ultimately meaning that you need to put your precious HP in jeopardy just to see that your single physical attack will actually land itself. Due to this, the battles of this game are unbearably slow and boring. Kind of like this review. Except slower. And more boring.

This brings up an interesting question: if Square went through the trouble of making an ATB Meter, why not just stick with random battles? They proved to be successful in the past right?

I'll tell you why: it's either because they have no freaking clue where the series is going, or because they stripped FFXI's engine and used it as a base for FFXII. Probably both. In fact, that must be why FFXII's engine seems so similar to a MMORPG's, except without the online interaction. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it is.

REPLAY: 1/10

I can't seem to fathom a reason to replay this game. In fact, I didn't even finish it, so I can't seem to fathom a reason to play it at all.

FINAL WORD: 3/10
I don't know what happened, but I do know that I haven't sincerely enjoyed a Final Fantasy game since FFX. It's a real shame that even Square has discovered how to take a great game series and crap on it, milk it, and do whatever it takes to mutilate it completely.

I don't want to see Final Fantasy become the next Sonic, but it looks like that's the path that Square wants to go down. I can't figure out what they're trying to do.

My advice: don't play this game, and don't give any hopes up that FFXIII will be good.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/07/07