Final Fantasy XII

Haha well today is my first time blogging about a game. As most of you know(if you don't know then you obviously don't know me very well) I love playing computer/PS games, especially RPG. Anyway this is what's currently occupying my nights. So if you dont see me online, you know what I'm doing.

One of the things that really caught my eye about this game is, the skies in this game are so lovely. See that pretty sky in the shot below? You can even turn your head up to look at the sky while running. This game has a nice 3D feel to it, one that doesnt make my head spin like certain games.







Oh yea, anyway, from what I understand the plot is something about this little country called Dalmasca being caught in the middle of a war between 2 large empires. In the war, Dalmasca's prince died, and the princess apparently commited suicide in grief, or so the government says la. The little country is forced to surrender to the stronger empire. So the hero of this country, who lost his brother in the war, eventually finds himself involved in all this, and it turns out the princess isnt dead after all, but its actually some political plot to cover up that she didnt die. They meet up with a few more interesting characters and set off to help the princess and somehow save their country.

Well anyway here is the typical pretty boy hero of the game. His name is Vaan.




I still prefer the other characters, hehe... like the Sky pirates Baltier and Fran.


Fran is a Vierra, one of the wood people. Somehow everytime I look at her I can't help but think of the word Playboy bunny. Its the ears!

Ah yes, and I really love the Moogles in FFXII too. SO much cuter than the original moogles.



About the battle system, It is more real time than the traditional system. Its called Active Dimension Battle" (ADB) system. The characters are free to move about when fighting ,instead of taking turns one by one. I do prefer it this way, instead of the usual way where suddenly in the middle of walking the screen changes and you are suddenly surrounded by monsters. By the time you finish your battle you cant even remember which diretion you wre heading in already. And if you get lost, you are gonna encounter battles until you die or get fed up.

After targeting a monster, the character will automatically perform basic attacks. However, there is also a visible ATB-like time gauge showing when a character can act. Another nice thing is the Gambit system, in which you can program the AI of your other party members so that they will automatically perform some actions without you having to command them to do so on the spot. Initially its a little weird, you see a lot of blue, green and red lines running everywhere on the screen. But its quite useful because those lines are telling who which monster is targetting which of your party members, and vice versa.








About the skill system, I think I prefer the previous ones though. This one is a little annoying. Its called Lisencing as in you need a lisence to use a certain weapon or skill. Basically its like a board where you earn points to be able to click on 1 square. A square represents a skill. Clicking on 1 square opens up the squares next to it, a bit like minesweeper,lol. Unfortunately you dont know what the squares contain until it opens up. This way you kinda waste your points trying to see whats on the squares. Usually I reload my game if I get those that I dont want. The best way is actually to just download the lisence board picture from the internet to refer to, so you dont need to waste your time, haha.....




There is summoning in this FF too, just like the rest. Here, they are called Espers. After deafeating it in battle, only 1 character may summon it. The difference is that the summoner remains an active in the fight, instead the summoned creature fighting alone. A bit like the style in kingdom hearts. You cant control the Esper though, but you can still use the character that summoned it, to attack/heal etc.

The Limit Breaks are replaced by Mist technicks called Quickenings. If your party members all have learned it, they can can string together Quickenings into large and powerful combo attacks. Its a bit hard to press all the buttons before the time runs out though, and you have to press some buttons to shuffle the characters too, I'm still trying to get the hang of that one.



Here's a few more random screenshots I took of the IGN website