I had not originally intended to do one of these summary things for Final Fantasy 12 since it was released after I had started my Final Fantasy series replay project. However, after replaying Tactics, I figured "why not?", plus I like the game so it seemed like a good excuse to replay it.
Final Fantasy 12 seems to be one of the more love it or hate it games in the series - not much middle ground - though that could maybe be said for some of the more recent entries in the series (and probably some older ones as well). As already stated, I rather like the game, and if I were to rank the entries in the series, FF12 would probably be somewhere near the top.
That's not to say that the game doesn't have its flaws. There are certainly some boneheaded design decisions (Zodiac Spear I'm looking at you!) and one could probably make the argument that some areas are a little too big - and this coming from someone who likes big areas! Still, overall, I enjoyed the game despite its flaws.
Even though I've already said that some areas were probably a little too big, one of the things that I did like about FF12 was that it has large areas to explore which, for the most part, the player is relatively free to wander around in. Also, while the plot is still a linear affair, aside from a few sections, the player is relatively free to go off and do side-quest things (which are mostly the hunts in FF12) pretty much any time (not just at/near the end of the game), provided they're high enough to handle the monsters they come across, which is something that seems to have been missing from some of the more recent games in the series.
The setting and plot are also somewhat different from other FFs. The game is set in the world of Ivalice, which is the setting of the FF Tactics games. While the connection between FF12's Ivalice and FF Tactics' Ivalice is not made clear within the game, some investigation on the weeb suggests that FF12 is set several hundred years before Tactics, though I don't know how canonical that is.
The plot, like that of Tactics, also has more of a focus on political intrigue and things of that nature. There are of course magic and things happening in the background, but it's the political struggles that give people their motivations and forms more of the core of the story. And I liked that.
The game's music is also quite obviously from the Tactics composer. There are a number of pieces that have a similar style or feel to them, and many places where the ornamentation also evokes that Tactics-ish feel to it.
For this playthrough, I took some time to do a bunch of the hunts that I didn't do the first time and also to hunt down a few more of the optional Espers. (Which, incidentally, where based on the Zodiac beasts from Tactics, the Totemas from Tactics Advanced and a few bosses from past games rather than the traditional FF summons which were instead used as airship names.) I didn't do all of the hunts (not insane enough to go after Yiazmat, for example) but I ended up doing most of them. I generally enjoyed most of the hunt and boss fights.
Anyway, that's my thoughts on FF12 in a nutshell. With that replay finished, I suppose I will at some point in the near future look into getting a PS3 so I can play FF13. Whether or not I'll do a write-up for it remains to be seen.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
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