Masem’s Gaming Blog

Final Fantasy XII, the latest entry in Square Enix’s premier role-playing series, moves away from several of the common aspects of the series, such as replacing the common turn based system with active-time combat system that utilizes “gambits” to automate much of the gameplay, a broad character customization system through licenses, and a plot that seems more mature than previous titles. At the core, most of these elements work - they are fresh ideas, and for the first 10 or so hours, make the game really enjoyable. However, there are serious balance issues with the game that make the customization almost seems to prevent given any character a strong unique focus, and there is grinding — a lot of grinding — more than I felt has been needed in previous games to get past certain bosses, only to leave long sections that follow a cake walk.

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Now that we’re in a gaming slump, I am going back to titles that I need to play through and finish; FFXII is first on my list, then Persona 3, then I plan to run through both KOTORs and Jade Empire, pending.

So I’m about 25+ hr into FFXII (around 70% complete) and I will say the game really forces you to grind more so than other RPGs of recent.  The mid-game bosses really require you to have your HP and MP up, as well as good defense and offense, and the only way to get all of those is to spend time in the fields to get the experience and then collect the loot to sell for gil as to get weapons and armor.  It’s a bit annoying after so many games where having characters not active in the party still earned experience, to come to FFXII where you need to rotate characters frequently to keep all their levels up, however, with the gambit system and this rotation, you learn to experiment with the automatic actions to make fighting, healing, and the like all nice and easy.

Still, of the 25 hrs I’ve played, at least a third of that is in the grind (returning to previous fields/dungeons either for hunts or just to build up XP), and that is an awful lot compared to other RPGs.  I already feel exhausted to this point in the game.