I poke Square Enix with a stick on a regular basis because I feel as though they have really gone downhill in the past decade or so and I include both of the latest Final Fantasy games on PS4 and also that horrible MMO in this mix. While they continue to sell tons of copies of games to suckers like me who have in the past kept hanging on in the hopes that they will return to the magic that made Final Fantasy games so great in the past they just keep failing over and over again.
Final Fantasy XII (12) on the other hand, was an absolutely amazing game that shook up the RPG world in a good way.
The year was 2006 and we were all playing this on what is still the best-selling console of all time, the Playstation 2. I did NOT acquire this game when it first came out because my system of not getting games when they are first released, especially for $60 is something that has existed for a long time, but as soon as the price drop happened, I jumped in at around $40 or so... and to this day it is one of the most solid purchases I have ever made in console gaming.
One thing that a lot of us were looking forward to and were a little afraid of was the fact that it was announced that Square was going to ditch the tried and true turn-based combat system that had existed in Final Fantasy games since their inception. Most die-hard fans like me kind of appreciated this old-school way of RPG'ing and were worried they were going to try to turn it into a Devil May Cry type game which most studios have proven time and time again that this system doesn't really work in RPG's where you are controlling multiple characters.
What ended up happening is something that I really wish they had stuck with in the more recent games because it was still kind of turn based, but not really in that you could program your partners on the field to behave a certain way in certain instances. The customization of the automatic actions of your teammates was really effective and this would result in certain strategies becoming necessary in certain situations such as when you face bosses or enemies that have offenses that include status effects such as poison, berserk, etc. You would still lose some battles, but would learn what you needed to do in order to get past it after a few tries.
One of the best things they did away with was the "random encounters" that were completely RNG oriented and while that had been a staple of the franchise for two decades, it was time to get rid of that because it was pretty damn annoying.
Instead, most enemies were visible from afar and a little line would get drawn through the sky that would indicate if they noticed you and were engaging and you could avoid them if you wanted to. In my mind, this was a dramatic improvement over the old system because especially when you return to lessor areas, it was extremely annoying to be inundated with forced battles with enemies that were well below your level and were basically just cannon fodder. Obviously this didn't really apply to bosses because for the most part, once those battles began you were stuck in for the duration - which is expected.
The story was pretty great as well and since most of the dialogue was written rather than spoken, we didn't have to be subjected to the sometimes absolutely horrible voice acting that plagues the FF games of today. I honestly don't know what Squenix was thinking with a lot of their voice acting choices in recent years but so many of them have just been terrible, especially in Final Fantasy 15.
The other thing that was just delightful about this game is that it would take about 60 hours of gameplay to get through the story even if you skipped all the optional content.... and there was a TON of optional content. This is one of the few games that I have completed and then kept going after you have "won" just to try to get to 100% completion which is a real task when you consider that one of the bosses especially one called Yiazmat who had 50 million HP when the max damage you can do is 10,000 at first and then drops to 7000 halfway through.
To make matters worse, Yiazmat had a number of attacks that would one-hit kill anyone it hit and also had a spell that would completely replenish its health if you didn't interrupt it. Even for very skilled players at max level this fight will take 3-4 hours. I never completed it and again, it was totally optional anyway.
They re-released this game on PS4 but I didn't buy it because people complained that there were no changes made to the game including graphics but then again, Square-Enix doesn't appear as though they have really cared about their customers in quite some time so this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
There have been 3 Final Fantasy games released since then and IMO they have all been unmitigated disasters to the point where I have no intention of getting financially involved with the franchise at all in the future. Millions of other fanbois will continue to purchase this dying brand though, so I would imagine that Square is just going to ride this wave for as long as possible.
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Cosplay and pron of "Fran" continues to be popular to this day
There was a time when they did at least appear to care about their audience though and I think that this time reached its apex in 2006 when FFXII was released.
For me it set a standard so high that I can't believe that they abandoned this fight system for whatever the hell it is that you call what they are doing now.
Did you play it? Did you love it?
You can get the ROM of this game to play with a PS2 emulator for free HERE if you feel like traveling back in time to when Square actually gave a damn :)