Battle System

Final Fantasy XII's battle system has changed a great deal from that of the previous Final Fantasy games, X-2, X, IX and so on. Instead of watching your characters take turns, instead you move your character around the enemy and position them how you want - then when you see it fit to begin attacking you press X and select you command, wether it be Attack, Magicks, Technicks, Mist Quickenings, Summons or Items.

Once you've selected the command you're going to use
Target Lines will appear on the screen, there are three types of Target Line, a
Blue Target Line which indicates which enemy you will be inflicting damage upon, the
Green Target Line which indicates which
Ally you are casting Positive Status Effects/Healing Effects on and finally the
Red Target Line, which indicates which enemies are going to attack which Party Member.
In a similar fasion to
Kingdom Hearts your party members run around by themselves, and act upon
Gambits. However if Gambits are set to off the character will remain idle until you have given them commands.
Gambits are a set of abilities you equip to a character, and the chances of them using it. The Gambit Menu for each character is set out like this:
| Is this Gambit set to ON or OFF |
Position of the Gambit, either 1, 2 or 3, more numbers become available as more Gambit Slots are unlocked on the License Board. This determines the likely-hood of the attack being executed, for example the Gambit in slot 1 will be most frequently used. |
Whom it will be targeted at and under what circumstances. For example if an ally needed healing when their HP began getting below half you could set it to Ally HP Less than 50% and then they would execute a command on them depending on what you have in the next column. In a similar fashion if you wanted your party to go all out and attack the oppositions leader you could set it to Attack Party Leader and that is what would happen. |
This column decides what action they are going to take. For example you can set this to an offensive state such as Attack, a play it safe state such as Cure or a defensive state such as Protect. |
Another thing is your party leader, and what you party can consist of. Your party can only hold three members and one
Guest. However Guests only appear in your party as part of the storyline.
Pressing
Up or
Down on the
D-Pad will allow you to select which character is your party leader, the party leader is the character that you control and run around as. When your party leader dies you get to chose another party leader from people who are already in your party, and if everyone in your party gets
KO'd then you can reform your party with members you haven't yet thought with.
For example if you had Vaan, Penelo and Ashe in your party and they all got knocked out, you'd get a choice then to reform your new party with Balthier, Fran and Basch.