Final Fantasy XII / FFXII / FF12 - Battle System, Races, Trailers, Storyline

Final Fantasy XII / FF12

Review

It certainly was a long wait for us to finally get our hands on Final Fantasy XII, the game took over four years in production - but the question most fans were asking is was it really worth the wait?

Personally I didn't have high hopes for Final Fantasy XII, I honestly though the battle system would turn out a mess and end up leaving us with something along the lines of Dynasty Warriors style gameplay - how wrong could I be? Final Fantasy XII's battle system is innovative and infact, really quite fun. It plays in a similar way to the previous Final Fantasy installments, however instead of having your characters fixed to one spot, you use the analog stick to move them about.

This introduced lots of new things to the Final Fantasy series that previously couldn't have been done, one of these such things is Gambits and it also added a whole new twist on the idea of Summons, named Espers in Final Fantasy XII.

After Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII had a lot to live up to storyline wise and I'm afraid it doesn't quite reach the same standard of story as the previous Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy XII lacked depth, one thing I've always loved about Final Fantasy is how you got to know characters however I really felt Final Fantasy XII lacked this, which was a big let down for me.

The actual storyline was pretty good though, shame it lacked the romance that shone so strongly in Final Fantasy VII-X though I can live with that. Graphics wise Final Fantasy XII is beautiful, by far the PlayStation 2's finest graphics. The areas in Final Fantasy XII are also much less linear than in previous games, you have a lot more side paths to take, and you can actually explore areas in Final Fanatsy XII, something I hope to see in the future Final Fantasy games.

In a nutshell I'd say Final Fantasy XII is definitely worth buying before the PlayStation 2 fades away under the shadow of the next generation!

9/10