Never played this as I heard this was bad

Never played this as I heard this was bad.

What exactly made it bad?

Vaan

The main complaints against it are that the main character is useless, which is somewhat true, as the character most touted as the main character is a literal nobody at both the beginning and the end of the game. However, he still has a nice arc of character development and serves as a good foil for one of the other characters, and the game has an ensemble cast anyway so it doesn't really have a main character.

The other main complaint is that it literally plays itself, which is really hit or miss for most players. In most RPGs you probably just spam the attack command unless the enemy has crazy defense or some weakness to spells, in which case you might cast fire, and then you use items if you get a status or run low on health. In FF12, you program an AI that automatically singles out enemies, say, weak to fire to cast fire on them, or uses potions when you're at low HP, or eye drops when you're blind, and otherwise just automatically spams attack. I feel like this is the natural evolution of JRPGs but a lot of people complained they felt useless. You can still choose commands manually if you want to, and if you're playing IZJS there's a speedup button that makes battling less tedious. Most boss fights are glorified puzzle bosses that test your ability to program the AI for unique scenarios.

It's easy and plays itself and the story/characters are very dry. Not a bad game but it's overrated and is again very dry.

Interesting

The game had a complete overhaul going from a classic ivalice setting to a bitchboy final fantasy gakt shit with the ivalice name slapped on top of it, just like most other modern final fantasy titles.

This change affected several things like including a mandatory fuccboi as protag who did literally nothing but be there shirtless, a dog shit story, shit mood, and shit atmosphere.

Gameplay wise, the game had potential but is also ultimately bad for the vast majority of it in practice. I'm assuming this also took a hit and the difficulty/depth was toned down to appeal to the newfound fangirl audience of square's PS2 era, since the balance is nonexistant (yes, it's even worse than the average FF title).

tl;dr:
>What exactly made it bad?
Taking the project of the last Square employee who still gave a fuck about quality in that rotten company and turning it upside down to appeal to a completely different audience.

>Battle system is too much like an MMO, and the Gambit system essentially does all the work for you
>Uninteresting and impersonal story
>world full of non-human races, and a party of only humans except 1 bunnygirl
>Vayne is a dull politician who just talks too much but doesn't even say anything interesting, and is so far removed that we don't even know why he is the main antagonist. No one in the party even has a personal vendetta with him
>Vaan and Penelo are entirely useless
>Lack of character interaction. It's awkward to see a band of characters that barely seem to know each other, even at the end
>Licenses a shit
>Environments are boring
>Game feels incomplete with sidestories that go nowhere

It didn't feel like a Final Fantasy at all, but a poor slapped together game with the logo stapled on

It plays itself. Have you ever played a game where you can start a boss fight, then leave the room, then when you come back the boss is defeated? Because that's what you can do in this game.

My only complaint is the slight pause at the beginning and end of combat when your characters unsheathe / sheathe their weapons. So many instances where its just a constant string of going in and out of combat with the enemies perfectly spaced to give you the most annoyance possible.

It's the one thing preventing me from playing it again really.

this is pretty wrong and youd know this if you played most of the game

even with gambits you still have to do heavy party management, gambits cant account for every situation

>The main complaints against it are that the main character is useless, which is somewhat true, as the character most touted as the main character is a literal nobody at both the beginning and the end of the game. However, he still has a nice arc of character development and serves as a good foil for one of the other characters, and the game has an ensemble cast anyway so it doesn't really have a main character.

He also serves as the everyman through which we experience the game's world from, from the eyes of a filthy street rat. Also, he influences Ashe in a small way, it's subtle but her experiences with him show how how she's not the only one who has suffered att he hands of the Empire.

>The other main complaint is that it literally plays itself, which is really hit or miss for most players

I don't care what anyone says, find me a better solution to party based real time AI than the Gambit system, FFXII solved the issues of retarded ai killing you or doing something bad.

And this is the sorto f thing that annoys me.

> Most boss fights are glorified puzzle bosses that test your ability to program the AI for unique scenarios.

How are they ANY less involved than any of the previous FF boss fights? There's a lot of rose tintedspectacle shit and revisionism for the past FF games, particularly the PS1 FF games in which they had the most simplistic combat of an RPG in that era, there were better combat systems out there, Chrono Cross and Legend of Dragoon come to mind.

Another criticism of XII ist he pacing, it does have terrible long stretches of dungeon crawling before any story, but the story is definitely worth it and at least the dungeons are non linear and expanisve.

Fuck off, I've beaten the base game and IZJS loads of times, 12 gambits on 3 characters is MORE than enough for like all but 3 bosses if you're not retarded

>The other main complaint is that it literally plays itself, which is really hit or miss for most players.
Dragon Age literally copypasted gambit system yet nobody complained about the game playing itself. And WPRGs commonly allowed your character to do auto attacks (KotOR, Baldur's Gate, etc). Why the double standard?

you won't get a fight from me, user, FF12 is my favorite FF. I was just quoting the complaints, neither of them bother me at all.

I like that idea so long as the bosses are appropriately designed to be hard as fuck to plan for.

I haven't played any of those and I know for a fact those games are harder.

FF12 is balanced for nothing but auto attacking and healing sometimes, you can clear a good 99% of the game just using your analog stick with the bare minimum gambits set up.

Probably because no one used it in dragon age.

Why does everybody ignore this game? even square enix in all ff games like dissidia or woff you rarely see something from ff12

>Vayne is a dull politician who just talks too much but doesn't even say anything interesting, and is so far removed that we don't even know why he is the main antagonist. No one in the party even has a personal vendetta with him

What am I even reading?

He has several motives in the game, one directly stated many time, to get the reins of history back in the hands of man (and away from the Occurian) which btw, he actually succeeds at. The second is, he's an utter bastard and think he desrves power, he says at one point 'Too long have my deeds gone unoticed, or something'.

Being theh eado f the empire, I would say Vaan and Ashe at least have beef with him, they mature beyond that by the time they get to him though, because character development.

None of the final fantasies are really bad. The problem is that people basically think whatever one they started with is how the series should be.

12 was different in a series where every game is different, retards that started with 10 threw a shitfit.

Pretty much every boss is designed to be a stumbling block from halfway through the game onwards. You can grind to just muscle through them but you can beat almost every boss at level 1 with the right strategy.

eIdk Idk I'd killed it.i liked it.

Everybody says the game plays itself, but don't you have to make it play itself? Like you have to set up the gambit system so well that you can walk away and have everything go perfectly. It's like setting up a program, running it, and having it run with no errors at all. I love it. This is one of my fav FF games.

Nah 12 was shit.

>eIdk Idk I'd killed it.i liked it.
Are you OK user?

ignore everything in this thread, except for this post, holy shit.

this fucking user gets it

What FF did you start with?

4.

Reminder that Larsa is best girl.

the other girls are pretty hot too though desu

It only takes a couple minutes to set up. Gambits are cool but the game plays itself because it's so easy. Don't defend it just because you like it, most people don't like it.

10 but u gay

You were shit at Dragon Age then.

I'm glad we brought up Dragon Age though, it's a prime example of why every single RPG with team based real time combat needs gambits. Origins had Gambits like FFXII did and it was fine, then DAII stripped this down to basic commands, then Inquisition puti n some half assed turn based mode which didn't change the fact that I had a Rogue in that game that never turned on stealth and used the back stab from the flank for the bonus of both skills literally because her AI was dumb and I couldn't set up gambits for her to do that.

But whatever.

>retards that started with 10 threw a shitfit.
Every Final Fantasy is at least good except, arguably, 2. 10 and 12 are my two favorites in the whole series, so don't act like you know what I think based off a few shitposters.

t. retard that started with 10.

I didn't like the world design. Felt like I was just running around in giant arbitrary corridors instead of actual buildings serving a purpose.

Slam dunk for me.

Not bad. I started with 1 though so I win.

13 and 15 are not good at all.

Only gonna say that it's got the best villain in any mainline FF.

Fine. Many retards that started with 10 threw a shitfit. Happy?

Yes they are.

> 10 fag throws a shitfit about 10 fags throwing shitfits


STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES

I think that most of the people who say Vaan is useless didn't play very far into the game or didn't pay attention to what was happening. The story doesn't revolve around Vaan, but he's the main factor in getting Ashe and Balthier, the ones whom the story actually revolves around, to get their shit together. And his character arc is genuinely good and has him change from a selfish angsty little jerk into someone who realizes that the world outside of Dalmasca is much more complex than he ever imagined and is willing to learn and better himself. He's the Bilbo Baggins of the story.

What does it matter what game anyone started with. If a game is shit then it's shit.

The plot is incredibly boring (unusually well written for a FF game - dialogue isn't cringey at all, but boring) and VERY poorly paced. Expect to have 10-20 hour breaks between things that happen, and expect most things that happen not actually involve you in any way.

The combat system is awful. You basically assemble a simple AI that handles the combat for you then sit back and maybe cast a spell once or twice if you feel like it. It may sound cool, but it's a fucking annoyance and every battle feels like a chore, even if it takes four seconds.

Best characters Balthier and Fran have a tiny role on the story, and main character Vaan has NO role in the story, he's just there because he happened to be there.

Game is EXTREMELY padded with filler. They could literally cut half of the game, throw it in the trash, and the game would be better for it.

Loot system is incredibly annoying and basically forces you to consult a guide as you play to not miss the good loot.

Leveling system is dogshit and results in every character being the exact same character, with identical abilities. This was fixed, but only in a Japan-only special edition that's not available in the west.

>Don't defend it just because you like it

When literally every game since with a team and no gambit based system was released and filled with retards fucking up then yes, Iwill point to Gambits every single time.

Because shit gets kinda' old in FFXV, a game two generations newer than XII.

Never played a Final fantasy before besides 14. which should I play

>Caring about the story when the gameplay is shit

Because you don't get a real opinion if you start later in a series. Obviously.

I recommend 1, 4, 5, 6 or 7.

>This was fixed
It was "FIXED" in that the new system is actually worse. The original system only gave you identical characters if you made them identical. In IZJS you just have gimped characters.

I'm saying don't defend the game playing itself, not saying you shouldn't promote gambit systems.

>12 fag throws a shitfit about 10 fag throwing a shitfit about 10 fags throwing shitfits

It's not bad, they just changed the attack command into auto-attack like in an mmo. 2 of the characters are a complete waste, but Fran is worth like 3 characters. Then there's the hunts. Emulate the Zodiak job edition for maximum fun times.

>Fran is worth like 3 characters
Doesn't she have the lowest overall stats since she doesn't excel in anything and is just a jack of all trades?

> don't defend it because you like it

hahahaha

he's talking about story relevancy

>I'm saying don't defend the game playing itself

Splitting hairs a bit here, I think if I'm promoting gambit based systems then I'm defending it playing itself.

How is Vaan a complete waste.

Ah ok.

i wouldn't start with 1 though.

it's fun to see 'how it all started' or whatever. but 1 is such a chore to play.

Well you're wrong because you're defending a game that's brain dead easy. Gambits were wasted on it, if you had retarded AI like any other game, almost nothing would change.

Fuck Vayne, Dr. Cid was one of the best FF villains of all time.

>The original system only gave you identical characters if you made them identical.

There was literally, objectively, no jokes or memes here, ZERO reasons not to. What tile is the best to pick at any given time is always the same for every character: you pick extra speed first, then HP UP second, then quickenings, and everything else comes dead last since all the equipment and spell and skill licenses are obviously worthless until you find the gear/spell/skill in a store.

Only reason someone might not develop every character in the exact same way is if they don't know where all the good tiles are and are looking around for them, but who the hell plays without consulting a spoiler chart for the license board?

Gonna play this for the first time soon. Should I play the original US release or IZJS with the English fan patch? Would rather play the US version if it isn't substantially inferior, fan-patches of any sort don't really appeal to me.

The problem with the "plays itself" complaint is that it doesn't. The tactics you appply to your party members allow them to react to situations, yes, but it's a CHOICE to apply those to the main character you're controlling instead of controlling the main character YOURSELF.

If people make the CONSCIOUS decision to buy, combine, set up and apply tactics to the main character, and enable them, then they made the CHOICE to MAKE the game play itself.

An argument could be made that the devs shouldn't have allowed tactics to be active on a controlled character, but it's a weak argument. At the end of the day the people that set up tactics on all characters, and let the game play itself, is still a choice. Player could have controlled a character themselves and let the companions work like ME or DA with tactics activated. Only a MUCH more robust tactic system than DAO and DA2 EVER provided.

The other thing is this. The tactics in FFXII are bought, in game. You have to track down the tactics in the game. You do NOT start out with tactics complex enough to actually make the characters handle situations intelligently on their own. You have to find and buy them.

This is actually a mistake in my book, all tactics should have been available right away, and tactics never should have been active on a character you're controlling. You can choose to play it with tactics on on your character, but on the companions. Hell you can turn tactics off on all characters and swap between them micromanaging their commands yourself. Tactics, and how extensively you apply them, are ENTIRELY your own choice, your own decision.

(I realize the game doesn't call it a tactics system, it was the gambit system or something like that)

>vaan and penelo are entirely uselesss
They both have their stories, and the only way they're useless in gameplay is if you make them that way.
>licenses
Are fixed in the Zodiac version for the people that hate a fully open board.

I dunno, it still felt like a good game to me when I last played it

>None of the final fantasies are really bad.

At least half of them are straight up shit tier.

Yeah but you could still have them act as job types and use what weapons you wanted. IZJS just limits you from that and the characters are weaker.

We're mixed up, rather than developing them differently you have them specced differently if that makes more sense.

Again, FF1-10 weren't exactly hard either, so when I hear shit like this I just don't understand.

This guy gets it, but I like Vayne, because I'm all over that politics shite.

Dr Cid and Vaybe legit freed humanity from the Occuria.

Fran is cool, but she's not particularly relevant to the story, though.

>The problem with the "plays itself" complaint is that it doesn't.
this nigga just went full retard

the patch is fine but just play vanilla, it doesn't really matter.

Still better than pretty much any other jrpg series.

The IZJS characters are better at their specializations than the FF12 vanilla characters were. The vanilla ones were still better because they could do literally everything by endgame, but calling IZJS chars gimped when they were actually better at their roles is misleading.
The problem is if you manually make every choice in the game and turn off gambits forever, the game takes a long fucking time and is extremely tedious. Jesus, I'm just imagining fighting Yiazmat without gambits.

Anyway you can buy all gambits in IZJS from the get-go,

10 fags didn't understand the story.

FF1-10 didn't play themselves. You had to input commands every time you wanted anything to happen. battles also took a lot longer.

That's true but I think a lot of people hold the opinion that she was one of if not the best character in the game. Everyone else was fucking boring.

>The IZJS characters are better at their specializations than the FF12 vanilla characters were. The vanilla ones were still better because they could do literally everything by endgame, but calling IZJS chars gimped when they were actually better at their roles is misleading.
You just made literally no sense.

IZJS limits characters, original does not. That's all there is to it.

4 5 6 7 9 12 15

>If people make the CONSCIOUS decision to buy, combine, set up and apply tactics to the main character, and enable them, then they made the CHOICE to MAKE the game play itself.

That's not a real choice when the other option (inputting all commands manually) is not supported at all by the shitty user interface and trying to play like that slows the already frustrating fights down to glacial pace.

Manual mode in FF12 is like turning the quest markers off in Skyrim: you CAN do it, but the game is not designed to support that option, even if it's present. Using that option makes the game unplayable and is clearly not a real option that was given as much polish and design as the default.

As someone who plays JRPGs mostly for their battle systems, I loved FF12. People saying it was a good evolution of the previous systems are correct.

Organizing gambits is fun in a similar way that creating materia combinations was fun.

>FF1-10 didn't play themselves. You had to input commands every time you wanted anything to happen

Yeah, and that comand was usually attack with a heal here and there.

As someone who somewhat enjoyed the original and is currently enjoying the IZJS version:

>What exactly made it bad?
The combat system is too slow if you don't use the gambits (which act like a bot's programmed commands. E.g. If Ally HP < 50% -> cast Cure), but if you do 99% of the normal battles become automatic and you don't really need to do anything beyond occasionally using status healing items and maybe some super specific magic.

Also the story is way too sparse and even the relevant characters (Ashe and Basch) don't feel like protagonists, let alone MCs (You can thank SE for shoehorning a fuccboi for the fujoshi buxs), and you don't get enough exposition nor development for many of the secondary cast like the judges.

If you decide to play it, play the International Zodiac Job System ver (it's english translated), since it improves some features and has a button that allows you to speed up the game a lot, cutting dramatically the time required, specially by normal battles.

More like the story wasn't all that interesting.

Not really. Final Fantasy is the most overrated JRPG series in the world if we don't count Pokemon as a JRPG. Many FF games are okay, a handful of them are even great, but the bad half is just mediocre trash that undeservedly basks in the halo of the actual good FF games.

>environments are boring
The environments are so well realized that people readily point out that walking through the Market had them smelling a food market. The game had INCREDIBLE detail in its environments for a PS2 game. And its character designs were absolutely delightful, downright beautiful.
>lack of character interaction
Did you even play the game? It's not ME style or FFXV style where they talk constantly as you explore the world, but it's fully in line with the amount of communication you got from FFs of the IV-X/X-2 era.
>Vayne is dull
This makes me question whether you even played the game desu.
>party members can only be human
Untrue.
>Except
Except you don't like the non-Human you got. That's on you. That's not a flaw in the game.
>Uninteresting Story
It's a story that people have called Star Wars: Final Fantasy edition. And that's pretty much what you get. No, it's not hugely complex, but it's not uninteresting or impersonal in the least. It takes a direct book from Star Wars and the Hidden Fortress of seeing the plot and events through the eyes of two (Vaan/Penelo) characters that would usually be side characters.

I get it if you don't like that, but it's not bad, it's 100% a taste issue on your end. Not a problem with the game.
>MMO combat
You say this and mention the combat system in nearly the same breath which tells me you either don't know what is actually available in MMO combat or you're purposefully ignoring that fact. It also tells me IF you played the game you mad e a conscious decision to program the game characters to play themselves instead of fully controlling one or all them yourself - which you CAN do.

>You just made literally no sense.

Not him, but that made sense. Sounds like he's saying while Character X can't do everything like in vanilla, they can become a better white mage or whatever else in IZJS than vanilla.

It was both of those things.

I've played everything except XV and XII is honestly my favorite, next to IX. The story was the least cringey out of all FFs and the environments and dungeons are also the best-designed ones I've seen.

>The combat system is too slow if you don't use the combat system
You don't say?

>You just made literally no sense.
>IZJS limits characters, original does not. That's all there is to it.
Vanilla FF12 has 5 battle lore licenses. FF12 IZJS monk has 16 battle lore licenses. Just an example. IZJS makes your characters a LOT fucking more specialized, which makes them overall stronger at certain roles than the vanilla FF12 characters can ever be. ESPECIALLY because IZJS doesn't have a damage cap.

The only advantage of the vanilla characters is that they can all be every role, which is useful when you want several characters with reverse or vanish.

MMO combat, Vaan.

>(Ashe and Basch) don't feel like protagonists, let alone MCs

What? Ashe and Basch are in the game's spotlightalmost the entire time, especially Ashe.

>10 fags didn't understand the story.

It's rather hard to keep track of a storyline that's 160 hours long and constantly references made-up nations and factions that it hasn't given a single reason to give a god damn shit about.

>samefagging

Also, Espers and Monster Hunts really made revisiting old zones fun and made the whole world feel much more expansive. I think they could have thinned the supporting cast because some characters die in cutscenes that you literally meet once or don't care about, but that's my only real complaint.

2 8 10 and 13 are the only bad ff games

What the fuck does MMO combat mean?

Ah yes, all of those MMOs that were singleplayer and you made gambits for your AI partners.

I disagree, maybe you just have higher standards than I do or something.

Its the best offline MMO there is.

Ah I didn't know that. So IZJS is even easier than I thought.

I love the gambit system. I don't get people who say it makes the game play itself. It lets you automate no-brainer behaviors (attack, attack, use potion if health is low, etc) and you can still manually control your characters if you wish.

Yeah, it needed more teenage angst and awkward laughter.

>What exactly made it bad?
Nothing. It's great.

What this user said

having spotlight =! feeling like the protagonists of the story

Wrong, literally just came into the thread

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