The Gambit System

Despite the hate it got, the gambit system was the best thing to ever come across jrpg's and you know it.

You are actually making the A.I. for your team and it works amazingly well. Its highly customizable and easy to work with. What's not to love?

Say you have a healer and want them to heal you if, and only if, you are under 30% HP. Guess what? You can. 50%? Absolutely. Do you want them to always heal you, regardless of hp status? It would be dumb, but you can.

And if you dont want AI for your party? You can set it up so you can select every attack/move if you want. It gave you the option to do either extremes of AI or specific choice making and everything in between, to make a systsm that you were most comfortable with.

How can anyone shit on the gambit system when it is such a well designed system?

I like the gambit system but that might just be because I'm a programmer and old CRPG fan at heart. My favorite part of playing MMOs is writing complex macros to win the fight before it even starts.

I think it would have been interesting if more Gambits were locked away until far later though. I like the idea of a super difficult quest or battle rewarding you with a useful AI option

Only major flaw is that the system made gameplay very passive. An improvement on gambits would make your allies macro-driven and try to make party leader combat a bit more input driven

Too bad the combat style was so utterly horrendous that it cancelled out any positive points that the Gamebit system had.

>Do you want them to always heal you, regardless of hp status? It would be dumb, but you can.

I actually did this for some boss I was extremely underleveled for. Made Bausch unload on him and the other 2 just constantly cast cure

People hated gambits because it kind of exposed how shallow final fantasy gameplay was when it could be automated with 3-5 if statements

>What's not to love?
How I can effectively make the game play itself.

>Don't use gambits!
Then I'm stuck suffering through the trash MMO-tier combat with a controller instead of a mouse and keyboard. Also, not using the gambits to play the game in the best possible way means I'm constantly reminding myself I'm an idiot for wasting my time with the combat instead of "playing" the game in the best way possible by automating everything.

Of course, that wouldn't be as much of a problem if any of the characters were worth a fuck or if so much of the story didn't happen behind the scenes making the story a chore to figure out and suffer through.

You can do that if you want though. Leave gambits on for your party members, but turn them off for your leader. At this point, your partners control themselves and you make all the choices for your leader.

It's a completely unnecessary replacement for the classic "control every character in turns" systems.

I'd argue that it just cuts out the middleman when you know what combat options you would select anyway.

The problem with the combat is that it's shitty and uninvolving even if you decide to make all the decisions yourself, it's still not fun or enjoyable in the slightest.

That's only compounded by the shitty and uninvolving story where most of the plot progression is done by characters your party never even meets and you just end up on an incredibly pointless road trip with a bunch of unlikable faggots and Balthier.

The problem with the combat isn't the Gambits themselves, it's that the game has the combat system of a subpar MMO and feels about as good to play.

I mostly just used it for companion auto-attacks and input the rest of the manual commands for magics/techs/etc. I like that it's optional in that game though. Part of why I fell asleep playing FF13, there's barely any input.

Yeah, I can't defend the combat. It is a single player mmo, either you like it, or you absolutely despise it. Just saying how great the gambit system is.

This, absolutely this.
>You can do that if you want though. Leave gambits on for your party members, but turn them off for your leader
I have no idea why people like you keep saying that when obviously everyone and their mom know about that. Obviously we are talking about wanting a better input driven alternative than that.
"Turn them off for your leader" isn't good or interesting enough to compensate how passive the whole system feels, otherwise, you know, nobody would have ever complained about that.

Sorry for stating the obvious then. When I talk to people irl about gambits, I usually learn they dropped FFXII before gambits even become helpful. Most forgot you can even turn them off. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

At this point, we are just analyzing how flawed the combat actually is. It is just an single player mmo. Even a lot of mmo's have that passive feel. Would have been a ton better if square went more towards the action rpg style here. If games like kingdom sharts, dragons dogma, and other arpg's used a gambit, they would be a better game.

>Despite the hate it got, the gambit system was the best thing to ever come across jrpg's and you know it.
not for the character you control.

>Would have been a ton better if square went more towards the action rpg style here. If games like kingdom sharts, dragons dogma, and other arpg's used a gambit, they would be a better game.

I absolutely agree with you. Not necessarily something 100% action, but a sort of completely new hybrid system for the party leader would have been the ideal.
When I said that in a previous threads XII fanboys leapt at my throat, though, even though I kept saying that even with all its flaws FFXII system is infinitely better than the usual completely braindead FF systems, better something too passive but with a lot of good qualities than the usual terrible FF crap.

>People hated gambits because it kind of exposed how shallow final fantasy gameplay was when it could be automated with 3-5 if statements
This is the correct answer and it is logically inconsistent to enjoy Final Fantasy and hate gambits at the same time. The game is essentially unchanged, you've only become conscious of the design.

This is the worst battle system in the entire main series and the only FF I didn't finish of course you cucks would defend it, can't wait to avoid the rerelease and get something else instead.

>Compiling a simplistic set of babby's first AI routines is the best thing to ever come across JRPGs
>Wanting the game to play itself

What you want is writing code, not playing videogames.

What you said literally is what i can do with tales games and you don't see anyome praise that

They don't appreciate innovation.

Thats because I have shit taste in rpg games and only play surface level shit. If I knew about anything about the tales games, I would praise it too I bet. But for now i'm praising a good system in a flawed game.

It's neat sure but thought it went a bit too far with it. It's good for farming though.
I still really liked it a lot & thought it was pretty unique. It's not like it's broken or something, you can still fuck up & easily die to optional bosses.
Been years since I've played & can't wait to play the remaster again.

Coding is a lot more tedious, there aren't any cryptic error messages when you're fucking around with gambits.

>Say you have a healer and want them to heal
Everybody was a healer; why would you not give someone healing?
Honestly I loved it despite never using it. I could've gone for some advanced (but tedious and therefore boring) strats, but I obtained infinite sustain and never needed to.
Regardless, it wasn't the gambits that made it the best Final Fantasy. It was the combat itself.

>How I can effectively make the game play itself.
>Hating optional off by default functionality
If you loved the story but not the combat (you've got it pretty fucking backwards) then you could still enjoy this game.

there's just you dying during your auto level script

Love this system op.
Searched for ages to find similar games andonly came up with a handful but they dont even utilize it as well as ffxII does it its really a shame so now Im kinda replicating it writing macros for gw2 on my gamepad with decent success. I would love to see more games integrating it