Best Yet?

I wouldn't call it the best, but I appreciated the baroque style of setting, politics, and plotting on this one. It felt like Squeenix was making a conscious effort to cater to our brains, not just our eyes and guts. Instead of dumbing things down (hello, X-2), it gave us some broad worldbuilding and a plot that wasn't another regurgitation of "boy meets girl, they save the world."

A lot of fantasy deals with kingship/transfer of power, but usually in a very fantasy way (think Aragorn in LOTR, although there's political considerations lurking in the backstory). In the real world, you can't just pull a sword out of a stone or slay the dragon to be crowned king/queen. So a lot of this story was dealing with the complications of balance of power, of civil war, of legitimacy.

I loved the memoirs of Ondore being used as an explication device to fast forward. Far more elegant than Tidus "this is my story" comments in X.

I adored the vocabulary. This game had me the moment Balthier said, "Spare us your quiddities!" to put Vaan in his place.

That sophistication works better for older gamers, I think; younger gamers were probably frustrated by lack of romantic narrative and the refusal to have heroic / emotional protagonists.

For me, it was a breath of fresh air.

Of course, I'm a classics major, so I'm very happy mucking about in historical period pieces, fictional or otherwise.

My only frustration is that there wasn't time to go to Rozzaria and compare/contrast that culture with Dalmasca and Archades.
 
Final Fantasy XII is a very complex game with all treasure box items being random and rare monster appearance. A complete strategy guide is highly recommended. A good example is that one single mistake at the beginning of the game might change the entire probability of occurance down from 100% to 0.1% for certain powerful items, such as the Zodiac Spear. There are also near 400 different monsters, bosses, and enemies data that player should know their strong and weakness in order to defeat them at ease and obtain rare items.
 
I think it's a pretty good game, but not to well compared to other FF games.
I personally like the gameplay better then a lot of other Final Fantasy games. (I don't use gambits on my leader. I actually want to play the game.)
The main reasons I don't like it as well were the story was a little confusing, and Vaan is the worst "main character" in the series. He didn't have much personality, and I thought "he" was a "she" at first.
The NPC's were cool though :D
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