Ok, I've played the hell out of it for most of today. Here goes my initial thoughts.
(I'll skip some of the details as to not spoil it for anyone. I'll just touch on the stuff that are already known.)
The game begins with probably the most action packed, visually stimulating intro in any Final Fantasy game. What surprised me even more is how sharp everything looks, maybe it's due to playing on vga display, but the video, the characters, textures, all look really sharp and colorful. Simply from the first few minutes you will be able to notice the amount of work that went into this game. The character models, their faces, their clothing, the texture, everything is overwhelmingly amazing. Right after the intro you go into the game, and immediately you will be introduced to the new splinter cell styled navigation system in FF12, which is basically straight from FF11. You can rotate the camera all around you, it's fast, responsive, and so far I haven't ran into any camera problems at all. The 3rd person camera combined with the fact that every area in the game is connected really conveys the feeling that you are in the world of Final Fantasy. It's a great feeling really, you won't be able to put this game down once you start.
The actual game starts you off as
. The town is full of people, and as Troidal said, the game does an amazing job conveying the sense of a real city. There are areas where it's more crowded than others, which is a nice touch conveying the sense of different parts of the city like the market, the central square, city gates, etc. In many of the areas you will see more than 10 NPC's at once. Amazing feat that Square has done and keeping everything nice and smooth. I will also mention that the sound is equally impressive. Even in the intro, at the first few minutes, you can hears the clanking of sword clashes, the sound of the armor colliding as different characters walk, etc. All crystal sharp, and superbly combine with the animation and the amazing graphics to really give the sense of tangible objects in the game. This game is a treat both in graphics and sound. The only complaints I have about the game's technical merits is the loading and sometimes fairly bland environments. I am being very very picky here, the loading is probably about 2.5 seconds and environment wise, it's not bad at all. I'll clarify what I mean.
The environments are big. The first city spans multiple areas and multiple floors. Imagine sizes close to FF11 cities. The world map is comprised of cities and interconnecting regions. Each region is comprised of several areas. Each area or dungeon being the size of what you saw in the demo. Some of the areas I visited include a
, and they are pretty looking and wide open. The dungeons are basically intersecting hallways and stairs for the most part, and this is where I feel it's a little bland, but it's not a big deal since you will be worrying about the battles anyways.
Here is the good part. I love this new battle system. Gambit takes aways the monotony of mashing attack and otherwise boring fights with lesser enemies. You might think the game is too easy with the AI controlling the characters, and I'll now explain why you are wrong. Each of the areas I've visited so far host a variety of different types of monsters of varying difficulties. Like what Troidal said the
. You can not simply run around and just let the AI attack, cause you will aggro too many enemies and make your life much harder. There are also times when the game throws groups of enemies at you, if you don't do a bit of micromanagement or set the Gambit options, you will be pretty confused at all the stuff going on. I'll say it again, Gambit is good, it makes the game more fun rather than taking it away. If you start playing the game and you don't think Gambit is important, wait till you get to the first big boss fight, or just try playing the game in ATB mode. It's very very easy to die if you are not micromanaging.
Character development is very streamlined and I'm sure you all know about licenses now. It really forces you to vary the way you develop each character because of the way it's laid out. I won't go into this since it's been done more than enough times.
Story wise, I'm not in noob land anymore, but there are alot of things going on in the story, and alot of characters. I definitely love the more serious tone and the political intrigue of the plot. Voice acting is superb imo, much better overall compared to FF10. To talk about this further would be more spoilers, so I'll stop here.
To sum it up, this is probably going to end up being my favorite Final Fantasy game. The mmo style gameplay (for a lack of better description) really gives you the sense of being in an open world and the sense of adventure. I do get a star wars vibe from this game
. I simply can't wait to start playing this again tomorrow.
