Final Fantasy 12 - Unappreciated or underwear
 

I believe that its storyline is unappreciated from the majority of the fans, I can’t believe. I can’t say that’s it perfect (no story is) because I fill that it wasn’t well integrated with the gameplay and on some occasion tried to disguise it dungeon crawler elements. I mean there’s a wonderful execution of subtlety to the way the character reveals themselves to players and have a better level of maturity to these characters then those like Squall or Tidus who either Nojima or Kitase feel the need to have them go on this Inuyasha like dramatics. So yeah, best cast since Final Fantasy 6 if you ask me. So I was hoping that the RPG fans here who feels that the story was underwhelming could do a better a job explaining on why they that felt that 12 story is lacking compared to the previous entries, and for those who liked it what or your feelings on the reviews that I posted? I’m sure there won’t be any complaints from Revenant Wings since it not being helmed by Matsuno and instead by Motomu Toriyama.

I mean did anyone even that seen the review of gametrailers, I mean come.
Gametrailers.com - Final Fantasy XII - Review

Here’s another of my hated review for Final Fantasy 12 for not being like it predecessor (mainly being seven through ten).
No Love for Final Fantasy 12 at Unlimited Gamer

I don't like FF12 only because it didn't feel too much like a FF game. Battle system looked horrible, the fucking story put me to sleep in the beginning since it looked too much like a LotR game. I stepped back and watched my older brother play it. He put the controller down and sold the game back and ended up buying 2 DS (PW and hotel dusk) games instead. I'm not sure how anyone here feels but at least you can always trust your friends at Famitsu for they have given the game a perfect score ;p.

You should be lucky that the Angry Nintendo Nerd hasn't looked this up yet.

I must admit I found the gameplay somewhat fun at early stages of the game but when you get to the point where you can have everyone pretty much do what they need to do without really doing anything, that's when everything becomes tiresome. I never really bothered with the story since it was a yawn and a half right at the get-go.

There are some fun stuff of course, like the notorious monsters, or whatever it's called. I like fighting huge things :X

Final Fantasy XII Reviews

Average score of 90.9%? Unappreciated? Please.

If you look at all the RPGs, it shows up 27th. Out of all RPGs. That's pretty good. Final Fantasy XII is nowhere near unappreciated or underrated.

Personally I found it pretty bad, but believe me, the "majority of fans" don't hate it.

I loved several aspects of this game (including story)... maybe it has too many innovations for the hardcore RPG gamer.

Anyways, amazing game... way too long for my taste and without a Guide some stuff is just impossible to figure it out, but that's irrelevant.

Innovations? What innovations?

FF XII had a ton of promise and then it was absolutely scrapped by a story that went nowhere and an ending that was horridly disappointing.

What do you mean the story went nowhere? You basically take control of this Vaan dude who really really wants to go on an adventure. Then like twenty minutes later he embarks on an adventure. I guess you probably were expecting a story that took more than twenty minutes to resolve though. I can see where you might be disappointed in that.

In all seriousness, I think the main problem with what little story you were presented with was that you are never really given any reason to care about any of the characters. Either you like the archetypal character you were presented with, or you didn't. None of them really changed throughout the game. Vaan is a kid wanting to go on an adventure when you meet him. He is a kid on an adventure midway through the game, and he is a kid who has gone on an adventure at the end. Yeah, that's some real emotion shit there. Balthier is Mos Eisley Han Solo at the beginning. At the end he is still pretty much Mos Eisley Han Solo with a little added backstory.

Hmm... I dont know, maybe the gambit system?... a story not entirely based on the characters (usually emo) but in a bigger stuff (war, city relation, etc)?

Granted, a story not entirely based around the characters lacks some appeal, however, some people find it far more interesting than the usual cliché character development.

Yeah. Setting AI for your character is novel and has never been done before. Not ever in MMORPGs, or in Tales Games, or even in Secret of Mana when you could set your characters from attack to healing on a grid.

And a story not entirely based on characters? FF Tactics? Suikoden? Suikoden II? Romance of the Three Kingdoms? Dude, these aren't innovations.

Yeah, wow, I wouldn't know anything about story development at all. No sir. Not like I make a living working on story development. FF XII just lacked it. It ended very poorly, and the story went nowhere for a huge amount of time. Sorry that offends you so.

Since you have to see it in that way: A novelty for a traditional RPG series... (And even then, the depth this system goes is quite impressive)

Weird stuff, for some reason I disagree with your point of view...

Do I have to explain the concept of the narrative structure to you? Really?

Researching a little bit about the world reception of the game I found it has been praised by everyone about its story and pretty much everything... so I was going to shove it in your face... until I found this: Interview : Akitoshi Kawazu (FF XII) ... not much to say. (Well, they archived a beautiful world)

They achieved a GORGEOUS world. I -love- Ivalice. I always have. I like that the games set in Ivalice usually have a fairly political bend to them. I love the concepts behind them, I like what they tried to do with XII, I Just think they came up sort.

Also:

Tu parle francais, monsieur Tafer?

I like the world. Like, the literal world: the landscape, the changes in scenery (which could've been more subtle than a loading screen, though). I was having almost the same rush as I had when roaming around the world in Shadow of the Colossus, except FFXII had mostly crappy background music to ruin the mood. It would've been so much better with ambience or even just silence. Or a Masaharu Iwata soundtrack, but let's not get into that.

I'm off-topicing, but I'm also bored.

Just enough to dig for stuff. (For everything else, good translators save the day)

Oh well, I guess there was a reason for all those moments where I felt like something was missing or this is going sloooow.

I actually agree with both Kishin and Tafer.

Here, Tafer, let me better explain my position and it might make more sense. I got into the game early. Balthier was straight up old school Han Solo or Indiana Jones. I love characters like that. Vaan is useless, but the teen hero always is (god forbid we ever get to play a grown up). The story starts, and there's some pump to it. You steal some stuff, it gets taken from you, a castle blows up. Hey, look at this pony go. And then there are all these bits where the story just -stalls-. It doesn't keep the narrative pace going, the sidequests seem to take you out of the action, rather than enhancing it, and the clip of the story is always interrupted by these sort of pointless filler bits. Like something just wasn't there to really bump it along.

You hit the nail on the head for how I feel about the game. I was given no real inscentive to continue on the quest, a quest where I had no idea what was going on, nor was interested. If you don't have an interesting or compelling story, atleast give me some compelling characters to fall back on. Alas, this game had neither, and was a tremendous disappointment.

This is something else I've noticed: Why is it the more "Medieval" Final Fantasy are, the more idealistic the main character becomes? Squall, Cloud and Tidus lived in worlds with technology comparable or better than modern times, but they were significantly more introverted than, say, Zidane or Vaan, or might as well have been living in the Victorian era. It might have something to do with them being the "charming thief/sky pirate" archetype (see: Locke), but it's still interesting.

There are a couple reasons I keep hearing on why many people didn't like the story. For one, there's no sub-plot. Inherently, this isn't a bad thing, there are plenty of stories that rely on just one theme and stick with it, but in this case I think people couldn't find anything in the plot to latch onto when they played it. It was a rebels versus empire scenario pretty much from start to finish, with some lore about the Aeons thrown in to pad out the world and make it more organic. FFXII carried on the whole Ivalice mythos from FF Tactics/Tactics Advance, so it didn't need to devote itself to a lot of expository scenes explaining where the player was or their place in the world. The monster guides kinda gave anyone who was willing all the background they needed anyway, but often at the cost of hunting certain creatures for hours to get info that may or may not be beneficial. The main quest was very point A to point B pretty much throughout (with a lot of backtracking required for nearly any quest), with virtually nothing revealed about many of the characters in the process aside from basic personalities and habits. People like a certain amount of intimacy with the characters they play in RPGs, and it's like the more you *wanted* to get involved in this story, the less it actually gave you.

The translation was excellent, though. I won't argue against that because honestly I can't see a bad side to it. I wish Alexander Smith did more games.

If we're discussing whether FFXII is underwhelming or underappreciated:
Talaysen already pointed out that with an average numerical score of about 91%, and high marks wherever you go, it's certainly not underappreciated. Meanwhile, there are a vocal few that have found it underwhelming, perhaps becaus of how different it is from other Final Fantasies, in certain ways.

To chip in my own opinion, I ejoyed it more than any Final Fantasy in the last 10 years. Loved the battle system, loved the setup, loved the story, loved the presentation. One of my favorites for sure, and Zodiac Job System is even better. Shame that it won't be released in America. Shame.

Somewhere in between, in my opinion. I think the one thing that Vagrant Story and Tactics have in advantage to XII is that they have a stronger element of subtlety. The game is more plot than character driven, so I'm not too hot and bothered by the lack of "character development" in this case. Especially considering that what they do go with is standard fare for something along the lines of Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics.

I think there are a lot of expectations placed on the game based on how different it is from past Final Fantasy titles, the major conflict stemming from having to please two audiences who expect some very different things.

I'm one of those guys who get into the countless side quest the game offers (I loved the hunting stuff), when I get bored (or cant find anything else to do)... I continue the story, without a doubt this is why I didn't notice major problems with the story.

Meh, the game took quite a while to come... I guess this kind of stuff was expected.

For someone that doesn't care about the plot in videogames anymore (as evidenced by my undying love for Grandia Xtreme), how's the actual gameplay in FFXII? Is it a game that's just fun to sit down and play for a few hours a week?

If by a few hours you mean level grinding with AI that basically means you don't even have to touch a button. So if you want to watch your people run around a desert and then run away and hit something, repeat ad nauseum, then sure.

A lot of the glaring issues present in the initial release are addressed in the International version of the game. A few for the cause, the damage cap of 9999 is still in place and I still have no freaking idea why this was implemented into XII. Of all the things not to do away with. Most of your debuffing arsenal is near worthless at times, save for a certain piece of equipment that some consider gamebreaking. One of the most powerful weapons in the game is susceptible to some bullshit that the game doesn't tell you about where you can all but prevent yourself from getting it because you opened a few chests in certain areas. The other powerful weapon is only obtainable after you kill the enemies you would want to use it on.

Hunts will keep you engaged and can be quite fun, though this is on the most grind heavy games I've played in a while. Especially if you're aiming at completionism. I really just have to say again that the International version is what the game should have been.

Deni outsponded me with a rather good point. The game makes a lot of the battles that would occur in other games go on "auto pilot", the true crux of the game's battles lies in the major fights. Which require management and precision or something. If you enjoy that sort of thing, it's quite fun... if preparation and constantly killing things over and over is sleep enducing to you, welcome to one of the greatest sleep aids this RPG generation.

Except that it still doesn't fix the plot.