How long has it been since we heard the Final Fantasy prelude? How long has it been since we casted fire magic or talked to a Moogle? Too long...far too long. Thankfully, Final Fantasy XII makes up for this incredibly long wait and does so in spades. But don’t think that is the traditional Final Fantasy formula we have all grown to love. While there are a number of similarities in FFXII, the number of differences far out-weigh them. Is this a bad thing? Depends, but I’m sure the majority of FF fans will appreciate the new direction FFXII has taken the franchise, especially if you like MMORPGs.
The biggest difference FFXII is sporting is the active combat system. Gone are the days of running across open areas only to have the encounter screen flash in front of you and then rip you into a battle. Random encounters are a thing of the past. Instead, enemies are now scattered throughout the enormous areas and just by running up to them activates the battle. Needless to say, it gives the game a much more controlled feeling. Also, in typical MMORPG style, there are a number of difficult enemies jumbled in with the easy enemies, which can completely own on your entire party at times.
Once the combat begins the similarities to an MMORPG continue: Battles occur in real time where enemies will attack you, even if you don’t attack back. There is the option to set the battle mode to “wait” to create a more slowly paced combat experience. However, I generally found that keeping it on “active” made the whole experience more visceral and satisfying. With multiple enemies and multiple party members, keeping track of the action could be quite hectic. Square foresaw this and created a simple yet effective visual system that makes the battles incredibly easy to visually analyze. These come in the forms of colored arches. Blue arches extend from a party member to the enemy he or she is going to attack, red arches extend from the enemies to which party member they are going to attack, and green arches extend from party member to party member, indicating assistance – be it in the form of healing or removing a status ailment.
But even with all of this help the combat system could still be a giant to handle, especially all in real time...not to mention that characters can move around the battle field. Square also saw that this could be overwhelming to gamers, which is why they built the helpful, and rather innovative, gambit system in FFXII. The gambit system is basically a list of commands that you can program into members of your party, which aren’t directly under your control. The further along in the game someone proceeds, the more gambits become available as well as gambit slots. Using these gambits to compliment one another can lead to a party that is truly devastating, without really doing too much hands-on fighting. All the favorite Final Fantasy attacks are there too. Everything from Fire to Ifrit and Cure, will be at the player’s disposal to take on all the monster’s FFXII has to offer.
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