Delterius
Arcane
Its the FF7 curse. Everything needs to be bigger and better. Kinda like how Blizzard can't just make Diablo 3, they need to turn it into a revolutionary business model for nickel and diming.
I got a -50$ discount code for this game: PCSX2
Enjoy.
Wouldn't want that even for free. Especially Zodiac edition
Why is that?
Because original game is "hey we fucked up HP system in game and players need 24/7 healing with all their characters ! Which means for best efficiency every character needs to properly heal thus every character is the same more or less. I know ! Let's divide our license board into classes and only 3-4 of them can heal properly ! that will do We call it international/zodiac edition"
Which means that in game where every character needs to heal you have now about half ability to heal. Hell if you don't know classes before hand you can even end up in situation where you can't heal with any character.
And then there is whole XII boring as fuck single player mmo dungeon design. Basically long corridors of nothing filled with same enemy type for next hour or two reapeat whole game for 100 hours.
If they would cut down dungeons in half, remove van and panelo and rebalance game about combat itself and not fucking "heal heal heal heal" then i would buy it.
I played both vanilla and zodiac back in day. Dropped zodiac half way because i had only one character that could heal effectively.
Dragon Quest sticks mostly to its familiar conceits and traditions.
Yup if you would cut down every area in two aside from few smaller ones, remove van and panelo make mc Bach and rebalance a bit it would be amazing game. Unfortunutelly lead designer Matsuno who designed FFT and Tactics Ogre got booted out from project midway and someone else took over
A JRPG with linear corridors and treasure nooks? You don't say! It's a good thing we have smart guys like Perkel around to give us all the facts, because it never would have occurred to me otherwise. Oh, wait... there's not a single person on the Codex to whom environmental complexity in games is more important.
FFXII disguises it corridors fairly well; since most areas have multiple interconnections, if you aren't consulting your map, then you CAN get turned around/have trouble finding a specific entrance. I also appreciate the lack of quick exits and shortcuts, and restricted fast travel. In JRPG terms, that's all well above average.
Well, Breaker is an extreme example. Berserker definitely would have been a more "Final Fantasy" name for it as it wields axes, wears heavy armor, and has good, if not exceptional, HP.
Problem with the breaks is they can't give them early because they're too good. Shear (Lower MDef) is found the earliest, basically right after Raithwall's Tomb, but is also probably the least useful one, except against maybe Chaos.
Nope the Zodiac boards were garbage.You shouldn't wanna brofist, because he's wholly incorrect.
It's a little unfair to compare XII and Tactics to one another in terms of gameplay, as they play nothing alike. They're set in Ivalice, and the similarities pretty much end there.
I'd also argue that Tactics allows for even more abuse in terms of trucking the difficulty - you can learn a skill that literally makes you invincible to all direct physical attacks (Hamedo), or have 100% chance to evade anything that isn't magic - guns included with 100 Brave if you use Blade Grasp. Sure you can say Lancers feel different from Knights, but once you have access to infinite Excaliburs, and Chaos Blades, why are you using anything but them? Why even use a party of 5 when Orlandu can beat literally any encounter the game throws at you on his own? Steal the Chantage from Meliadoul and Agrias is literally invincible - she resurrects on her next turn if she goes down, and can blast through groups of enemies with Holy Sword. Even the infamous Wiegraf fight - if you don't expect it, yeah, it's impossibly difficult and you may have to restart your game because that shit sucks. But if you've built Ramza even reasonably well it's literally as simple as putting on the Samurai '2-hand' ability, and hitting him once with the biggest fucking weapon you've got and you win as long as he doesn't block. Then it just becomes a test of hoping RNG doesn't shit on you. Or you can run around like a pussy and use Shout 74 times to get fast enough to go 2 or 3 times to his once. I prefer the former, it's faster.
And like Great Deceiver said, FFXII is all about the optional Hunts, Espers, and uber-bosses / areas. No one cares about going through Raithwall's Tomb. We're rushing through that to test our builds in the late, late areas
...all of which are more challenging than anything present in Tactics.
By your logic, the filler is a great majority of the game to simply be slogged through, which objectively speaking is a mark in the game's disfavor.
This is exactly the case for 12 as well. The only difference is it's a lot easier to become powerful, and nearly impossible to totally fuck up your characters, unlike Tactics.The possibility of grinding, min-maxing, and extensively employing metagame knowledge to become powerful in Tactics doesn't invalidate the game's baseline or overall difficulty. The game doesn't physically prevent you from min-maxing if you choose to, but this is a benefit, not a detriment; or put another way, it's a symptom of the freedom the game offers you
The other day, it came to my attention that Dark Cloud 2 and Final Fantasy XII had been re-released. That finally tipped the scale for me, and so I purchased a PS4—new, because I don't trust anything that's been handled by unknown retards. I'd been wanting to play Nioh, Bloodborne, and a couple of other PS4 games, but I have a strict "bare minimum of 5 worthwhile exclusive games before buying potato" policy. It usually takes 3-5 years for a potato to qualify, if it ever does.
I've long maintained that FFXII is the best mainline modern Final Fantasy title. I certainly enjoyed it far more than the relentlessly linear, sappy, goofy FFX. FFXIII was even more relentlessly linear than X, while its characters and story were demoted from sappy and goofy to mediocre and forgettable. I'm pretty sure FFXV is also shit, although I don't know much about it; all I really know is that I find the main cast repellent. I realize that metrosexual fruitcake hairdos and bizarre fashion-disaster emo fad clothing is all the rage in Tokyo these days, but I hate it. Also, the concept of driving around in a car and snapping smartphone pictures is suspect at best.
If I want to play a Millennial simulator, I'll just browse Reddit for a few hours.
Overall, I agree that Ivalice, the Zodiac motif and aesthetics pioneered in Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story-esque themes and aesthetics, and especially the job system collectively represent the peak of the Final Fantasy series. The original Tactics doesn't quite live up to Tactics Ogre in all areas, but the story of political intrigue and betrayal is excellent and it makes up for its few shortcomings in other ways; Tactics Advance/A2 faltered in story and characterization, but still maintained good gameplay, concepts, and aesthetics; FFXII isn't the objectively best mainline FF of all time (I still believe VI holds that honor), but it's in the top third, depending on personal taste; and Vagrant Story was cool. It's been ages since I've played Vagrant Story (the year it was released and never again), and I suspect I'd find it to be a little datedly edgy these days, but I still remember it fondly.
Actually, my memories of both Vagrant Story and FFXII are pretty damned vague, which is increasing my enjoyment of Zodiac Age since I have only an unspecific familiarity with most of the stuff in it. I haven't played it in 11 years, after all. The new two-job license boards are no doubt a great improvement over the generic catch-all boards of the original (and outside of Japan, the only) release.
The aesthetics and art direction in XII are perfect. The characters' faces are clearly Vagrant Story-esque, the espers are Tactics Zodiac-themed, and the costuming and hairdos and whimsical, elaborate, and elegant without being too fruity (XV) or edgy (also XV, Squall, Seifer, Cloud, etc.).
Even at the time XII was released, the Gambit system, partly real-time combat, and other aspects of the game's mechanics reminded me of an MMO, but in reality the game is still essentially turn-based and overall it's fine. The two-job license board system, the hunts, some non-linear segments, quite decent exploration, and the story featuring political strife and intrigue (which falters later on, but is still far and away better than many FF storylines; also it's strangely similar to Star Wars, as many have pointed out) all comes together to create a well-rounded and enjoyable weeaboo potato thingamajig.
What I really want is Hastega, because casting Haste on more than one person (especially automatically through Gambits) is extraordinarily tedious and makes me want to kill myself even at 2x speed, but I assume I need to get further into the Necrohol to find it