In all honesty it seems like a mixed bag

Final Fantasy XII Demo

It’s been five years since Final Fantasy X and while Square has provided us with over FF titles: FFXI and its many expansions, FFX-2, FF Crystal Chronicles, and FF Tactics Advance to name a few. It has however been quite a time since a good and proper Final Fantasy game has been released. Final Fantasy XII marks a hopeful return to the series more epic roots. Admittedly it is hard to get a handle on exactly what the final build of the game will play like from the two short demo levels, but at least it gives us a taste. FF XII will be released in Japan in early March, and will come to the states sometime in August.

Music:

The Final Fantasy series has long been known to possess some of the best music to be found in gaming. The tunes are so adored in fact that there have been live orchestra concerts of music from the series. That being said the score in the two demo levels does not really jump out at you. Granted, at least for me, many of the most memorable themes have either been for characters or towns, so not having the best music in a couple of random exploring areas is ok. The sound effects, while I couldn’t say were anything astounding, did give a nice sound to battle.

Graphics:

As you might imagine the technical quality of the graphics is remarkable. The environments are crisply and well rendered 3-D, and respond well to the camera controls. The character designs are well done, complete with our a little on the skinny side, slightly femmy main hero. The monsters too, form what I’ve seen seem to be well designed too. The animations, especially the special effects for various spells are exceedingly well done. This also includes the summons that you can perform, which are appropriately dramatics and kick ass. Also, as is a habit of the animators in FF games, they can get a little long. In the demo there was no way to skip the animations; I can only hope there is in the final build.

One last comment the opening cinematic trailer …breathtaking. The English voice actor they have narrating isn’t so good, but the technical quality is astounding.

Gameplay:

The basic gameplay in FFXII is a radical departure from the traditional. While certain actions still have they’re appropriate charge and wait times the action on a whole takes place on the same stage. There are no more random encounters, there is no different interface between the world map and battle, in fact there isn’t any battle screen. All monsters and creatures are just out wandering the land. This is nice in some ways because it means there are no random battles. Yes there might be a group of monsters that you cannot sneak around or avoid, but at least you know it’s coming. When you are actively fighting monsters you can have your command input set to either active or wait. Similar to how these timers worked in past games wait pauses the game while you input your commands, while active leaves to furiously input your commands while action continues. For my two cents I find the active timer significantly more fun than the wait timer. Also of interest since the game is trying to give a little more of a mmorpg/live action feel to its battles, when a monster is defeated, even if it’s part of a group, everyone’s counters reset and the new target needs to actually be targets. You get no freebie retargets of the next enemy that is so common place in most RPG battle systems. Lastly on the battle interface front; when you do summon a monster to aid you it takes all other party members away except for the caster and the two can fight together. This can work extremely well for ganging up and doing a lot of quick damage, or you can have the summon caster start casting heal spells on the summoned monster to help it stick around longer. All in all it’s one aspect of the battle system that I really enjoy. Lastly this game would benefit greatly from multiplayer, but it appears that the other two members of your party will appear to be largely controlled by AI scripts. Which is really a shame.

As for the plot and flow of the game, there was not nearly enough content in the demo to get a solid definite idea. However, on the plus side, there are sky pirates involved in the game. On the downside though both demo levels had a very missionny feel to them. If the entire game is more mission hopping with plot, as opposed to a more seamless epic I will be sorely disappointed.

Closing Thoughts:

Square Enix is taking a bit of a chance with their new Final Fantasy game. Their past departures from the norm FFV, FFVII(to an extent), and FFVIII have met with varying degrees of success(not talking about sales success here). So, with that in mind I remain cautiously optimistic of the results. Though I am willing to admit that in the long run if the approach to the game is more mission based the gameplay and battle system itself will not be enough to prop the game up.

Grade: B (with reservations and hopes all at the same time)