Ten Reasons Why Final Fantasy 12 Is A Bad Game

When the latest installment for the long-running JRPG series Final Fantasy came out in the PAL regions, to say my excitement was at fever pitch would be a gross understatement of just how fever-pitched I was. I had been hearing all kinds of good things from across the pond; That it was a revelation of a game, that there was a huge world to explore. Even the illustrious Famitsu magazine had given it a perfect score. Purchasing the game on the day it came out, I proceeded to play through a large majority of the main story in less than a week.

During this time something strange happened. At the beginning the world was shiny and wonderful. The opening FMV and action sequences were both enthralling and engaging. But then doubts started coming up in my mind; Aren't I just standing watching my characters doing all the work? Why exactly is Penelo in my party? Is the Empire really that bad? Ah shit, I don't think I was meant to go that way.

It took some time for me to come to terms with the fact that I hated FF12. It was like some allergic reaction, like going into a restaurant to eat your favourite meal only to start bloating up just after the starter. Previously I had adored almost every installment of the game. Yes, even Final Fantasy 8, the emo-fest of tedious gameplay (I may or may not have cried during the space scenes, no one can confirm anything dammit!) . The number of hours I had wasted on the franchise was immense. I had played almost every version of every title I could get my grubby little mitts on. So imagine my surprise when I had clocked over a hundred hours into FF12 only to put down the controller and never return to it.

Looking back I have a better perspective of just why FF12 is so terrible, because it's glaring flaws only become apparent once you're on the other side. Near the beginning it doesn't seem so bad. Heck, it's downright brilliant. But then the initial rush passes and the problems start. So, for those of you who may not know, here are the ten reasons why FF12 is bad;

10 - Gambits

Surely you can't knock the gambit system given it's context? I mean, who'd want to mess about with all of those different spells and whatnot? Well me for a start. Sure the ATB/CTB/Turn-based shenanigans of the past sometimes became a bore, but at least you always had control over your characters. When you finally took down an end boss it was your thumb, and vicariously an oversized sword presumably, that dealt the killing blow. With FF12 there is no satisfaction. You are but a general surveying your troops, occasionally manually selecting items to use should the need arise. It says it all when players can leave the game for days on end to power-level without so much as a cursory glance at the action. To me such a system dehumanizes the characters and makes them walking tanks. Why not turn it off then? Because the game is blatantly designed so that Gambits are necessary to proceed. It's either sit back and enjoy the snore, or flounder as you're taken out by waves of enemies. Either way it's torture

9 - Uber-bosses

If you ever want to experience what it would be like go insane, I suggest you try taking out the various optional bosses. I'm a fan of a challenge don't get me wrong, but not if the challenge involves a bunch of cheating little shits that can wipe a party in moments due to a bad roll of the random number generator. No boss should ever take more than an hour to kill tops. Some of FF12's optional bosses can go on for days. Days! That's not an achievement, it's a homework assignment. Plus none of them have the same spectacular bombast of say Omega Weapon or Penance, or even the same significance.

8 - Penelo

Seriously, what the hell was she doing there? I think she was following Vaan around like a puppy, and everyone just kind of forgot she was there. I swear, the characters in FF1 had more personality than her, even more motivation (they had orbs to lug around, whereas Penelo...what is she doing there?). It doesn't help that she has about ten lines in the whole game and the personality of a carrot. O, and while we're on the subject, her outfit is ridiculous. It looks like the sort of thing they'd give pregnant women just in case their waters broke. Bonus points to anyone who can name me a more pointless PC in the history of gaming.

7 - The Rest Of The Party

Penelo is somewhat forgivable since it's obvious she was a placeholder character created when the development team realised they needed to pad out the main party. But everyone else has little excuse for their dreary, monotonous personalities. Vaan is almost as superfluous as Penelo and just as exciting to watch (that's to say not very), Ashe wears an even more ridiculous outfit and doesn't seem fit to rule an ant farm let alone an entire kingdom, Basche walks around all moody and looses his mildly interesting plot device way too early(he killed the king - actually, no he didn't, fair enough). The only two main characters worth a dime are Balthier and Fran. Balthier because he's got the most interesting back story which is criminally put to one side and rarely developed for most of the game, and Fran because, well, she's absolutely bonkers. Her accent is all over the place, she goes mental for no reason on more than one occasion, and actually manages to out-ridicule Ashe and Penelo in the outfit stakes by wearing high-heels and bondage straps. Not that any of this matters because the main characters rarely speak to each other. It wouldn't be a stretch to say some of them might not even remember each other's names by the end of the game. There's zero development, no interesting scenes and very little reason to bother playing through the whole game just to see their totally predictable endings.

6 - "Dead"-ends

Note to the makes of FF12 - If you put a cave in the middle of a low-level area leading to a high-level area, have some kind of sign that informs as such. It is not fun to spend three hours crossing a desert only to accidentally wipe without saving because you wandered into a side-area thinking it was the way you were meant to go.

5 - Espers

This should have worked. It worked in FF10. It works in FF11. So why the hell are Espers such a bag of shite in FF12? I can think of only one battle that I used an Esper, and that was the one directly after achieving my first one. I watched as the pathetic excuse of a summoned monster had it's life chipped away faster than you can say "underpowered" before I was deposited back into the battle and just had my notably stronger main characters clear up the mess. It's laughable when you have to spend twenty+ hours trying to get an Esper only for it to be as useful as a wet tissue in battle. At least the Magnus Sisters had Passado.

4 - Go Fetch!

Let me condense the plot of FF12 down into a simple formula;

1 - Send player to arbitrary location
2 - Make player get arbitrary item
3 - Have bad guys come in and either capture team or disrupt team
4 - Repeat from 1

Of course this is simplified; I haven't even mentioned the miles and miles of pointless locations you'll have to suffer through to get between points 1 and 2. Or indeed the dreary, frustrating dungeons that bridge the gap between points 2 and 3. Or the snooze-worthy cutscenes between points 3 and 4. Speaking of which;

3 - The Worst Script In Final Fantasy History (And That Includes FF1)

I don't know at what point I stopped caring about the storyline in FF12. Maybe it was when the promised balls-out war never developed. Perhaps it was when I was sent on a third "Go Fetch!" quest. Or indeed maybe the whole thing's just rubbish. Sure there are some interesting ideas, such as the brother of the main bad guy (who truth be told isn't at all memorable or indeed bad) helping you for short periods, or different towns turning coat on you. But never do you get a sense of dread or indeed meaningful plot progression. It doesn't help that your main party are a bunch of unlikeable cardboard cut-outs, or that the motivations behind the game's main arc are so arbitrary to the proceedings and ultimately flawed and boring. Don't be surprised if you come back from a long break only to completely forget what has happened or indeed what you're supposed to be doing.

2 - The Worst Enemies In Final Fantasy History (And That Includes Necron)

It says it all when you care more about the bad guys than your own troops. The only time I found myself paying attention to what was being said was when the Judges were on screen, because you could tell almost immediately they were much more bad-ass. But the rest of the Empire is just a joke. You never see any kind of imperialistic oppression or dogmatic disregard of human rights that may make you mad enough to give a shit. In FF7 we had the destitute citizens of lower Midgard who Shinra were more than happy to murder for the sake of meeting their own ends. In FF6 there was the other (better) Empire that meticulously laid their plans and even stabbed you in the back in a bid for ultimate power. In FF12 we have...people living in relative comfort, and soldiers who are more likely to have a casual chat with you about the weather than hunt you down mercilessly. Seriously, how can a fugitive princess waltz around the capital of the Empire without so much as a cursory glance? Only the occasional capture breaks the monotony (yes, your characters are dipshit enough to get caught more than once), but even that isn't enough to give you a real sense that you're a rebel group fighting an oppressive regime.

1 - The Drops/Enemy System
I saved the worst until last. The one thing that made FF12 an almost unbearable experience akin to having your nipples twisted off. That thing is the drops and enemy spawn system. There's a few reasons why it's terrible. Firstly the design team admitted that they made the drop system so confusing that people would be forced to look for help. Let me just re-iterate that for you; THEY. DESIGNED. IT. TO. BE. UNFATHOMABLE. This to me is like taking a big steamy piss on your fans. Then a massive dump. Then perhaps spitting on them for good measure. It smacks of a blatant attempt to get players to buy a strategy guide out of necessity. Hey guys, one URL: www.gamefaqs.com, now kiss my ass. Secondly the (purposefully) confusing nature and sheer magnitude of the odds you're working against in order to get the most powerful weapons make any attempt to gain the ultimate weapons an up-hill struggle of Biblical proportions. This isn't even mentioning the fact that the system that allows the rarest enemies to spawn is in the same league as the item drops in terms of complexity. So what you have are two incomprehensible systems that you have to understand fully to get everything in the game. If you're as insane as I am and actually go ahead with this then congratulations; enjoy using your hard-earned weapons on the waste-of-time side-bosses that also require prior research to defeat. Meanwhile the guys at Square Enix will be laughing at you whilst swimming around in piles of money. Once they've finished pissing, shitting and spitting on you from a great height obviously.

So there you have it. If you do intend to get FF12 this is my advice - don't. Go spend your money on something more worthwhile, like the vastly superior Final Fantasy 10. Or just recreate the game on a shoestring budget; Make six cardboard cut-outs of the main characters, run through ten miles of forest trying to find a pink elephant that'll drop a super-rare item once every thousand times you kill it. Provided it's a Tuesday, and you kill it within two minutes using only your bare fists. Then find a television and watch BBC Parliment for about ten minutes. Repeat until you lose your mind or find something better to do. Like shaving your scrotum perhaps.

Cram it in; just how complex can games become?

It seems these days that more, not necessarily bigger, is better. At least when it comes to games. If you want to see direct proof of this then go look at the top list of games on gamefaqs.com for the PSP section. As of the date of this blog, three of the games - Monster Hunter, Monster Hunter 2 and Disgaea PSP - can only be accurately described as gargantuan in their scope. The Monster Hunter series offer a huge free-roaming world where you can do battle with various different types of weapons and abilities against loads of, well monsters. Disgaea is also a remarkably silly romp which involves stats so astronomically high as to be mind-boggling. This is certainly an impressive feat considering the small size of PSP games (somewhere in the region of 800Mb a piece). But do all these extra features mean that MH and Disgaea are the best games ever created?

Well no actually, it doesn't. I tried hard, so very very hard, to like MH. I mean if everyone else liked it so much, surely it must be good? Then I remembered that everyone also likes excessive drinking and Grand Theft Auto, promptly bringing me to my senses. The major problem with games such as Monster Hunter and Disgaea is that for most hardcore gamers such as myself who demand to see everything a game has to offer (being from the North of England I have a natural tendency towards tight-fistedness), putting in all of these features almost from the word go actually causes an interesting affect; I just don't want to do it. The sheer cliff face that is the world I've been given proves too much, so I go off and play iSketch instead.

What's the problem here exactly? Perhaps it's me, maybe I'm just fickle. But I think it's something else. To me a game can be complicated and deep, it just needs the right pacing of just how complex and deep it gets. Take your average JRPG, a mixed bag of brilliant examples of narrative and hours-long trash that's as fun to sit through as genital mutilation. It would be absurd if you were given transport around the entire world, every single party member and every single spell, ability, item, weapon, armour and battery-powered dildo. There's a gradual incline of learning to be had, where new ideas are trickle-fed to you like a hamster at it's water tub. Now compare this to Monster Hunter; you're given an option of every weapon, a unnecessarily huge set of tutorials that will reasonably take double digit hours to sit through them all, and then punted out on your arse with nary a target in sight. Sandbox game or not, I need some direction, a reason to want to randomly mutilate animals besides increasing numbers.

Then there's other such issues, perhaps one that's always got my goat - multiple endings. Now the backs of games boxes are more than happy to shout out such features to the high heavens. Personally I see the term "multiple endings" on the back of a games box and feel slightly nauseous. I can say, without hyperbole, that not once in my gaming life have I ever been able to get anything positive out of multiple endings without a guide sat on my lap. Call me insane, but I don't want to have to go through however many hours it takes to complete a game and missing out on the "perfect", most expensively produced sequence because I forgot to visit Old Man Plot Device three times as oppose to just the two times I remembered whilst I was trying to play the game. I can see the virtue of multiple endings in some respects, but there's better ways of doing it. The Fallout series is easily the best example I've ever seen; you have one central storyline that always concludes the same way. What you do in individual towns changes the ending slightly; not a lot, but enough to make you want to do something a bit different to see if you can change the fate of Broken Hills (you can't by the way, I tried). Now contrast this to the J-Pop disaster that is FFX-2; not only do you need to maximize an arbitrary percentage completion that randomly increases, but you need to talk to a specific character, at a specific location, at a specific time, and a specific number of times. Are you kidding me? What happened to the days when such achievements were the realm of getting a higher score than the last player? It's sheer madness.

I personally would rather see more games being constructed that were more focused on their core elements rather than taking those same elements and spreading them out so far it becomes a tangled mess. Games such as F.E.A.R. are much more engrossing to play than something like Disgaea. It focuses itself on the tactical shooting and horror aspects to aplomb, while Disgaea complexity grows exponentially to the point where it all becomes too much to care about. It's a bit like choosing between reading a great novel or staring at a bunch of spreadsheets on a database. You're bound to get something out of both of them, but the question is just how far does your masochism go to learn all five hundred lines of the customer shoe catalogue?