There comes time in every company’s life that they start realizing that their routines and products have become stale and blasé. While still keeping the sentiments and aspects that the common consumer admires from the original products, newer features are implemented and certain memorable and beloved aspects are altered and changed for the better. But what happens when this reconstructive process goes horribly wrong? What if the company were to create something that they thought would be “innovative” and would “pioneer a new age in the industry” but had not expectantly become a complete aberration from what everyone loved about the original archetypes? What if—THE PUNCHLINE IS FINAL FANTASY XII.
You have been warned.
Before the ranting and raving can truly begin (“bitchin’ and moanin’” in layman’s terms), let me start by settling all qualms and pre-determined resentment that you might have towards me for derailing anything and everything with the words “Final” and “Fantasy” in it even when the installment in question is like cat piss poured into a Gatorade bottle and marketed as the new “Mystery Flavor”.
I consider myself an avid gamer who has dealt with a diverse compilation of games both good and bad. I have revered some and loathed others and as it so happens, role-playing games are among my most preferable of genres.
My reflexes suck
Introspectively, Final Fantasy stands out as the franchise that dominates the RPG realm from its picturesque visuals and fascinating worlds to its quirky yet plot-significant characters to its radically unique game play mechanics and challenges that would destroy the most tempered of souls, separating the men from the boys and in the end, only those who can attest to the games’ trials may proceed on.
Final Fantasy XII doesn’t have any of that.
This game is dreadful. The absolute worst. An exemplary testament to all that could go wrong with the series packaged into one game.
Okay…Maybe not the “worst”. But still terrible!
There’s affectionate lampooning of a game, deconstructive dislike for a game and then there’s my irreverent hostility for this piece of shit. Let me assure you that I did not get into this game aspiring for a masterpiece and did not have ludicrous standards which I demanded to be met. I never go into a game expecting a Citizen Kane-worthy setting or game play that is so good that I would have to cosplay as the characters in order to emulate a sad pathetic fantasy world and believe that overcompensating chalkboard-size swords were real.
cosplayers (n) - people who celebrate
Halloween more than once a year
Nonetheless, a qualified game would not have had me losing my mind every forty-eight seconds pondering all the possible activities I could be doing instead of squandering every wasted, vapid moment of my already-mundane daily life. I did not expect anything outstanding but did not expect anything outlandishly unplayable. So I really did not know what to expect but I felt I had (and still have) reasonable standards. I did not expect another Final Fantasy VII.
you compare this to a good game
But believe it or not there was a part of me at one time that went into the game expecting to feel the same awe-struck adoration that I usually had from the other installments like a crackhead reliving his gateway days by kicking back with some nice simple Mary Jane. But this “game” somehow took everything that I had loved about the series and had not only mangled and mutilated it, but it somehow got away with receiving unequivocal acclaim from game critics everywhere. I am not the type of person to jump on the bandwagon and go “I lurv dis 2 12 r teh best gmae evr!!!!SHIFT1111!1! roflolmaomfgtforlyarlybbq!!” but I smell trouble afoot when competent game reviewers and other known savants in this industry award this game for its supposed “merits” or lack thereof.
If you want to read this review and all ninety-seven compendiums of my outright hatred towards this game, I implore you to abandon all preset notions that have been beset onto you by the corporate side of video gaming and listen to an ordinary gamer like me.
Doesn’t this mug just shout “ordinary”?
And if you have played this game and somehow can endure its shit-factor far more than I can, I will iterate now that my opinion cannot be changed just as much as I cannot change yours. However, for those of you who rank this game as their favorite (let alone ranking it on your top 11) of the series, I have no words for you. But I have an appropriate image that I would love for you to reenact.
ONE LINERS WERE FUNNY!!"
In order to describe the banality of this game’s plot, let us delve back in time to Final Fantasy VI:
As the game begins, the player encounters an enigmatic woman named Terra who has (here’s a surprise) amnesia and had been manipulated by the Emperor to do his evil bidding. After being rescued by a pickpocket named Locke, Terra continues on her quest to uncover who she is and meets several other characters on her quest—each equipped with their own specialties and variant reasons to fight—demanding retribution against the Empire for their devious acts. After a turn of events, Terra unearths the terrible secret about her lineage and becomes compelled to use her newfound powers to see to the end of the tyrannical menace. Then comes along good old Mr. Plot Twist ready to change things up and the story takes a turn for the worst as the sociopathic Kefka strolls along, kills the emperor and acquires an omnipotent force that the group is incapable of defeating in their current state. After nearly a year, the group members somehow persevere and this band of heroes must face their own inner demons and reunite all the members once again to defeat Kefka and restore this dystopian world to the way things were.
And here is FFXII (in fragments):
Princess get people.
Fight Empire.
Win.
Princess become queen.
The end.
Man, what a mouthful! Who even needs Deus Ex Machina when you could stoop far lower and construct a story so linear that the player can already deduce the ending from the very moment they put in the game? Alfred Hitchcock, eat your heart out! Didn’t think my head could be wrapped around a story so complex! Especially when you have so many involving characters like Vaan, the transvestite of the group whose prominence in this story is incredibly uncanny and important: having little to no impact on the plot, speaking barely any lines, and fighting against the empire for a reason that seems rather uninspired. YES! WE NEED MORE MAIN CHARACTERS LIKE VAAN! Fuck insightful character development! All we need is a protagonist who just stands in the background and lets the plot unfold without him!
Man, I suck at these "Spot the Difference" games.
In fact, let’s make every character in the game like that! Wouldn’t that be great?! Just leave one character fulfilling all the plot advancements and have every other insipid character jerk off in the background!
THANK YOU SQUARE ENIX! YOU DID NOT DISAPPOINT! YOU DID NOT DISAPPOINT! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
All right…Get a grip, man…I can do this…Just need more Ritalin.
I’m afraid that I cannot continue to describe the simplicity of this plot any further without some detriment to my mental health so here are the rest of the characters in a concise, abridged format:
- Vaan =
a mana woman[gender-undefined] - Penelo = a nag
- Balthier = a douche
- Fran = a playboy bunny with a four-year old’s voice
- Basch = as interesting as a paper clip
- Gabranth = the paper clip’s evil brother
- Vayne = bad guy
- Larsa = bad guy’s brother
- Cid = unexplained villain cohort
- Al Cid = not to be confused with Cid; makes Vaan look like Chuck Norris
- Reks =
the green dinosaur in Toy StoryI mean…oh, who cares; he dies in the beginning - Every other character = useless
- Ashe = everything else
screen time. It would be a tragic scene…if we cared…
I like to call the plot Ashecentric because that is the most definitive plot summary you can give this game. The story is completely centered around Ashe, a rebellious princess leading a group of fighters vowing vengeance against an imposing empire that is responsible for the destruction of her home. She is the one true hope to end the malice of the dark lord Vayne, a man hell-bent on power by using the mystical force given to him by a malevolent entity. Hmm? Where have I heard this story before? Must be my imagi—
"Do not underestimate the power of the attorneys"
Oh yeah, that’s right. It’s just like Star Wars. Except where Star Wars excelled in storytelling, character development, special effects, action, orchestral score, and immersive atmosphere, Final Fantasy XII…um…
So allow me, if you will, to dispel any possible misconceptions that I find this game completely unredeemable. I may be a curmudgeon but I am a reasonable curmudgeon whose word is fallible (but I’m usually right).
The music can sometimes be abysmal and you can haphazardly compose better tunes by throwing knives off a bridge onto oncoming traffic. This is partly due to the series' venerable composer Nobuo Uematsu's abdication from Square to form his own Instrumental Metal band, the Black Mages. With the position open, Hitoshi Sakimoto took over and I would hate to vilify this guy having not heard any of his auxiliary work so I will say while some melodies are merely four beats repeating and others are so low in tone that the songs lean more towards being classified as "noise" rather than "music", Sakimoto somehow composed suitable music for this game and could even be considered perfect: all the songs are just as bland as the game.
The visuals are well-complemented by the high resolution and overall graphical enhancements since four years prior when Final Fantasy X came out. The graphics are high in detail for a non-PS3 title, albeit the thought of coughing up ten extra dollars on this waste for a technologically-advanced cutting-edge console is absurd. The artwork is another story and this is where my bias juts out most. The visual style somehow regressed to a quasi-fairy tale feel and what should have been eye candy ultimately failed miserably. The graphical enhancements cannot save this game from the bizarre art style as much as it is spraying over dog turd with darker colors to enhance the shittiness. Consider this the only aspect which is purely subjective and you can argue that you love seeing certain unique nuances, such as the game’s incarnation of the moogle, which looks a mutant offspring of an orangutan and a Furby.
How do you fuck up something as simple as a Moogle?
Skippable cutscenes are the greatest asset to this game as far as the story progression goes, which goes as far as permitting players to skip the tutorials. But I wouldn't understand why anyone would want to skip tutorials. After all, the fun lies in sitting in front of the television set mashing the X button until the lecturer shuts the fuck up.
The voice acting in this game is top-notch. Phenomenal. Superb. I have yet to come across another game whose voice work comes close to the flawless perfection in this game. My only grievance: WHY THIS GAME?
waste his career as an ancillary voice actor
Now the question lingering in your mind is “Why is this obviously-more-attractive-guy-than-me detailing every benign aspect of the game when he so clearly wants to smash the developers of the game in the face with scaffolding equipment?” Consider it a service before I really unleash my abhorrence upon this game and then you truly understand why I am being so merciful.
"AND YOU WILL KNOW MY NAME IS THE LORD..."
What is the nail that seals the coffin on this game and causes lapses in time due to incessant boredom? The quintessential part of any shitty game aside from the meandering plot and bland characters?
Prepare for the worst. We're going to rip this game a new one from the inside out. Next time...
The gameplay.
MASS HYSTERIA!!
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