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  1. #1
    Melee Summoner
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    I played the FFXII demo the other day (fairly long read)

    I posted this on several other forums, and seeing a lack of discussion here about FFXII, I figured I would post it as well for those that are interested in this title.

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    It looks a lot more promising than I had originally thought it would be. If you are a final fantasy fan and have not yet had a chance to try out the FFXII demo (packaged with Dragon Quest 8 I think it is), then feel free to ask some questions regarding the battle system and I will do my best to explain my thoughts on it.
    
    Anyways in the demo there are two modes that show of the "Wait" type of fighting and the "Active" type of fight. Both are pretty much the same, the difference being that during "Active" you can have your attack menu open and run around at the same time. During "Wait" when you open the menu, the game freezes and you can choose the actions you wish to take. Although both most likely have their advantages, I feel the "Wait" will become a needed mode due to the fact that if you are taking on multiple enemies at a given time (I fought 3 enemies at once at one point), it may become necessary to freeze the gameplay in order for you to properly set up stratagies.
    
    Now, speaking of stratagies, that is one highlight I saw with FFXII. I was worried that this "Gambit" system was going to be weak, and I was looking for a new system where I could have more free will in customization. But I see now from the "Active" mode that Gambit is a necessity, because while you are getting dealt by foes, you need the two people you aren't immediatly controlling to follow some sort of action pattern, from always attacking, to healing when needed. The thing I like though is in "Wait" you can really set up how you want to work. I don't doubt that during the game you will be presented with many situations where a straight fight isn't going to win. This is a lot different from most of the battles of its predicessors.
    
    For example, let's say you are getting attacked by three enemies at the same time. With "Wait" you can open your menu and select one of your guys to sleep two of the monsters, allowing you to focus on the one. I will also assume there is some "hate" system related with mobs, much like there is in FFXI (more on their similarities later). This will most likely leave room for you to set up who your "tank" is going to be (some big guy taking all the hits) by making the enemy get real pissed off at him, and allow even more strategy with each fight.
    
    The only problem I see here is I hope that every random battle is not going to take a hugh degree of strategy. There is such thing as too much though. I know you all probably hate random battles as much as me when you are crossing a dungeon for the 3rd time, and the enemies are getting very repetative, very fast. But I wouldn't mind scattered battles where you must put some thought into it besides hitting "attack", and for boss battles I do hope they go all out and make you use all your avaiable abilities to their fullest in order to hit that enemies weak points. (Also on boss related, I do hope there will be battles where mid fight the boss will summon two guardians or something along those lines, making you split your forces in order to survive. Oh how fun!)
    
    It did not much talk about the "Gambit" system. You could not customize/adjust it at all. All I know is that each of my 3 characters in both modes had a Gambit attached, and I could freely enable/disable that at will in the middle of battle. When it was enabled I could freely move my character in battle and when I stopped, he would stop and do nothing unless he was close enough to attack. With his Gambit enabled, if I was not touching the control stick and he had already targeted the mob, he would move up to the mob himself and strike him. My teamates would use magic and items on their own with their gambits attached, but if I wanted I could go into their menu easily and tell them exactly what I wanted them to perform, and then they would proceed to perform that action on their own. They also weren't stupid (IE attacking with "Water" on a fish). They knew when to use the correct spells, and they knew that if only one person was hurt, it would be a waste to use a Cura which heals all.
    
    There is a huge similarity between these battles and FFXI. I won't talk much about it because if you have played FFXI, then you know the types of battles I am talking about, and if you haven't played FFXI, then you don't know and probably don't care. It is hard to explain the relationship between two things you don't know about anyways. But on a brief note, the FFXII battle system is incredibly similar to the point that there are enemies on the map (no "random" battles), and transition between walking around and battling is seamless. No weird glass breaking screen transition's, etc. The game feels like a single player version of FFXI. You have specific roles your party members should play to make it most efficient, but the best thing here is that you can control your other party members to make those needed adjustments (where in FFXI you can not because they are other people).
    
    Summons!!! Oh yeah, there is summons. In this demo you could only summon when you had full MP (which you recover though items or through running around and it slowly recovers in ticks. The best part here is that you can run around in the heat of battle circling the mob to recover those couple of MP to re-cast Thunder or something like that) and when the summon comes out it becomes a party of two. Just the summon and the person who summoned it. The summon is not controllable that I saw, and they perform a variety of VERY powerful attacks (where I did 200 he would do 900). They have a timer (I think invisible, but I wasn't paying too much attention), and when that timer runs out the summon performs one final ultimate attack before de-summoning.
    
    Magic is a bit different in that even normal spells have an AoE (Area of Effect). When I cast "Aero", and I select a mob, it shows the area in which it will hit, and if another mob is in that area, it will also attack it. I am not sure whether it does reduced damage due to it hitting multiple mobs, I didn't pay that close attention, but if I play it again I will edit this post with that info. Note some spells have really small AoE so they are essentially a 1 target attack (such as Flare). Magic was also divided into 4 types that I saw (White [Healing Cure, Cura], Black [Offensive - Thunder, Flare], Time [Negative Status - Slow, Immobilize], and Green [Positive Status - Protect, Shell]).
    
    One of the neatest things in FFXI is the fact that it isn't a two sided battle. The entire monster side is not against you. In fact, some are against eachother. In one of the demo modes there were two races (Sleipnir and Mandragora) that hated eachother. Sleipnir's hated me, also, and would aggro if I got to close to them. The Mandragoras on the other hand had no beef with me, and I could get as close to them as I wanted. But the moment they saw eachother they would get into a brawl, allowing me to come up behind and decide if I want to stay out of it, or sucker punch one. Pretty neat and it is obviously one of the highlightes the game seems to advertise.
    
    Chests are around the map, and can be opened mid-battle. Might be nice to hit up a chest while fighting that ultra hard boss to find an extra potion to use at your disposal!
    
    That's all the info I can think of at this point in time... I know it is long and I didn't intend it to be, but I got into talking about everything I noticed in the game. If you are interested in any other specifics about the battle system, movement around terrain, etc, feel free to post a question. Or just add your own thoughts if you have also played the demo. Later.
    On a side not I didn't talk about graphics and sound (although the classic fanfare is back and the CG videos and Summon calling videos are amazing), due to the fact I was looking at gameplay more than anything else. Oh, and also I was asked about this earlier.. I saw no "limit" system (limit break, overdrive, weapon skill, etc), but who knows if one will be implemented or not.

  2. #2

    I hate you for posting this cause it makes me wanna play it even more ; ;

  3. #3
    E. Body
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    Yeah that sounds really fucking good. Like some thought actually went into the battle system to stop it from being a boring old turn based affair a la the previous FF games. I CANT WAIT!!!

  4. #4
    The God Damn Kuno
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    Wow that sounds pimp as hell.

  5. #5
    Sea Torques
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    yeah i played the demo too, it's pretty fuckin pimp. and to think we could've gotten all this and more three months ago if SE wasn't retarded =/.

    oh btw, titan uses a move called "Roxxor." i shit you not. FFXII OWNS

  6. #6

    -.- FUSE, give us a damn release date.

  7. #7
    E. Body
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    I'm not going to call SE profane names just because they didn't release a half-assed version of FFXII 3 months ago. I think you guys should do the same

  8. #8
    Melee Summoner
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    Just note that moves like "Roxxor" are quite possibly not even going to be in the actual FFXII completed project. Least not in my opinion. The demo packaged with DQ8 was the english version of the E3 demo from like, a year and a half ago. Things are subject to change at will.

    And it wasn't Titan, it was some other summon. I think they are going with the FFT:A idea of no "popular" summons, but instead using creatures like the Totema and hopefully zodiac beasts and such.

    If anyone wants me to elaborate on something they are curious about, I am more than willing to go into further detail of what I saw. Feel free to ask.

  9. #9
    i'm awesome.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elcura
    I hate you for posting this cause it makes me wanna play it even more ; ;

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