Final Fantasy XIII Review

 I was a Solider

Final Fantasy XIII cuts back to the heart of who I am in a way. Back when I was still fresh eyed, bushy tailed and curious about the world of games outside that which I had been introduced to by my grandfather all the way back in those halcyon days of Metal Gear Solid. RPGs had already had their way with my interests, sparking a passion for slipping into the mind of fantastical 'others' and leading a journey of my own- but the mythic JRPG remained mere hearsay. Those would talk about them with bated whispers, but never enough to justify what they are to exist apparent from western RPGs. And so when I saw how Final Fantasy was considered the genre mecca, and one just happened to be on the Xbox 360, I rushed out to try... Final Fantasy XIII-2. But I decided I wanted to understand the story first so went out and got Final Fantasy XIII.

I'll tell you right now that I never finished it back in those days. In fact I skirted all the way up to Chapter 11, the chapter when the game actually opens up, before I became aggrieved at the fact I was still receiving general tutorials by the 20 hour mark! I felt like I was under some sort of endless Greek curse, pushing a fantastical boulder up a never peaking hill buckling under the weight of my self-inflicted horror. In some ways I thought I would never go back to Final Fantasy ever again. Then the marketing for XV cured me of that delusion right away. Still never played my 360 version of XIII-2 though... waste of money, that one.

So now I can come back with more aged eyes, experience like some sort of vintage beverage, matured on gaming, on RPGs, on Final Fantasy- that I can truly judge this game not just as a product of it's tumultuous time, but as a timeless product of it's storied peers. Sure XIII had a reputation all these years for being painfully linear with poor gameplay systems and a confusing plot- but those were the gripes of a new generation of gamers coming into a franchise they knew nothing about, which likely relied a bit on franchise recognition to score it's appeal, right? I mean, XIII has it's die-hard fans like any other game in the franchise; could that be because there's a seriously charming little game under the somewhat lacklustre presentation, such as with IX or perhaps due to a little of self-delusion spurred by personal bias- as for XII?

Coming back to the game was kind of like stirring old memories, first of that- I don't care what anyone says- gorgeous soundtrack- and next of that, even to this day, actually over-cluttered cutscene design. Final Fantasy is no stranger to hyper cutscenes, don't get me wrong- I've now finished one game out of all the major numbered releases and I can attest- when CGI entered the tool-box the Final Fantasy devs lost a little bit of their collective minds. But XIII seems special. A mix of seriously high-quality art being delivered, but edited together as though by a blindman on acid with a deep fear of visual action storytelling. As a kid I straight couldn't follow the action and assumed it was too complex for me. As an adult I can see- no it's just messy and unclear- hiding what appears to be truly top-tier animation work for some incomprehensible reason. At least the story isn't confusing to the point where such bad visual storytelling would become an issue right?... right...

As I alluded, Final Fantasy XIII does indeed have a reputation for being one of the most confusing of the franchise and to this, on the otherside, I can both empathise and pooh-pooh. Following the game is fairly easy to do when you're uninterrupted and insistent on paying attention, but unfortunately being in such a state does highlight the ways in which the scenario is honestly poorly told in a lot of the small ways. I'm talking the ancillary little tidbits, side character conduct and motivation stuff, but that does build towards a general problem. I don't know anyone who likes having to keep up with an unlocked codex to comprehend what was bizarrely omitted in the previous chapter. That is until the final chapter wherein the big moments start flying by unexplained and the story kind of falls on it's face. Bit of a shame really.

But I'm jumping ahead of myself. Final Fantasy XIII is the first, and so far only, game in the franchise to go truly Sci-Fi. VII flirted with Cyberpunk elements, but XIII whipped out the colossally impractical gravity trains, cybernetically trained animal-robot police force and embarrassingly fragile, constantly erupting into balls of hellfire, spaceships. (Honestly, I don't think a single spaceship survives longer than 5 minutes throughout this game.) Many of the classic Final Fantasy monsters have returned with metal make-overs, not quite as charming as the cyber-makeovers of ATLUS' monster-roster in Soul Hackers, but different enough to be genuinely distinct amidst a franchise that dances a little close to stiflingly homogeneous at times. (Then there's whatever the hell this game's version of Goblins are meant to be. I don't like them. Goblin Slayer would never.)

Within that Sci-Fi world is spun a narrative detailing an unlikely team spun on the loom of a fate they do not want, and fleeing a society that vilifies them and realities that haunt them. I think that last part might contribute to the actually bizarre level of distaste this main cast are instinctively fed by the wider Final Fantasy community. Honestly, I think this is an okay cast by Final Fantasy standards, Lightning is actually a solid leader who really confronts her own demons and grows caring, maybe a touch too caring, for her tribulations. Fang is a fun sarcastic hard-ass, Vanille uses her innocence to hide her habitual lying, Hope has a genuine purpose for being 'mopey' and develops from it, Snow... well, Snow is kind of annoying in an endearing way. Of course no one has anything bad to say about Sazh- dude, is just a real one. However- I can see how people can get fed up with the fact the majority of the story is just them running away.

Yes, there's a surprising lack of forward momentum in the narrative despite the oodles of lore fed throughout the story thanks to the level design which shackles Final Fantasy XIII. You might have heard of the 'curse of Hallways' this game is infected with, but I don't consider a linear level design to be the end of all quality in the world. For me it's more how Square handles those hallways. Filling them to the brim with an obscene amount of enemy encounters, most of which are copy-pastes of the last encounter despite the fact these aren't randomly decided fights but explicitly placed- for no other reason than to provide players with the correct amount of Crystarium Points to level up a pretty linear iteration of the Final Fantasy X levelling system, which itself was a levelling system I found restrictive and not that interesting. (XIII did it worse, go figure.)

The real problem here comes from the fact that Final Fantasy XIII, like XII before it, really doesn't have it when it comes to combat. In another attempt to evolve away from turn-based, XIII evolves the ATB system into a completely real time action combat mode only without direct control of your character. You feed them attack instructions which they carry out when the ATB bar fills, meanwhile they wander about and position themselves completely randomly- which might put them in or out of danger of group sweep attacks depending on how evil the AI is feeling. It already feels disconnecting, taking us out of the button-to-action relationship we expect with our characters, but that becomes even more of an issue when you realise that there are so few actions actually available to the player that the most effective way to play, even through to most of the endgame- is to just tab the built-in 'auto que' button which selects moves for you.

I quite literally played my way through most of the first 20 hours of this game treating it as a complete second-screen experience whilst watching 'Gotham', because the combat was that mindless to get through. Until chapter 3 there's literally nothing to combat but tapping A and occasionally throwing a 'heal everyone' potion down. From there you unlock the 'Paradigm shift' system in which you dynamically switch classes and roles. It's basically the Dress-Sphere system from X-2 only with it's own problems to be neither better or worse than that system. It changes the entire team at once so you actually work into a strategy, but you can only switch to pre-decided formations you created outside of combat- so no adapting to the situation at hand. It's also largely moot of a system until the end of chapter 10 because Square are terrified of actually challenging the player until they're certain they know how to press the R1 button on their controllers to change the party. (Or is it L1? Whoops, guess I need another 10 hours of baby-fights, Square!)

But Chapter 11 is where is gets good right? That's what everyone says! No, Chapter 11 is where it becomes active. Where you finally get battles that require you to actually know what you're doing. But by that I mean- slot in a utility character to build up buffs or debuffs, then switch to combat roles and tap auto until you win. It still isn't engaging or interesting. The best this combat gets is the hard boss fights where buff and debuff timing becomes relevant, but then that creeping feeling of not being in direct control rears up and you start feeling never quite in the moment. Meaning that Final Fantasy XIII either feels totally dull or frustratingly hands-off; which might make it just as bad as XII's combat in a way. Except XII is challenging just for trying to figure out to program those idiots to be useful, XIII at least comes packed with competent AI companions who dynamically update to take advantage of revealed weaknesses. I'll give them that.

But where XIII really let me down was with it's world. I've said it before but the worlds of Final Fantasy are really where they go above and beyond the genre to deliver unforgettable adventures across iconic world spaces- and given that this was the first SCI-FI focused title I expected something totally unique for the planet Pulse and it's techno-moon of Cocoon. Indeed I'm certain there's a little bit of Midgar expectation here, with the highly developed Moon inhabiting the majority of society starting off the game until you are set free in the wild expanses of the planet fully- juxtaposing aesthetics and nature. Only the game struggles to back that up. A lot of your time in Cocoon feels oddly aesthetically inconsistent. You'll travel across totally industrial caverns of Sci-Fi train yards to neon techno forests and then just hit a natural looking forest. Or a sunset soaked beach. The only real distinction between Cocoon and Pulse is that you never meet anyone actually living on Pulse, so it feels abandoned. They don't really feel distinct enough. Additionally, because of the linear nature of the story which keeps you constantly in combat and literally never provides an opportunity to explore a hub outside of one ill-fitting carnival-esque chapter, there's no sense of space and world even in Cocoon. The world doesn't feel real, I don't know it's people, I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care about saving it's brainwashed citizens from their self-inflicted fate.

Then there's the brunt of the writing itself, which is hardly Square at their best. I can tell there's a level of nostalgia played up for points, from the moment Lightning haughtily declares "I was a Solider", I knew they were playing the hits- if in reverse. But then you get characters who feel like they're written for a more light 'FFIX' style world. The teenage revolutionaries of NORA, for example? "What's our Motto" hero-obsessive Snow asks, to cries of "The army's no match for NORA!" I'm sorry that's just dumb and uninspired. Like an intern was tasked with coming up with that quip at the nth hour. I found myself really hoping that NORA would undergo some wild sort of subversion and this didn't turn into another SeeDS situation. But of course, I was wrong. They're are inexplicably correct child-soldiers for the whole game. Yippie!

This story is also chock full of the kinds of lore stuffing that Final Fantasy is typically a lot more natural with. In the first few chapters you'll be attacked with terms left-right and centre which, if you're not one to pay attention and file away fantasy terms, is going to overwhelm you. Fal'Cie, Pulse Fal'Cie, L'Cie- it's all a lot to get to grasp with- and then you'll have plot points which are really badly shoved into the story but explained in a bit more detail in the codex entries shoved you way. Unfortunately those same entries are stuffed with ancillary overlapping summaries as you try to parse them for anything new. Then there are straight omissions to the story which make what should have been important plot points fall flat. Cid doesn't ever get to explain his intentions so his twist falls flat when Snow attempts to throw his motivations back at him (given we never knew those supposed motivations to begin with), Vanille casually drops that She actually turned into Ragnarok last time around and no one reacts to that bombshell. (As though it had already been revealed in a scene earlier that was just never actually shot.) You spend a whole chapter looking for Obera, first just for a place to regroup and then suddenly it's about finding a way to lose your brands? It feels badly cut, as though from a first time director stressed for time. 

There's also a few narrative inconsistencies with gameplay, such as the electric bird fights in Chapter 9 which feature a cutscene wherein Lighting, Fang and Snow square up to a monstrous battle only for gameplay to fix you with an unswitchable team of Lightning, Fang and Hope. Kind of feels like the left hand didn't know what the right one was doing when inconsistencies like that start popping up.

But for all it's faults I did find charm here, largely in the core cast. Lightning's guilt is apparent and drips into her wrath- creating an interesting early dynamic between her and Hope, whose blind-anger is hilariously ignored by Snow for far too long into the game. Snow's obsessive hero-complex goes unaddressed for the entire game, unfortunately, making him a regression even from VII's Barret. Sazh and Vanille are adorable together, surrogate fatherhood always works well in stories like these. And Chapter 11's mission system does feel like the game at it's best- as through the bulk and heart of the game was always waiting on Pulse and you've just been treading water for that moment. But given how that is 20 hours in, I'm not sure I can call that a complete positive.

Chapter 10 might be the worst in the game actually, an endless spiralling dungeon of identical fights, reused assets and no-where storytelling culminating up to five hours of nothingness. It exists purely to give you the points to level up so that Gran Pulse is feasible- but here's the thing- Square could have just balanced the levelling experience more so they didn't have to flood crappy fights so often! Isn't that how you're supposed to design your damn games? You'd think designers like Larian and Square were in totally different industries for how differently they grasp seemingly basic topics. (Though to be fair, Larian of this time were putting out Divinity 2 which is hardly any better in it's own right.)

But the worst it all, which really put me off sticking around to the endgame, was the ending. I expect an ass-pull from a Final Fantasy game- they're not exactly known for their impeccable storytelling, but Final Fantasy XIII felt like it was stitched together by 12 different writers at the end who had never met each other in their lives. Let us not forget the moment where >spoiler< Fang tries to save Vanille from becoming Rangarok by submitting herself to be turned, and when Vanille cries "What about saving Cocoon, we promised" Fang remarks "I also made another promise, to protect my family." only for Fang to, inexplicably, turn around and try to kill Vanille, you know: her family- which would kind of defeat the purpose of deciding to become Ragnarok in her stead, no? That's probably the biggest mess but unfortunately the ending is stuffed full on miracle nonsense that flies in the face of the facts the story attempt to run on to that point. To such a degree that I'm reading online the sequel games have to retroactive script-doctor these events so they aren't total gibberish- which no other Final Fantasy has ever had to do before, XIII is a trail blazer for terrible endings in this storied franchise.

Overall Final Fantasy XIII feels like an attempt to reconcile the expectation of Final Fantasy to a 2010's Western audience, which the games industry of that day were convinced only found value in simplified action-movie style experiences- which led to a stifling homogenisation it would take nearly a decade for the industry to shake off. A lot of Final Fantasy XIII's decisions feel muddied in this pursuit and it results in what I would honestly call the worst Final Fantasy game I've played, and by this point I have actually played them all. It's boring for far too long, and never rises to be interesting enough to offset that delay- even at it's absolute best. I'm glad I played it for my own history with the franchise, finishing the first Final Fantasy game I ever fully owned (I played XIII-2's demo first) but I could not recommend this title to anyone, It lacks in gameplay, story and world building. A decent cast cannot cut the slack here. It feels like a bit of shame, given how excited I was for this game, but I can't award this game anymore than a D+ on my rating scale, earned largely because Chapter 11 has a bit of interest, but a single chapter in a 13 chapter long game does not count to a lot on the grand scale. I really wish this game were better, and that it's derision were undeserved. But whilst I think those feelings might be misguided at times, Lighting is a fine character, I cannot relieve Final Fantasy XIII of it's sins. It is indeed the worst mainline Final Fantasy game.

Final Fantasy VIII Review

"...Whatever"

I actually did approach Final Fantasy VIII without any preconceptions about the game and what it entailed, which lasted for all of about 5 hours of playtime until, by sheer bloody coincidence, MrMattyPlays uploaded a video to his second channel 'Retro Rebound', entitled something to the avail of 'Worst RPGs I've ever played' and in that thumbnail, tucked away in the top left, was Rinoa- FFVIII's poster girl. "Uh oh" I said, pointedly choosing not to watch that video. But it was too late, now I had the inkling in my brain. A JRPG lover considers FFVIII to be not just bad, but one of the worst they've ever played? Maybe that itself was a nuclear take, but the cloud of what it represented formed- not hanging over me like a downpour, but forming condensation on the glass warning of troubling skies. Now I was not just enjoying the set-up for the new Fantasy world I was diving into, I was suspicious in the ways it might ultimately let me down- (Knowing Matty is a narrative-buff like myself) and I'll confess to that potentially coating my views somewhat.  

That being said... yeah, I kind see where he's coming from.

The next step on my journey to experience gaming royalty, Final Fantasy VIII was an actual enigma to me- the only aspects of the game I knew were the rough identities of the cast- and that's just because Selphie is inexplicably one of Roxas' childhood friends in Kingdom Hearts 2 and "Leon", the inexplicably renamed 'Squall', mopes about all emo-like contributing little to the overall plot of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. I remember thinking he felt like a discount Cloud. I remember wondering what he was doing there. I remember wondering why the hell he renamed himself to "Leon". Now I think I have an idea, if not theories. He feels like Cloud (and has a name that is similarly weather-related) and is in KH because the character designed of FFVIII was a Final Fantasy VII fanatic whom we all know quite well and... tolerate. Yep, Square's modern day mad-man Tetsuya Nomura. From the height of obsession.

This did mean that I was approaching this Remaster, a quite successful and beautiful upscale of the original game which seems to sacrifice none of the original artistic intent in order to look decent on modern day hardware, with curiosity in my eyes and questions bubbling in my heart. Chief of which- why do people find Selphie annoying. Coming out the otherside I still have that question. She's your typical bubbly over-excitable archetype like Yuffie and, I assume based purely on her character design, FF X's Rikku. If anything any chance she had to become overbearing across the game is neatly stolen by Zell- which fits given that the both of them share the honour of being the characters to undergo the least significant character arcs in the game- but I'm getting ahead of myself...

In being faithful, FF VIII's remaster retains the 3D models in FMV backgrounds, similar to Final Fantasy VII and, a beloved game of my youth, Abe's Odyssey. This means some visuals can be overexposed and garish, my literal first note is "makes my eyes hurt", but good-lord you can't beat that old school charm. And, honestly, Final Fantasy VIII does kind of push the envelope with this technology in a way that makes me curious whether or not it can work in the modern day in kind of an old-school revival way. Moving video backgrounds whilst the sprites are controllable leads to some genuinely fantastic set-piece action moments I had to clap my hands at. And seeing as how I skipped FF VII (because I've already played it to death at this point) this marks the first point in my journey where I can see how to-the-page Square were when rendering Yoshitaka Amano's work.

I've seen his art style with accompanying art-books across the pixel games but there's always been compromise getting off the page and to the game- as is natural; pixel's are limited. Not so anymore. I recognised his style immediately the second I say Edea's horn-strewn red-hued asymmetrical headdress- that is right out of the Firion-style of character makeup. (Makes for quite the contrast compared to Tetsuya Nomura's pointedly westernised concepts for the design of the main cast. Like a conventional world meets otherworldly fantasy.) And I've never seen Amano's typically bubble-like city designs brought to life so perfectly until I saw Balamb Garden and the city of Esthar. Actually delightful!

Conceptually Final Fantasy VIII places its scenario in that same 'pseudo sci-fi/ contemporary' setting space that seems to spawn some of the most memorable JRPG worlds out there. Not that I don't love a good fantasy world space, Metaphor's world absolutely sung with history, culture and introspective strife galore- but it takes serious effort to distinguish oneself from the grey deluge of medieval fantastical peers- coated with garishly over-vowelled nouns and a light novel's worth of expected background reading material just to comprehend the significance of "that one guy doing that thing in this scene." Give us the grounded allusions to the world in the contemporary and go ham wild with your creativity in the Sci-fi any day of the weak and you'll win this old curmudgeons heart over! That being said- I am of two minds about the world of FF VIII.

On one hand it carries on FF VII's benchmark of distinctly realised worlds that feel workable beyond just being present. You can truly picture this world, follow the intercontinental train lines that dot the land and feel the web of global society- whilst pretending you don't notice how few actual settlements there are in this supposedly modern world. On the otherhand, and maybe this is partially my own preconceptions on the basics of human logic, it seems to make no damn sense whatsoever. This is the first symptom of a malaise that effects a lot of what makes up Final Fantasy VIII- what I'll call 'Ambition beyond ability'. Because yes, yet again this is another Final Fantasy game I'm going to give the vaguely over-used badge of 'Ambitious'.

But to be fair, Final Fantasy VII did so much to push the franchise forward not just in terms of visuals but in world building and the scope of the narrative and characterisation! (Okay, I'll relent there- FF VI actually pushed the envelope for character arcs in this franchise.) For VIII to decide not to just reach the same plateau that VII hit marks a courage that I'll always prefer over the safe laziness which colourises the sad majority of Ubisoft's existence. (Yep, got a dig at Ubisoft in there. It is a blog made by me!) All that being said- it doesn't turn out well. Not in story, not really in character, not in world and not, god forbid, in the disaster of an 'RPG system' that Final Fantasy VIII calls a core mechanic! (FF 7's Materia kept things so simple, and I guess that rubbed the FFVIII team the wrong way?) 

Story

FF VIII places us in the shoes of Squall Leonhart, an improbably named near-graduate of Balamb Garden, one of three mercenary schools that 'accepts' students aged 5-15 and trains them up to the point of becoming their elite-most operative- a SeeD. (Yes, it is always styled like that in the game. No, incredibly, they never tell you what the acronym is! I am actually aghast researching this to figure out if I'm just an idiot. There is no officially published acronym laid out for SeeD. Unbelievable!) Right away you are placed in a classroom in this Amano-conjured wonderland of a structure before a terminal of optional reading material. And let me just tell you now, after greedily consuming every bit of that terminal, there are so much mountains of context absent from that prime exposition dump of a device it sickens me. (Even a bloody mission-statement would have been helpful!)

This is a world that lives in the aftermath of 'The Sorceress War', which is kind of like FF6's 'magi war' only this foundation bit of world building is hardly mentioned and only ever indirectly elaborated on during the main story, so that even when you are actually witnessing the events of this war it's never quite clear who is fighting over what until several plot points later. (You feel that? Your brow furrowing? Get used to that feeling.) Honestly if I didn't play so many other genuinely coherent and well written RPGs I would actually consider myself the problem here- but as even the fans of FFVIII will tell you- the problem is within the pages of the script in that nothing feels like it makes any sense in the moment and only after you've seen the credits and seen how it all ends can you look back and connect some of the dots. Which is actually cool for like a mystery narrative or a weird conceptual mind-bending game- but for an otherwise conventional Fantasy game? It just comes across as poorly written.

Anyway, 'The Sorceress War' left a power imbalance and now nearly two decades later it's victors, the Galbadian military dictatorship, (Didn't know they were a dictatorship until looking it up just now.) are starting to stretch their borders and subjugate their neighbours. But never to fear, because the Garden's vast supply of specially trained child-soldiers have services available to purchase by any struggling city state. And if you think the child-solider factory that ships off 16-21 year olds to war is obviously going to turn out to have sinister intentions... nah. They're actually pretty much completely the good guys with barely any downside, barring one 'short-lived insurrection' which to this day I have no idea what relevance it played in the overall plot.

What I've done for you, in those three paragraphs, is untangled the jumbled mess of confused half-dissected thoughts and aborted plot threads which makes up the basic lead-in scenario of FF8- you'll not find a more concise, yet complete, overview: particularly not in the game! It almost feels like your wading around the poison-swamp that represents the creative processes in Hidetaka Miyazaki's brain as he conjures up his next Souls-Game- getting buffeted this way and that with the stinging acid of run-on sentences and absurdly vague dialogue snippets that feel like gaslighting. When Headmaster Cid told me that SeeD's were created to fight Sorceress' and then that it was Sorceress Edea who proposed the idea, and felt that no elaboration was necessary between those gigantic plot drops; I thought I was going actually insane.

Pit stop

But that's enough ranting about story, before I go any further I need to talk about FF8's combat system, or rather- it's failed attempt to take Espers and Materia 'just one step further'. The GF System (GF stands for 'Guardian Force', but it's funnier if we forget that.) is an archaic and needlessly esoteric relic of the pre-millennia seeped in superstition and suspicion. But is it really as complex and nonsensical as everyone says? Yes and no. The biggest problem with this system is actually the same problem as with the story- these writers suck at imparting even the simplest of information. I actually gawked at the cumbrous manner that FF8 lumbers through it's tutorial for this foundational gameplay system that I had to look up a guide on Reddit. That's how I know that it isn't all-that complicated; just head-scratchingly bizarre and more than a little bit ill-conceived.

So GF's are 'summons' for this FF, and just like Espers from 6 they have lists of skills and abilities you unlock by levelling them over the course of countless battles. So far, so good. Except these aren't 'spells' you're unlocking, but junctions slots. Bear with me, this is when it gets stupid. So a 'junction slot' is essentially a 'modifier slot' that you can apply to a specified stat- stats being what you see on your typical Final Fantasy character sheet: Strength, Vitality, Speed etc. When you unlock a junction slot in that stat- (that particular GF has to be 'equipped' for the slot to be available. Luckily there is no equip limit, you can pick and choose.) you can then 'junction' a magic spell to that slot which will buff that respective slot. (For example: Slot 1 fire to your Strength stat and it'll get a buff of +1.) This alone is the way you get powerful in Final Fantasy 8. Not one of the ways, the way. As in- levelling doesn't make you that much stronger- in fact, because this game has level scaling for some abominable reason, it is actually disadvantageous to level because it makes everything stronger without improving you enough to meet them! Insane, isn't it? (Most fans of the game actually encourage running away from most world encounters so as to avoid XP. I feel like I'm in a mad house.)

But surely I'm overselling the importance of Junctions, right? Afterall I just said that a fire slot will give only 1 to strength, if even that! Well I did say 'one' fire. You see, there is no MP in FF8. Spells are ammo that are drawn (a combat or world action) from enemies, draw points or GF unlocked item-conversion abilities. The more spell ammo you slot, the more that slot is buffed with a max of 100 spells per slot. The type of spell interacts differently with the type of stat too, so a damage spell will buff Strength more than a curative spell would. (They work better under HP.) "But then", I here you say. "If Spells are Ammo- and you need you keep 100 copies of spell slotted to your stats to stay competitive...(You can only hold 100 per character) then what if you need to use a spell?" There in lies one of the most perplexing conundrums of this entire concept because yes- if you use a spell that you have junctioned you are actively weaking that stat by spending your buff ammo! So pray you have alternative spells that aren't being junctioned- which becomes an issue in itself late game because... all those late game spells are the best junction fodder! I'm not going to spend rare Ultima spell ammo when that's the thing keeping my basic attacks popping! So FF8 managed to take the range of gameplay choice present from 6, (and slightly muted in 7) strip away classes completely again and disincentive spell use- encouraging basic attack spam until major boss fights. That is design incompetence to a near Ubisoft level! 

Characters

Back to the meat- the story and it's many characters! Right away we meet two rivals who's wrestle to overpower each will... kind of be entirely overshadowed by the fact that this game proceeds one of gaming's most legendary rivalries in 'Cloud v Sephiroth'. Still, Squall's bully Siefer is an intensely unlikeable prick from moment one, lacking charm, humour and wit to a near ghoulish degree. It is perhaps the one narrative plot point that FF8 is very effective at instilling at the appropriate time- from the first words he speaks. And yet, he is such a detestable asshat that it slightly works against the narrative when they try to shine sympathy on him. When I hear that Rinoa had a crush on him from a year back, that just lessens my regard for Rinoa's skills of basic deduction not to realise a prat when she sees one. When his backstory and the reasons for his iciness are extrapolated- it just somehow makes him see even more childish and pathetic- even next to a protagonist who is literally defined by regressive and insular personality traits. So good job in making a minor antagonist I dislike, FF8. Shame you wasted that energy on a dude who doesn't even rise to 'tertiary antagonist' in the grand scheme of things.

The otherside of this early-game conflict, Squall- is markedly better as a character, but not as much as he needed to be. Squall is kind of like a Cloud 2.0 in how stand-offish and 2000's emo-coded he is- only FF8 gives us much more insight into Squall's inner workings thanks to near constant thought bubbles during dialogue exchanges. I am... ambivalent about their presence. One one hand they really give us an in to his mind in a way we never really got with Cloud, on the other hand his inner monologues lack a juiciness to them to make them really interesting. Squall's mind, unfortunately, roils with the same energy of emo-"I don't care about anything" vibe you'd expect from a teenager- which is true to life, I guess, but not so exceptional for a protagonist in a story. His inner thoughts are mired with a anime-typical aloof yet philosophically rote haze which wares as the game goes on. Like the inner monologues of Max Payne but lacking any and all traces of poetry and noir.

More faux pas

That's enough character stuff- what if I told you there's another deeply questionable gameplay design choice- albeit one with a bit of more wiggle room for how objectively 'bad' it may or may not be. Limit Breaks- don't we love 'em, folks? That ultrapowerful explosion of flashy super moves- never get tired of them! Final Fantasy VII knew exactly how to handle them- build up the limit break meter with every basic ability you land until you hit it off. Simple, effective, we're still using that model decades later. Of course FF8 went for something completely different. There is no limit meter in FF8, and in fact you can use Limit Breaks constantly. one after the other, as many times as you want. The catch? They only become active when your health in the critical zone. (15% or less.)

Now... from a narrative point I can actually get this. You're taking a beating, down on your last leg and suddenly a burst of power surges forth as you turn the tables of the battle- it's real soaring stuff! In fact, I'm pretty sure Final Fantasy XV does something similar with their summon system- the more dire the battle the more likely they'll come! But in actuality, within the hands of an actual player- the second you realise how unbelievably broken and easy to exploit this is- it's over. When don't you just walk around with your most powerful physical attacker constantly on the edge of death spending each turn limit breaking? By the endgame doing this strat was the difference between Squall doing 4000-5000 damage a turn or doing 25,000-35,000 damage each turn. Well done, you've just made 'being half dead' the most appealing state of being in the game- which is exactly a design choice made for the Super Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry 2. Never have your design decision be comparable to Devil May Cry 2- friendly bit of advice there.

Set pieces

If I can just veer haphazardly back into story beats- I would very much like to be a bit positive again. For all the ill that Final Fantasy VIII's unchecked ambition caused, in ill-thought out combat systems, in unfocused narrative- I have that same ambition to blame for this game's, honestly, just awesome collection of set pieces. I really got a taste for them during the train operation which presented a mission-impossible style set of objectives to seize the Galbarian president's carriage mid-journey through an impressive series of precision line switches and a minigame that was basic, but thrilling and different from anything else in the game (or series) up to that point. The Assassination was resplendent in spectacle, questionable though it was given how little the game wanted to tell us about the premier in question- and I'm not just talking about her purposefully mysterious identity, but the very aspect of what a Sorceress even is or why the Galbarian's would be excited about getting a new Sorceress leader whilst SeeD would find that disturbing. (In hindsight that makes even less sense, actually. Didn't that country literally just finish a war against a country ruled by a dictatorial Sorceress?) However the sewer maze in the middle of the assassination sequence had me fitting my neck for a rope necktie. And finally, the Battle of the Gardens is just epic grandiosity to a frankly ludicrous scale.

The bizarre

Of what little I had heard about Final Fantasy VIII before this playthrough; one such thing was the existence of fan theories- one of which being the oldest and laziest in the book= was it all a dream? Such believing is trite and underserving of examination, but the trigger for such postulating marks one of the most grand dead-end threads of plot that even FF fans in the moment, lovers of the franchise, couldn't ignore. Namely Squall being impaled with a bolt of ice, suffering a proto-typical death sequence only to wake up in a few hours with a mild confusion about not even having a wound and never mentioning it again. It's a startling omission that begs for attention despite the fact it gets literally one, all we can do is guesstimate about the reason that the villain, which at that point is Sorceress Edea, might keep around and even heal her would-be assassins. 'Moment of clarity' be damned, that was straight up nonsensical.

And then there's the orphanage plot point. I cannot tell you how utterly repulsed I was by that moment when it happened, despite vaguely hearing about some hub-up around an orphanage here and there before experiencing the moment full throttle- like accelerating into a brick wall with spikes on it. That insane moment when it revealed that everyone in the party save for the 'princess' Rinoa were all childhood friends from the same orphanage, actually had my mouth hit the floor. Then when the matron walked in I literally got out my chair, tears in my eyes, and demanded to be buried because clearly I had died. (True story.) The fact that no one remembers this apart from resident screw-up Irvine, and the explanation is the throw away assumption that somehow GF's are involved- (coupled by the very complicated matter-of-fact and sudden lore reveal that apparently only Balamb Garden uses Junctioning, despite there being two other Gardens at the time. Doubly despite the fact that Selphie, a recent Balamb transfer, relays having accidentally stumbled into a GF in her youth and randomly Junctioning with it, accounting for her own supposed memory loss, implying that literally anyone can do it, but only Balamb commit) it just creates yet another chasm of narrative begging to be filled, which is never. Which only feeds the conspiracy theorists desperately tripping over themselves to theorize some abnormal purpose for these disparate threads of lore and plot- such as the theory that Rinoa is Ultimecia with her memory destroyed from years of Junctioning. Fun idea, sadly unsupported by everything else the narrative insists- still more believable than those who insist Vaan is a good protagonist.

Triple triad

Dammit, I need another pit stop. How about we talk about Triple Triad for this one? As anyone will tell you, Final Fantasy VIII is a simply massive card game with a sub-par fantasy story tacked onto the side of it. Triple Triad might be more famous than the game itself for the impression it's left on the community and upon experiencing it myself- I kind of get it; even if it's nowhere near my favourite minigame in this franchise. Heck, it's not even my favourite "card based" minigame in the franchise! That may be due to a rocky introduction to the game thanks to, surprise surprise, yet another poor tutorial from the kings of bad information dumps. Are you seeing a pattern yet? I had to find a real tutorial on Reddit. 

Triple Triad is a card collecting game wherein you challenge a player to place cards with directional values on a grid of nine. On the basic ruleset, if one of those values is higher than a value of a competing card it's touching- you capture that card. Whoever has more cards at the end wins... and they win a card from the opponents deck of their choice. Thus starts the red-hot obsession! There are dozens of cards and most NPCs in the world can be challenged to a game so there's always some completion metric to chase. Rare cards dot important NPCs, typically sporting designs based on other important NPCs- (I suppose it would be considered conceited if Laguna sported his own trading card.) and thanks to a quirk of the level scalling system- Triple Triad is actually the most reliable source of power progression in the game. Seriously.

Okay bare with me because this explanation requires several steps. Firstly, Level Scalling problem. Remember how I said that enemies become tankier the more you level? Well there is an underground and underexplained system designed to keep players somewhat competitive as the game goes on. Slotting spells provide higher buffs depending on how powerful the spell is, so 100 Firaga spells gives more Strength boost than 100 Fira spells would. But you won't be able to draw Firaga from any early game enemy because despite some enemies having access to that spell, the drawing of it is level locked. You have to already be a certain level before the game will let you draw that spell, and you won't find world draw spots for it until the late game. This doesn't so much keep the player reasonably strong as much as it keeps them barely capable of struggling through the game. Which is why you need to start winning cards in Triple Triad.

You see, Triple Triad cards can be 'modded' thanks to another unlockable GF ability, which essentially allows you to transform any card into a specific item which can then be broken down into elemental or status spells depending on what they are. There are no level requirements here and the more valuable cards typically yield more valuable transformation items. I had a healthy chunk of Firaga spells slotted into Squall, all courtesy of earning Triple Triad cards. In the late game some of the more onerous-to-collect cards offer frankly insane items. I'm talking a full 100 Megaexilirs from the Ward card, 100 Hero (temporary invincibility) from the Laguna card- the kind of stuff that makes it feasible to tackle up to Super bosses. But what about the game itself?

I don't love it. At the start all you need to do is win your first couple of games and get at least two good cards, that pretty much trivialises this entire minigame until disc 3- which doesn't scream 'solidly balanced minigame' to me. From disc 3 onwards, however, you'll be treated to poorly explained and headache-inducing rules like 'Random', which invalidates all the rare card collecting you've been doing by saddling a bad deck on you. (Literally the only way this game mode can become competitive again.) Then you get the true devils pulled up from Pandemonium, the horrific rules of 'Same', 'Plus' and 'Combo'- which scupper so many sure-thing matches that they'll live in my nightmares for all eternity. I just sit there screaming as my entire board is captured by a single crappy card whilst Squall exposits his riveting thoughts about how much he doesn't want to rely on people despite the fact he's now doing exactly that. (What a bed wetter!)  

Which is to say that Triple Triad is distracting enough, but it doesn't feel like a coherent enough mini card game for my tastes. I'll admit I'm in the minority there, though. People love that damn game like it's their first born. Final Fantasy XIV even officially brought it back as a side activity. I'm just more of a Queen's Blood guy I guess.

Behind the curtain

I am typically a believer in the common-man philosophy that any story can only ever rise as high as their antagonist, which isn't to say that picking a solid villain ensures a good story- but that you never have a chance at developing a truly gripping confrontation without a satisfying foe. ATLUS typically pick worldly pursuits of the human condition to form their stories around, such as grappling with the reality of death both literally and figuratively or facing down truth in a world forged by fear; which it what gives them such room to forge unforgettable tales. Final Fantasy VIII gives us a time travelling Sorceress from 'the future' who's specialties are possession, a gorgeous design, an bizarre Russian accent and motivations that are barely even hinted at throughout the game. Yes, we're going to talk about Ultimecia.

The matter-of-fact way that fake-out villain Edea drops the "yeah, I was possessed by a Sorceress from the future" line will haunt my dreams. And my waking hours will forever be haunted by trying to decipher exactly what this Sorceress' plans and motivations were intended to be the entire time. We get shockingly little insight into Ultimecia's thoughts outside of a detached monologue she gives from within Edea's body back before we learn who she really is, in which she rages about some form of 'Sorceress persecution'. But such persecution is never depicted nor alluded to, if anything people cower from Sorceress' and Garden is created to try and turn that around- so maybe the inciting slight that set Ultimecia off was committed in the future between the events of the game and her time? Either way, we're never given an in-road which makes it kind of hard to vision her as a three-dimensional character and not just an 'generally leering apocalyptic event.'

This sensation is heightened by how utterly insane her plan is. Get this- Ultimecia travels back in time so she can travel even further back in time so that she can enact a vague concept known as 'time compression' which (forgive me if I get this wrong, it's literally garbled out once in the entire game) squashes together all time so that everything occurs simultaneously which is a state of being in which only Ultimecia can exist. Why does she seek to kill literally everything? I don't know. How can she survive existing in a world without time? I both don't know and don't even know how the person who told me that fact knows. Why does she need to travel a certain distance in the past to be able to do this? That I do know- it's an arbitrary goal post to enable the plot to happen- there's no sense to it. 

All of this combines to create an antagonist that pales to the iconic heights of Sephiroth or the depth of Kefka. She's just an evil lady, with a Russian accent, and a eye-poppingly stunning design- seriously, Squaresoft really ran with Amano's concept art for that one! 

Squall has no time to ogle at Ultimecia's disturbing attractiveness, however, because in the later half of this game he suddenly, and I mean suddenly, decides that he is madly in love with Rinoa. This comes like a stack of bricks on the plot because up until this point, he hardly seems to like her. I worry that this writer might have confused 'refusing to let anyone in for fear of losing them' with 'actively hates the people around him and wishes they would die'. At least, that's the only way I can interpret Squall actively trying not to save Rinoa when she's hanging off the side of Balamb during the Battle of the Gardens. Not only does he need to be guilt tripped into going to rescue her by the rest of his team, but he immediately allows himself to be distracted on a side op to help some clumsy classmate track down a kid she's lost. That man wanted Rinoa to fall. In fact, if you really examine that scene, he only flies into Rinoa to rescue her by sheer dumb luck. He wasn't piloting that flying mech, that was a total coincidence! And, somewhat upsettingly, Squall only realises how deeply, obsessively, in love with this girl he is... after she falls into a coma. Translation: he only likes Rinoa after she stops talking at him. If that ain't true love-

It's almost startling how detached Squall begins to how, almost aggressively, possessive he becomes by the end. I like to think of that as positive character growth, but I can't help but wonder if that's simply swapping one extreme for another. His emo inner monologue is replaced with pining for Rinoa, he carries her halfway across the world on his back- he replaces his fond (if long missing) memories of his childhood home as an emotional anchor with his desire to meet her at a romantic flowery meadow. It's a little nauseating, but it's a lot more character growth than we typically see out of FF protagonists, so I'll ratify it. It's a lot more than we see some of his friends get. Zell's literal only growth is... he doesn't get bullied by Seifer anymore? That's all I can guess.

Rinoa herself doesn't really leave the same kind of impression that past heroines did. Again she's kind of like Aerith's innocence with Tifa's playfulness- nothing unique to her. That being said those are solid inspirations so the girl is likeable enough, I just don't know what is particularly special enough about her to warrant the obsessive devotion Squall comes afflicted with. I mean afterall- this is a girl who once had a crush on waste-of-free-will Seifer who's only redeeming quality was the time he broke out of jail because he was afraid of Squall getting credit for taking out the Galbadian president- gee, what a dream boat! (You could do better Squall! Hell, you could go for Quistis! She's got self respect!)

Grind

Pit stop again. Despite all the ways in which the very foundation of this game's design rejects grinding to an almost conceptual level- this is the Final Fantasy game that has demanded the most grinding out of me in order to finish to completion. (Yes, I clocked every achievement, even taking out Omega Weapon. Don't ask why, I think I have a problem.) There are end-game weapon upgrades throughout the game dependent on drops you can only get from a one-time dream sequence midway through the game. I wouldn't even have expected I was able to keep resources gained in a bloody dream sequence! (You'd think such drops would be spread to the endgame enemy table- but apparently that's communist talk or some such...) The only other option feasible would be to grind Triple Triad, a game in which you have no control over what cards are played dragging out the grinding experience even further, delightful.

Also, and I know this isn't technically the game's fault but rather the Remaster staff's- one of the achievements necessitated the killing of 1000 enemies. No surprise there, literally every Final Fantasy before this one has asked the same. Only in all of those games you'll naturally hit that number just by playing the game somewhat thoroughly- but in a title that disincentives all but essential fights, (even if I didn't adhere to those rules quite as stringently as some others did.) I was staring down the final dungeon with a kill count of 250. That was two and a half hours of mindlessly murdering trash mobs whilst watching the first two episodes of Gotham. (Decent, might watch more.) Really dumb achievement choice.

The end

Back in it- do you remember me mentioning the Super boss? Think I dropped that once or twice. I do so because, unlike for FFV I actually really enjoyed getting to, and overcoming, this Superboss through enduring the hell of a gauntlet to reach the bugger and then cycling my tactics to bring him down. (Aura + hero for me- worked wonders.) Of course, Ultima Weapon is more of the proto superboss. The real winner was Omega Weapon and he was a chore. Tucked away in, admittedly, one of the better endgame dungeons of the franchise- Omega Weapon has a simply obscene amount of health and a brutal attack sequence including one move that does exactly 9,998 damage. 1 less than the health cap. He was a supremely enjoyable little extra challenge, rather than the insane RNG puzzle of FFV's Omega Mk. II.

Which brings me to the finale in general. Much of what FFVIII attempts only really exists in context of it's peers to me. I can only see Disc 4 as a pale imitation of FFVI's 'World of Ruin', only lacking the narrative weight and desolation and helplessness of that iconic moment. Ultimecia's Castle is pretty cool, however, spouting a unique challenge in which all of your commands except from attack are stolen and have to be earned back from slaying each optional boss one by one. That means no magic commands, using items, resurrecting, calling your GF summons or even saving until you re-unlock it! Very interesting little end-dungeon challenge. There's even some curious puzzles to solve in order to progress through this Resident Evil coded mansion. Yet, disappointingly, Omega Weapon isn't a puzzle at all. Simply ring a bell and jog to his spawn point. Feels like a cop-out after the gauntlet to reach Ultima Weapon.

In the end Final Fantasy VIII caps off with another overly sentimental send-off the very likes of which FFVII made pains to avoid and truthfully- it's sweet, in a garish kind of way. I'm a sucker for a bit of sap and it's not even ruined by the haphazardly thrown together bootstrap paradox in which, whilst recovering the world from it's Time Compression, Squall and Ultimecia accidently end up at the orphanage whereupon Edea inherits Ultimecia's power (a power that will one day be inherited by Ultimecia ) and Squall explicitly gives Edea the idea to start Garden and the mission statement of the SeeDs. (Of which he was raised to join.) I understand why people come away with fond memories, even if the journey is bumpier than the Nile.

Final Fantasy VIII is an experience; and one I didn't hate as much as it might sound like I did. The game is deeply flawed, in concept and particularly execution- but by god it's still a Final Fantasy game. When you just play the thing, regardless of the nonsensical GF system or the 'grinding actually makes you weaker' design philosophy- that simple JRPG heart shines through and leaves a fun enough romp- enough to counter act the bad decisions unique to this game. Which does kind of sound like I'm saying that the best part of the FFVIII experience is everything they didn't try to 'throw their own spin on'... and that would be accurate, I agree with that. The story, on the otherhand, is a mess of stylish nonsense. Eye popping set pieces strung together by barely coherent bumbles of "and then" storytelling that leaves the distinct impression that everything was made up as they went along- which is especially embarrassingly when it's so very clear that they didn't. This script was weak, and the translation to English heightens those issues by being just plain odd. I saw Seifer announce his "Childhood Dream" only for Squall to recount it as his "Romantic Dream" over the course of two consecutive lines- I truly considered how much of this narrative was lost to weak localisation. But even given the mistakes (pariticularly Squall's characterisation which is meant to come off more clinical than dismissive) there's no diamond hiding in this rough.

Struggling quite a bit with the ways this game annoyed me against the different ways which Final Fantasy XII did the same made me realise how similarly I regard the two. Both had glints of interest from the outset that burned out over the course of the game, both had gameplay systems I didn't get along with... but I could follow XII's narrative. And I think Ivalice is a more interesting world space; probably due in no small part to that improved coherence. Which is why I'm giving Final Fantasy VIII a C-, still not a failure of a game but far below the standard of quality I expect from freaking Final Fantasy! Especially just after the game that put them on the international map! Here's hoping for a return to form with whatever game I tackle next- be it Final Fantasy IX or XIII. Or X, I guess... kinda wanna jump to XIII though- I have unfinished business there...

Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age review

How old are you?

Boredom is a funny thing that takes us to strange places- unless you're a gamer in which case there's very little guess-work about the places your boredom is going to take you. For me, however, the boredom which led me to finally delving into the vast world of Final Fantasy (for which my only prior experience was a bit of XIII, the entirety of XV and the 7 games) was tinted with anticipation over the upcoming launch of XVI on PC. A launch which has apparently not been very profitable for Square, maybe because it was so under-marketed that I only knew it was happening because my sickly seventh sense for upcoming video games poked me to search for any news on the PC port randomly only to find it due within the coming month. (My sixth sense is the ability to know a good or bad game or movie before release with a high rate of accuracy, for those keeping track.)

Picking up and immensely enjoying that demo was enough to secure my purchase, if not the majority of other gamers, which meant that FFXVI would be on my mind for the next month- how would I deal with that? Well, there was always the vast well of other titles with more traditional JRPG systems to keep me entertained- I thought- and surely they could keep my attention for at least a bit of that torturous waiting period. Surely I wouldn't actually end up finishing an entire Final Fantasy game within that short time for what legendarily massive adventures they are. But I guess that's the thing about legends, isn't it? You can never live up to them. I ended up beating FFXII just before XVI launched and experienced enough to have some very definite thoughts about my time and it only took me- give me a moe... Yikes, Steam says '62.9 hours'. I withdraw my point- I'm an addict.

Now, it's very important you understand my reasoning and expectations going into Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age so that you can be on the same level with me in that experience. I wanted a Final Fantasy type game to bide over my time that gave me familiar JRPG vibes of your everyday Japanese title. The kind of turn-based tactically light stuff I play from indie devs off Itch.io running on RPG Maker every other week. I also knew actually nothing about this game, or really any Final Fantasy I haven't played aside from the major ones like... I think there's a guy called Tidus in... FF X? And... is VIII the one with Squall? (That silly bugger who calls himself Leon in Kingdom Hearts.) As for XII? I actually didn't know the protagonist's name and spent a decent chunk of time wondering how I was ever going to take a guy called 'Reks' seriously over the course of an entire game. (Thank goodness that young boy got murdered in the prologue... uh... spoilers I guess. The game is eighteen years old, I'm going to spoil at least a little bit of the story.)

Now with those expectations, those who are familiar with FFXII might understand exactly where I'm going with this. My face dropped the moment I started playing the game and found out to my surprise- the combat isn't turn based. Not really. It's this weirdly horrific mix of MMO-reminiscent auto-attacking accompanied with acquirable skills and an 'action cooldown' that has your player stand around awkwardly between slashes in combat. It's weird and ugly to look at... but when you're playing a 60 hour JRPG there are things you just have to get used to and this was one of them. I grew to... endure this combat system and in doing so came to reflect a bit more on Final Fantasy as a whole to realise- I'm not sure if they've ever had a traditional combat system!

I mean I assume the pixel games have, 1-6 look like they do from screenshots I've seen, but all the titles I've played have some kind of hybrid between tactical turns and straight action gameplay or are simply just action games out-and-out. It really did surprise me how 30 odd years of video game legacy just kind of clouded my actual analysis, as I think it did a lot of people who assumed FF16 suffered from breaking away from FF's formula- despite the franchise not really having a clearly defined gameplay formula really ever. I guess that's why Final Fantasy is a monolith- you really never do know what you're going to get next.

So after surviving that combat-jumpscare, my next point of remark was the world of Final Fantasy XII both visually and within the plot. For which I have to say- Final Fantasy always covets some of the quality world building throughout all JRPGs. I couldn't tell you the name of the starting towns in half of the average RPGs I've played but every Final Fantasy world exists with distinction in my mind. FFXII is a great example of this with Ivalice serving as a fantasy world plucked straight out of the fruits of the imagination tree. With unique and interesting fantasy races, (alongside the race of tall bunny girls that5 have half their asses hanging out at all times) fabulously grandiose middle-eastern inspired architecture and really striking character designs. It's all really rather inspired if you ignore the very obvious Star Wars Prequels influence.

Rabanastre might be pretty much fantasy-Naboo but it's all a richly beautiful and diverse city teeming with people going about the open-air bazaars, taking in the fabulous courtyard water fountains, and gazing up at the giant maximalist structures that will make you wish the game let you look up a bit more reliably. I feel like a real-estate broker saying all this but seriously, the work put into bringing these spaces alive is truly excellent and whilst I think the first city is probably the most brimming with character and visible culture- that design excellence persists throughout. Sure the black armour of the Inquisitors looks like a take on Darth Vader's famous armour- otherwise the obvious Japanese Samurai helmets have literally no visual place within these design themes- but I find something nostalgic about going back into the era of prequel-mania- even through the eyes of a... visual copycat feels a bit dismissive but I mean that with all the love in the world.

To accompany this visual treat we have the writing and acting which is... the quality of a 2006 game. Far enough along in the game that actual actors who know what they're doing are being employed, but not enough for decent recording equipment and/or sensible sound mixing practises to become the wide-spread norm. Then maybe there's a lack of enthusiasm in some cast members, and some rather clear poor direction resulting in ill-fitting performances of the odd line. But overall I wasn't offended by the quality of the voice work and coupled with rather gorgeous and well-parsed verse in the script, I found some meat on the bones to latch onto. Of course, I speak of the writing here, less what the writing actually says- and that's because I'm trying to start off positive. But I guess in the pursuit of an authentic review I'm going to need to expand my feelings.

I don't like the combat. I don't like that when you start it takes no fewer than three button presses in order to perform a basic attack. I don't like that in order to 'overcome' this limitation that game expects you to literally write basic if/and conditional code using their rudimentary interface so that the Ai presses the buttons for you. I hate how the sign of a well-balanced and wisely deployed team is a battle that fights itself with minimal, sometimes even no, input from the player whatsoever. I don't like the fact that the 'Esper' system the game employs in place of traditional summons appears to be functionally useless by the time you reach the mid-game, also that it takes forever and is bad. I hate the fact that basic spell upgrades which every other boss enemy has are hidden as one-time drop items tucked away in the deepest recess' of the most out-of-the-way dungeon instead of, you know, cool thematic items that flesh out the world by simply existing where they do. And finally- I think the dungeons are kinda crappy too.

Ah- but as you picked up in the midst of all that- I do like the game enough to want to learn more about it's world- I wish it related to the gameplay more. And I also wish that the complex lore snippets earned by extensive monster slaying and bestiary filling pertained to lore that more closely linked to the plot in even the most abstract way. You know, like if the extensive religious pantheon they spell out were in any way presented in the actual gods that appear in the plot! Imagine how silly I felt learning about the various myths and legends only to be told "Actually, nah these are different deities who we failed to set up in the story sufficiently before literally launching them at you." But I'm getting ahead of myself.

What is FFXII's story on an even basic level that it eventually involves the gods? A redundant question, this is a JRPG- the game could be about maintaining a successful farm and somehow end with a duel against god. (I'm still only on the first month of Harvestella but I'm pretty sure that's where that game is heading too.) FFXII actually surprises as a tale that doesn't so much ground itself in a heroes journey against the heavens as many other FF stories do, but instead takes a more macro sweeping eye at wide-stage geopolitics as the various co-existing nations of Ivalice are threatened by... >sigh< an evil empire... This one isn't just a Star Wars reference, rather a reference to Final Fantasy's many reoccurring plot elements. Little sick of it by now, to be honest.

In this pursuit FFXII took a rather drastic sacrifice of the individual stories being told throughout the game, not that you don't get characters with personal drives to them- just that they don't drive the plot as much as are carried along by it. Much of the plot is actually pretty lazily strung along with a 'do this and then do that' structure that belies connective tissue and makes it hard to really feel the pulse of the plot. Unless you engage with discovering the world, like I did, I can definitely see this boring people expecting a narrative to the level of, say, Final Fantasy VII at least. As for the wider nation-shifting narrative- there are some problems there too. Problems very much highlighted in gusto after my playthrough of the narratively excellent Final Fantasy XVI which managed to marry complex nation movements and individual character storytelling without skimping on either. (Guess 20 extra years of storycraft is going to amount to some improvement.) 

What we have here is a story of plucky rebellion against overwhelming power, and the nature of power of what it comes to wield it eventually being brought to the table and... left about for inspection. Final Fantasy has never been the most introspective of theme-examiners and XII is no different, but I respect there was at least an attempt to establish a heart and it shines through. From a distance, on a list, the game has all the formulas it needs to give us a tale about the human cost of power, whilst in practice it sort of plays out a bit more unfocused than that. And perhaps the game would have a better time figuring itself out if it wasn't for it's protagonist problem, Yes, we're talking about Vaan in this review. 

Now I have to come to learn that little Vaan has something of a cultish devotion which, upon examination, seems to have spung up for a very particular purpose. You see, Vaan is singular amidst Final Fantasy protagonists as being... how do I put this... not particularly good. And that is a pretty vague sentiment which could go in a million directions, but I keep it general rather to highlight just how overwhelmingly 'not good' the man is by every metric. Is he interesting? No. Is his journey engaging and dynamic? No. Does he take charge in the narrative? No. Is his perspective an invaluable perspective to providing a complete story? And this is the tough one because it really is the last bastion that his fanbase rally to... but honestly the answer is still no. Vaan is laughably redundant in every aspect- so why do so many insist otherwise?

There has been at least one complete essay written in his staunch defence and when you actually take to the word of the argument it becomes pretty clear why. The sentiments are wavy but follow a similar vein- 'Vaan is the audience perspective', (despite that clearly being Ashe) 'Vaan represents the common man in a story about powers which dehumanise the human cost.' (only he offers no presence or perspective in key moments concerning such costs, nor does he seem all that impassioned about the plight of 'the people' in general.) And finally the 'Well why does Square keep putting him up as the face of the good characters every crossover fighting game if he's so bland?' (Precisely because he's bland. There's no ambiguity to him. No depth, no contradiction. He's just along for the ride and will hop aboard anything short of genocide.) So what's the heart behind his impassioned defence? It's actually pretty simple. It's the underdog effect.

Vaan has been in the crosshairs of everyone confused about his protagonist status since the game launched, and when you love a game (as some do for FFXII) it's natural to default to defending the thing. It's easy to push away the glaring flaws and hold up your project on a pedestal as some sort of eternal monolith of perfectly logical consistency, instead of a product developed by people who sometimes get it wrong. Just ask Square developers why they made Vaan. Their last game, Vagrant Story, garnered some criticism for their adult protagonist and so they decided to err towards a younger man for the next game. It feels right to create some sort of excuse, to fill in the blanks with your own imagination and conjure some genius interpretation of the character when if you just be objective, look at the character plain, and most importantly- observe the effect he has on the audience: he's just a dud of a character. Even if we lived in a world were the writers had knowingly cooked up a protagonist so inactive to the plot that he literally doesn't even share any words with the end-game antagonists, all in some thrilling subversion of expectations- (in a game with an already shaky narrative) it pretty clearly failed to translate to most of the critical audience. Maybe Vaan is a stroke of genius, (he isn't) but he didn't pan out that 'genius' in a way that enriched the narrative. So Vaan's crap, rant over.

As for the rest of the cast? They're fine. I get the feeling that FFXII was born at a time of rapid improvement in technology, were studios had to really put down their foot to keep up with the changing times and maybe some more fundamentals, such as rounded character writing, got lost in the scuffle. The original Final Fantasy 7 arguably had some much simpler characters, but they gave each cast member time to develop- with FFXII it feels like they picked favourites constantly. Fran was a decently interesting character; (Choice to have her voice direction be so quiet she can barely be heard in the sound mix aside) but her story kind of fizzles out so Balthier can take the stage. Balthier actually has a really solid narrative on paper, but his actually solid character connections with his father and the parallels his origins shares with other members of the cast and the theme of power in general feel rushed. I know! 'Rushed' in a 60 hour game! Maybe we should have had more time to unravel his character and connections- which we could have done were he the protagonist? (Actually Balthier is a pretty early companion, they had plenty of time to make him more than 'the rather ironically soft-spoken supposedly 'suave' swashbuckler-type who gets vague about his past all the time.')

Ashe is the real protagonist of FFXII in all the ways that matter. She has the impetus of the story laid upon her, her's is the internal struggle that plays out detailing the core theme of the plot and it is from her perspective that the world and it's people are slowly uncovered as we explore the vast lands of Ivalice. She's also the princess who's Kingdom is stamped upon by the Empire, and who's bloodline just happens to hold overwhelming significance to the plot. I would go so far as to call her presence the connective tissue which pulls events together if this were a slightly tighter narrative that I could confidently call 'pulled together'. And she is... a fine character. I'd categorise Ashe less of a 'dull character' and more a 'product of her time where protagonists had to be a certain way'. Some Final Fantasy protagonists break from the 'middling scope of personalities' available to that generation of storytellers, but most didn't. I understand why Ashe, nor most of her party, wind up at the top of 'favourite Final Fantasy characters' with the exception of Fran. But her popularity is so deeply tied to her looks that when Final Fantasy XIV respectfully yoinked the bunny-race of the 'Viera'- they effectively plucked all of Fran's cultural relevance with them. Rather mean of them if you ask me.

What this game does wonderfully, as I hope out of any Final Fantasy game, is provide that sense of vast adventure across a wild and fascinating land of varying cultures, peoples and traditions. Travelling the land from one edge to the other, as is genuinely asked of you from time to time, will take you from snowy outcrops writhe with winged beasts to hollowed out ancient oil rigs plunged across a vast desert haunted by dangerous tribal scavengers. There's so much diversity and intrigue to Ivalice that I held absolutely no surprise to learn this land ended up being the setting for the much beloved 'Final Fantasy Tactics' games. Games which are still not legally purchasable on modern hardware for some insane reason! (I'd love to try them out.)

Ivalice also treads a curious line between the manifested gods of Final Fantasy lore and the more grounded aspects of less fantasy-driven world building. The famous summons of the series for example, Odin, Bahamut, Shiva are present not as summons but rather gigantic airships that are central to the narrative as unstoppable machines of war. Much of Ivalice culture is based around skytravel, (despite there being no actual sky-plane gameplay for some insane reason) so these flying fortresses determine the shape of the world in a much more tactile way than magically shifting mountains and waging celestial warfare. It's a really inspired subversion of the typical Final Fantasy reoccurring factors, only slightly dampened by the fact that they did actually try to include their own magical summons through the 'Espers' system, only for those Espers to be vanishingly forgettable and crappy by comparison to the old summon system. 

I particularly love the inclusion of optional 'hunts' to encourage the player to explore. High level and sometimes gimmick strewn duels that will drag you all the way over Ivalice and really put you to the test. There's a progression tree to committing to them, actually substantive rewards for the early game and an invaluable familiarity with the quirkier aspects of the combat system up for grabs for those that engage- as well as some curious tidbits about the history and biology of these creatures in the log book that a Monster Hunter lover like me just finds invaluable. It's really right up my alley. Some of these hunts even carry curious side-quest style plot threads with them that offer some of the really unique moments which stick with you after the game. The system is still a little finnicky though, with there being no real neat way of tracking which bounty belongs to which applicant if you do something sacrilegious and 'take a break from the game and forget what you were doing'. (Hell, I didn't take any breaks and still struggled keeping everything straight!)

And of course as you get deeper into the game the optional content starts to bloom outwards, although unfortunately a lot of that delves into the more 'ultra obscure game guide bait' style of content. Side Quests with ludicrously vague steps you'd never happen across in a normal playthrough, secret weapons so obscure you would literally never know they are there unless you looked it up and the route to one of the superbosses being an utterly impenetrable maze of near-identical hallways scattered across a slog of a dungeon. That's another point, these dungeons kind of suck. Final Fantasy never really boasted the most interesting dungeons in JRPGs but FFXII in particular seems to subscribe to the 'drag it out until the player wants to tear out their hair' school of design. I might actually consider calling SMT 3's dungeons better by comparison, until I remember how trail and error the last one in Nocturne was. Yeah, I'd rather slog through a near endless dungeon then bash my head against a maze of invisible teleport traps for the rest of my existence.

All this belies the fact that despite how much there is to do and see around Ivalice, the main story actually doesn't do a great job of handling a geopolitically driven narrative. You hear about the rising tensions of the various world nations under the blustering of the Empire and yet none of it feels as tactile as it should. You hear about Bhujerba's rivalry to the empire but the Bhujerba you visit is little more than a relatively tiny floating town with a prominent mining community, they don't really sell the 'independent city state' vibe very well in the actual presentation and game - it seems unfeasible to think of that as the basis for so much as even a military annoyance for the giant empire. And what about the... I have to look this up... the Rozzarian Empire, not to be confused with the more obviously antagonist Archadian Empire. They have such little actual presence in the game the fact they exist is only brought up when their debonair harem-wielding prince saunters into a scene halfway through the game to shameless flirt at a totally nonplussed Ashe and vaguely threaten global warfare against the Archadians. This isn't how you handle political drama guys, you need to give us a proper global overview of the world situation first so we understand and respect the weight of individual shifts of state across the various nations later- which is exactly how Final Fantasy XVI does it.

Now I've talked a lot about 'Final Fantasy XII' but where does this 'Zodiac Age' come into it, you may wonder. I was actually quiet curious about this one going in, speculating that these 'Zodiac' might refer to some aspect of the lore which this rerelease edition expanded on to some greater degree and I was half right. Kinda. The Zodiac are one of those vaguely mentioned sub-lore aspects that are buried by the actual gods present in the narrative, and as for 'The Zodiac Age'. That entirely refers to the revamped class system. Yeah, they named an entire rerelease for a job system that bares no relevance on the plot. (Simpler times.) The Zodiac job board presents a kind of semi free-hand system of class building where you pick a couple classes and then use battle obtained points to select 'licences' to use certain spells and equipment. It's... serviceable as far as RPG systems go. But very sterile and bland too. When all your levelling amounts to static stat block increases or the 'legal right' to equip a certain tier of armour, progression can feel pretty passive. And in passive progression systems I usually prefer to be hands off and let the stats build in the background, instead of in the forefront picking the hardly noticeable power increases by hand. On the flipside this system does uniquely allow for extreme low-level playthroughs if you are that deranged enough- so there's that.

But if you've followed along with me this far you'll no doubt how picked up on a certain passion with how I speak about this game and it's world, no matter if I'm praising it or digging at it. And that's because I did actually really enjoy playing it! For it's faults and gaffes there is a heart to Final Fantasy XII which makes it fully understandable why some out there hail this as a formative game for them- it may not be perfect but it's hardly a bad game by really any metric- it just shapes up poorly in comparison to actual masterpieces out there- which is no great shame. I even think that somewhere, with some spit'n'shine and a total rewrite of Vaan's character so that his driving motivations don't almost completely disappear the second Ashe joins the party, and I think this game could make for a blinding Remake one day. Unfortunately, I'm sure there are far more deserving Final Fantasies worthy of a remake first- so I'm not sure XII will ever see that day.

Final Fantasy XII is a strange one. Solidly made but structurally flawed, evocative yet unfulfilled, ambitious yet narratively absent. And also I don't like the combat but I'll confess that's a personal bias. As far as Fantasy games go, however, Final Fantasy XII nails it where it counts for someone like me, who flocks to this genre for fascinating worlds that spark the imagination. Ivalice is another unforgettable world in a franchise full of them and it's light alone deserves a recommendation if just to see the grandeur of Rabanastre if not to stick around for the whole game. The story does kind of fall on a flat note and I'm not sure any character really feels that fully developed- and the player character really let's the story down in terms of connecting the audience with the moment. I think my feelings can be summed up in one scene: at the very apex of the game, when the protagonists and final villain finally meet, and that same tyrant turns to our heroes and says "Who are you?" It's the beginning of a middling speech but by god in that one moment I thought "Right! Who the hell am I?!" Which shouldn't really be your take away by the time of the plot climax. FFXII deserves it spot in fantasy games history, if not exactly a plinth of honour for all it achieves. Which leaves me with a tentative recommendation if all those negatives I just described doesn't fully turn you away and a arbitrary review grade of... this one is hard... I'm going to go C. C+ if you just love fantasy enough. Not a failure, but far from the best this franchise is capable of and what this world deserved.