I need to say this: The Modern World is killing my childhood loves. From Transformers going live-action ang GI Joe turning their toys into human-faced robots, it seems that the modern marketting system is conspiring to devour my youth one anime-mass-market–inspired concept at a time.
That leaves the video games I loved left to sully. Metal gear has survived the taint and made into a fantastic franchise. That goodness the Final Fantasy series is sacrosanct… or so I thought. Then I was reading the review at Gamspot.
What your character and your party do then is to a large extent determined by gambits. The gambit system is based on artificial intelligence commands that you set for each character (you can even set your own). Gambits consist of two options: a target and an action. For example, if you set a gambit for Balthier that starts with “Foe: party leader’s target” and ends with “attack,” then Balthier will attack any enemy that you have the leader attack.
I went pale and strained to hold in my hate. Let me explain: every FF game has some linear moments. However, those moments are broken by glorious random encounters that let you wallow in the turn-based goodness the way golden sunlight will part storm clouds to reveal azure sky to tired eyes. Those moments saved the game from constant tedium by allowing you the player to make decisions on your own before jumping back onto the story-line train tracks.
Now we just set up the game to play itself. I wan’t use the … tactile description proposed by Penny Arcade, but I will say this is a massive let-down and yet another blow to a cherished childhood franchise.
However, the game is getting some good reviews. One on Eurogamer even called it the best of the franchise. So, here is me giving FFXII one chance, ONE, to preserve my inner child.
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