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So I got a Switch 2. Because I'll always be a Nintendo kid at heart.
My old Switch was dying. The fan in it was making a god awful racket. So I hadn't turned it on the last few months because I planned on just transferring everything to a Switch 2 anyways. I may replace the fan for fun and practice and sell it now that I'm not concerned about losing data.
First order of business was finally finishing the playthrough of Final Fantasy XII that had about 3 hours left to it. I fucking love this game. Favorite Final Fantasy by a country mile, and the only one I still fire up from time to time. Personally I preferred the original's license board over Zodiac Age's job system, but it is what it is. I generally always prefer things the way I first experienced them.
The game was still as obviously flawed as it was when I first played it in 2006. The first half of the game is way stronger than the back half. The entire plot seems to revolve around chasing McGuffin after McGuffin to no consequence what so ever. Every time you finally get a McGuffin, some cutscenes halfway across the world with characters you never meet happen which move the plot along independent of anything you did. That said, I still love the real time combat and gambit system, the localization is top notch and the accents they gave all the groups really heighten the expert world building that went into Ivalice. Ultimately it's a game that is a work of art despite itself.
The story is a bit cheesy, and takes itself more seriously than is merited given its quality.
But the battle system is really unusual and really fun. I did two challenge runs with it in the past year: gambits only (no issuing any manual commands during combat) and Vaan solo, both of which were challenging enough to be fun but not so difficult as to be frustrating or infuriating.
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Don't mind me, just jumping off of you since you mentioned FFs and favorites and I had a pre-prepared ranking. Ahem. The FF series:
1 - one of a very rare few games where I will use the phrase "good for its time" seriously. A bit slow, rough around the edges, probably not a good starter for non JRPG folks. Raised to middle of the pack by stinkers at the bottom.
2 - a very deeply flawed game with few redeeming factors. A stinker at the bottom.
3 - a bit fresh, a bit new, a bit flawed. Eh. Middle?
4 - mostly good, a little great, a couple sticking points. High middle.
5 - yeah, good shit! Top of the middle or bottom of the top.
6 - chef kiss emoji.
7 - chef kiss emoji.
8 - some real question mark choices push it down from where it could've been.
9 - chef kiss emoji.
10 - chef kiss emoji.
11 - N/A, go home and play a single player game.
12 - Fuck you, Vaan. Do not pass Rabanastre, do not Collect Fran and Balthier. To the bottom with you.
13 - Just really weak. (Mostly) nothing to HATE, but so little to love that it can't overcome the flaws at all. Way low.
14 - N/A, pls stop putting MMOs in the numbers kthx.
15 - terrible combat, fun road trip. Low you go!
16 - a spark of greatness, wasted on samey filler and bad overall plot pacing and shaping. Get on down to low tier.
Ranked: 11/14 <<< uncrossable apples and oranges gap <<< 2 < 12 < 13 < 15 < 16 < 8 < 1 < 3 < 4 < 5 < 9 < 10 < 7 < 6
Honestly, though, most of what bothers me about 12 comes from a huge pile of factors almost everybody else considers trivial - they're all just big problems for me and when you stack them all up the experience is incredibly grating.
I played 16 recently based on enjoying the demo a ton, especially the real-time combat. Unfortunately, the full game didn't add a whole lot of depth to the combat, and the story ended up being a major disappointment, going a very well-trodden boring route after the demo appeared to set things up for a really intriguing medieval politics kind of plot. Really sad that what could've been a very bold step into a new direction for the franchise ended up being so half-assed.
I never finished 13, but I still think it has the best combat system out of any FF game I've played, including 7 Remake. Almost as a rule, I have a great distaste for turn-based combat systems, but I found the whole Paradigm Shift system of changing party members' roles in real-time during a battle and spending 90% of the time doing tiny damage to stagger the enemy so that you can deplete 90% of their HP in that 10% stagger window to be highly engaging. A shame about the storytelling, worldbuilding, and hyperlinear levels for the first 20 hours of the game.
I'll always have a soft spot for 8 for being the 1st JRPG I played and blowing me away with its huge explorable world and cinematic cutscenes. Even if the Junction system turned out to be pretty bad, and the story went off the rails near the end. The space base scene and Laguna's love story will always tug my heart strings.
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For the ones I've played:
3 - Only played the DS remake; it was ok. I kind of agree with your description, it wasn't terrible to play, but really felt like it had been left behind
4 - This the good shit
5 - Meh, didn't grab me much. Another one where I probably left it too late like 3
6 - Yeah pretty goated
7 - Same
8 - I appreciate a game that tries new stuff but it was just fucking weird
10 - personal favourite
12 - As I posted below, yawn
13 - Can't believe I actually beat this piece of shit instead of giving up
15 - Really a lot like 8, they threw all kinds of shit at the wall but forget to bring it together into a cohesive product. Some of the stuff in here is my favourite in all of the games, but it feels like the designers spent all their time deciding on new foods to carefully render and making fishing minigames instead of completing what they set out for.
16 - Story reminds me of 15, they do a lot of setup then about 2/3rds in I guess they ran out of time so they throw it all away and just rush to the end. Otherwise competent.
FFT - Not as good as tactics ogre
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9 is wildly overrated. The gameplay in 9 is totally broken. The animations take so long that everyone's ATB bar fills up at at the same time, so you can never guess what order the turns will happen!
The writing was also lousy. The "comic relief" character Quina is by my estimate the 6th funniest character of the main cast, behind Steiner, Zidane, Vivi, Eiko, and Garnet ("What's that phrase again? Oh yeah! Get off me you scumbag!") and arguably 7th because Freya and Zidane have that bit where he pretends he didn't know her name. Amarant was a wildly underdeveloped and pointless character, and while Freya was interesting the writers just forgot about her halfway through the game (common problem in final fantasy).
Great music though.
I haven't played them all, but of the ones I've played, I guess I'd rank them 12 < 3 < 9 < 4 < 5 < 8 < 7 < 10 < 6.
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Where do 10-2, 7-Remake, and 7-Rebirth fall for you?
10-2 has excellent combat. If only I liked the story enough to push it higher... probably lands somewhere in high-mid. 7-remake was pretty fun at first, but eventually I got really frustrated with the way ATB fills for the active vs passive characters and the need to constantly ping-pong control around. Felt like I could never get a groove going on anybody. And then of course the plot gradually revealed that it'snot actually a remake . Put those together, plus my dislike of large open worlds, and I didn't bother playing rebirth.
I agree with some of your criticisms of 7-R. I feel like it's so close to my ideal battle system, if they just made the movesets between ATBs more dynamic and with a higher skill ceiling. I kind of like the ping-pong between characters, as it gives a cinematic feel and some light satisfaction from effective multitasking.
I also kind of hate the storyline. My hope is that when it's all done, they go back and asset-flip a "true remake" because the convoluted alternate dimension ghost stuff is just awful.
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4 - The best gameplay in the series. Characters were uniquely distinct from each other, with a mix of magic types and unique abilities that gave them deep flavor without being gimmicky, much in the way 1's class system and upgrades had worked. This worked with the linear story to regularly remix your party and keep things fresh from a gameplay perspective; a character dying or leaving the party meant the flavor of the fights changed significantly, and these mechanical changes underlined the story beats. Exploration was significant, because you could find hidden fights and treasures that noticeably spiked the power of your party, especially in the endgame. The characters were awesome, and the story hit hard. Coming from FF1 and from the Dragon Warrior games, it was a complete revelation.
6 - The best story in the series. Kefka had far more depth and menace as a villain, and many of the character set-pieces and story beats were delightful. Amazing mood, amazing music. In terms of gameplay, though, I felt like it was a step down. You had much more control over which characters you used through the game, and every character could learn every spell through the esper system; this was a huge upgrade in terms of player freedom, but a huge downgrade in terms of focused gameplay, because it made the characters feel much more generic and made the gameplay much more open-ended and flabby. They tried to compensate by giving every character a unique skill, but there were so many of them and they all competed with universal magic/Espers, and the end result often just felt gimmicky and pointless; combined with the much longer intended playtime, the gameplay felt much more monotonous by the end.
...The other games I played were downhill from those two. 7 and 8 felt like elaborations on the theme of 6, but each felt flabbier than the last. I never played 9. 10 felt like they were trying to pull things back in the direction of 4, but by that point the bloat seemed terminal. I gave up somewhere in the second disc, and haven't played an FF since.
The series as a whole seems like a monument to the truth of "less is more". FF was the series where I realized "100 hours of gameplay" wasn't necessarily a good thing, like a bit of butter spread over too much toast.
...I've often wondered how much of the above might just be the "nothing will ever be as good as that thing you liked when you were 14" effect, though.
9 is basically a call back to 4/5/6 (but especially 4). Four party members, fixed classes on each character, more fantasy,very final boss that just sorta comes out of nowhere . It's been remastered with some QoL additions, but there have also been rumors of a remake for a while. Someday I'll actually get around to playing it, because my first playthrough came to an unfortunate conclusion when the third disk turned out to have an unplayable scratch on it (the perils of used games).
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I always hear people going on about how you're supposed to be eternally in love with your first, and 6 was not my first, so that can't be it.
...though I was about 14 when I played it, so maybe a point for your formulation there.
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9 and 10 are hyper GOAT status for me, some of the best games ever made across any genre.
7’s alright, but even back when I played it for the first time as a kid I thought it was overrated.
I enjoyed 8 quite a bit more than you did, but that was probably just due to the spectacle of how much of a fever dream it was, rather than it being a “good game” in the traditional sense.
I think FF8 is a great game. Yeah parts of it are a fever dream that make no sense, but the same is true of FF9 as well (Necron). And I think gameplay wise it is one of the most fun character building systems they turned out. It really rewards mastery of the mechanics in a way not many other FFs do, and on top of that it gives you multiple ways to become strong (e.g. while many favor low-level runs where you junction high level magic, I myself enjoy a high level run where you level up with the stat bonus abilities). And it has the greatest minigame ever, bar none.
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Man, different strokes, different folks. I positively loathed Final Fantasy 10. I hated it's VO, I hated it's world, numerous boss fights sent me through the roof with frustration (Yunalesca in particular). I think what frustrated me most, especially towards the end game, was how insanely wasteful with my time the game got. You die in a boss fight, and you are committed to 5-15 minutes of unskippable cutscenes every attempt. It was excruciating. I found Tidus an infinitely more annoying character than Vaan, but that could have had more to do with the VO.
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Even the best Final Fantasy are beautifully flawed -- anyone that thinks VII was perfect can shove it up Guard Scorpion's tail. XII's world always struck me as much more interesting than its plot, just as the combat itself seemed more interesting than the gambit system you end up spending more time working around (though I've long been a Tales of fan so I may be judging the gambit system a little too harshly).
Agreed that the remake is in an awkward place. Like X and XI, it's in that awkward early stage of 3d work that's just high enough quality that it can't cruise on retro feel or imagination, but still so low-res that it's painful to watch and not easily vastly improved with emulation and upscaling... while the remaster also screwed around with enough of the systems that it's not a clear upgrade from gameplay perspectives. I prefer job systems in general, since some of my favorite games in the series have been FFXIV and the original FFT (and arguably Legend of Mana, though handwaves), but it definitely moves away from the learn-and-automate feel of the original. I'd guess that it was set that way under the assumption you'd have played the original enough that it'd just be repetitive? But that's not really right, either.
That said, both the original and remaster seem like they've been big sources of Lessons Learned for other games in the series, so well worth knowing just for that (in contrast to something like FFType0).
Hope you enjoy the Switch 2.
See for me neither the combat nor the gambits really grabbed me. The fact that you spend most of the game without having to make decisions about fighting just sort of removes the fun. You cruise through most of the game that way — once you figure out the correct balance of auto commands to get the AI to not be stupid, you could put down the controller and grab a sandwich while the game fought itself. Which then turned the gameplay into moving around the game zones and solving puzzles.which aren’t bad, but are really pretty simple and don’t add much replay to the game. I felt like the entire experience was on rails to some degree. X was extremely linear, but at least you had to play the game yourself.
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FF12 was when the series began to die for me. The gambit system is un-fun because then the game is just playing itself, and the game really pushes you hard into using it. I tried to play manually but it sucks because you have to keep switching characters (rather than the game auto-switching when their turn comes up), and it gets too hectic to keep up with that anyway. The writing is kind of a mess too; I played all the way through and couldn't figure out what had happened in the story until I read a summary on Wikipedia. Good characters and world though.
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FFXII was such an incredible disappointment after X. Starts off really well, but after 10 hours you realize the only gambits you need are low health > heal and attack, and there is absolutely nothing of interest when it comes to building a character. The licence board was entirely pointless. All that was left was the story, which as you say became incomprehensible very quickly
This is straining my memory some, but I recall the gambit system in the original game being much more finely tuned than Zodiac Age. It only gave you the option of automating poisona for instance, after you'd spent a dungeon manually curing poison in combat. In Zodiac Age you can purchase all the gambits right from the jump, letting you automate everything immediately. I recall the original had this effect of, as soon as a task got tedious, the option was available to automate it. In Zodiac Age the game feels like it's playing itself more.
I did find I was constantly tweaking my gambits, most on account of status effects. Another difference I remember was that with the OG license board, I could give all my characters some low level spells, like Protect or Shell, so the whole party would work together to keep those protection spells up. In Zodiac Age, you tell your single white mage in the part to keep everyone protected, it's virtually all they do it takes so long to cast 3 times in a row, and then it's nearly worn off! Meanwhile they aren't healing or curing status effects.
I donno, I think some of the quality of life features in Zodiac Age actually made the game worse in ways that are counter intuitive.
This was what really put me off the game back when I played the original. IIRC, I had every character basically playing as a red mage, never bothered with skills, and just unlocked the strongest weapons available whenever I found new ones.
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Yeah, the original there were a handful of unlock events for most of the status and health level gambits. They could have used a bit more granularity and evenness (why is ally: lowest hp or foe: lowest hp a mid-game thing?), but it did help a bit. And the ones you could get from chests in the original also avoided the whole 'giant list of shit to buy' problem Zodiac Age had.
In exchange, Zodiac Age hide a lot of spells that were previously buyable by putting them in chests. Which, imo, feels a lot worse. Though at least it did fix the damage limit that made a lot of those higher-end spells useless.
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