So I thought I'd pick up FF 12 to tide me over till gears. What a mistake that was. I haven't enjoyed a numberd Final Fantasy game since 6. The only reason I caved was because 12 takes place in the same world as the Final Fantasy Tactics games and is signifigantly less gay sci fi and more awesome fantasy. (Finally a Final Fantasy hero with both a huge scar and a beard! A.K.A. MAN!)
I turned on the game and was treated to some awesome Nobuo Uematsu classic remixes, Both main FF themes, the most well known now includes an angelic choir and what I refer to as the "The beginning the quest fanfare". I start the game and I'm treated to an AMAZING cgi sequnce that involves a royal wedding and some sweet victorian era esque backdrops. Think Gears if everything was really gorgeous and not destroyed and that's kinda what they went for. Then there is a big epic war where the guy who had just been married is shot through the heart with an arrow. Really all I could say was wow.
So I'm hooked, the game begins and I go through a tutorial esque mode to be treated to a "HOLY CRAP AWESOME!" moment that probably wouldn't have worked out like that had I been paying attention to the games message board.
The game is awesome, at least awesome for the first 6 hours. Because then the difficulty ramps up to 11. I thought that I was going to be able to play though the game and pull in a neat story, just because that's what I've always thought rpgs were about. And it really wouldn't be so hard if it wasn't for the new battle system. Frustrating is the only thing I can say. I got my ass handed to me by a boss, so when I beat him (Took me 2 times.) I decided I'd quest to get my level up. For some reason this is when the game got really, really, really, frustrating. There is this thing they call the gambit system, which is where you program your party a.i. So if you want a healer you'd say "Hey bitch, heal anyone who goes below 50% and if no one is below 50% target and attack what the party leader is attacking." Seems awesome in theory, but in execution not so much. My party keeps getting wiped, all 6 members. Which is fine, the crap I'm fighting for the quests is tough but what isn't fine is that when I start replacing my dead meat with fresh meat they decided maybe the best course of action is to stand around like morons for a good 10 20 seconds. It normally takes me about that long to notice they're not doing anything because I'm busy controlling the party leader, that totally thows me off my groove and while I'm saying to myself "Wow, if those assholes would have done what I had programmed them to do I would have beaten that guy." I get kind of angry.
That's not where my frustration with the game ends. Oh no, the new class system is complicated too. You get points aside from exp for each monster you kill, you use these points to better your character, but not so much in the way you'd think. Lets say I want to use a long sword, well I have to make sure I put points into that, then I have to go and buy the sword. It's the same thing with armor and spells, only if you have 3 people who you point points into black magic you don't have to buy fire three times, but you do with weapons and armor. So right now I have the feeling that because I don't understand the system I've totally screwed myself over and I think my entire party is severly illequiped to do anything I need them to do.
So really what it has boiled down to is am I patient enough to try and get through a story that I'm interested in even though the gameplay is frustrating me to the point where I want to throw my controller though the screen. I like challenges, but when I get killed in Ninja Gaiden or Ghouls and Ghost I know it's my fault. In this case it really hasn't been like that at all, if I've wipped it's because my party members weren't doing what I had programmed them to do, in most cases my party members weren't doing anything at all.
This is another Mel bitches diary.
