The Video Game Revue

Being Harsh on FF XII

Wow, I just read Tycho's post about the Final Fantasy XII demo, and I have to admit, I'm a little surprised by how harsh he is about it. I can certainly agree that between the "active" and "wait" modes, I don't see why anybody would play on "active"--it doesn't have the same effect as it did in the more structured FF battle systems of the past; rather it just removes a further degree of control from combat that is already wild enough. The combat in the FF XII demo is much more frenzied and chaotic than Final Fantasy combat has been before, but as I indicated previously, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the FF XII demo combat system worked. It's really nice to not have to be rudely interrupted by a combat sequence transition while trying to figure out whether you should turn left or right at a T-intersection in the middle of a maze-like forest or dungeon. And besides, the flow of combat is largely the same as in other Final Fantasy games. Sorta.

Okay, I'll grant Tycho a couple of big points: first off, I don't like having to interrupt a character to get them to do something else after issuing a fight command. If I was commanding eight or more characters, than sure, it's a big convenience to be able to say "Fight" and that character will continue attacking until I change my mind--but for only three characters, that system has a lot more cons than pros, since you're more likely to forget who is performing what actions that way, and you're not going to know what the best timing is to issue new orders. I'd rather be interrupted by a menu when a character who made a physical attack last round is ready to act again.

Secondly, because the combat in the FF XII can get pretty hairy, I find that it's sometimes difficult to know who you're targetting with spells and such. What they really need is to introduce a wider camera angle so you can get a better view of combat and more easily tell who you're targetting with what, because those blue and red lines that whoosh through the air really don't cut it (they're also quite distracting.) While playing the demo, I found that too often there was action occuring behind the view of the camera because the party leader character was a bit further ahead of the rest of the party.

Still, there is time for Square-Enix to refine the game system and fix issues such as those. Whether they will address such complaints or simply consider such issues to be differences of opinion that don't need to be answered is, of course, another matter. I wouldn't go so far as to call the combat in the FF XII demo "broken," though. There's room for improvement, but I've had complaints about every FF combat system since FF VI. Personally, I welcome the change.

posted by Parappa @ 10:39 AM