14 DAY TRIAL // 
What if we mixed "Star Wars" with Square's hit game "Vagrant Story"? We would get a brand new Final Fantasy, packed with a new battle system and the usual breathtaking storyline. Let's not forget the cutscenes! I must admit that Final Fantasy VII is my all time favorite, but each new title of this series is a candidate for the throne. Could Final Fantasy XII be the one?
Story Vaan is the main character in Final Fantasy XII and I bet that solves the pun in the title of the article. He is a 17 year old orphan thief, that lives in Rabanastre, the capital of Dalmasca His greatest aspiration is becoming a sky pirate and owning an airship. Two years have passed since the Archadian Empire conquered Dalmasca after many fights and the assassination of the king. Vaan's brother, Reks got killed in the process and that made the young boy hate the cruel Empire. The names of the characters and places sound a bit Italian or Spanish and I'm not mistaken when I say that the setting is also Mediterranean.
Vaan is joined by Balthier, a great sky pirate, Penelo, the typical female character that seems to fall in love with the hero, Fran, the hottie of this game (too bad she has two long rabbit ears) and Ashe, the summoner princess of Dalmasca. The House of Solidor rules the Archadian Empire, but I'm sure that is very uninteresting to you. Interesting is the fact that the throne of Solidor is a reason for the dispute of the two Solidor brothers: Vayne and Larsa. Larsa will play as a guest in your party at some point of the game. The first one, the elder brother tries to integrate Dalmasca in the Archadian Empire and also tries to connect with the people, not being the cruel ruler you'd expect him to be. If you think I got into politics too much, wait till you play the game as the story tends to focus too much on the empire and nations' motivations forgetting about the actual people that suffer or die in the process.
Concept Final Fantasy was known (and cursed by some) for its turn based battle system. With each new game, Square tried to make the battle more real, or at least more 3D. They somehow remembered that they had produced Vagrant Story a few years ago and implemented some of the fighting concepts present there. The true revolution of the fighting system is the Gambit, a new tool that allows predefined moves of your characters. A party of four heroes means a lot of work to do for the player during the fight. With the Gambit system you'll have the chance to assign the characters their tasks before the battle. For example you can set a limit of hit points for one character, and if he or she goes below it, the character with the Gambit on will use a potion or the Cure spell on the hurt ally.
I didn't use the Gambit on all characters however as I feel the need to control my party, rather than let the AI do it following patterns. Kind of spoils the fun of the game. However you won't have anything to say about the summoned creatures being controlled by the AI. That's really a shame, as I wish I would have been the one doing those cool powerful attack. All you can do is heal the Espers, that's the name of the creatures you can call to your aid. Mateus is by far the coolest of them and Espers are "descendendents" of the other Final Fantasies Eidolons or Aeons. If you search your memory well you'll remember that Espers were used in the old Final Fantasy Tactics game.
The world map is big enough to make any multiplayer game jealous and you'll have a lot of walking to do through the enormous world of Ivalice. This is another thing you should remember if you played Final Fantasy Tactics, as Ivalice was present there too. If you have enough cash, you could sure a chocobo. Whoever played a Final Fantasy games knows what I'm talking about. A chocobo is some sort of a huge yellow ostrich, that characters ride throughout their journeys. The ones in Final Fantasy XII look more aggressive and seem designed for conflict rather than racing, as they were in Final Fantasy VII. One of the advantages of riding the trademark Square-Enix bird is the fact that enemies will ignore your presence once you're riding past them.
Learning new abilities is done through a system similar with the one in the tenth part of the series. You have a map of black and with tiles with abilities that appear once you get a new weapon or get a level up. The player will have to get a license for the new abilities or magic and those are earned by collecting points after each battle. The character customization is pretty open and you'll be able to choose your armor, weapon and all sorts of pendants and amulets that provide you with magical powers or elemental defenses. What would an sky pirate be without his airship? There will be some superb aircrafts available and they are named after the creatures we used to summon in the previous Square games: Ifrit, Shiva, Carbuncle, Alexander and so on.
Gameplay Things have changed if we look back to the last original member of the Final Fantasy family. The control and battle system have moved totally to the analog and 3D universe. You can now run all over the map while fighting and disengage the battle just by running from your opponent. Also you won't be so static and take an enemy by surprise by attacking him from behind. There are no more random encounters as you'll the enemies coming before they hit you. The "bestiary" of the game is pretty vast and creatures range from normal soldiers to huge dragons and the trademark Square creatures (Tonberry, Marlboro, Cactuar etc). It might be just my imagination, but the soldiers of the Archadian Empire look a lot like the Galbadian soldiers from Final Fantasy VIII and I'm talking about their armors and helmets.
The large world of Ivalice is at your disposition and you can explore it even if it means running into enemies that are too big and strong for your level. Sometimes this might be a problem as you can enter a fight where you'll get wasted after the enemy's firs hit. Since we've involuntarily reached the "Game Over" screen, we must thank Square for being kind placing savegame crystals all over the place. Those blue shiny crystals will also recharge your health and magic, curing all your status ailments. There are some brown crystals that will also allow you to save the game and replenish health, but also get teleported from one place to another, but only if you have teleport...guess what ... crystals. This game is filled with crystals, even if they are called simply stones or magicites. Square's crystal motif will never die, you know what they say "diamonds are forever", so crystal must also be everlasting.
Something is random in the game, if not the enemies, at least the pickups and items. They appear in chests or crates and each time your character passes by an exclamation sign that appears above his head signals that you should search the area for treasure. Square was dead serious about making this game, so serious that they forgot to add the minigames we loved, like Blitzball in Final Fantasy X, or chocobo racing and Golden Saucer games in the seventh installment of the series. The AI was a pretty nice surprise for me, the great Square fan, that was always a bit disappointed by the enemies. This RPG is not an easy game, but not an impossible one to play either. However, if an enemy feels that he, she or it is losing the fights he'll run away or reach some other enemies to be defended by them. How cool is that? Since we're in the world of crystal some summoning and magic wouldn't do any harm. Magic is called magick in this game and can be black magick (fire, ice, thunder etc) or white magick (curative magick, healing magick etc).
Because I mentioned the AI, I must say that seeing their hit points meter makes the game a lot easier as I know when they will try to heal or when they're close to their death. The old limit breaks have also changed name and now they are known as quickenings. You don't know what a limit break is? Remember the clich?s in the Japanese games and anime that involved a character getting hit a couple of times and then ... he got angry. Eventually he changed the color of his hair (Dragon Ball Z anyone?) and performed an attack that destroyed half of the planet. That's not the case and the attack you'll perform when angry and hurt will take tons of hit points from your enemies. You'll be able to chain the quickenings of your party into one powerful attack, but keep your eyes open as this technique will use all of your magic points.
Video Vagrant Story must have been a hit considering that they used the graphics and battle system even in 2006. Something similar was available in Final Fantasy XI, but this new look gives the Final Fantasy series a chic look. Aside from small problems with the camera angle the graphics will make the fans drool and cry throughout the 60 hours of gameplay. Those camera issues appear when walking around corners and I know their real source: the analog control is too sensitive and the camera goes nuts if you change the view too fast. The characters remain Square-ish to say so and they're still the Japanese guys with big eyes and androgynous look. Vayne looks very much like Laguna from Final Fantasy X, while Vaan is Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII) and Tidus (Final Fantasy X) all over again. The cutscenes get an A plus and only a blind man wouldn't like the animations.
They add depth to the story and complement beautifully the gameplay by flowing without many loading sequences. The characters' moves are very natural and the battles will be affected by the 3D environment in very visible ways. Enemies will fall off ledges and you'll have to climb a hill or descend from a tall sand dune. The Espers will have moves and summoning animations that can take even take up to one minute. You'll love that minute and those magnificent creatures, especially when they do that last powerful move before they die. The producers went to Turkey and India to get the inspiration for the backgrounds in Final Fantasy XII. You'll see a lot of desert, little vegetation, huge towns and Mediterranean architecture with a touch of Prince of Persia backgrounds.
Sound The soundtrack seems taken from a movie, a heroic one with tons of battle and sieges. Or maybe it's Star Wars again, even in this field. The chocobo birds sound the same and the main theme song is the old one, that a fan would recognize even miles away. There will be sword fighting and explosions that will tickle your ears in the most pleasant way possible. The sounds of the airships' engines will be like a breath of fresh air after all that walking. Music changes during battles and when you enter a new environment, suiting it perfectly any time. Orchestral works are never scarce when talking about Square, the violin, piano and chorus are all there, ready to give the gamers a unique acoustic experience.
Hitoshi Sakimoto is the main composer of the OST, but I can't say I'm disappointed considering that they kept the trademark Final Fantasy theme, at least in the first FMV.Nobuo Uematsu, the genius behind most of the Final Fantasy songs had a small contribution to the soundtrack, the song "Kiss Me Good-Bye" performed by Angela Aki. As usual the soundtrack alone is good enough to listen to, even when you're not playing the game, and it's quite long summing up to 4 cd-s and 100 songs. Dialogs are brilliantly written, except for the politics talk which is only gibberish and boring chat to pass the time. Also I couldn't quite figure out why the bad guys have British accents... Balthier has by far the coolest accent of all the characters adding more charm to his pirate look.
Conclusion This is for those of you who always wondered what the deal with all this Final Fantasy that's never FINAL. They're making a new Final Fantasy, the XIII, as I'm writing right now. It will appear on the Playstation 3, so I guess that the XII will be the farewell title for the PS 2. Back to the first sentence of this part of the review, I'll mention only this: almost twenty years ago, Squaresoft had some problems and was about to shut down. They decided to make a game that would take them to the top again or at least keep them in the business.
Being their last game, they called it Final Fantasy... Cute story, isn't it? Back to 2006 Squaresoft is Square-Enix and Final Fantasy reached the thirteenth part, not counting the X-2, the Dirge of Cerberus and the Tactics. I played all the Final Fantasy games up to the X-2 installment and I was pretty disappointed with the XI. Not being a fan of the MMORPG genre, I was happy to hear that Square returned to the good old habits and made a single player game again. Final Fantasy XII is a brilliant example of what RPG-s should look and feel like, and apart from few minor defects it's a new shining star of the series.
