Final Fantasy is one of my favorite games franchises ever. If it wasn’t for Final Fantasy I probably wouldn’t even own a PS2 (I also got it for Resident Evil and Metal Gear but that’s a sentence for another review). Admittedly, Final Fantasy is an incredibly long running, money making cash cow that in a last ditch effort saved Square back in the eighties. The series has been going for almost twenty years now (the first game was released in December 1987) and shows no sign of stopping. Over recent years however, Square have made a lot of changes with the formula of their games, fans have started to demand more and more from the franchise and Square have been all to keen to oblige their wishes. Final Fantasy’s legions of followers have clearly made an impact on the developers as they constantly called for a change to what was becoming a predictable and dull formula (Final Fantasy X could be seen as the epitome of what Final Fantasy used to stand for). I think this change in format for the series is also down to other things as well and not just the fans wishes. The merge with almost-rival Japanese role playing game firm Enix in 2002 obviously gave the company a boost in funds and experience to experiment with other franchises and ways of playing in a rapidly changing games industry.

It is with this context that it is easy to see Final Fantasy XII as the culmination of work by Square Enix to revolutionize and change the role playing genre. I wouldn’t say that the game was a complete step away from the classic format of the series at all though; however it is quite a change in game play. Traditionally, Final Fantasy games used the ‘ATB’ system (Active Time Battle) which pretty much defined for a lot of people how role playing games were played. You had your heroes exploring the world and defeating bad guys and whenever there was a battle, the game would shift to a new screen where the heroes would be on one side of the screen with the enemies on the opposite side. You would use attacks, skills or magic to defeat the bad guys with great vengeance and furious anger. Lasting for ten entries in the series, each using the same system, it’s quite a feat that it didn’t get old and cliché sooner. Lots of fans were starting to get tired with the system and so were Square (so much so they even parodied the system in their own games at times). With the feedback from popular games like Kingdom Hearts and Brave Fencer Musashi it was obvious that fans were enjoying the more ‘active’ styles of battling rather than the ‘wait-your-turn’ system Square had pioneered with their Final Fantasy series. In Final Fantasy XII battles take place on the same screen you use to explore the world. Enemies can be seen from far away and can be avoided if need be (in previous games enemies popped up out of nowhere). The new system that is in Final Fantasy XII (dubbed the ADB – Active Dimension Battle) is a lot more interesting than previous games but can take a lot of getting used to, luckily though a lot of the same attacks, magics and skills have been brought over from previous games so it isn’t the biggest jump players will ever experience. It is possible to see that Square have learn’t a lot from the invention and popularization of massively multi player online games. The game itself plays a lot like Guild Wars and other popular online RPG’s in that you control one character at a time; the twist is you can switch control of the characters at any time. You walk around with three party members at all times, party members can be switched in and out from your six character ‘mini-army’ which are introduced quite early on in the story. The sad thing about this system is that all the characters in your team are completely user controllable – although this is perhaps a good thing for most people. In previous entries, characters were defined by a certain job or class, some would heal others while some would attack or be more specialists with harmful magic’s. In Final Fantasy XII it is completely up to you to decide how your characters perform in battle and what they are capable of doing as well as what weapons and skills they use. It was nice having the game hold you’re a hand a little but saying that it is also separates your play experience from the next person – you will always have different characters which do different things than someone else who plays this game. The battle system has changed a lot since the last generation of games on the first Playstation. Changing the almost-cliché game mechanics the series has used since its creation is obviously a risky thing to do but I believe that Square have pulled it off exceedingly well. The new battle system is great fun and fast paced – it is however slow at the beginning though as you need to be introduced to it slowly to fully enjoy it. I wouldn’t say the battle system is without its faults but by the looks of things, Square are already fixing up some of its negative points (it still seems odd you have to prepare to attack someone) in their next entry of the series, Final Fantasy XIII.

It is most often said that the story for the Final Fantasy games is what most people play them for. I must admit, Square are great story tellers. Their games mostly include long and intriguing story lines which make it almost impossible to put down the controller without finding out what happens next. Square have helped to pioneer the story telling element of video games with their epic quests in the last twenty years, not just Final Fantasy either, games such as Chrono Trigger and Kingdom Hearts have won over fans with their incredibly long and involving stories. Final Fantasy XII obviously has a lot to live up to. As much as the game play has changed, so too has the story line involved. Playing old games in the series in comparison to this one, it is clear that the stories are so much more in-depth and interesting now. Whereas in the older games, characters provided little explanation for their actions and almost no reason behind some of the things forcing them to take said action, Final Fantasy XII creates a coherent and believably fueled story which takes place in the middle of an imaginary world full to the brim of political parties and revolutionists. The world of Ivalice is the most in-depth world I have ever seen in a game, so much so that it is almost impossible to get a real grasp of the situation until playing for at least ten hours. I have played about thirty five hours into the game and only now is it all beginning to come together and make you can begin to put things together and learn about the history of the worlds civilizations and what the current situation is. The political terms and manifesto’s of each party are thrown at you from the beginning of the game where you start in the middle of a war between two countries. Clearly as technology has advanced, it’s possible to store more information and so stories have grown in detail – a part of the advancing of games many media people fail to pick up on. Stories in general have advanced in detail due to technological advancement. It’s interesting to note that the world of Final Fantasy XII has the most involving and in-depth I’ve ever seen in any type of media format let alone a video game.

The last thing I have to say about Final Fantasy XII is in regards to the soundtrack. It shames me to say that I think this is the worst aspect of the game. I’ve been a long time fan of the soundtracks for Square’s games as they usually have some of the best tunes and most memorable melodies in video games. I would have to put this downfall of audio quality to the departure of Nobuo Uematsu, perhaps the most famous music producer for video games in the entire world. Uematsu has worked on the music for the Final Fantasy series since its creation and sadly left Square Enix when work was being done for Final Fantasy XII (He now works at self created firm ‘Smile Please’ who create music for Square Enix, Mistwalker and have even made the theme tune for Super Smash Brothers Brawl). Only three of his songs made it into the game, a couple of which were rehashes from previous games (the Chocobo theme and the Gilgamesh theme from Final Fantasy V) he also scored the theme for Final Fantasy XII – ‘Kiss Me Good Bye’ with Japanese pop singer Angela Aki. My problem with the soundtrack is that it simply does not have the same feel as Uematsu’s legendary scores. A lot of the music in previous games peaked peoples attention because of a particular style which was reminiscent of the games setting and themes. An example of this is Final Fantasy VII’s very modern, midi based instrument feel whereas IX featured very classical European rhythms and reminiscent of the setting (mostly old European castles and towns). Final Fantasy XII features little to no style in any sense and doesn’t really fit with the style of the setting (it’s quite like Final Fantasy IX in my opinion).

Final Fantasy has become a big hitter in the world of video games. It fits together with massive franchises such as Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Super Mario, Halo, God of War and Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy is a massive income generator and has such a large fan base; it could probably sell the PS3 by itself. With the exclusivity of future titles rumored to be in doubt, I think it is clear that the franchise is changing heavily. With Square’s new direction in game play and advanced story lines, they could end up winning themselves a much larger fan base than just the token J-RPG fans. I think Square are doing the right thing by changing the ‘hard-to-learn’ nature of the franchise and making it a lot more fast-paced and acceptable by the common gamer. The games industry is going through a lot of changes at the moment with rules and standards being broken all the time. It’s an exciting place to be right now and I think with Final Fantasy XII, Square are preparing themselves for whatever could happen in this most unpredictable generation of gaming we are edging towards.