Some people prefer the classic Pokemon style controls. Some people prefer full-free control. If you like one or the other, you will not enjoy this game's battle style. If you decide, however, to look past the quite annoying battle system in this episode of the never ending franchise you may just find, well... the storyline also sucks. While it isn't as bland as some stories, this video game just doesn't reach expectations. Maybe it is because the story of, say FFX, set the bar so high, or maybe FFXII's story is just overall dull. I recommend NOT playing this game to FF fans and non-fans alike.… Expand

This game is terrible; its high metacritic score is the result of the name of the game and the producer. In reality, this game is ****

The problem arises on many fronts.

Firstly, the main character, Vaan, sucks. Indeed, he, along with Penelo, were shoehorned into the game late in development because they had concerns that the original main character, Basch, was too manly for the Japanese. It shows. He is basically uninvolved with the story and uninteresting in general, and he basically stands back whenever story sequences occur and is completely irrelevant. He should never have been in there in the first place.

Secondly, the pacing of this game is abominable. You run for hours and hours for a fifteen minute bit of dialogue, then do it again. At one point, you go through four or six huge areas just to get to the next plot point; it is simply awful and you lose all interest in the game.

Thirdly, the gameplay is bad. The game is insanely easy and boring in its ease, and indeed, you can turn on gambits and cruise through the whole game - your input is barely required, really, and that is just bad.

Fourthly, the bonus content, such as the extra bosses, are just meaningless grind fests with millions of hit points which take hours to kill but are uninteresting in being fought; they just are an endurance challenge, as they are not particularly difficult to beat, just incredibly time consuming.

All in all, this game is bad, and marks the start of Final Fantasy games just not getting it.… Expand

A lot can be said about this game with comparison to its predecessors. The Final Fantasy series has always traditionally excelled in the areas that make a great rpg, particularly in bringing to life memorable characters and a compelling story. But in virtually every area where FFX, for example, succeeded, Final Fantasy XII categorically fails. At the heart of every story is a protagonist one can root for, and an antagonist to root against. This game has neither. In fact, the entire ensemble is lifeless and one-dimensional. At best, it glosses over Vaan's and Balthier's backgrounds as the convoluted plot flounces about like a headless snake. The voice acting is adequate, though the script itself is weak, and the dialogue, affected and clunky.

Sound is one of XII's meagre strengths, with lavish sound effects and a reasonably well-written score (Dalmasca Eastersand's sweeping Williams-esque theme a rare treat). The graphics are also to be commended.

Gameplay has suffered considerably in this overhaul of the series. I personally found myself plumbing through relentless waves of enemies without ever having to actually perform any action manually. It is as if they encourage the player to take as passive a role in the 'experience' as possible. And that ain't gaming, Joe. It is just proof that change is not always preferable (or necessary).

Square Enix, you really dropped the ball with this one. Back to the drawing board, here's hoping!… Expand

Final Fantasy XII is easily the black sheep of the Final Fantasy series, the battle system is radically different, the story and characters take a backseat to the world at large, and the whole operation has much more in common with MMORPGs in general than the Final Fantasy series in particular. Needless to say, your mileage may vary.

FFXII is set in the world of Ivalice, originally seen in Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story. Ivalice is a huge, boring, uninspired, ill-defined fantasy world filled with dozens of races that lack personality and charm (none of whom join your party anyway), and interesting, but painfully pastiche art design. FFXII seems to take the Star Wars prequel approach to world-building in that it operates under the pretension that you… Expand

I've read the reviews that claim this is amazing once you get inside, but I'm unconvinced and not inclined to bother. Very boring gameplay to begin; far, far, far too many beautiful but ultimately pointless and annoying cutscenes (skip 3 in a row, anyone?); and WTF? no option to invert the view controls. That for me is a deal breaker - it requires (I assume) virtually no effort on the part of developers, just a modicum of respect for the way my brain prefers to work. Can't rank it higher, no matter what others say.… Expand

This game hurts the team. Maybe not the Square team, but you know what I mean. Wasted 25 hrs to realize the game goes nowhere and is completely boring as hell. I could sit the controller down and have my dumb ai party beat the game for me without even leveling up. Old school rpg gamers, don't bother. Newbies to the genre (PS2 and up) and kids keep this crap going hard.

This is the worst FF I have ever played, it starts off ok, I wasn

There is nothing I can say here that hasn't already been said, but I will echo the complaints of a shoddy battle system and an extremely disappointing story that relies upon pseudo-philosophical apologetics and apologists to power the hype-wagon that has sold the game so far. Very sad, really.

DO NOT buy this game if you are looking for a good/engrossing storyline, because you won't get one here, the story and characters are bland, the new battle system is good and so is the new camera system, some of the sidequests are also fun which is why I'll give it some credit but ultimately i found the game to be very disappointing, i bought it for the story, I don't think it was too much to expect a decent storyline from a Final Fantasy game but this one falls flat on it's face, there are no memorable characters here, no memorable scenes, the story is just boring, don't expect to be pulled by the story here because you won't be.… Collapse

The camera is inverted from the standard way other games use it. There is no option to change it, making this game impossible to play for me.

I found the game good at first. Seem to have all good points at the start, but has i progressed i found this game good graphically, but the story was terrible and very predictable and the fights became boring.

FFXII is a strange game. If it was not called Final Fantasy, it would probably have received much lower scores. Graphics are very nice. The background music is great. The quality of speech is instead incredibly bad. It sound like they used an old mic. Now, let's talk about the game itself. I have played all the FF from 4 to X-2 and I must say the story of FFXII the worst so far and has all but fantasy in it. If you've seen Star Wars you will hate it. The world is huge and boring. The battle system is awful. It is true it can make the standard battles quicker but that means you will not play the game yourself. You can still control you characters manually but that makes every battle tedious and you will loose a lot of time as every time you select a command your action time is reset (and your party members will review their strategy according to what you do sometimes, so they'll also loose precious time). Boss fights are so messy! I got the best results when I did not pick any strategy and just mindlessly attack and cure. Attack magic and Espers are mostly useless. My espers generally die a few seconds after summoned so they deal damage close to zero. FF is famous for complicated side quests. Complicated or difficult is something (remember dodging lightnings in FFX?). Impossible-to-figure-out quests are something else. How the hell am I supposed toI know a monster is going to show up only if run like an idiot for 15 minutes with another monster following me? How comes the best weapon in the game is so easy to get (while the second best requires 20 hours of work) but only if you do not open some chests the guys in square enix did not want you to open? Else you can forget about it of course. This is not something you get with luck. You need a guide to enjoy this game. And then, will you really enjoy it if you need the guide? I am fed up with these impossible titles. If you want to play a good RPG, play Rogue Galaxy. If you want to stick with Square Enix, play Dragon Quest 8. That one has a good story at least.… Expand

Haveing played most games in the ff range and a player of ff11 for the past 3 years i can safely say that ff12 would be right near the bottom of my list! As soon as i started playing my first impression was that this game seems like Kingdom Hearts 2 with the kid charcter main leads and the poor story line. Also the battle system is similar to Kingdom hearts. im shocked to see some of the other peoples comments about this game im guessing people who have given this game 10 have had little or no experience in rpgs or perhaps are very easily entertained -_- this game lacks a decent story 1st and foremost and really doesnt allow the player to become emersed into the game unlike other ff games. i think that SE belived that by takeing the points from one of there most sucessful games of recent times, the MMORPG FFXI, it would work just as well. Im sorry to tell you this SE but it really doesnt work like that! it may be fine in FFXI to have secret chests in hard to reach locations containing rare equipment, it is also fine to have difficult to pop rare monsters! this works in a MMORPG because you have contant contact with hundreds of other players and can form big parties! However when you apply this to a normal RPG game how can this ever work??? To succesfuly complete this game you will need a guide which tells you which chests to open and what routes to take! On the other hand that said this game is really easy to complete and it insnt necessary to aquire all the items or all the best equipment! In fact this game only has about 30hours of storyline gameplay and perhaps only 1hour of that being enjoyable! Playing this game felt like a chore to me even though i completed it twice! ( the first time i completed it i thought id missed loads of the story out and perhaps my game had glitched....i wish it had) If your a huge FF fan like me then you will be dissapointed with this game it has no romance or flair just like the older titles. If your a KIngdom Hearts fan you may like it more as the game flows in a similar way. But personly i think KIngdom Hearts is a lot better than this. (p.s Dr.Avery i think you must have been playing a different game! the game you rate is not FF12 >.>)… Expand

this game was a pain to play, it was just so boring for a final fantasy which i expected to be fun. if a game is not fun then whats the point to playing? the main part of a game is that it should be fun. i felt nothing for the main characters and i never grew attached to them like i have to previous final fantasies like ff9 or ff7. there was no love story no chemistry nothing.

The only Final Fantasy I have never bothered to finish. Dull with no real story and no characters I really liked/hated. I had no reason to believe in their quest for "whatever it was they were doing". Interesting battle system and looked nice but that was it.

To put it simply, if storyline and music is the big thing for you in a RPG, you probably won't like it. Really can't believe this is a FF. Played them all from oiginal versions of North American FF2 onwards along with square's other popular RPG titles, FF12 is the only one that fails to get me hooked. 40+ hours in and I can still switch it off and walk away with little to no hesitation. Don't see why those popular sites gave it such high ratings. Maybe graphics makes up 80% of their final score. Whatever it may be, they valued battle system, graphics, and customization above storyline. Pop the disk in and you'll see a mix of in-game movie clips - that you will all see again during gameplay, and remix of classic FF themes - seemed so lazy. The intro movie was actually great, but once the game really starts with your main character, it's done. All the exceptional stuff people loved about the previous FF's - especially music, storyline, character development - nowhere to be found in this installment really. Even though each character only has 5 equipment slots, shopping for equipment will drive you crazy - A combination of mass swapping between menus and interfaces, exiting shop interface to open up menus. People that gets high over the ability to customize - like putting in a different color case for your gameboy ipod or the likes - are probably the ones loving the license idea. To me it makes every single character the same blank sheet. One is, and can be, exactly the same as the other. No uniqueness. They're all FF6 Gogo's. But to be fair, the idea of selling loots instead of picking up gil directly from monsters is interesting. Picking up special equipment by selling loot is great too. But if this thing costs more than twenty bucks... you might have more fun replaying the old FF you love instead. Coming from someone that thoroughly enjoyed every other piece of square's RPG from SNES days.… Expand

This was a terrible final fantasy got home after buying for 60 quid thought 2 myself the starts crap but it will pick up it never did terrible and the combat system is garbage auto running to the enemy when you even have long range weapons and summoning became pointless with the stupid quickenings bout a month later i went back to the same shop it was 20 quid square shot itself in the foot this time but i hope 13 is better.… Expand

It is one thing to be blinded by the pretty pictures, but the level of acclaim that this game has received is disconcerting. For one, it is such a vast departure from the series that one wonders how they justify giving the game the name "Final Fantasy," if not just to grant it a vehicle to sell the game. On another note, the game is, when not a blatant rip-off of FFXI in terms of in-game content (NMs, Elementals, condition-specific gear, etc etc) atrociously boring. There was never a moment when I ever felt completely in control of the action thanks to the modestly-tweaked FFXI battle system...only now there is no cooperation among other players, but (at best) a vague and frustrating AI system that only serves to strip the game's battles of what little strategy and challenge remained of the series since VIII. The narrative (or what little is present) sees fit to introduce characters with a modicum of back story, and then simply sets them loose to interact with other characters with no eye for development or growth. It is as if S-E had granted their audience a beautiful world, only to create characters as a secondary notion with grudging and haphazard acknowledgement of their necessity. We are granted snippets of scenarios which are supposed to come together to tell us what is happening in the world of the game. Instead, the "writers" have taken the more...unorthodox route of simply not caring. Villains are introduced and dispatched in behind-the-scene vingettes that supposedly add depth to the tale, yet serve only to confound and muddle the plot. Judges with no connection to the main characters are given screen time with no purpose than their removal in a later scene. Political intrigue, once the bread-and0butter of the FFT team, has been watered down and instead made into a series of unconnected events that could safely be removed from in game without the slightest effect on the story. And let's not forget the atrocious quality of the in-game dialogue! While the voice acting itself is superb, S-E has shown just how much regard they have for fans in the states with one of the worst-produced audio feeds in gaming history. Feedback, static and unintentional echos abound in a track so frought with errors that you would think they were transmitting a hidden signal to Saturn from our collective PS2s. Yes, a company that has so much advanced audio visual equipment at their disposal could only muster up as much during their year-long translation process. Another Post-Sakaguchi example of cultural disdain. Final Fantasy XII, at best, represents what is wrong with what S-E has become - experts at crafting a beautiful gift box, but unable to supply even the most trite novelty within. Whether it is running your auto-programmed characters through bland, uninspired missions or the fragmented manner in which they have presented their story, it is apparent that any hint of what made the series great is now gone, leaving it free to the more shallow fans of eye-candy and hype marketing to fill the void where once sat fans who appreciate quality.… Expand

Progress is a good thing - throwing random elements into a battle system and robbing it of any difficulty (aside from the annoyance you face when operating it) is not progress, it is laziness. SE, you can do far better than this, even if you have lost all of your real talent to MistWalker. I won't get into the story here, because others before me such as mdzN^^ and Jowy A. put it way better than I ever could.… Expand

Final Fantasy has been ruined by "Change". No break screen? Final Fantasy's signature is the "Break Screen". Without that it isnt Final Fantasy. It's just a Knock off Star Wars Game with a Poor Storyline. How can people like this crap. Don't let good graphics blind your judgment.

If you have never played an FF before, you will like this game. If you have, you will probably hate it. If you have played ALL the FFs, you might like this game just for the sake of change. Overall, bad story, you don't care about your characters. They are all near-clones of each other so there is no identity. Gameplay is decent but magic and summons are underpowered to the point of uselessness. It's like an offline MMORPG.… Expand

I don't want to seem like I just hate the newer Final Fantasy games, but honestly, I really don't know how this game got the high scores that it did. Sure, the game is presented beautifully, but after a few hours in, this game begins to fall apart. The cast of characters in this game is definitely the worst of all Final Fantasy games. No one has a personality. If I had to choose a person who came closest to having one it would maybe be Balthier. Everyone's emotions for doing something in the story are told to you, either by the characters themselves or the narrator. No one actually makes you feel for their cause through their own expressed emotions or actions. As for the story itself... it seems like there's this big conflict going on in Ivalice, yet the characters are running back and forth in the desert, having no part of it. The music in this game starts off strong, but after playing the game for a while, they all seem to blend together and end up just as dull and lifeless as the characters and story. The graphics are its only high point, which are exceptional for a PlayStation 2 game. The new battle system they added is an iffy one, considering that you can get the game to essentially play itself. However, it was an interesting addition, but I feel that the Active Time Battle was fine, so there was no reason to fix/change it. The license system however, is just... awful. It gives you no sense of direction at all, so you could end up wasting points early on in the game that could affect the development of your characters abilities early on in the game. Arguably, Final Fantasy XII is the worst game in the series. (Final Fantasy XIII is a contender as well)… Expand

As a big Final Fantasy fan (played most including XI which is fairly similar to this game), I found XII to be very disappointing. What makes the auto-attack feature in XI tolerable is that the fun comes with playing and cooperating with other players and micromanaging other tasks rather than the basic attack. XII being a single player game lacks any of those other elements but keeps the battle system which requires very little to no input for your average random encounter (which there is ALOT of everywhere in between the cut scenes)

While the story had potential the characters for the most part (except Basch) were extremely boring and uninteresting, Vaan is by far the worst main character in FF history.

The License system (similar to the grid system in X) is a mess where players need to not only spend their points to unlock abilities, spells, and equipment but must also find a locations that sells that particular item or ability or whatever, and also have the gil to spend across many different characters. What ends up happening is needing to grind ALOT through extremely uninteresting battles that require little to no input. While every FF game has grinding, in this game it is excruciatingly boring.

My advice is if you want to play a game similar to this one and have a PS3, pick up White Knight Chronicles, which while is not a perfect game by any means (pretty weak story) the gameplay is at least much more fun than how XII set it up. If you really want to stick with Final Fantasy pick up XI or XII:Revenant wings, XI essentially plays like XII: Online (read: fun) while revenant wings is a completely different game style that retains the same characters (also pretty fun).

Avoid this game unless you're an absolute die hard FF fan, I've played through 3 5 7 8 10 11 and 13 and could barely play through12.… Expand

As a critic, I take pride in keeping an open mind, but games like this discourage me. I won't say this game is awful because at its core is the makings of the decent role playing game. Memorable characters, a unique landscape, and a plotline. But what earned this game a 4 is what it lacks. The classic battle system is gone. The new one is rubbish. the weapon proficiencies always end badly, and lead to overpowering players. It also has a horrible soundtrack compared to the earlier games in the genre. By far the worst thing about this game is the length. It really starts to get boring after 200 hours of playtime. If you plan on playing the game, I encourage you. Try it. maybe you will find something that I missed in the endless void that is Final Fantasy 12… Expand

This game = horrible! Vaan, can anyone say Tidus? Actually, the even lamer version of Tidus... WTF is up with the gambit system? I would rather play some stupid hack n slash where I mash a button, as opposed to running around doing nothing but watching animations on screen. I didn't get far enough into it to know where the story goes, nor do I really care. The gameplay is just so stupid and boring that I just can't immerse myself into the story. By the time I get to the next cut-scene, dialogue, etc, I am so bored that I am more worried about finding a save point (just in case I get bored enough to try and play this again) than pay any attention to what any of these people have to say. FF XIII, same thing, a button masher disguised as a 'fast-paced turn based system'. Square, rid yourself of that disease known as Enix, and please have some sense in creating the great games you were once known for! If you really want to change your battle system, take notes from the Shadow Hearts franchise. Those games had by far the best turn based mechanics, EVER! Not the dumbed down 'play the game for you' mechanics of this trash!… Expand

I played final fantasy tactics and no other final fantasy games. I was very impressed with this game for the first 20 hours or so, but then the monotony got to me. All you do is go to a new area, beat up everything, kill the boss and get new weapons. For all the strategies suggested online - throw them away! Just hit everything until it dies. In a word: boring.

Excellent graphics, and the grid system adds a level of customization to characters. The world has very good looking and very varied looks. FFXII does a lot of things better than any JRPG before, however it is very lacking in the most important area: Story. The characters are uninteresting, unmotivated, and bizarrely uninvolved.

The gameplay is very boring. If you're playing the game right, how it wants you to, you're not doing anything but watching your characters. A huge dissappointment.

This game was just terrible. Simple. There is no awesome nemesis, no interesting main character (ok, Vaan is the main character but he's just not memorable or has anything about him remotely... interesting), and no involving storyline. The rest of the final fantasy series has always been original, involving and epic, but this seemed to go for epic and ignore the rest. I must admit i gave up after about 14 hours of gameplay because it just wasn't fun. If by 14 hours your playing a game that just seems a chore, thats a pretty strong singla your wasting your time. It's got good graphics though, which is pretty much the only benefit. One more thing! You get all the characters so early, there just doesn't seem anything to work for. I don't get what Square Enix was doing making this, it was embarrasing.… Expand

This game sucked and is probably the worst out of the other ones... first off turn based hello I don't wanna end up walking around and just clicking one button and watching a useless and boring combat system... SE I had high hopes for you but you created a piece of crap I hope FF13 is a huge improvement over this garbage

Maybe now that the undeserving hype has died down, we can start seeing some realistic reviews on this crap game - I mean even the producer offered an apology for the nearly non-existent story, citing development time constraints! If a bunch of static, uninteresting characters standing around shouting their first, middle, and last names at each other repeatedly is your idea of "epic" writing, then FFXII is the game for you. If, however, you're not a Squeenix zombie and actually have a brain in your head, then stay far, far away from this RPG beta. Epic...right. A dead person could have written a better story.… Expand

This game is a disgrace to all of the other final fantasy games that came before,every thing about this game is just completly awfu! Ever since suare soft ceased to be the producer of final fantasy games and allowed Square Enix to take over every thing about Final Fantasy went straight down the F!%$@#G toilet.At first I thought that final fantasy X-2 was the worst...but I was F*&%$#@G wrong wasn't I.Final Fantasy X-2 was one of the worst Final Fantasy games ever made but it is still a million times better than Final Fantasy XIII.No one can ever deny that the best Final Fantasy games in the world were the ones produced by SQARE SOFT for the play station one.This game is so horrible that I am not even going to bother write a detailed review about it,all you need to know is to stay as far away from this game as possible and do not buy it because it is a waste of money.… Expand

To be perfectly frank, if this WASN'T a Final Fantasy title, I wouldn't have rated it so low. Bearing the name Final Fantasy comes with a lot of responsibility... responsibilities this game just couldn't shoulder. It tried to stray too far from the classic Final Fantasy form and I felt alienated and bewildered. The story is convoluted and terrible. None of the characters, try as I might, were likable in the slightest. The battles are engaging and exciting for a time, but I felt bogged down by the gambit customizing and, 40 hours in I had already maxed my favorite characters out to the point where they were literally carbon copies of each other. The graphics, however, are absolutely incredible. Square definitely outdid themselves in that regard. But I'm glad to see that Square wised up and took XII as a lesson on what NOT to keep producing for the Final Fantasy franchise. This would have been a pretty decent game, if it weren't for the Final Fantasy title it so wrongfully holds.… Expand

It looks like a Final Fantasy game, but it plays like an unfinished piece of crap. Production values don't mean anything when even the simplest task involves 200 steps. To start with, the save game system is as clunky as ever, which you'd think they would want to fix. Second the battle system is great at having your character standing around and getting killed, which happened to me before I even got to the first save spot. Just try to run away from a combat, I dare you. I regularly end up with 6 or 7 monsters chasing me and they are faster than you. Your only hope is to cross the all-too-frequent load border, then have you wait 2 minutes to start running again. The character models in game look like dirt has been smeared all over their faces, and frankly I just found myself saying "I hate this game" over and over again. Dragon Quest 8 waqs the pinnacle of console RPG, and the Final Fantasy crew ought to play it to understand where they fall flat on their faces.… Expand

This is not Final Fantasy. There's no story! Don't get me wrong...the gameplay is absolutely fantastic, the graphics are wonderful, and for the first time I actually had fun in battle. Unfortunately, Square-Enix put all its energy into gameplay and scenery and not enough heart into the reason we all play RPG's - for the story! There's no character development whatsoever, and the majority of the game is spent killing monsters and level grinding rather than uncovering a plot. After awhile, it becomes more work and less play. It is a good game, but it is not Final Fantasy material. I am very dissappointed.… Expand

I am sad to say it but this game sucks. I have been a finalfantisy fan since the start on the old nes! I really hate the battle mode why fix something that was never broken. you almost always get killed before you can save. just don't get this game.

I was so excited to get my hands on the game that took square enix 6 years to create. 6 f'n years!!!... When all i got was a game being to serious about itself...kind of similar to the tv show Friends... but with all gay guys. In fact, I don't think i found myself even smiling at one point... Ya, of course the graphics where fanomonal, but give me 6 years and I could create a game just as well. Sad to say... that this is my least favorite FF game ever.… Expand

The graphics in this game were excellent. The battle system was passable. Unfortunately, the story and general atmosphere of the game was just boring, to bad those are the reasons I play Final Fantasy games. The characters were poorly developed and some lacked motivation to be there in the first place. I understood what was going on in the world but I simply did not care. Overall the game lacked the originality and emotional ties to characters that I am used to in Final Fantasy games.… Expand

The camera sucks and the battle system is stupid. I wish they would have made it more like FFX.

Everything about this game speaks of mediocrity. I've tried to play this game three times and it is simply impossible to do. I was a huge final fantasy fan and I picked this game up on it's release and played for a few hours before becoming disappointed and not touching it for a year. I tried again and struggled up to the Stillshrine of Merriam where I simply couldn't get any further because I didn't grind. I picked it up again and March to play through because I simply wondered if I did not give this game a fair try. I spent hours grinding in the Lhusu mines and didn't struggle any longer but then of course it just became so boring. I'll try to give a run down of what I experienced in my last game.

The characters were indeed as bad I remembered, Vaan is in the top 10 of worst video game characters PERIOD. No one on the cast was really likable as none of them have any development. Baltheir, the character many cite as the best, is little more than a generic jerk. It's clear that Bashe was intended to be the main character at one point and when they scrapped that for Vaan they were unable to fix the dialogue and characters before releasing the game. The bad guys get multiple times more character development than the characters you use do.

The combat is BORING. You don't actually do much of anything you sit there and watch your character do all the work. There are no interesting abilities, gone are monk, dragoon and other abilities you might be familiar with and instead you get 3 abilities you need a math degree to use properly and another "dark" attack that takes health to use which is basically juts an auto attack. In fact magic is gimped in a variety of was, the biggest being you don't get the gambits you need for it until the end of the game. Because magic is gimped what you get is a "tank" a melee attacker and a healer which is quite boring. And for a game that has a "aggro" mechanic it's terrible, you have no way to control it until you get decoy which is just a spell you're going to have one of your characters spam on your tank every time it runs out which automatically makes him have all the aggro. The story seems confused and disjointed. It starts out with a good back drop but then stagnates. FFXII all but lacks the epic sceenes and emotional story twists one would come to expect from this series. It didn't help that some environments like the Sand Sea were so pointlessly huge that by the time you got to your destination you could forget why you were going there in the first place.

Grinding, why would they go back to this? I didn't play any other RPG on the PS or the PS2 that required me to grind. Why after 7, 8, 9, and 10 would they go back to the SNES era of grinding in order to progress?

I've never made it past the Stillshrine of Merriam it simply becomes impossible to care about getting further the combat is pointlessly boring, the story moves slower than a snail, and I really don't care what happens to any of these characters. This game is one of the biggest disappointments in the history of gaming, by no strech of logic can I understand how this game has such a high score. I started this review calling it mediocre and it is, but for a game so boring and pointlessly long that I can't even complete this game deserves the low score I'm giving it.… Expand