The Moment of Truth

[Earnest]

I won the game at Level 40, which is not high at all. There was one period where I did have a long train, and that was early on as I was excited with my new batches of weapons and I was in the Ogir Sand Sea, which is a mad training place.

I agree with Sanity. Final Fantasy XII is the best PS2 voice acted game I've ever played. And graphically, the best PS2 game I've seen (though SOTC comes close).

If you can tell me that the voice acting by Baltheir, Basch, Gabranth and the Judges and Larsa is bad, then you are wrong (lol). Every characters voice suits their character. Take Fran and Vaan for example. The voices seem to be really well suited to the characters, based on their appearance and character.

[Tidus1979]

Quote:You know those are all the things I hated about 12. The voice work was done by play actors that don't know how to voice act, the graphics just weren't good (even in comparison of older PS2 games), the art style was okay at best(better than other FFs but lamer than other RPGs).

Wow, I thought that I was the only one who thought that post was all wrong.

[dark_mullet]

Earnest Wrote:If you can tell me that the voice acting by Baltheir, Basch, Gabranth and the Judges and Larsa is bad, then you are wrong (lol). Every characters voice suits their character. Take Fran and Vaan for example. The voices seem to be really well suited to the characters, based on their appearance and character.

Absolutely, I completely agree that the voices were suited perfectly. The English Casting Director certainly nailed it when it came to that.

But I'm talking about the actual acting itself, which wasn't that good. You could tell these people were Play Actors, not voice actors. I can use two things for comparison.

In Transformers, Hugo Weaving was the voice of MEgatron. Now, I think Hugo is one of the greatest actors around right now. But his voice acting was over-shadowed by Chris Adler (Starscream in the movie), who has been a voice actor his whole life. Even though he only had two lines, Starscream's voice had way more emotion, ferocity, and sounded snide. Whereas Megatron just sounded 'mean'.

Another comparison would be coming from Del Toro. He described how Ron Pearlmen knows exactly how to act in make-up. You could put the best actor in the world in make-up and they wouldn't be as good as Ron Pearlman is because it's not what they're used to.

So while everyone in the game had a fantastic voice (something you really need in stage performance), I can't help but feel like there was more performance behind the microphone than through their mouth.

Now certainly that doesn't ring true for everyone in the game. Balthier was great voice acting without a doubt. Basch was good. And Fran I WANT to say was good, but she just sounds so much like a parody of Keira Knightly it's a little distracting.

Cid and Basch's brother also fall into the great voice acting bracket.

[Lotus]

Earnest Wrote:I won the game at Level 40, which is not high at all. There was one period where I did have a long train, and that was early on as I was excited with my new batches of weapons and I was in the Ogir Sand Sea, which is a mad training place.

I agree with Sanity. Final Fantasy XII is the best PS2 voice acted game I've ever played. And graphically, the best PS2 game I've seen (though SOTC comes close).

If you can tell me that the voice acting by Baltheir, Basch, Gabranth and the Judges and Larsa is bad, then you are wrong (lol). Every characters voice suits their character. Take Fran and Vaan for example. The voices seem to be really well suited to the characters, based on their appearance and character.

Albeit some of the voices were quite comical

EDIT!!!: "I won the game at lvl 40"? I had to stop myself from choking on my Cherry Coke with that coming from you Earnest >.>

[Tidus1979]

Quote:In Transformers, Hugo Weaving was the voice of MEgatron. Now, I think Hugo is one of the greatest actors around right now. But his voice acting was over-shadowed by Chris Adler (Starscream in the movie), who has been a voice actor his whole life. Even though he only had two lines, Starscream's voice had way more emotion, ferocity, and sounded snide. Whereas Megatron just sounded 'mean'.

FFXII is a F'ing Video Game!!!! Not a movie!!!

[Sanity]

in case you missed it, I answered your questions on the previous page Mullet. have at it.

Lotus Wrote:I had to stop myself from choking on my Cherry Coke

a coke girl? yuck.

pepsi 4 life.

[Tidus1979]

Quote:in case you missed it, I answered your questions on the previous page Mullet. have at it.

Same here.

[dark_mullet]

Sanity Wrote:The voice acting is leaps and bounds better than what was on the market as well.

It's lower quality than any of the Metal Gears, Xenosagas, in fact I can't think of any mainstream PS2 game off the top of my head with lower voice acting aside from FF10.

Quote:That's character development.

No, that's generic J-RPG treatment. That's not character development at all.

And you just reiterated my point. You picked up Shakespear and expected Homer. Just because MacBeth didn't fight a giant monster or lose his entire crew doesn't mean he didn't have character development.

Quote:you really going to use that as the end all, be all to your argument?

I'm just using your own argument. You pulled the "we all don't like it" card before I did.

And judging by User Ratings on various internet sites, the majority of people do NOT hate the game.

[Tidus1979]

We just said, what you had said, was crap. The things we had named that were good, you said that they were bad. But it takes more than

Quote:Voice work, graphics, art style, all top notch

to be good.

Yes they help but, what's really is important is

Quote:pacing, characters, and story

and if you don't have those, then a game will fail miserably. And in this case, Final Fantasy XII did. (and also they made you train entirely too much and that didn't help.)

[Sanity]

Quote:The story is more about nations and events than people, so while it makes sense that Final Fantasy XII’s characters are underdeveloped, it doesn’t stop it from being unsatisfying. Many of the story’s other characters are more interesting than the ones you’ll actually control, as your characters’ motivations are thin to non-existent. For example, Vaan, despite being the “main” character, is apparently just along for the ride. While this does result in fewer cutscenes, the game lacks the memorable emotional core of recent entries in the series.

Despite the elaborate setup, the story is surprisingly straightforward and unsatisfying in the end, but the extensive, exquisitely-translated dialogue delays this realization until the end. There is an awful lot of talk of politics and planning, but it’s mostly backdrop and rarely affects you or your actions.

Quote:The big problem with FF12 is that the developers really focused all their attention…on the wrong areas. Here we have a game with a gigantic, amazing-looking world, with lots of quests to participate in, as well as a very fun battle system that makes the gameplay incredibly addictive. But under this, there's nothing but emptiness. FF12 completely fails in plot, character, and world development. They filled this world up with tons and tons of locations, but none of them are ever of any importance! They set up some great characters, but none of them are given any time to develop. They set up a pretty decent storyline, only to have it be completely abandoned for hours and hours and its interesting ideas completely go to waste. Nothing in this plot is developed at all, and we end up with characters and situations that just go nowhere.

Quote:I remember that chill that went up my spine when Sephiroth first said, “I'm going to see my mother.” I remember the magnificent sense of achievement and pride when Cecil shed his Dark Knight roots to become a Paladin. I remember the overwhelming revelations as Squall and his friends began to recover their repressed memories. But you'll find none of that in Final Fantasy XII. Instead of plot twists that reveal information about the protagonists or show their growth as individuals, the storyline primarily deals in the shifting political tides between opposing governments. In this regard, the story is very much like that of Final Fantasy Tactics, which touted much of the same creative team. While Tactics' story was nearly incomprehensible by its end, XII does keep its political intrigue to a reasonable level of murkiness; however, this is simply no substitute for good old-fashioned character development.

Quote:. FFXII was actually the first game in which I honestly didn't care who was in my party at any given time; not only did I lack attachment to the characters for story reasons, but their play mechanics were nearly identical.

Quote:I salute Square for making a technically masterful game that attempts to address many of the long-criticized holdover elements from previous Final Fantasy games. I appreciate their attention to detail and their painstaking efforts to create a battle system that redefines the role-playing genre, although imperfectly so. But despite these achievements, I mourn the loss of what used to make the series great—the spirit of great storytelling through great characters. Combined with a lack of aesthetic ingenuity, I fear that the soul of Final Fantasy has finally left the series

Quote:The story (many describe it as boring) relates to political intrigue rather than inter-personal relationships. Rather than an overarching nemesis, the plot takes you through the motivations of countries and individuals of power. If this if your thing, you might dig it. If not, you'll find it bland.

Expect next to zero character development. If you hear something mentioned about character motivations, expect it to be forgotten shortly. Vaan, the main character has a strong motivation to become a sky pirate and steal from his oppressors. After mentioning sky pirate and airships a few times, this is quickly forgotten. And looting from his oppressors soon becomes forgotten, too. Penelo... seems to have absolutely no purpose. She seems to make an occasional comment from time to time that has little bearing other than to make Penelo converse with other characters.

Quote:One thing to remember about this story is that it is not a character-driven story like so many Final Fantasies of the past. This story is about the politics of 2 empires and the small kingdom of Dalmasca that is caught in between it all.

Quote:It feels like Square put so much time into making the game pretty they forgot about what makes it Final Fantasy. They added so much frustration into a game that need not be there, and strayed from the great stories that made them the pinnacle of RPG in my opinion. Anybody can have a bad guy, but you need to hate him and care about your good guys to really get into a story. This game had a forgettable cast, boring plot, and an anti-climactic and predictable ending. There was less character development in these 6 main characters than you had in 14 for FFVI. There were no powerful scenes like the wedding in FFX, the opera in FFVI, or Cloud finding himself in FFVII. There was no love story like Tidus/Yuna, no character turnaround like Golbez on the moon. I can replay IV, VI, VII, X and X-2 endlessly because of their stories and how they touch me. When this game ended, I turned it off and never picked it up again. I found it boring, and though I love FF and square, I feel like they really dropped the ball here.

Quote:However, that's about it; the story is limited to empire building and eventual destruction. The villains of the story get little time on-screen and their reasons for taking over the world (yawn) are left vague and rather undeveloped. The story reaches its natural end after about 35hrs of gameplay and is very reminiscent of FFVIII in that the game is clearly focused on the battle system, graphics and gameplay. It's arguable that it's hard-to-follow too, as you go from place to place it's hard to be really sure of its relevance in game; whether it's a member of the Archadian Empire, a Dalmascan ally or whether it's a filler town that they often use just a re-grouping point between places (the route to Archades being a good example) I also didn't like the re-manufacturing of Magicite and the crystal structure as seen in FFXI – it stinks of unoriginality and shows a lack of forward-thinking. Surely it can't have been that hard to come up with a new concept?

Quote:In fact, what I'm most disappointed about here is that Ashe, the centerpiece of the story, evokes NO emotion. She might as well be a robot. Power this. Revenge that. Nethicite this. Get kingdom back that. And while Balthier and Fran have quite a few enjoyable lines, they, and the other two characters (Basch and Penelo) have next to no development. Hell, Penelo, who was supposed to be Vaan's friend all through childhood (think of Tifa to Cloud), she has more dialogue narrating a two-minute ending than she does for the ENTIRE DURATION OF THE GAME.

Quote:Seriously, the story--the heart and soul of any good RPG just wasn't here.

Quote:Pros:
-Voice Acting is top-notch
-Excellent voiced and written scripts
-Artistic direction is conceptually realistic
-Innovative game-play
-Boss battles are the most fun of any recently released RPG
-Strong exploration element; Ivalice feels genuinely vast and diverse
-A solid cast of characters... no character has a grating or inconsistent persona
-The best end-game sequence of any FF

Cons:
-Story pacing could have been more consistent
-Developers missed opportunities to enhance character interaction

Quote:I was appalled. Whatever character development you are looking for from Vaan, the main character, you will miss out terribly on. Not only this, but it seems as if he contributes next to nothing to the ending of the story, if not the entire story in general, which is not how I define what a "Main Character" is.

Quote:To make matters worse, character development is practically nonexistent; it's hard to tell why some of the six companions you control are even there. While there are a couple characters that are naturally cool (like the sky pirate Balthier), I found upon completing the story that I was really didn't care all that much about any of them. Despite these issues, the story does have some very bright points (it closes very strong, which is always important), and the bits of significant story dispersed here and there are most certainly interesting. It is these points which save the story from being completely average.