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FF12 definitely had instances where you could get weapons you shouldn't have yet, Zodiac Spear being the most famous example. You could try some hunts at low levels too, I got the Gilgamesh equipment earlier than you're supposed to but it took some effort.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:09
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Yeah, I definitely did the Zodiac Spear but that came a lot later than I would've liked, to be honest. If it were up to me, poo poo, I'd potentially be able to obtain that spear the second I got to the first desert, haha. It would of course have to be an uphill grind battle like a motherfucker, but still, that's the kind of option I like having available.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:10
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:FF12 definitely had instances where you could get weapons you shouldn't have yet, Zodiac Spear being the most famous example. You could try some hunts at low levels too, I got the Gilgamesh equipment earlier than you're supposed to but it took some effort. Yeah, if you have a guide to help you out, you can easily break the game early on. Before you even get party members beyond Vaan, you can: -Grab a rod (33 power) from a random chest with a very good chance of spawning. -Repeatedly kill a rare undead mob with phoenix downs for easy levels. -Steal a gladius (45 power, wind element) from another easy rare mob. -Kill werewolves (you know, the big mean guys that you're not supposed to be able to kill at all) for more levels and a kotetsu (50 power) -Get to level 30 before you pick up more party members, making the rest of your party level 31 and 32. By the time you have a full party you're supposed to be level ~15 and have weapons slightly weaker than the rod you picked up at the start. And then once you're done with Raithwall you can go grab the Zodiac Spear and the game is over.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:15
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You can grind to high levels early on FF12. You just chain Dustias for many hours, and everyone joins at whatever level Vaan is at.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:17
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Okay, I can see where you guys are coming from. It doesn't change the fact that I think it's a really ugly game with really crappy music. This is coming from someone who grinds FF6 in the path to the ancient ruins specifically because it has pretty music; it's not even a very efficient grind area.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:26
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The White Dragon posted:Okay, I can see where you guys are coming from. You think FF12 is an ugly game?
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Jul 16, 2012 20:29
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The White Dragon posted:Okay, I can see where you guys are coming from. Yeah, FF12 is like the first Final Fantasy game ever that has lovely music. Up until that point, one of the primary selling points to those games was really really great music. It's not the first game that wasn't primarily composed by Nobuo Uematsu (Naoshi Mizuta did most of XI) but XII was done almost entire by Hitoshi Sakimoto, who did Tactics Advance, and it shows. I think FFXII has great visuals, though. Although I don't really care for the character models - there is something weird about their faces. And costumes.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:39
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Aside from a few areas (and cities, I guess), the only stunning thing about FF12 is (some) of the character models. Most areas are pretty ugly.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:40
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TurnipFritter posted:You think FF12 is an ugly game? Yes, I do. I made a huge derail about it earlier, I won't go into the specifics but yes, I think it's really, really ugly and visually disengaging.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:40
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The White Dragon posted:It doesn't change the fact that I think it's a really ugly game with really crappy music.  Man, what the hell are you talking about? The art direction is phenomenal, and while the music isn't terribly memorable (even I'd rate it on the lower end of the chart for FF music, and I'm a huge fanboy of it), it still has some amazing tracks in it.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:42
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It feels like you're cherry picking and finding things to bitch about here. Originally, you said that FFXII was hard to play because of the story. Then I brought up how the story is such a small part of the game, that shouldn't matter; then it was the gameplay, then the character progression, and now you bring up the visuals and music.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:46
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Gammatron 64 posted:Yeah, FF12 is like the first Final Fantasy game ever that has lovely music. Up until that point, one of the primary selling points to those games was really really great music. You guys are seriously way too harsh on FF12's Soundtrack. To say that its music is "different", sure. "unmemorable", possibly. "not your favorite", subjective... But to define it as lovely and really crappy? What the?! Giza Plains and Dalmascan Desert, The Empires Theme, Rabanastre, Esper and Boss Fight Themes, just to name a few. Not to mention probably the best renditions of The Clash on the Big Bridge and the Crystal Theme (from the opening) that the series has ever done. There is seriously a ton of really stellar orchestral tracks in FF12.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:47
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Happy Blue Cow posted:You guys are seriously way too harsh on FF12's Soundtrack. Final Fantasy XII does indeed have the best rendition of The Prologue.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:50
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Clash on the Big Bridge was epitomized in XIII-2, actually. As for the rest of its soundtrack, the biggest problem is that it sorta fades into the background. It either sounds like something out of Star Wars, or it's superceded by character's voices and battle and such that you barely hear any of it. And what you do hear isn't particularly interesting, nor memorable.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:51
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Himuro posted:Final Fantasy XII does indeed have the best rendition of The Prologue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM7MGqzekFU 
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Jul 16, 2012 20:52
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Azure_Horizon posted:Clash on the Big Bridge was epitomized in XIII-2, actually. As for the rest of its soundtrack, the biggest problem is that it sorta fades into the background. It either sounds like something out of Star Wars, or it's superceded by character's voices and battle and such that you barely hear any of it. And what you do hear isn't particularly interesting, nor memorable. FFXII's soundtrack is great while playing the game. It's not my favorite ost to listen to, but it offers fantastic ambiance while playing. I love the music in the intro fmv. http://youtu.be/3CDzjsmgqVk How can anyone hate it? 
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Jul 16, 2012 20:53
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edit: sorry, double post.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:54
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Azure_Horizon posted:Clash on the Big Bridge was epitomized in XIII-2, actually. Man, you're crazy. XII's is far superior. Or maybe I'm just upset because Gilgamesh cheats in that game. 
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Jul 16, 2012 20:55
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Himuro posted:It feels like you're cherry picking and finding things to bitch about here. Originally, you said that FFXII was hard to play because of the story. Then I brought up how the story is such a small part of the game, that shouldn't matter; then it was the gameplay, then the character progression, and now you bring up the visuals and music. It feels that way but I did mention prior to this that I find the maps ugly and dull and far too extensive for their own good. There's a difference between expansive and huge and packed full of cool and weird poo poo to find, and expansive for the sake of feeling large. FF12 falls into the latter category, and this only stresses my already poor opinion of its environments and aesthetics. It's a study in bad level design.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:55
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Himuro posted:FFXII's soundtrack is great while playing the game. It's not my favorite ost to listen to, but it offers fantastic ambiance while playing. That's easily its greatest negative. I can't pop on the soundtrack and be like "oh hey that was Giza Plains". It doesn't work outside of the game, and even inside of the game a lot of the tracks just kinda blend together into mediocrity. I didn't think XII's Clash on the Big Bridge was all that great compared to the original or XIII-2's, which had the gall to go with completely different instruments and rock the poo poo out of it. Azure_Horizon fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Jul 16, 2012 |
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Jul 16, 2012 20:55
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Whilst I enjoyed the XII OST, the only song I can honestly remember from it is Ozmone Plains, excluding the remixes of Clash/Prologue, etc. It's ambient, but not at all memorable.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:59
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Happy Blue Cow posted:You guys are seriously way too harsh on FF12's Soundtrack. I'm not sure if the Prologue, Clash on the Big Bridge and Crystal Theme count because they weren't exactly composed for it. I do like Giza Plains as the Boss Music, but you pretty much listed all the good songs from the whole game. The rest are subpar. I don't think FFXII is a bad game. It's not. It's just not particularly great, either. It's pretty meh. It doesn't deserve a lot of hate, but I don't find much to love about it, either. The story is nothing special, the music isn't that great, the visuals are nothing special, and the gameplay is highly subjective and how good it is depends on who you ask.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:59
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The White Dragon posted:It feels that way but I did mention prior to this that I find the maps ugly and dull and far too extensive for their own good. There's a difference between expansive and huge and packed full of cool and weird poo poo to find, and expansive for the sake of feeling large. FF12 falls into the latter category, and this only stresses my already poor opinion of its environments and aesthetics. It's a study in bad level design. I actually kind of agree with this, but at the same time I don't. I used to dislike the map size, now I love it, and find that FFXII has tons of secrets jam packed, must of which are fun to find and this is attributed mostly to map size and the scale of the exploration. Ultimately, FFXII is just one big dungeon crawl which is why I like it. Azure_Horizon posted:That's easily its greatest negative. I can't pop on the soundtrack and be like "oh hey that was Giza Plains". It doesn't work outside of the game, and even inside of the game a lot of the tracks just kinda blend together into mediocrity. I'm not sure if I could call that mediocrity because the music is far from mediocre. It's something prominent with a lot of Sakimoto soundtracks, depending on the game. I can say the same is true for a lot of his Matsuno games, FFT included. If that's mediocre to you, I don't know what to say. It's definitely better arranged than Uematsu's offerings, it's just that it lacks a giant emphasis on melodic elements, if we're talking purely technical musical terms which Uematsu has a hard on for, given his lack of skill in well arranged tracks. I personally think FFXII has a lot of iconic tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIkYOR5kgxM Jupiter Jazz fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Jul 16, 2012 |
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Jul 16, 2012 21:01
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FF12's "dungeon crawl" aspect would be interesting were it more visually arresting, like say SMT: Nocturne. The cel-shading and muted lighting made the dungeon crawling in that game much more interesting. Only a couple areas could be called bland, and the art design carried the rest.
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Jul 16, 2012 21:08
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I didn't really like XII either, but I don't know why. Maybe it was just the slow pacing. I think part of the problem was that I tried to keep all six party members evenly leveled and fully-equipped, and consequently spent all my time chaining mobs for gil and being underleveled and underpowered in the latest dungeon the plot had led me to.
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Jul 16, 2012 21:09
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Azure_Horizon posted:FF12's "dungeon crawl" aspect would be interesting were it more visually arresting, like say SMT: Nocturne. The cel-shading and muted lighting made the dungeon crawling in that game much more interesting. Only a couple areas could be called bland, and the art design carried the rest. Eh, I find the game very visually interesting. I love the architecture, the vistas, the landscapes, the character designs. The entire world really appeals to me aesthetically. I guess I can understand not liking the environmental design because a lot of the textures are repeated over and over, but it's not like FFXIII doesn't suffer from the same problem. Both XII and XIII are visually flat and boring compared to their forebears in terms of environment design. I prefer XII's aesthetic more than XIII's if we have to pick favorites however. The great thing about XII's world is that it invokes the idea that this is a land with thousands of years of history. I never got that with XIII. I love places like Raithwall and that gray place I don't remember the name of that had the invisible doors. Those were inviting, interesting places with a lot of mystery. I don't think I can say that about any FFXIII location. Jupiter Jazz fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jul 16, 2012 |
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Jul 16, 2012 21:13
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKebU_3JFrQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xri_gNuZqIo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgvaZ1F7Ox8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XygkIvA5B0Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qQm3kaxfl4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qq2U6W-NbY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWgc1pSMCMw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjP6z0YOlSA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhPYVTlMuxM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13GyoLq_4dw Listen to all of these and say FF12 music is bad and get kicked out of the people who know what there talking about club forever and then go to hell nene. fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Jul 16, 2012 |
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Jul 16, 2012 21:28
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From what I've seen of it in Theatrhythm, the music is pretty good. Very Star Wars-y though, and I wouldn't say it's as "catchy" as other games' music.
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Jul 16, 2012 21:41
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nene. posted:Listen to all of these and say FF12 music is bad and get kicked out of the people who know what there talking about club forever and then go to hell See the thing is there's all kinds of complex poo poo going on in these songs but it really isn't for video games. The human brain can process about four, five layers of music at once; this has eight or ten at least, and you're playing a video game so fat chance that you can even do the four or five you get when you're just listening to music without anything else going on in the back and way having too many layers for the brain to process actually can create a psychological effect where it becomes cacophanous. They might be successful pieces on their own, but for their purpose, they are abysmal failures.
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Jul 16, 2012 21:45
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I find Sakimoto's music works better with slower-paced games like the FFT, Ogre, and Vakyria Chronicles series. I love his music, though, so I'm biased when I say that FFXII's soundtrack wasn't as bad as others in this thread are saying it is.
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Jul 16, 2012 22:02
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XIII is a lot more distinguished visually than XII, by virtue of having more creative and imaginative environment design. Despite its linearity, places like Lake Bresha, the Gapra Whitewood, the Sunleth Waterscape, Oerba, and the Yaschas Massif/Archylte Steppe, not to mention the final dungeon, are full of visual pizzazz that XII lacks due to mostly being covered in brown and orange. There are dull moments in XIII's settings, but the places that stand out blew me away much like IX did in 2000.
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Jul 16, 2012 22:08
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The White Dragon posted:See the thing is there's all kinds of complex poo poo going on in these songs but it really isn't for video games. The human brain can process about four, five layers of music at once; this has eight or ten at least, and you're playing a video game so fat chance that you can even do the four or five you get when you're just listening to music without anything else going on in the back and way having too many layers for the brain to process actually can create a psychological effect where it becomes cacophanous. They might be successful pieces on their own, but for their purpose, they are abysmal failures. I don't really agree that they are that complex and the themes seem to fit most of the visuals pretty well. FFXII has it's faults but the music is generally solid and neatly suits the various environments. I worry that we'll never see another JRPG with the kind of world building in FFXII and that's a shame because it had some really interesting exploration elements more akin to western themed RPGs.
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Jul 16, 2012 22:09
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Azure_Horizon posted:XIII is a lot more distinguished visually than XII, by virtue of having more creative and imaginative environment design. Despite its linearity, places like Lake Bresha, the Gapra Whitewood, the Sunleth Waterscape, Oerba, and the Yaschas Massif/Archylte Steppe, not to mention the final dungeon, are full of visual pizzazz that XII lacks due to mostly being covered in brown and orange. There are dull moments in XIII's settings, but the places that stand out blew me away much like IX did in 2000. I have to agree with this, especially the part about Lake Bresha. I recently replayed the game (lost my data some time ago), and after taking the time to look around I realized the attention to detail was impressive. The last dungeon gave me a huge headache both times I played through it, though. Something about all that poo poo moving around in the background, combined with the white-pink/purple motif really screwed with my head. It kind of makes me glad that the last area with all the Wladislaus gets locked out, because I don't know if I could deal with grinding in such a head-busting location.
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Jul 16, 2012 22:25
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Himuro posted:I'm not sure if I could call that mediocrity because the music is far from mediocre. It's something prominent with a lot of Sakimoto soundtracks, depending on the game. I can say the same is true for a lot of his Matsuno games, FFT included. If that's mediocre to you, I don't know what to say. It's definitely better arranged than Uematsu's offerings, it's just that it lacks a giant emphasis on melodic elements, if we're talking purely technical musical terms which Uematsu has a hard on for, given his lack of skill in well arranged tracks. I wouldn't say it's bad or anything, technically, but there's no way it's a good sign for me to be clicking through all these youtubes and not recognising a single thing from a game I played for tens of hours.
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Jul 16, 2012 22:30
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Tempo 119 posted:I wouldn't say it's bad or anything, technically, but there's no way it's a good sign for me to be clicking through all these youtubes and not recognising a single thing from a game I played for tens of hours. I'm not disagreeing with you at all and feel the same way about FFXIII's soundtrack, which I found disappointing.
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Jul 16, 2012 22:37
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Himuro posted:I'm not sure if I could call that mediocrity because the music is far from mediocre. It's something prominent with a lot of Sakimoto soundtracks, depending on the game. I can say the same is true for a lot of his Matsuno games, FFT included. I love the music in the Ogre Battle games and in FFT, but 12's totally bored me. I'm not musically literate enough to explain why, but it did. The one 'song' I can remember having any kind of effect on me from the game is Dalmasca's town theme, because you hear it so much. The reason it had an effect on me is that I actually hate it.
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Jul 16, 2012 22:49
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Bongo Bill posted:I didn't really like XII either, but I don't know why. Maybe it was just the slow pacing. I think part of the problem was that I tried to keep all six party members evenly leveled and fully-equipped, and consequently spent all my time chaining mobs for gil and being underleveled and underpowered in the latest dungeon the plot had led me to. Huh. I never really had a Gil problem and I raised everyone equally. Then again, I made sure to pretty much steal from every enemy.
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Jul 17, 2012 00:09
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I wanted to like FFXII so bad. If it had just had a combat system that wasn't abhorrent I would have loved it and been able to put up with all its other problems. I was so excited for the Zodiac Job System re-release but it didn't actually fix my fundamental problems, just addressed some of the more egregious errors. 
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Jul 17, 2012 00:13
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The White Dragon posted:See the thing is there's all kinds of complex poo poo going on in these songs but it really isn't for video games. The human brain can process about four, five layers of music at once; this has eight or ten at least, and you're playing a video game so fat chance that you can even do the four or five you get when you're just listening to music without anything else going on in the back and way having too many layers for the brain to process actually can create a psychological effect where it becomes cacophanous. They might be successful pieces on their own, but for their purpose, they are abysmal failures. You don't even have the faintest hint of a conception of what you're talking about. Layers? What the hell is a layer? It's not Schoenberg or anything. It's pretty straightforward music with a more or less homophonic texture and lots of superficial decoration. An Enormous Boner fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jul 17, 2012 |
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Jul 17, 2012 01:05
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Pollyanna posted:From what I've seen of it in Theatrhythm, the music is pretty good. Very Star Wars-y though, and I wouldn't say it's as "catchy" as other games' music. Glad I'm not the only one that felt like I was listening to Star Wars half of the time. Also I was never a fan of XII, story was neat but the gameplay soured me on the whole experence. It was very slow, tedious and I just I'd not like the gambit system, I really wanted to like it, but just could not.
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