Yet another great Final Fantasy game, a fine end to the PS2s era. Although I'm a huge fan of the series, I feel this game fell short in a few key aspects. Still good enough for a 7/10 in my book, mostly due to my incredibly high expectations.
The first thing you notice when you play this game, or at least what I noticed, are the games breathtaking visuals. Square has really outdone themselves this time as so many of us have come to expect with the Final Fantasy series.
Secondly You'll notice that there is a new combat system in this game as well. It's much more involved than that of the demo, even though it's the same system. It will take you a while to get used to it, and some time yet again to fine tune the system, but once you do it's very easy to use and quite efficient. This will take you easily through the game to the end boss, but it tends to be more frustrating when doing some of the optional bosses or "Hunts", which often require much more strategy.
All of the characters are essentially the same person, they have absolutely nothing 'unique' about them. This is a common trend among the Final Fantasy series as of late, and I can't stand it at all. Square basically re-introduced the "Sphere Grid" from FFX, but this time it's called the "License Board". Your characters start out at a point where you can only have a single healer, single warrior, single mage and so on, but once you reach 10 or so hours of game play, everyone can do everything, so it becomes a chore to level your B-Team, and your characters lose all of their uniqueness. It's very frustrating to me to have this type of combat system, it takes away all chances at having different parties for different situations, everyone can do everything, and it's rather boring.
They throw you into the story from the second you put the disk into the console. Two nations on the brink of war, and you're not quite sure where you stand in all of it, only being fed little bits of information at a time.
Trying to describe the story without spoilers is difficult.. But the story is one of the key areas that I feel is missing with this game. It's sad too because the game's story has so much potential to be great. At the end it just seems that there were too many characters introduced, not enough detail on some of the major points in the story, and that the information didn't come together very well to end the game. Combined with the fact that the characters seemed to be acting on their own throughout the entire game. They showed very littlie emotion toward one another, and just seemed to be thrown together. It took even more away from an already struggling story.
This is kind of out-of-order, but there are many, many great Computer Graphics (CG) scenes in the game, among the best that Square has ever produced in my opinion. Yet once you beat the game, there is absolutely noting that happens afterward. No theater mode, no statistics, no option to go back to your last save, nothing. To me this is very frustrating, I had hoped that they would keep the idea of a theater from FFX.
Lastly, for the reason I'm no longer playing the game, and why I'll probably never re-play it. The system they use to gather the better items toward the end of the game is beyond words. If you enjoy saving your game at a save point near a treasure chest, opening that treasure chest, not getting the item, closing the game, and re-loading that same save file to open the treasure chest yet again.... for hours on end. Then this is the game for you, because you'll find that you have to do that a lot for the better items. I can't believe I wasted as much time as I did on it.
A fairly harsh review from a long time Final Fantasy fan, and mostly because I hold a very, very high expectation for Final Fantasy Games. It's easily worth the $60 I paid for the Collector's Edition, but could have been better in many ways. Once again a 7/10.
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