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Final fantasy 12 - The banjo Impression
Posted by Anjo Banjo on 12/04 at 03:38 PM | Skype: 
Filed under Anjo gaming rant
Read this article about my heroic struggle against bunnies, wolves and dinosaurs!
Final fantasy 12
Basic info from IGN:
As war looms on the horizon, the mighty Archadian Empire begins a campaign to subjugate its neighbors. To Vaan, a young man living on the streets of Rabanastre, the Empire is a hated enemy who took the life of his brother. Planning on exacting revenge by breaking into the palace, Vaan gets more than he bargained for as he runs into Princess Ashe, the sole surviving heir to the Dalmascan throne. Together, the two embark on an incredible journey tracing the mysteries behind the Archadian Empire’s invasion.
Anjo Banjos experience.
One of the most anticipated games is out and kicking. To my surprise, my husband had picked me up a copy of FF12 and a gaming manual for it. Usually I am not the type that reads a manual while playing a video game, I simply enjoy the artwork and pictures in it. As you progress into the game, the manual gets in handy with it’s customezation charts.
When I saw the intro, It blew me away and dragged me in. Amazing! Unfortunately the graphics to not hold the same quality throughout the entire game. In my opinion ( I know all you guys that are into hardcore graphics throughout games will hate me right now) it’s the storyline I love! Pirates and the characters. WOOHOO.
It starts with a tutorial, you learn the controls and the simple commands (it gets worse). A slight confusion kicks in because of all the customization you have to do to survive battles.
As the game follows the music and artistic style of its earlier cousins, this game is hard! The enemies are tougher. I am the type that stands on a battle area till my characters are good leveled to handle the upcoming tasks with ease.
Here is how this goes down. You get thrown in a catacomb! You fight rats and other measly creatures! (all hail my glory!) Then on the way back (after having a few things collapse on you and people wanna kill you) the monsters have gained super powers! All of a sudden the battles are hard and they are everywhere! I went from battling measly rats, to Giant frogs, ghosts and other crappy, but oddly funny things.
That’s the thing I like about this, real time gaming! I could run away, In all other final fantasy games, you didn’t have that possibility...oooohno (ofcourse you had the option to run away but it did not always work). You HAD to fight, but then again, the monsters we always beatable. This time, I wasn’t so sure. Like I stated earlier they’ve gotten harder to beat. While I was in the castle stealing treasure, they were pumping up on steroids while watching Chuck Norris.
I had 30 potions entering the catacombs, after I came out of them I was faced with a firehorse!!! (make sure non of your party members fart) I had to use my companions as baits, and heal them while they did all the fighting (thank god for cure magic), cause honestly, I only had 4 potions left when the boss battle started.
Sure that my demise was unavoidable, I kept fighting till I ran out of everything. The boss dies and I feel relieved. I was finally hoping to come out of those dark dungeons and out explore the world ( I pretty much also have to build up my characters level wise. All of a sudden, my party is surrounded by a bunch of guards that throw me in prison! Hazzaaaah)
Other than a rocky start and a few adjustments, its a very attractive game. You have your magic, you have your weapons, the summons are still there, moogles, chocobos (now to find CID!) and best of all AIRSHIPS! With airships in a game, you cant go wrong! (esp with the ladies)
What is also a new aspect to the game is a wonderful function that sets a customary battle mode for your companions. Lets face it, the battles can get pretty messy, that’s why you can now set gadgets. This way if you see yourself dying, your companion (who “cures” an ally when HP reaches 70 %) will heal you, the battle commands can be pre set to your liking (before battle). What this game borrows from ff10, are the “sphere system”. When you kill an enemy not only do you get XP, you get points and those points are used for buying skills. It doesn’t look like the sphere grid like in ff10, but the concept is the same. Also what’s’ new ( and to my opinion, pretty well annoying) is that before you buy a weapon you need to use your points to buy a license for that particular weapon. All that is also included in the grid.
A cool thing in the game that took me by surprise is that some monsters are neutral, or friendly (of course some are just plain Jerks!) For instance, while my party was being attacked by a pack of wolves, a dinosaur (yea you heard me) comes to my aid! Like Sir Lancelot for queen Guenevere! He eats up the wolf and walks away which was a good thing, cause I was a couple of blows from dying. There are also monsters that heal you. The interaction of the game is revolutionary ( in my opinion). I don’t think I’ve seen a monster that just eats another while you battle it, have you? Even though the dinosaur saved me, I could’ve killed it if I so wished, but I will do it later (he looked pretty damn big)
This concludes my first impression of final fantasy 12, there will be more reports as it goes along.
I will continue calling my party members morons since they have this annoying habit of using up all my potions and still manage to get themselves killed.
