250 hours later, and I have completed what could be considered the longest Final Fantasy I have ever played, and it drove me nuts at times. Most FF games I never put in more than 100 or 150 hours, but FF12 has been different and a pain in the ass at times.
I enjoyed the storyline and the awesome airships and the pretty cg and landscapes.
But...I had gripes of varying levels.
- Biggest issue was difficulty of the side quests. Even at level 70+, the side dungeons like Subterra and Henne section 2 were brutal not because of the enemies, who were level 60ish, but because they'd attack en-masse, so you'd have 10 enemies raping you at the same time. worst part was that most of the enemies were undead so you'd think an area was clear and 3 more guys would appear out of nowhere.
- I was killed 3 times before I beat Zodiark, all when his health was critical, because when he gets to that point he becomes all but immune to physical attacks and magic. I've beaten all but Yizmat and Omega... One elite mark I fought had 2 million HP, Hell Worm has an insane 8 million HP (he was easy but it took almost 2 hours to beat him), Omega has 10 million hp, and Yizmat has an amazing 50 million HP. I wish Square wouldn't insist on all their games being insanely hard. It must be a Japanese thing.
- And of course, something Square still has yet to figure out, is the proper placement of save points. There's still places where there's no save crystal right before a boss and after a very difficult hack through a long and insanely hard dungeon.
- Fishing? Running? Is this the best they can do for side games? Gay!
- The final air battle was shiny and pretty but needed to be longer, and less "can't we just stop war and live in peace" Japanese hippy bull would be nice.
- Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the difficulty in getting the best weapons in this game. Difficulty not in how hard, but the fact it takes a very long time to get some of them, since most of them either require a certain rare monster to "drop" the weapon (which happens once in a blue moon), or getting certain very rare drop items to sell at shops so the weapon appears in the Bazaar. The most powerful sword requires 10+ hours of collecting 20 something rare items.
... is it just me or are lead FF characters pussies? If I were Vaan, I would have tapped that.... all three of that... well maybe just two since one seems to be accounted for... and there were so many mostly-naked Viera around the world willing to "explore" human culture...
I'll add one good thing about all Final Fantasy including 12... it's easy to get higher levels, even if the side quest and dungeons are hard. The last Square-Enix RPG I played, it was insanely hard to level up past level 50, which sucks because you got some of the best attacks of the game at level 60-70.
