No longer FF, the Final Fantasy 12

(tags game, Playstation 2, Final Fantasy, programming)

I've already racked up 50 hours of gaming with Final Fantasy 12. I kept thinking, I'm never going to play another Final Fantasy ever again. Certainly not Final Fantasy X-2. It's not because I started to hate Final Fantasy as a cliched console RPG with the ever present menu item for action. It's because FF12 is a breath of fresh air with it's programmable "Gunbit" system. It allows me to move around in 360 degrees of analog freedom instead of living through digital menus. Instead of casting "cure" and antidote after every fight so my party can battle the next one, they can heal themselves as if they were "alive". Of course they are working by my rules, so once I change my aim, such as conserving party MP instead of stealing, my "Gunbit" rules work against me and I need to tweak them again. But certainly the appeal of digging through menus on every stupid enemy encounter has worn off on me.

But I didn't play for about 5 days. The bomb boss in some forest caused my characters to drink my whole supply of "high potions" (which cure 600 HP). It's like that song, "99 bottles of [high potions] on the wall" but I got to see "1 bottles of ...". This was a tough boss. I was in a funk stuck on how to improve my "Gunbit" rules. It turns out that according to the linear story, I didn't need to raise an encounter with the boss until later. Though I did beat the boss, eventually I decided to reset the game to a previous save and continue with the story part. The anticipated pain of replacing 99 "high potions" which meant Gil Running low-level monsters almost killed all the fun of FF12 for me. Do I really need 99 "high potions" around? No, but in games like FF12, where you can carry as much as you want, I learned to carry as much as I want.

Now I'm back into the FF12 mood, now in one of the coastal areas. This has got to be one of the most beautiful games on the PS2, if only it reminded me of Super Mario Sunshine. Monsters and their attack intent shown as a disembodied horizontal bar, my party's stats and map, these items do detract from the sandy beach beauty, but it is strikingly picturesque nonetheless.