4th April 2007, 7:21 PM
I finally finished the game today after playing on-and-off since I got it at launch. It is definitely my favorite PS2 Final Fantasy, and I came the closest I ever have (that I know of) to playing a game for 100 hours. I ended at 97 hours, but I could have passed the 100 mark if I felt like taking down the remaining handful of marks I needed to find. That leads me to what I loved the most about this game: the marks. I had always felt that the Final Fantasy games had gotten easier since they became more mainstream. The Weapons in FF7 notwithstanding, I haven't felt too challenged by the games until hunting all the marks in FF12. Some of them were pretty damn hard, and I didn't even get to the last five.
I also ended up liking the gambit system. I barely used it for maybe the first quarter of the game, but then I found a system I really liked and only had to tweak it a little when I fought bosses or marks. I always had a main healer (Penelo and Ashe) in each group whose main priority was to heal, cast esuna, and charge if she got low on MP. Everyone in the group cast Blind on enemies with a lot of HP, and Dispel on any enemies with positive effects. I also had my non-range characters (ie everyone except Balthier and Fran) cast the Shades of Black technique on flying characters. It worked extremely well for me throughout the whole game, and I additionally had every character use a Phoenix Down to revive fallen characters. I originally had them casting Raise, but when I realized that Phoenix Downs can revive my party leader even before the game asks me to choose a new leader I knew I had to use them.
Finally, Balthier is now my favorite Final Fantasy character or all-time, passing up Sepiroth, and passing Edgar from FF6 as my favorite main character. I almost couldn't stop laughing at the end of the game (this isn't spoiling anything) when he sees Fran unconcious under some debris and says "Do I have to do everything myself?"
I also ended up liking the gambit system. I barely used it for maybe the first quarter of the game, but then I found a system I really liked and only had to tweak it a little when I fought bosses or marks. I always had a main healer (Penelo and Ashe) in each group whose main priority was to heal, cast esuna, and charge if she got low on MP. Everyone in the group cast Blind on enemies with a lot of HP, and Dispel on any enemies with positive effects. I also had my non-range characters (ie everyone except Balthier and Fran) cast the Shades of Black technique on flying characters. It worked extremely well for me throughout the whole game, and I additionally had every character use a Phoenix Down to revive fallen characters. I originally had them casting Raise, but when I realized that Phoenix Downs can revive my party leader even before the game asks me to choose a new leader I knew I had to use them.
Finally, Balthier is now my favorite Final Fantasy character or all-time, passing up Sepiroth, and passing Edgar from FF6 as my favorite main character. I almost couldn't stop laughing at the end of the game (this isn't spoiling anything) when he sees Fran unconcious under some debris and says "Do I have to do everything myself?"
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