Final Fantasy 12 is my favorite of the series and one of the few I've finished completely. That said, it also discarded several of the tropes that made the franchise so popular in order to try out different ideas.
First off - the battle system isn't the turn based, shifting style of previous entries. All enemies are visible on the world map and you can use gambits (sort of an if-then sorting algorithm) to simplify to where you don't have to press a single button as you progress. For some this can be seen as cheating but it can be manually controlled for those who want to. Gil isn't won through battle but collected by selling loot. It's very similar, if not exactly the same as your standard MMORPG. Luckily, you don't really need gil as you progress so this isn't a big issue outside of a few situations.
The plot itself is good but very different, again, from other titles. 12 is in some ways a deconstruction and send up of one of the series' favorite references - Star Wars - and the basic theme is free will versus fate and what to do with a magical superpower against an evil empire. Except the evil empire turns out to have decent people too, and the fate has led every time to a Golden Age whereas going by future Ivalice games, free will isn't all that it's cracked up to be. It's ballsy in some respects to show both good and bad and not take a position on whether your characters made the right choice or not and I applaud this game alone for keeping a fairly complex grey area without feeling forced.
What I like most though, is that the game never seems to run low on things to do. Aside from the central plot, there are plenty of areas to explore, plenty of monsters(boss, rare games, hunting marks, you name it it's there) to fight and you are given relative freedom to choose where to go and what to focus on. There are also small side-quests hidden throughout.
The downside? If you like standard Final Fantasy games, this probably won't appeal to you. There is a lot of political intrigue and most of the main characters aside from Asche and Balthier don't really get fleshed out as well as they could be. The summons are almost not worth going after beyond bragging rights and aren't even that useful. Limit breaks are also sub-par and unnecessary. The graphics are good and clean and the music is nice too.
Great but Different
Final Fantasy 12 is my favorite of the series and one of the few I've finished completely. That said, it also discarded several of the tropes that made the franchise so popular in order to try out different ideas.
First off - the battle system isn't the turn based, shifting style of previous entries. All enemies are visible on the world map and you can use gambits (sort of an if-then sorting algorithm) to simplify to where you don't have to press a single button as you progress. For some this can be seen as cheating but it can be manually controlled for those who want to. Gil isn't won through battle but collected by selling loot. It's very similar, if not exactly the same as your standard MMORPG. Luckily, you don't really need gil as you progress so this isn't a big issue outside of a few situations.
The plot itself is good but very different, again, from other titles. 12 is in some ways a deconstruction and send up of one of the series' favorite references - Star Wars - and the basic theme is free will versus fate and what to do with a magical superpower against an evil empire. Except the evil empire turns out to have decent people too, and the fate has led every time to a Golden Age whereas going by future Ivalice games, free will isn't all that it's cracked up to be. It's ballsy in some respects to show both good and bad and not take a position on whether your characters made the right choice or not and I applaud this game alone for keeping a fairly complex grey area without feeling forced.
What I like most though, is that the game never seems to run low on things to do. Aside from the central plot, there are plenty of areas to explore, plenty of monsters(boss, rare games, hunting marks, you name it it's there) to fight and you are given relative freedom to choose where to go and what to focus on. There are also small side-quests hidden throughout.
The downside? If you like standard Final Fantasy games, this probably won't appeal to you. There is a lot of political intrigue and most of the main characters aside from Asche and Balthier don't really get fleshed out as well as they could be. The summons are almost not worth going after beyond bragging rights and aren't even that useful. Limit breaks are also sub-par and unnecessary. The graphics are good and clean and the music is nice too.