The Gamer’s Quagmire: 32nd Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

Any dedicated reader of these rants that I’ve been spewing out over the past several years have noticed a continuing subject tend throughout most of it- a dedication to the Final Fantasy series. Above any other gaming franchise this game has been around with me almost since the beginning of my video gaming journey (as if the journey itself has been some form of epic quest). Sadly as I missed out on ownership of the original Nintendo system my first entanglement with the series was the fourth iteration in the franchise- of course, it became known as Final Fantasy II here in the United States.

It was not until well after my familiarity with the Internet became high that I started to notice these things. After hearing statements like “Final Fantasy 7’s name came from the number of years it took to make the game” it was hard to comprehend the real value of the Internet. After Google’s inception into mainstream society (most likely when the name of the site somehow became a verb) it finally became clear to most people the Internet is nothing more than a giant collection of information. As a gamer I’m perfectly happy with my constantly growing list of sites that I visit daily about the world of gaming, yet somehow after years of this practice I almost missed out on what could be the most important development for me as a gamer in the past five years.

Tonight, at midnight, Final Fantasy XII becomes available in the US market. I only found this information out one week before the game’s release. My identity as a die hard gamer started to waver. That was before I figured out a way to soundly plan my sleep schedule this week so as to still get in over 30 hours of gaming before Friday, not require any vacation hours from the office, and not be tired. Naturally, when Thursday rolls around I will regret writing these words but it made me realize that my priorities are still in the right place. I cannot very well be a gaming guru and place frivolous items such as sleep before gaming.

Somehow in the midst of this sudden end in the boring summer months of 2006, where the fresh injections into the gaming world where the new releases were about as welcome as a colonoscopy, several new games are coming out over the next couple months that I have been dying to play. No more complaining about nothing to play for me! Naturally Final Fantasy XII’s release puts at bay the next gaming addiction that had a 100% chance of otherwise happening- Neverwinter Nights 2. Behold, the summer of hallowed RPG’s! This is a gift from the gaming gods and a curse upon my already hectic normal schedule. Part of me wants to complain that there are now way too many hours backlogged for gaming through the end of the year (as there are only 2 Final Fantasy titles that I have not replayed), but then I remember the simple truth: I have been waiting for this game since 2004.

After scouring several of my past articles that have graced both this site and my old site I found a few gems that I thought were worth sharing once again (and not just for the sake of bumping up my word count):

An interesting thing to get some perspective on. I wrote this near the beginning of the year not knowing when XII would hit the US market. What scares me occassionally is that when one of my paragraphs that I barely bother editing almost could not possibly ring truer months after letting the world share in its splendor. Translating games is not exactly a trivial task considering you have to translate all of the subtitles and game text, record all of the dialog in the new language, and, if you are really good, redo all of the character animations. It would be asking too much to as the Japanese market to wait for the game to be released before the game was proofed in English (and however many other languages the game comes in, although methinks there are only two).

And in case you are wondering, my PS2 is still in working order and was recovered from its cardboard (previously typed as bardboard which, for games like Everquest and the upcoming Vanguard, sounds like a great invention) box and turned on for testing purposes over the weekend.

In preparation for viewing Final Fantasy tonight I’ve caught up on all my e-mail and most of my mail, returned every phone call, and made myself unavailable until at least next Monday. Of course somehow I will have to allocate time for some necessary yardwork. Somehow I knew buying a house would quickly bite me. Still, the week should go off mostly without a hitch. I even have a special bottle of wine ready for the occasion- a ritual that became part of the main ceremony with the release of Final Fantasy X. It has reached the point where this could be dangerously close to taking my television out on a date. I do not spend too much time thinking about this as, frankly, it might dawn on me how disturbing most of this behavior truly is.

What bothers me the most about this release is that I have managed to allow my impulsive behavior to find everything imaginable on the game before its release here. Cardinal mistake! Huh, that’s a statement has special meaning for me over the past couple weeks. Anyway, after reading through tons of reviews, sifting through writeups on game mechanics, oggling over screenshots, and drueling over trailers and movies I basically have set myself up for a disastrous fall if this game is not as awesome as I want to be and as breathtaking as most every other person claims it is. Still, wanting this game to be the best the series has had to offer is something I have wanted since X-2’s release, as past rantings have indicated, so this just goes to show that this gamer has not changed all that much over the past five years.

Lucky me.

Moving on, let me share some of the material that is floating around the web on this game. Fear not- no items ruining the story will be presented here. My jerkiness does have its limits.

Veterans of the franchise know that the battle system changes with every new installment, and this time is no different. Espers, introduced in the first Super Nintendo Final Fantasy installment, are back as well as an interesting modification of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid. The big one, however, is the removal of random encounters. Final Fantasy XII employs what Square successfully implemented in Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy’s online installment- the exploring window is the same as the encounter window. All battles with enemies now happen out in the open. Based on several short movies I can tell you this is much more compelling than you could initially picture. Because I have no direct experience with the mechanism that is all I will permit myself to say now.

So what message am I trying to send here? It’s very simple: if you like RPG’s and have access to a PS2 there is no reason to not check this game out. Not one. There is one element of the Final Fantasy series that I always fall back on that I have yet to mention, and that is the story and the characters. X-2 is the only true sequel in the franchise, so with that sole caveat every game showcases all new characters and a new universe for gamers in which to frolic. The writing is by no means perfect but the story is always interesting to me, even when playing through past iterations of the franchise for the fifth time. Maybe that’s the reason I hold this series in the highest regard amongst any other: the name Final Fantasy is a label and while it is easy to pin each new release in the series a sequel, in reality it is just another game whose quality since Final Fantasy has almost unequivocally been at a level that I wish most games would reside.

Next week I will relay all of my impressions of the game and, if there is a God, it will be positive.

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