Final Fantasy 12

steviec wrote:

I am enjoying it for the most part, but there's some annoying things. The new battle system is great in some ways, but at the same time it feels kind of chaotic, maybe I just haven't got to grips with it yet.

That said I'm not really all that far in, because I've been dying a heck of a lot which normally never happens in Final Fantasy, think I've a long way to go getting to grips with the combat system.

Just started playing this over the weekend as I only finished Okami last week.

I'm 8 hrs in and about to leave the first city and I haven't have to do any excessive leveling to kill any of the bosses so far (this includes killing the Wraith at level 9). I think I get the battle system so let me try to explain. Some minor spoilers ahead.

The battle system seems to be a mix of the old FF games and the mmorpg. You'll probably get to grips with it a lot quicker if you have played mmorpgs like ff11 before.

All I did was explore every inch of the map to pick up all the treasures, kill off all monsters I see along the way and proceed to the end of the dungeons. The first real boss I remember was Firemane and that kicked my ass when I walked into it. My party was all level 6 at the time (could've been 5) and they were all close to level so I went out, killed 3-4 monsters and leveled and tried again.

Fight wasn't so hard, you just have to have one tank and the rest have gambits to heal when allies are low on hp and you occasionally help out with manual healing.

To tank a monster (if you don't know) is to get the monsters attention with a single character who is usually with the best armour and highest hp. The others just deals damage. I am using Vaan as the tank and at this early level all I have to do is walk up to the monster so it targets Vaan and start stealing and attacking. My party also only attacks what the party leader is targeting so they never get in first hit.

The monster will attack other members if they do excessive damage. In a mmorpg other skills like cure will give the character more hate/aggro too so the monster will attack them. The monsters ability to dynamically change target is one of the differences to the old FF systems.

If that happens you will just need to get the monsters attention again. Vaan does a lot of damage with his attacks in my party so that doesn't seem to be a problem and the healing gambits keeps everyone alive. Didn't even have to use a pheonix down in this fight cause I was paying attention to the HP.

The other boss fights weren't that memorable, I just remembered I didn't have to do the excessive leveling people were complaining about. The only other boss that give me problems was the Wraith cause I was trying to solo him at level 9. When I got my party back and was about to leave the city I tried again and took him down after 1 party wipe. That party wipe was cause of that doom spell

And even though I haven't done this yet, some mmorpg tactics and strategies for fighting some bosses will def work with the ff12 battle system such as kiting. Should be very easy to kite a tough monster in an open area. What you'd do is get the monsters attention with a range attack, make it chase you, run around in circles, tell the other party member to attack monster. When it chases the other member, control him/her and continue to kite.

Other tips: action bar charging. If the monster you are fighting is fast and your action meter is slow, you can just run off when you're recharging and make the monster chase you. The monster can only hit you when you are close.

Anyway, I quite like the battle system. There's a lot more room for strategy instead of just standing still and trading blows and micro manage actions.