When you first start FF 12 it takes a while before you really realize anything’s wrong. It start’s out fine. You get a streamlined battle system, a generic evil empire, (probably stealing magic crystals or some shit), and a lead character with ambiguous sexual orientation. The basic plot is you’re… umm…. Actually, I don’t really know. The plot is extremely political and I have ADD. They start talking legalese and I just sort of zone out. It’s like watching Gundam Wing. Well what I gathered is that this kingdom has been taken over via a coup d'état and king assassination. And the daughter of that king is trying to reclaim the thrown, (don’t quote me on this.) 
The first thing you’ll notice is the new battle system. It’s more or less real time, but not in the fucking shitty Final Fantasy 8 way. In a sense there aren’t really any random battles anymore. No more running through a completely vacant field and being suddenly thrown into a battle. In this game you approach the enemies or you can even bypass them. This allows you to pick your fights but still has a random element since enemies can still attack you first if you’re close enough and there’s also the possibility of random nearby enemies joining the battle. When in battle three from your team fight at once and are able to walk around freely instead of just being in a stationary flank. You can pick actions from anyone’s menu at any time and they’ll perform that action whenever they’re able to. The whole process is greatly sped up. There’s no loading the battle screen, pressing attack 10 times, playing the victory ditty, watching the items, experience and gil gained screen, and lastly loading the “real world” screen again to finally be on your way. And the best thing is that while scrolling through your battle menu, THE GAME IS PAUSED. It only took them how long to catch on to this?
Every Final Fantasy game has a battle gimmick and this one is “Gambits.” It’s basically the ability to program your character’s to do different things automatically in battle, like heal allies under 40% health or cast whatever on flying enemies. You can buy or find various gambit abilities around. I though this was interesting for a little bit but quickly lost interest when I realized that my human intuition trumps any precognizant automated actions. I can’t rely on the programmed character to heal when they don’t have any magic left, and I don’t want two identically programmed characters to do the same thing at the same time to the same person. They can’t know what needs to be prioritized or what the enemy will do next. Only the player can do that which is why it’s easier to just not use gambits.
The main problem in the game is that there’s too much grinding. Actually, first lets talk about the skill grid. It sucks. It’s simple enough, with it’s squares in a grid. You start out around the middle of the board. Each square is a skill or license of some kind that costs X amount of skill points which you get from defeating enemies. Each time you learn one, the bordering skills around the newly learned skill will become unlocked and available to learn. Before that though, you have no idea what they are until you‘re right next to them. It’s like playing Battleship. What’s stupid is that you can’t use something like a helmet or sword unless you attain the “license” for it off of the grid. Now what it means by license I have no idea. Is it like a driver’s license where you have to learn how to operate your feathered hat or bracelet in a safe manor? Or is it more like a concealed weapons permit where you have to be of a certain status and face a thorough background check before you can own and wear a black belt? What would happen if I tried to use something without the correct license? Would I get arrested and fined? Just for wearing a fuzzy mitre? Also, sometimes You’ll get some kick-ass sword or something but you don’t have the license for it. Not only that, but you don’t even know where the hell the license is located on the grid so you can’t even begin to work towards being able to use it. You have to just sort of eventually stumble upon it later and by that time whatever it is probably isn’t that kick-ass anymore.
There are also things like magic abilities and techniques on the grid. Not only do you have to learn them but you also have to buy the ability from a store. I don’t know if it’s a license or what but it’s extremely frustrating. It’s basically like having to learn it twice. You’ll be constantly learning abilities that you can’t even use because you have to go spend a ton of money at a store to be able to. And there’s no guarantee that it’ll be at the first place you visit either. Depending on how powerful the ability is you’ll probably have to search for it. If it was a normal game you’d just learn the ability and it wouldn’t really matter if you ever used it or didn‘t, but in this game all you see is a giant price tag and a budget to be spent on more crucial things.
The map screen isn’t that great but it’s kind of hard to explain why it’s bad without actually using it. Lets just say you need to have a very vivid imagination. I have to say though that there is one awesome thing about it and that is that when you go to it there’s a summary of what you’re doing and where you’re supposed to go at the bottom of the screen. That just totally blows my mind. It’s like the antithesis of what Final Fantasy is about. I always thought the whole point was to be given vague ass-backwards directions if any at all. Then you get stuck and wander around aimlessly for 20 hours and then toss the game in the garbage because you want to actually play something fun. At least that’s what it was like before internet walkthroughs.
The boss battles in the game are way too dependent on the shit that you have equipped. You fight something fire based and you have to get something to protect you from fire or you’re dead in 30 seconds. So wherever the hell you are, (probably the furthest reaches beyond an unsettled barren desert or in some god-forsaken rice pattie surrounded by Charlie), you need to backtrack and travel to a store that hopefully has something useful to you. Not this town. Not that town. Oh here’s something, a flame shield. It’s only 4500 gil. you have 1266 gil and need at least three shields. So you go out and kill small animals for an hour and sell their loot to get enough to buy the three shields. Now you can go beat that boss… Oh wait, no one on your team has a license for this shield, also you don‘t know where the license is. So you go out and kill things for another hour to accumulate enough skill points to hopefully find the license. Then you make as many moves as you can on one character’s grid around where you think the license might be. If you run out of points and still don’t find it you go to the next character’s grid and go a different path. Repeat this as many times as necessary until the desired license is found. Once it’s found, restart the game. Now that you have all of your skill points back and know where you’re going on the grid, you can get the license and beat the boss... Oh wait, you have enough points to reach and unlock the license but not enough to learn it. Go back out and kill things to get enough skill points to acquire the license to equip the shield to beat one fucking boss and ultimately piss away 2-4 hours with repeatedly killing the same wolf respawn and staring at a chart. Wasn’t that fun? Don’t worry, you only have to do it for about 90% of the bosses. I think boss fights in Final Fantasy 13 should be just like this, only instead of selling loot you should have to fill out job applications to get a job and make money. Also you go to job interviews and answer questions. Then if you manage to get a job you have to work. I’m surprised FF8 wasn’t all over that one.
