No Love for Final Fantasy 12

*Note: contains little to no spoilers, just my take on the lack of development of depth in ff12, if you haven't played this game and are scared to read it, it reveals less than a review, so yeah whatever :P.

Two weeks ago today North America got it's first actual Single Player Final Fantasy game in a long time, of which has been a staggering five years in development. After two weeks of constant play, side quests, and becoming emerged in the story and gameplay; I am left rather empty, and it's depressing.

A game with such potential for deep character story and a diverse group of people to help back up this potential seemed nearly impossible to steer wrong, however this is sadly the case, whether it is square to blame, I think not. I for one, well, blame the voice acting, while it was superb, it really just kind of lacked. The fact that almost all dialogue was done via voice acting and that most of it only revolved around the story further lessened the depth in the characters. To push further there really weren't any side quests that helped an increased understanding of characters.

Regardless of that fact the characters were well represented which kind of hurts the relationships the player feels between the characters. In doing this there wasn't much left to mystery and your left wanting more and then... well it ends.

You don’t really care about the characters lives like you would in say FF7 or FF8. This is most likely the result of the apparent failure of depth in FFX as well. Because the story unfolded in such an odd way at the end you were also left unsatisfied.

Now in terms of characters you have 3 males and 3 females... so love should really have unfolded, however the only real relationships are sort of mutual. While there is a connection between Vaan and Penelo its never more then just plain fun and the dialogue between them is lacking so much that you really have no idea if the characters actually have feelings for each other. Then you have Balthier and Fran whom are colleagues and they share a sort of bond as well and leave very little to speculate unlike that of say the relationship between Cloud and Tifa.

Lastly where the game really falls short is the lack of a middle substance. In ever Final Fantasy there is a back-story for every character and you become attached to the ones you like and detached from the ones you don't. However in 12 their is a void, from the beginning to the end, you are left with little to no increase in backdrop and left bored with the characters. Balthier for examples back-story is he is a sky pirate, and the only thing we learn about other than that is his father, and the entire discussion on it is moderately short. In the case of Final Fantasy 7 you have the ability to tackle the history and story of every single character and you do so at ever-possible occurrence. In fact previous Final Fantasy's revolve almost solely around the characters lives, and NOT the actual story. The moderately recent trend of voice acting has taken away from the depth and emergence I have felt in the game, and well really leaves us the gamers to speculate on the characters lives far too much.

Because of the lack of depth and emotion in the characters, Final Fantasy 12 falls short of it's predecessors, but despite that it's still a Final Fantasy and a great game, just hope the next Final Fantasy takes another turn for the best. ;)

Well that was my "Two Gil" as woody once said.