Here's my review for Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings for the Nintendo DS.
For the most part, the game was alright, and easy to pick up on. But that's exactly it, it was too easy, there were a few hard parts, but most of the game was far to simple for my liking. The battles were easy, and quick, and most of the time I was sitting around waiting for the party to finish up, move to where I wanted them to go.
There are 3 ways to attack, and kill enemies they are Melee, Ranged, and flying. And healing, which was a back up.
A healer can not defend his/her self in any way, so if your healer is attacked you have to pull out, and send all your soldiers at the enemy, who will walk towards their destination slowly. By the time you get there, your healer will probably be dead, or severely hurt and have to spend time healing his self.
Melee beat ranged, ranged beat flying, and flying beat melee. Characters were sorted into these 3 groups, and you were suppossed to have a strategy for each one. But it's hard to lose track of that in battles, as you might end up surrounded by enemies on all 4 sides, so you just start attacking, not really doing any damage to anyone. If you accidentally pair up a melee ally against a flying ally, you might as well forget about that ally, because he'll die so fast you don't know what to. There's no time to fix your mistake, no time to pull out, your just dead, and you don't get the revive spell until far later on in the game.
Then there were the summons, there's not really any new summons, just the same ones, and some monsters from other games. You can summon bombs, the Giza rabbits, Belias, all kinds of them, also ranked from Rank 1 to rank 3, and also classified as Melee/ranged/flying.
A rank one esper would be something like a bomb, while a rank 3 would be something like Bahamut.(YES BAHAMUT IS IN THIS GAME!!!! YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED AS WELL!!!) To get these espers to help you, you must sign a pact with them, or give them a certain amount of Auracite, which is easy. So there's no since of accomplishment when you forge a pact with big esper like Chaos, you just move on to the next esper, and forget about all the other espers.
Rank one esper= 1 Auracite
Rank two esper= 2 auracite.
And Rank 3 esper = 3 pieces of Auracite.
Auracite is extremely easy to get, you must get at least 2 to 4 pieces after each battle.
Most of the times the espers are not helpful, prevent movement, and get themselves killed. Other times, they will kill an enemy, then stand there, and not do anything, really helpful huh?
The Rank three espers are for the most part, helpful. One esper called Leviathan is extremely useful for taking out huge groups of enemies, with his special attack. Which I think he can only do once per battle, as I haven't seen him do his special twice in the same battle.
You can only use one high ranking espers on your team at a time. The espers line up is as follows.
Rank one esper, rank one esper, rank two esper, rank two esper, and rank three esper. Even the rank two espers aren't that useful, and die fairly quickly. You must make a perfect balance of Flying, ranged, and melee monsters. But must also have a balance between Rank one, Rank two, and Rank three espers. You must include a rank one esper in your line up, or else the game won't let you move on, so one, or more of your people will be stuck with weak monsters making the team uneven. Vaan summons the espers at the beginning of the battle, so there's no work involved to get these esper to help you, or bring them out. Vaan simply summons the monsters to bid the team's will. On some levels, there will be a portal on the floor. This is called a Summoning gate, it can be used to summon more monsters, either at the beginning of the battle, or when some of your espers die. Again, No work involved, simply go to the gate, and use it. Sometimes you may have to 'capture' a Summoning gate to use it, and by Capture I mean have your character stand there with a stone in hand, to make the gate usable by your teammates. All that's said and done, and then, the battle starts...
All the espers clump together, and prevent the party from attacking enemies, or saving an ally from death. You can't even move until you firstly get each, and every esper out of your path, which must be straight. The enemies aren't that special, just opting to attack, throwing any type of strategy out the window, but since it's a DS game you can't expect much. The enemies are repetitive, and you will see the same type of monster everywhere. Often times, a enemy will have a certain element like lightning, and you need to use the opposite spell to Kill the fiend. You only have one spell caster throughout the entire game, and after you use one spell, you have to wait AGES for the spell bar to re fill so you can use it again, not very helpful when your surrounded by a bunch of Lightning monsters getting killed, and you can't use a stone spell.
Another part of the battle system is the gambits option. The gambit option lets you select one of your attacks that you will automatically use when the battle starts. What makes it so bad is that you only can select one option. You do not gain more gambits, or other options, your stuck with one, and one only. Which again, after you use it, it must charge up, WHICH TAKES FOREVER!!!!
There are some glitches in the battle system, such as characters attacking, but not hitting the enemy, and you can't dodge in this in this game. They'll also attack randomly, and sometimes start walking when you don't want, or tell them to. It can get very annoying.
Aside from the Battle system, and summons, the game was alright. The Storyline was interesting, with some twists, and turns, but in the end was pretty dull. You don't feel moved by the storyline was the Graphics can't show the characters emotion, and without the ability to hear their voice, you don't feel anything, your just watching it silently with the music playing. The music is suppossed to help you feel the emotions, but it really doesn't help when you can't hear the people talking, it's just there. The storyline isn't that engrossing, and I found myself just wanting it to fast forward to a battle, but then there wasn't much waiting on me...
That's another thing, the soundtrack, and the music. It's great, and most it is the same as Final Fantasy XII, but it's played at the wrong time, and clashes with what your doing, and where your at. Example, Your in a dungeon, and instead of playing music that makes you ready to battle, they play the music that they played in Rabanastre in Final Fantasy XII. The music, which is fairly peaceful, and represents a peaceful town, clashes with the environment where it is played, in a dungeon. Another example is the airship, they play the active, bustling music from Final Fantasy XII's lowtown, and played it in a drab setting like the airship! It doesn't go together to at all.
To me the Music was a big screw up, while I was glad that they kept the original soundtrack, they just made it seem horrible. To me at least. They could have done a much better with the timing, and the setting of the music.
The Graphics...not much to say as it's a Nintendo DS game. The graphics were okay, but not the best, I think that they could've done alot better on the graphics. The CG, and the cutscenes were great, but still no that good. In some of the cutscenes I could see Visible breaks, and lines in the movie, where I guess the graphics were breaking apart. Also, I want to know why they made them all look like kids? Vaan, and Penelo are I believe 19 now, and yet they look like they are 14 or 15, it's...indescribable. The Adults, such as Balthier, Ashelia the Queen, and Basch also looked Kiddish, The graphics were just not good enough. The game is not that long, it has about 10 chapters which you complete by beating the missions given to you, and completing the side quests, which is a piece of cake. Actually, It is fairly long, but you'll probably beat it in about 2 or 3 days after getting, not weeks or months like the real Final Fantasy games. The missions are easy, and not fulfilling, you'll find yourself wanting more. But, if you play it sparingly, then you might make it last a week and a half, maybe 2 weeks. There are alot of missions, and you can do some side quests after you beat the chapter your on, and you can go back and re-play the levels, but there's really no reason to do so. They make you complete all the missions however, by pulling the ol' Final Fantasy X-2 trick. Remember to see the perfect ending that you had to complete 100% of the game? Well they brought that factor back into play, to view the true ending, you must complete 100% of the game, which even then, won't take a long time. So the game doesn't really last that long.
The worst thing though, was that I didn't once, get excited about anything in the game. Where as other Final Fantasy Games, I would feel proud after beating a boss, or happy that I completed a quest, It wasn't the case in this game. I just played the game, and moved on, not really happy or anything.
Overall The game was mostly bad, but there were a few good points, and a few new things that I hadn't seen before, but it doesn't make up for all the bad...I'd have to give this game a six out of ten, I was disappointed by this game. Square Enix wanted to try new things with the game, and experiment with that, and try new things. I can respect that, but they really should have kept this game on the playstaion 2 console. More people have, and have played a Playstation 2 than a Nintendo DS. While I can see why you wanted to put this this game on the DS platform, you really should have kept it on the Playstation 2 console. Then, alot more people would've played it, and alot more people liked it.
If someone wants to buy this game, then go ahead, you might Enjoy it, and get some amusement out of it, I however, did not. That was my review of Final Fantasy Twelve Revenant wings for the Nintendo DS, and my first review for Supercheats, I hope you enjoyed it, and find some use in it.
Cheating-is-good.
