Echoes of Time is a fun hack n’ slash multiplayer game. The game improves upon its Ring of Fates predecessor with a greater emphasis on multiplayer combat and teamwork. Though the Wii version leaves much to be desired, the game is still a solid title on the DS to be enjoyed with friends. Square Enix’s efforts to allow both DS and Wii players to connect and play together are admirable, but one that definitely needs to be tweaked concerning the Wii’s control scheme. Echoes of Time should keep fans happy for some time until the arrival of the upcoming Wii title, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers.

Click here for an explanation of our review and scoring format.

Ring of Fates was Square Enix’s follow-up to their Gamecube title: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. After receiving fairly positive reviews, Square has returned to tweak the multiplayer features with a greater emphasis on combat in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. Though the gameplay is similar, the ability to play with your friends over a Wi-Fi connection on both the DS and Wii versions is a welcome addition to the series. Echoes of Time combines the best of Ring of Fates and its Crystal Chronicles Gamecube brethren into a fun, light-hearted RPG for both casual and experienced players.

The story tells the tale of a young hero who reaches his or her sixteenth birthday. According to village customs, every young villager participates in a special ceremony by defeating hordes of monsters in the dark forest that surrounds the village. The victorious are crowned with a glowing crystal found in a forest clearing guarded by Sherlotta, a fellow villager. However, a village girl falls gravely ill on the brink of the village’s celebration that sends the hero on a mission to acquire the items needed for a cure.

Combat in Echoes of Time is similar to the earlier Ring of Fates DS title. You can attack, pick up and drop and jump in the open field in battle. There are four tribes are available: Clavats, Yukes, Selkies and the Lilties. You can engage the enemy with standard attacks, charge attacks (powerful attack that leaves you temporarily vulnerable) or magic attacks by acquiring various spells. This time around, you can either grab your friends or partner up with the A.I. to form a party. At the start, you can customize your party with as many warriors, mages or tribe kinsmen and kinswomen as you like. Towns  and villages hold save crystals with most locations situated around a trotted path on the world map. A diary is kept by the main character that contains the chronology of events and adventures throughout the game.

You can assign different tactics for your A.I. party members in battle that includes Protect Yourself, Do Your Best, Just Follow Me and Go Nuts With Magic. You can add and drop party members at the Adventurers’ Guild in town prior to your quest. For multiplayer coop, you can team up with your friends via Nintendo’s Wi-Fi connection. You can easily communicate with your party members with a communication panel that features phrases like “Attack Together”, “I’ll take this one” and “Hit it”. Phrases are customizable with a total of twelve phrases available for you to create your own unique message.

Echoes of Time allows you, just like its predecessors, to pick up and drop items, barrels and enemies at will. This is necessary on various quests to solve puzzles and unlock doors. Fighting enemies helps not only to gain experience but also helps you to acquire materials to place custom orders in town. By doing this, you save lots of money that would otherwise be spent on scrolls and materials at Custom Fabrications.

Visually, the game has polished character designs and detailed environments. After a short run, the Wii version is essentially a ported DS game. The graphics are only slightly improved with a rather mediocre control scheme using the Wii remote. Between the Wii and DS version, the latter is preferable as Echoes of Time was originally designed with Nintendo’s handheld in mind. The soundtrack is soothing and accompanies the game quite well with its light hearted and relaxed musical tunes.

Regrettably, the A.I. party members are more trouble than they are worth as they will often miss platform jumps, fall into lava pits and stand around idly while your enemies are attacking you. Echoes of Time shines in the multiplayer aspect as the single player adventure mode is very short-lived. Regarding the portability and the convenience to play with your friends, both Wii and DS owners can connect online with one another for quests. However, I personally recommend the DS version as the Wii online interface to join other quests is not very user-friendly at all.

Sqaure Enix President Yoichi Wada dropped a bombshell at the end of Microsoft's press conference today, as he revealed that Final Fantasy XIII is no long exclusive to the PS3 and will be available for the Xbox 360 on release day.

This is huge news for Sony, as one could now argue that they have to show at least one huge game at their conference tommorow to show that they have quality exclusives in the pipeline for the PS3. There's no doubt that they'll be facing pressure to show that the PS3 can compete with the 360's lineup of exclusives, which includes Fable 2 and Gears of War 2.

Stay tuned, we'll keep you updated with all the big announcements.

You can view the video below.

• Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
• Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep
• Sim City DS 2
• Dissidia: Final Fantasy (1, 2, 3)

Why It Won: Zelda games come around more frequently than Mario games and so aren't held to the same absurd scrutiny. In fact, after a lifetime of mostly-identical storylines (the princess is kidnapped, oh noes!) it wouldn't be altogether ridiculous to wonder when something new would come along for Link to do besides spend all day fishing, blowing into an ocarina, and looking for pieces of the much-elusive Tri-force. I'd all but discounted the series as an ad-tedium retread of the same concepts when The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass came along and I, feeling sorry for my oft-neglected DS, decided to give it a whirl.

Contra 4: This was the first game in a long time to "feel" like a Contra game. The fast-paced shooter is one of the best portables released this year and deserves recognition, but the joy it takes in its difficulty makes it a game not for everyone, and besides taking advantage of both screens the only real reason for this game to be on the DS is because it would look ridiculous on any other platform. What the game needs is a boomerang you control by drawing its path with the stylus.

The plot of course remains centered on the Dark Knight Cecil and his questioning of authority and the whirlwind of events that follow. Square Enix has promised however that all new scenes will be added to the story that were written out for its original release but were either technically or logistically unfeasible at the time. Early screens have shown that the game looks to improve over FFIII's exploitation of the DS hardware, as more characters can be displayed on the 3D battlefields. The original version's battles, as mentioned previously, loaded quickly and were over quickly - FFIII DS suffered slight load times that were made all the worse due to the high encounter rate. Whether FFIV will suffer the same remains to be seen. Another addition is that characters are now able to use skills inherited from other characters, the details on which are still scarce.

This of course isn't the first time FFIV will see release on another console. Subsequent re-releases on the PS1, Wonderswan (a Japanese-only handheld), and Game Boy Advance have seen minor additions to the game. But never before has the game been completely remade, so the hope for new content built from the ground up is there. The original game is short but some standards - an experienced player can breeze through the quest in about 10 hours. Let me repeat - experienced, on the original US version's toned down difficulty. Someone playing the game for the first time should see more than 20 hours from the game, which is a solid length for its now portable status.

Final Fantasy IV sees its DS release on December 20 in Japan. There is still no word on a release to the West; however, that gamble is about as safe as betting that Cecil will have to come to terms with himself and save the world from a villain that pops up for the first time in the story's latter act. In other words, yeah, it'll happen.

Square Enix has announced today that the Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddess expansion pack has shipped to North American retailers for the PC, Playstation 2 and Xbox 360.

The game can be purchased as part of the Vana'diel Collection 2008 with MSRP of $39.99 and $49.99 respectively for the PS2 and Xbox 360. For fans who only wish to buy the expansion, Wings of the Goddess carries a $29.99 price tag for the PC, Playstation 2 and Xbox 360.

The online service for the title will officially go live on November 22.

Wings of the Goddess includes the following features:

• Unravel the secrets of this highly anticipated new chapter
  and discover its ties to the exciting world of Vana'diel
• Experience the world through the eyes of two new job
  classes, the dancer and the scholar, both exclusive to the FINAL
  FANTASY XI: WINGS OF THE GODDESS expansion pack
• Master new techniques like the dancer's Steps or use new
  black and white magic with the wise scholar, further enhancing magical
  capabilities
• Learn more about the main stage, Vana'diel, and see San
  d'Oria, Bastok and Windurst like never before with epic battles and
  new inhabitants, good and bad
• Engage in combat, alone or in a party, with powerful new
  monsters and foes – claim the spoils and rewards that come from
  defeating ferocious enemies such as gnats, gnoles, ladybugs, pixies,
  sandworms and more
• Team up with friends from around the world and across the
  PlayStation 2 system, Windows PC and Xbox 360 to experience the world's only triple cross-platform, triple-region MMORPG with a community of more than 500,000 active subscribers and 1.7 millionplayer characters

As I’m sure you can tell from the title, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales is, quite simply, child’s play, a title developed so that both children and adults can enjoy those giant yellow, fun-loving, eager-to-please birds called chocobos that have proven a staple of every Final Fantasy game. For the first time since the relative disaster that was Chocobo Racing (1999) on the original PlayStation, the chocobos are back in their own premier title, ready to weave a spell of classic storytelling with a Final Fantasy twist upon both the young and the old. Strangely, the game’s friendly nuances, colorful atmosphere, and fun minigames make Chocobo Tales an enjoyable retreat from the fast-paced action/adventure games that make up the bulk of a gamer’s diet, and the title is much simpler than a regular Square Enix RPG, making for easier pick-up-and-play moments. Gather around for story-time: depending on your age group, this could be a winner.

The overall plot for Chocobo Tales is simple and direct, with minor twists and turns paired with fun or witty dialogue to keep the player interested regardless of age. Gamers are cast as a young yellow chocobo fond of a storytelling white mage who has gathered all her chocobo friends together for a fantastical treat, but as these things tend to go, the fun is spoiled by a thrifty black mage who has just purchased a rare storybook. The book, of course, is cursed, and as the black mage recites its spell it comes to life as Bebuzzu, a wicked fellow who proceeds to eat all the chocobos and retreat until a “dark” woman appears. It’s now up to you to free your birdy friends from Bebuzzu’s grasp by collecting their cards throughout the environment which, by the way, you navigate entirely with the status.

The usual method for freeing your friends involves completing tasks from various storybooks containing traditional fables (Three Little Pigs, Ugly Duckling, Jack and the Beanstalk, etc) told with Final Fantasy flair. Each storybook contains three options: trial (in which you attempt to meet a gameplay requirement for a reward), battle (you against AI-controlled chocobo opponents), and storytime (which gives the prologue/theme for each book; keep in mind that you can unlock new epilogues for completing certain goals). The story is told in colorful pop-up fashion, with cut-out characters interacting in the book’s picturesque environment. In Titan and the Beanstalk vol. 1 players help their chocobo climb the humongous plant by drawing leaves to propel the chocobo up, all while avoiding the hazardous bombs along the way; in vol. 2, gamers race down the stalk by drawing leaves that are used to slide the chocobo back down to earth, collecting coins to beat opponents. In Ugly Chocoling, players utilize a magnifying glass to find a flaming bird; in Shiva and Ifrit, gamers collect fruit without being frozen or burned alive by the ice and fire raining down upon the poor chocobo’s head. The majority of these storybook minigames are enjoyable and of an appropriate difficulty for children, though a few of them sport some tough spots to keep the title challenging.

To keep the storybook minigames from posing too much of a distraction Square also included microgames that are just as fun and entertaining as the minigames are. In Malboro Masher the object is to tap the screen whenever a malboro appears on the grid, but tapping a bomb by mistake ends the game. Job Juggler is a lovely nostalgic game in which a sprite representing a Final Fantasy class jumps across the screen and you have to identify its job from rows of class options. While both microgames and minigames give card awards, the minigames serve a double purpose, often manipulating the environment so the chocobo can proceed to the next area.

All this card business probably has you wondering what you’re supposed to do with your set other than examining their pretty pictures. Besides including mini and microgames, Square has capitalized on everyone’s strange fascination with card battling by including the option in Chocobo Tales in place of real fighting. Card battles are turn-based and give both you and your AI opponent three random cards pulled from a deck; each card has four colored zones that can feature either an attack (sword) or guard (shield) zone. If your card’s blue zone has a sword and the opponent’s card has a blue zone with a shield, your attack is blocked; if his card’s blue zone is blank, however, it goes through. There’s an element of speed introduced for the card battles, as the first person to select his card choice goes first, and it should be noted that any successful attack made against your card character will go straight on through to your chocobo, lowering his HP; when his HP reaches zero, it sucks to be you.

If single-player gameplay isn’t your thing, Square has included some multiplayer options for the adventurous. You can hop on Nintendo’s Wi-Fi option for a pop-up duel with players across the globe, which is especially enjoyable considering that human opponents are considerably more challenging than the AI ones offered in the storyline. Online play also motivates the player to collect additional cards via completing tougher challenges in storybooks, which grants further replay value.

Square is renown for creating wonderful visual presentations for its games, and Chocobo Tales receives the same star treatment. Your 3D chocobo explores a lush, vibrant 3D environment complete with small houses, forests, streams, and even a volcano. Movement is performed via lightly sliding the stylus across the screen, although you can use the D-pad if you prefer. The pop-up characters in storybooks and card battles are another visual treat, and special effects occur during card battles when you or your opponent pulls a card with a unique ability. Acoustically, you get the same Final Fantasy themes you’re familiar with, like the famous chocobo song, paired with ambient noises like choco-footsteps and squawks.

Though Chocobo Tales sports enjoyable micro and minigames as well as online play, a few of its games can become quite irritating. For example, in Titan and the Beanstalk the player has to draw leaves to propel the chocobo upward, but taking the time to draw an actual leaf is a waste – instead, draw a line or the top of a triangle to orient the leaf properly or you’ll spend the next hour bouncing all over the place. You’ll run into little problems related to drawing items or directing your chocobo in numerous minigames, but while frustrating, they still require only minimal effort to work around.

Probably the game’s biggest fault is its target audience, as the game often feels far too cutesy and childish for adults. Then again, it’s full of chocobos and moogles, so what can one expect?

Though you can send games to friends, you can only send microgames, which aren’t anywhere as pleasing or as cute as the storybook minigames. As for online play, there are plenty of gamers to compete against, but don’t be surprised by the standard disconnects.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales is a surprisingly pleasant game if you’re into fast pick-up-and-play gameplay and are enticed by cute visuals, card collecting, and card battling. It’s a fairly quick adventure, though, and a bit too easy to maintain an adult’s interest when more complex, similar titles are available. If you’re a Final Fantasy fan or enjoy card games, it’s more than worth a look, and especially if you’re under the age of 15. Others may want to rent first.

It’s much too simple for my tastes, but it’s functional and cute.

Very adorable visuals. Love the cut-out character design.

Standard Final Fantasy themes.

You’ll enjoy card battling and some of the mini and microgames.

If you love card battling, Chocobo Tales has got the hook-up.

]]> Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:03:00 -0500 Shiva Stella http://www.gamebump.com/go/ffxiii_to_last_10_years_plus_current_ff_project_details http://www.gamebump.com/go/ffxiii_to_last_10_years_plus_current_ff_project_details http://www.gamebump.com/go/ffxiii_to_last_10_years_plus_current_ff_project_details# This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.

Final Fantasy is without a doubt the name when it comes to RPGs. Unfair or not, fans tend to fall within two extremes - love it with every ounce of their beings or hate it because it’s only good because it’s so mainstream and thus overrated. And now we have the return of the series to a strictly non-MMORPG console title in Final Fantasy XII, but with Square bringing in some of the elements from its online XI, longtime fans of the series were worried about how much those extreme changes in the gameplay, particularly the battle system, would affect their experience. I, too, was one of those skeptical, though still open-minded, to the ideas. I like to have some sort of semblance of control over my party’s decisions. After spending some good quality time with it, however, I can assure you that the overall package of Final Fantasy XII did little to disappoint.

Final Fantasy XII returns us to the world of Ivalice, long established by old PS1 Square games, Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story. But, this version of Ivalice is very different than the Ivalice found in those games, though there are hints to a connection amongst them. In XII’s Ivalice, you’ll find many a species littering the streets of the first city, Rabanastre. It invokes a Star Wars type feel. In fact, the intro, with all of its dogfighting airships and hundreds of foot soldiers marching through the streets during a ceremony feel like they were ripped out of the original trilogy. Heck, as you progress through the story, there’s a resistance versus the empire plot point. Sound familiar? A friend of mine put it best with his “Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings” comment.

Despite that air of familiarity, the game does an excellent job of immersing you into the atmosphere of its not-so-tiny little universe. There seem to be literally hundreds of people in the town of Rabanastre alone, all minding their own business, whether it’s just to chat it up with a friend on a corner or busily shopping in the crowded bazaar district. While you can only talk to the ones with an icon above their heads, they are plenty interesting. They can either steer you in what direction to go next, drop a clue on a sidequest, or just help flesh out the history of Ivalice and how it’s gotten to be in its current situation.

While not as ground breaking as when Final Fantasy X first showed up, Final Fantasy XII is still a beautiful game. The environments are all rendered with small details that would normally be overlooked. Taking the time out to stop and smell the roses is definitely recommended here. And since most of your journeying requires quite a bit of hoofing it on foot between the different maps, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to do so while traveling through the seamlessly connected world of Ivalice. And though there are quite a few breath-taking fully rendered cutscenes, most of the story unfolds with the in-game engine. However, they look and animate so beautifully that you’ll be hard pressed to complain about it. And hey, the US got the addition of 16:9 support, so there’s even less to complain about.

The main cast of characters is definitely a crew that will become endearing over the course of the game – well for the most part. There are a few characters that will have you scratching your head and asking why they’re there. Surprisingly, one of those you’ll be asking that question about is the main hero, Vaan. His reason for journeying with the core group, as well as his friend, Penelo’s, seems rather trivial, and unfortunately, those two suffer from the least amount of development. The other four and the various guest characters that will join you is another story, however. The other character that most will know from promotional materials is the displaced princess of the kingdom of Dalmasca, Ashe. There’s also the fallen knight, Basch; the sky pirate, Balthier, and his Viera friend (the all-female humanoid rabbit hybrids), Fran. Don’t be turned off at first because they all seem pretty generic, but they’ll quickly turn into well-rounded fleshed out characters. Balthier in particular I grew very fond of, spitting out one-liners left and right with a very strong hint of “humble arrogance”, if you will. In fact, sometimes, it seems like Balthier plays the hero bit better than Vaan. I’d say more, but that’s treading into spoiler territory. Just take my word when I say this cast is pretty hard to hate.

What helps is the fantastic voice acting jobs by most of the cast. Yes, there are some that aren’t a perfect fit, some synching is off, and the subtitles don’t match the spoken dialogue sometimes, but those gripes are easy to overlook when looking at the bigger picture. An interesting stylistic choice is using Olde English as well as a large variety of accents. I love this decision as it gives XII more of a worldly feel. It works all the more because of the fantastic acting making it sound very natural, not wooden or forced. And there really isn’t much to be said about the music except that it’s up to FF standards. Lots of variations on old themes permeate the soundtrack, but the original compositions are nothing to shake a stick at either.

I guess it’s high time we covered the largest and most controversial change found in FFXII – the battle system. Taking a cue from XI, random battles or running into an enemy avatar no longer triggers a change into the battle screen. Instead, exploration and battle are woven into the same map. Enemies are strewn about the maps and battle is not initiated until you give the order to do so or the enemy decides it wants to eat you for lunch. That’s a big change in itself, but bigger still is the actual battle mechanics.

The active time bar is still in effect, with the character’s speed stat playing a large role in how quickly one of them will act on their given order. Battles play out much faster than they used to, so constantly giving orders to three separate party members can prove taxing if you lose track of ordering what to whom. This is where the gambit system comes into play. Gambits are automated orders that a character will perform when a situation constraint is placed on it. For example, if you have a gambit such as when Ally: HP < 50% combined with Cura, that gambit will tell the character to use that particular white magic when anyone in the party falls to under half of his or her max HP. That’s just one gambit example. With hundreds of gambits to collect/buy as well as a laundry list of skills and commands, it can seem overwhelming, especially since how you order the gambits affects how the AI will handle combat. Luckily, XII eases the system on to you slowly by only offering a handful of gambits and skills at the onset. Unfortunately, that’s when it will seem sort of boring because you don’t have a lot of options to play with it. But once things start to open up, it’s very satisfying experimenting with different gambit set ups.

It’s a surprisingly deep system, which caught me off-guard because I thought the hands-off battle system would be a total turnoff. But, seeing how well an automated system can handle it – if you set it up correctly - feels very gratifying. Of course, the same can be said for the opposite case. Incorrectly set up your gambits and prepare to see your party decimated because someone is constantly using a skill or magic that benefits the enemy mob. Catch the mistake too late and it’s either a very deep hole to climb out of or game over. Then you smack your head as you realize the one mistake you made. But hey, at least you can change gambits, as well as party members, on the fly.

The complement to the gambit system is the license board. You can customize each character as you see fit using the license board. Think of a variation of FFX’s sphere grid, and you’ll have a general idea of what to expect. Purchasing licenses is what enables characters to equip weapons, armors, accessories; learn all sorts of magicks and technicks; and even gain stat boosts. The license board for each character is the same, so this leaves their progression entirely up to you. You can take the knight Basch and turn him into a white mage or take cute little Penelo and turn her into your meat shield-slash-tank. While I love the open-ended nature of the license board, it would’ve helped had the game given you more hints as to what directions to take. What I mean by this is that to see what you haven’t unlocked yet, you may need to blindly spend precious license points. When you spend points to buy a license, only the ones adjacent to it become unlocked. And sometimes you’ll be spending points trying to build someone a certain way and hit some sort of dead end. Here, you’re down to two choices – waste the LP to see where what leads (you could always reload if it’s not where you wanted to go, but that’s annoying especially if you haven’t saved in some time) or hoard the points and keep the character’s progression stagnant until you’re ready to check it out. It’s hard to build someone up efficiently without looking ahead by using some sort of guide. License points are earned after every fight (even for those not in the active party, though non-active members gain no XP), but they are still a precious commodity that should not be wasted.

As if juggling licenses for all of those things weren’t complicated enough, there are other things to consider within each of those categories. Armor comes in three types – light, heavy, mystic – all with their own special attributes. Light armor gives HP bonuses, heavy gives extra defense, and mystic armor gives quite a hefty bonus to magick power. And I love all of the different weapon types available. Not only do they offer differing kinds of attack, but their powers are based on different stats. Swords, both one-handed and two-handed, spears, and crossbows are your standard attack power plus strength weapons. Damage from bows and daggers are based on the weapon’s attack power plus the character’s speed. Katana and staves are based on attack power and magick power. And guns and poles ignore an enemy’s defense and magic defense, respectively. With so many different enemy types and ways to build up characters, trying to figure out what weapons to use for whom can be a chore itself. But, just like the rest of the gambit system and license board, it’s so rewarding knowing that your super black mage can deal massive physical damage by using a katana; or watching your heavy hitting knight come across a monster with a high defensive stat and smacking it for minimal damage, then seeing your gunner rip a hole right through its HP. It’s good stuff I tell you.

While I had a fun time with those systems, there is no denying that it is complicated and by nature difficult to fully grasp and take advantage of. There is no gray area with all of the changes made in FFXII – you either love it or hate it. Because of that, XII isn’t nearly as accessible as other RPGs. Unfortunately, because it is the biggest name on the market, FFXII will get name dropped the instant the letters R-P-G are mentioned and may be someone’s first foray into the genre. Though battle is automated, this isn’t the game to be diving head first into without a small bit of extra knowledge.

The way the story unfolds may also turn off those expecting a grandiose story. A good 30-35 hours is enough to bust your way through to the end while skipping the loads of sidequests. However, when you finally do get there, you’ll get the feeling of “what, that was it?” The majority of the story focuses squarely on Ashe and her reclaiming of the Dalmascan throne; Basch trying to serve Dalmasca as best as he can despite being branded a traitor to the crown; and Balthier and Fran weaving their way into the web eventually. This is where the questions of how Vaan and Penelo fit in, but it’s more of a lack of character development than lack of their motivation for being on this journey. If you make a beeline to the story’s end, you’ll miss a lot of the bigger picture – the war between the empires. By talking to the NPCs, you get a better grasp of just what exactly is going on around you. I actually liked this decision by the development team. The story focuses on your core cast, but it shows that the world goes on without you, whether you choose to let it or not. I put this in the bad and ugly section because again, I can see it turning quite a few people off, thinking that the story isn’t fleshed out enough, but it is; players just have to let it develop for them instead of being spoon fed the story through cutscenes.

However, I do suggest not doing that. You’ll want to do a lot of the sidequests not just for the great loot they give, but for the levels and gil; plus they’ll add a lot of hours to your play clock, almost doubling it up in some cases. Excessive level grinding isn’t really necessary, but taking some time out to gain a few levels does help. XII isn’t overly difficult, but if you’re caught unprepared, it can be damn frustrating. And gaining money has been overhauled. Instead of gil mysteriously being dropped by monsters, they will instead drop items for you to sell to the various shops. These shops also have bazaar items that come for sale when you sell enough of the right drops to them. Unfortunately, nothing in the game tells you what items open up what bazaar specials and the shops don’t keep a memory of what you’ve sold to them before, so either sell everything in bulk all at once if you really want those bazaar items, or sell when you need the gil to keep your equipment upgraded. That ties into the difficulty since attack power and defense is solely based on the weapon, no longer increasing with levels. Strength and vitality do play parts in the formula, but not as much as it once did. So in essence, you’re killing three birds with one stone while grinding – leveling up, gathering items to sell for much needed gil, and earning those ever important license points.

On the technical front, the only gripe I have is the camera. It’s a tad unwieldy, even with the fact that you can reset the camera to behind the lead character with the simple push of R3. But, if you happen to initiate a fight with your back up against a wall, be prepared to watch the top of your character’s head. And trying to move the camera to a more favorable angle is a fruitless endeavor. In addition, when facing off against a towering enemy, all you will see is the party swiping and sniping at the monster’s feet. A wider angle would have been nicer in those situations.

Mist Charges/Quickenings are XII’s equivalents to limit breaks and espers make their return as summoned creatures, most of which are optional. The problem is that they are, for the most part, not that useful. You can easily tackle anything the game throws at you with a party using normal tactics. Ok, quickenings aren’t entirely useless because you can chain them together to form some very damaging combos that can drain a boss’ HP very fast. Each character has three available once you purchase them on the license board. The catch is that it requires the use of all MP. In XII, MP is a precious thing. Though it restores as you travel, it’s the fastest and most efficient way to heal and sometimes damage enemies, and it restores at a pretty slow pace. Yes there are ethers, but for the majority of the game, they’re rare and you’ll want to keep them in stock for emergencies. Situations with no MP to cast a cura are dire ones indeed.

Esper battles are a change of pace. When an esper is summoned, it becomes a part of the team, but only it and the summoner are left to fight. If the esper falls in combat, so too does the summoner. Again, it was something I didn’t find very useful other than experimentation.

As I said before, you’re either going to love or hate FFXII. It has a lot of what FF fans have come to expect – high quality presentation, a grand adventure, a likeable cast, and lots of fighting. But, it also has a lot changes to which not everyone may warm up – gambits, revamped battle system, and a different way of storytelling. Some say that it’s not even deserving of being called a Final Fantasy title. I find that a little extreme.

Even I was a little hesitant when I first heard of all the changes being made to the core gameplay, but if you’re like me and approach it with an open mind and let the game sink in, I can honestly say that you will not be disappointed by Final Fantasy XII.

New system - not perfect, not terribly flawed either. Very deep with plenty of customization.

Not as breath-taking as when FFX first dropped, but still amazing nonetheless

Fantastic acting by most of the voice cast; old theme variations bring a hint of nostalgia.

If you told me an automated battle system would be fun a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed you

Not much incentive to play through again, but lot of sidequests runs clock up past 60 hours.

]]> Sun, 19 Nov 2006 18:47:00 -0600 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/six_new_final_fantasy_vi_advance_images http://www.gamebump.com/go/six_new_final_fantasy_vi_advance_images http://www.gamebump.com/go/six_new_final_fantasy_vi_advance_images# This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.The original author is Evan Lahti.

Investigations on RMT took place over the month of May and resulted in about 250 accounts being suspended permanently. 250 billion in illegally acquired gil was also purged from circulation. Square Enix further warns that "acts of RMT will not be tolerated in Final Fantasy XI, and any violations of the user agreement will be dealt with severely."

Capcom has released a new set of screenshots this afternoon of their recently released arcade brawler, Final Fight: Streetwise. Enjoy!

]]> Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:58:00 -0600 Tim Grube http://www.gamebump.com/go/final_fantasy_vii_advent_children_comes_to_psp http://www.gamebump.com/go/final_fantasy_vii_advent_children_comes_to_psp http://www.gamebump.com/go/final_fantasy_vii_advent_children_comes_to_psp# This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.

The movie will be available for an MSRP of $26.96, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children will be coming to Special Edition DVD in a 2-disc set as well as UMD for PSP. The bonus materials on the DVD includes a story digest, deleted scenes, a “Making Of” featurette, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Venice Film Festival footage and a “Sneak Peek” of the upcoming games in the “Compilation of Final Fantasy VII” series. ]]> Mon, 13 Feb 2006 10:59:00 -0600