VI or XII (Multiple Categories)

[Locke4God]

I wanted to compare 2 games at a time in several of the areas that make up a great Final Fantasy game. And I thought I'd start with the last of an era vs the latest in the series, VI vs. XII.

The poll below is multiple choice, and you'll see each game is listed with a category such as (storyline) to the right. Use your votes to pick the better game in each category. If you thought neither game was good in that category, don't pick either, but if you thought they were equally great, pick both.

[Che]

Fail @ making poll?

edit: nvm!

Gonna go with FFXII for Battle System. I loved the Gambit/License board. So customizable! "Maining" one character and having gambits for the other two to be able to function on their own to help you was a great idea. I also picked FFXII for boss battles because it had a lot to do with the gambit system as well.

I also picked FFXII for the enjoyment of towns and environment. While FFVI is a great game, before FFXII even existed, I don't ever remember being involved so much in towns as much as when I first played FFXII. The buildings were huge, and so were the cities themselves. I really enjoyed it.

For Characters and Story I went with FFVI. Such a large, and interesting cast. Much more than FFXII, I thought. The story was also much more deep and involved than FFXII's. These are two things that the latest game lacked pretty badly, but it made up for it in what FFVI lacked to sort of even them out for me.

[Locke4God]

Agreed on the Character front. Nothing really beats 6. It had a large collection of extremely important characters, a few important but not intrigal characters, and then a few toss in, but really powerful and fun characters as well. I loved them all.

Clearly the battle system goes to XII. VI is fairly run of the mill, however, it does shine in the unique abilities of each character. I'd put it ahead of a lot of games.

[MagitekElite]

Ahehe, I'm sorry, but I think VI beat all of that into the ground. I'm surprised there are so many VI fans here ^^

[Locke4God]

Suprised there are 6 fans? I don't know, if you've played all of the old school games, 6 was pretty clearly very very good. I honestly place it ahead of both 9 & 10. The story was amazing, and made better by all of the great little moments and side stories, like the letter you carry back and forth from the soldier to his woman, or the back story of Relm and her father. There were other fun spots like the option to save Shadow, and the underground city. Plus Kefka was just the most ruthless villian ever, and everybody's story entertwined nicely, and the large cast was not at all overdone. If it had been done in 3D, it may have been the best of the series.

[Xanatos]

Wow, I can't believe that there is someone who wants to compare FF VI made in 1994 on a SNES cartridge with a poor limit size of 5 MB with FF XII who's been made for PS2 in 2006 with a size of over 4 GB. Is it just me or does anyone else sees something wrong with this?


I don't want to sound so harsh but Locke be more realistic at this subject. Of course that FF XII will have more mini games, sidequests and extras. For God's sake, when they made characters, opponents and story in FF VI, I don't think there was much space left to put awesome extras, mini games and side quests. And there was no possible way that they could make a battle system any greater, I mean that was battle system's peak for any RPG at that time. This games can be only compared in popularity and reception and I think that FF VI owns in those elements.

[Josh_R]

I dislike the battle system of XII and that is honestly the only VI has over XII...XII has superior graphics, more mini games, better story line and much much more...

[Locke4God]

@ Xanatos - You know I might dissagree with the side quest / minigame dissadvantage of VI that you claim. Sure it doesn't have hunts or something so expansive as blitzball, but it had a lot of side story potential.

The Collesium of course, and the auction house are classic.

Plus you have a large side story with Strago, Relm, and Shadow that's completely optional, along with Gau's background, the quest for the ultimate sword, the underground lost city where you can get raiden, the soldier and the girl you can pass letters back and forth too.

The 8 dragons, the sky demon, etc etc etc.

There are a lot of optional elements to that game.

[Locke4God]

@ Kisuku - You know I don't know if I'm sold yet on the battle system either. I'm having a lot of fun with it, but it could get tiresome. I think the best part of it is, is that you can customize it in such a way that you can fight 200 enemies in a row without taking extra time to transition into a new screen, and you can set your guys to heal and attack in any way you want automatically. But at the same time it's not that simple. For different enemies you have to go back in and reset your gambits, say if you need to use magic instead of physical attacks. But all you have to do is toggle commands on and off. It's really quite fun I think.

I'll say this about it at least. The idea that was presented several games back to move away from random battles, I never thought could really successfully be done, but I think they've done it with XII far better than I thought would be possible. Either way, random battles are forever done at this point, so we'll see over the next few games if other developers can't put together more successful versions.