Originally Posted by
Xanatos
My my, what do we have here. I'm not sure where to begin, I guess XII supremacy is a good start as any.
First of all, you clearly didn't play XII, either that or you don't know shit about it's story, which makes me wonder, how can you compare two games if you lack knowledge about one of those games? Vaan didn't search for his sister, he doesn't have any family to search for, I guess the huge orphan cue wasn't clear enough for you.
As for the comparison at hand, XII has only huge open spaces to roam around, real scale world map, non random battles, gorgeous graphics, excellent voice acting, impressive CGI scenes, but that's superiority from technical stand point, to make this comparison bit more fair I'll rule those elements out.
Now we're left with characters, story, gameplay, music and overall content. While considering those elements, Square decided to pull back from all those cliche and to be honest highly overused parts. Cheesy love story with bit of yaoi there, lame generic villain, angsty teens, one man army and whatnot are all good for Final Fantasy VII, not for XII though.
Protagonist - We have Cloud, a ****ed up angsty teen who wasn't himself through major part of the game both mentally and what he claimed to be, aside strange attraction towards Sephiroth as a leader he caused quite a few problems for the group, making some of the main characters main duty to babysit him. He's arogant, a poser, and probably gay considering he rejected two hot girls and want's to literally be his savior Zack Fair.
Vaan, character who went through a lot of ****ed up things as well seeing as he lost his family, friends, home, watched his brother suffer and eventually die and had to steal to survive, though unlike Cloud he kept his composure. He's a common fella, not your usual one man army protagonist, part of a group rather than leader, optimistic, brave, excited to explore new things and open minded.
Villain - Acording to Square, Sephiroth is by far the strongest being in VII's universe, he's also apparently a brilliant tactician. With that in mind falling for the same trick three times is kinda lame and stupid. Not to mention all those similarities he shares with Kefka. His biggest accomplishment as far as original media goes was burning down a village and killing an innocent defenseless girl, nope, that was actually Jenova, so burning down five house village it is.
Vayne Solidor is unlike any other villain in franchise, he actually had a genuine and selfless goal. His methods may be cruel, but necessary it seems. Great example of a brilliant tactician, after all he managed to fool the entire nation of Ivalice, even God's themselves. Man of pure determination, prepared to sacrifice everything precious to him, to go through hell and all to accomplish his goal and he succeeded at doing so. Even Kefka and Kuja fall short at what Vayne managed to do, while all villains perish his accomplishment is there to stay forever.
Story - Final Fantasy VII - Save the world from big bad guy told bit differently compared to previous game. Typical JPRG story here, couple of teens with emphasis on problems of several individuals told through game. Sadly though, there are quite a few parts left unexplained or given a poor explanation, which resulted with all those theories over the internet, official guides released by Square to patch things down and so fort.
Final Fantasy XII - Somewhat fresh compared to previous games in franchise with emphasis on tyranny, struggle and problems of entire nation rather than few men. The entire cast has something personal on stake here aside the general issue rather than "let's follow the main guy because it's a right thing to do". Subtle love story which I think is better than where franchise has gone after VII just to please mass of teens.
Gameplay - I actually like to mess around with materia system, there are several nifty combinations, but you don't really have to be intelligent to come up with a tactic that will annihilate everything in front of you making this game look like Kirby's Adventure on super easy mode. Place mimic materia along with powerful limit break and that's where game pretty much ends.
On the other hand, gambits give you as much control over your characters and tactics as you want, you may even chose in which manner you want to play this game be it old school or having help of AI. The amount of combinations you can assemble while entering into a battle is simply staggering. You can approach any battle in so many ways without actually triggering a combination where you kill uber powerful opponent in one move or two which is my main issue with materia system.
Overall Content - no contest here, XII features more content than any other game in franchise, and for obvious reason. This game has more references to older titles than IX itself, not to mention sheer amount of weapons, items, information about it's world. Speaking about world history, VII had a great thing going on, it's a shame they didn't explore that area more. You can find out a lot about Ivalice, it's history and locations, such information spans through several games, something VII and it's related media failed to do.
Expect part two Nix, I'm not nearly done, right now I need to rest a bit, long day you know, for now feel free to nitpick what I wrote.
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) ... it was my first rpg and thanks to it I am now a big fan of all FF games ^.^
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