My classes finally ended and I had a chance to sit down and start the supposedly epic Final Fantasy XII. With every other Final Fantasy, I would wait hours before even touching the game, reading over the manual and much of the general information in the strategy guide. This time, I was too tired to wade through all the text. Besides, I didn’t even have the manual, as I had rented the game. I decided just to dive in.

The opening movie was spectacular, as always. It was beautiful and slightly chaotic – everything you’d expect from a game about a war. I can’t really complain about the CG movies, but it was the in-game graphics that seemed a little odd.

When you gain control of the characters, you begin to see how some graphics can be really good and others just don’t seem as great. For example, anyone with wrinkles appears exceedingly realistic, almost to the point where the younger people look like they need don’t belong in the same game. The graphics do seem to have improved since the PS2’s Final Fantasy predecessor, FFX, but not by a whole lot.

On the other hand, great graphics can sometimes become a distraction. During the CG sequence for Vayne’s speech, I was so captivated by the realistic movements of his long, wavy black hair that I can hardly remember what he said. (Although I admit that I had a soft spot for the similar hair of Final Fantasy VIII’s Laguna Liore.)

Hair aside, CG scenes are only really effective if they mean something. While great care was taken to show Ashe’s wedding, I hardly cared when her new husband was killed. I barely knew him, and she didn’t look terribly heartbroken (just solemn).

Another really distracting element was the dubbing. Why couldn’t the game have been subtitled? It seems like the animators went to great effort to animate the mouths of the characters for the Japanese words, but it just doesn’t look right when the English dubbing hardly fits. I hope it gets better soon.

When actually playing the game, I found that it feels fairly intuitive. I am still having trouble getting the hang of the battle system, but I’ve played for fewer than five hours. I didn’t like the choice to play a minor character in the beginning of the game either – it didn’t seem to matter what I did. I can see where this would be an advantage for newbies, but I like making progress from the beginning.

I have yet to make up my mind regarding many of the new changes to the previous Final Fantasy gameplay elements. I think I will have to keep playing to really make up my mind, but I feel that the game only offers an average Final Fantasy start.