In my impatience to begin FFXII, I dove right in without following my usual routine. This pre-RPG ritual involves reading the game’s manual (cover to cover) and the overview in the strategy guide that comes before the walkthrough. This system has worked well for me in several RPGs, such as Chrono Cross, FFVIII, FFIX, FFX, and Kingdom Hearts.

After playing FFXII without the benefit of the additional reading, I had the constant feeling that I was missing something. I was afraid I would screw something up in the licensing (leveling) system and ruin the rest of my lengthy experience. I was purposely avoiding playing FFXII for about two weeks because of my constant dilemma: when I wanted to game, I didn’t want to read, but when I was able to sit down and read, I had to do so for class.

At the encouragement of my sister, I was finally shaken out of my paralysis and sat down to read FFXII material on an otherwise empty Friday night. Two hours later, I regained the confidence I so sorely lacked. I now had an intellectual understanding of the leveling process, key mechanics, and new Espers. I could now play, knowing that I would make informed choices.

By the time I finished reading, I had only a few hours to play. I was able to go through a couple missions: one for a sunstone and another through a castle underground.

The sunstone quest was structured traditionally, but with one key difference: I was by myself for the first half of the mission. While the “go here, talk to a certain person, go there, get an item” pattern was the basis of the quest, I couldn’t even get more information until I had battled several creatures of the desert by myself. Most of the monsters weren’t too difficult, but I was running low on potions by the time I got to the village. I had been following the maps in my guide to try and collect scattered items in treasure chests, but some chests appeared to have mysteriously vanished. (I found this issue earlier as well – are randomly spawning chests a new feature?)

Once in the village, I found a friend who would fight with me and make my life easier. I was rather confused when read in my guide that she had the Cure ability, but I couldn’t figure out how to make her use it. I don’t know if I stopped paying attention during an earlier tutorial, but I soon discovered that spells had to be purchased. I find this system to be rather redundant, since you earn points in battle that have to be spent to earn an ability such as Cure. Essentially, you have to buy the spell twice (once to get the license and again to get the spell itself). Although the magic regeneration is fairly rapid, I find the spell acquisition process to be cumbersome. I wish the game had made the acquisition of vital spells such as Cure more clear.

My second mission involved running around a castle’s underground waterways. I got to fight alongside some neat characters – a sky pirate and his partner in crime, a striking female warrior of another race. I had been getting used to the fighting system at this point, but there were still some issues for me to iron out. I was shocked after I set my main character to constantly heal everyone and then my female warrior got knocked out. I soon realized that my MP (“Mist Points” like magic points) had grown too low and I could no longer cast cure.

FFXII has been the butt of many jokes for being a game that could "practically play itself." However, from my reading and experiences with the automation system, I can see that that is quite an exaggeration of the truth. It still takes a great human mind to harness the A.I. behind the battle system and use it to its full advantage.