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Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XII do have similarities when it
comes to the battle system. They are not identical, so let me take
you to the key points.
1. All enemies are on-screen. This is the biggest similarity between
the two and the one that causes most people to compare FFXI and FFXII.
There are no random battles, so gone are the days of walking around
an empty area and then suddenly being attacked by a random group of
enemies. Along with this is how enemies are engaged in battle. Some
aggressive enemies will attack your party on sight while docile
enemies will ignore you unless you engage them.
2. Actual combat is similar, but whether or not it will be identical
is still up in the air. In FFXI, you would generally have a party of
six other player controlled people. In FFXII, you can have up to 3 in
your party. When engaging an enemy in either game, you select attack
and your character will continuously attack the enemy until directed
to do otherwise. This is the one area that it is difficult to fully
judge FFXII in yet. FFXII has a gambit system which, if turned on,
determines what automatic actions the assigned characters will focus
on. In the demo, your only option was to turn the gambits on or off.
There was no customization of having one character to focus on healing
or having another focus solely on attacking, it wasn't that developed
yet. At this point, we still don't know what abilities, if any, FFXII
characters will have. In the demo, they had magic and a couple could
summon Espers, but will they have skills like Steal, Armor Break or
Jump? We can only hope.
3. A key differentiating feature between FFXI and FFXII is the
Active/Wait time system. If you are in Active time, then you are
going to be reminded a lot of FFXI. You have no break in combat. You
have to think on your feet with no stopping to think, should I use
fire or ice? The Wait time combat is much closer to a traditional
turn-based battle system. You do have the time to consider what you
want to do and to swap between characters and give commands without
relying on the gambit system. The major difference is that you at
least have a choice. You don't have to be in a seemingly real-time
environment like you do in FFXI.
4. The biggest, most obvious issue seems to be the hardest to see.
FFXII is not an MMORPG. Yes, the battle system of FFXII may play
almost like one, but it's lacking a major irritation of the MMO genre,
stupid people. Vaan is not going to be looking for a group for hours.
Penelo is not going to have to leave once you start a mission because
she's tired or could get a better party. You are not going to have to
grind for hours to level up just so that you can move on to grind for
more hours in a new area.
Now it's my turn for a question. Why is this a problem? Do people
seriously have a problem with the battle system of FFXII from what
little taste they've been given or are people angry because it plays
similar to FFXI? Those of you that dislike the FFXII battle system,
do me a quick favor. Take FFXI out of the equation for one minute and
tell me why you dislike it?
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