Once you have picked a board you use license points-earned with every kill-to unlock new squares on the board. The 'white mage' board gives you access to lots of recovery spells very early on, which makes it a good choice for your healer. A close combat brawler will do well with the 'foebreaker' board, which lets you specialise in heavy melee weapons. When you start levelling with a character you pick a board from a selection of 12, each of which represents a combat archetype. The license board is a big part of this appeal, allowing you to cast any character in any battlefield role. I have played through the game multiple times over the course of its life, and each time I have enjoyed building wildly different parties with new tactical approaches to combat. Once you have enough party members, and enough gambits, setting up a web of buffs and detailed attack commands is an absorbing and rewarding process. Or you might instruct another character to cast protective shields and spell-reflecting buffs on the rest of your party. You can arrange gambits to instruct a squad member to detect fire weakness in enemies and respond with fire magic, for example. You can buy new gambit commands from shops throughout the game, which let you tailor your squad's AI more intricately.

Then you're free to give direct commands to any party member, which they execute as soon as their action cooldown timer has expired.

When an enemy attacks, everyone draws their weapons and target lines appear showing you who is engaging what. Fighting happens seamlessly as you wander around the game's open areas-no whooshing from exploration to separate battle scenes here. Once you have a full squad the combat system oh-so-slowly reveals itself, and the fun can truly begin.Ĭombat differs from other Final Fantasy games in many ways. As you guide him around town and into the surrounding deserts to hunt monsters you pick up companions like Vaan's streetwise pal, Penelo, and the fantastic sky pirate Balthir, whose opening line “I play the leading man,” hints at a massive lost opportunity. He's hitting rats in a sewer alone, and seems determined to give you the worst possible introduction to FFXII's world and systems. After a brief scene-setting prologue you start the game in control of Vaan, a charmless and irritating child from the streets of Dalmasca.

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