Really?
Yes, really. Materia, sphere grid, & garment grid are all more intricate systems than any of XII's shit.
VII, X, and X-2 are very simple games. It's part of the reason their fanbase is so large.
Umm...no.
Obviously I love VII or I wouldn't be here, but the game is very simple going from start to the final boss without really needing to sidetrack that much/grind. You CAN, and you can pull off some awesome combos, but it's not needed if you just want to get the story.
This is true of most games. XII is also subject to this. But when you look at the materia system, you find out that there's so much more there than XII, where you can teach every character every ability, & they most likely end up very much the same.
XII requires a variety of strategies with gambits,
Gambits=/=strategy. You get a few good combos going, & you can just have the game fight itself. That isn't strategy. They're also somewhat annoying, but my poach gambit & its failings are another story entirely. Gambits were more of a necessity than anything else. Most of the time, it's much too difficult to keep rotating around your party members, giving them instructions.
accessories,
Umm...what's so unique about this?
the licence board? (that's what it's called right?),
This was the big thing I was thinking of. How can you even say the license board is strategic? Unless you have the guide, you can't even see what you're unlocking. Compare it to FFX's sphere grid, where you can actually plot your course, & is much more conducive to specializing your characters.
but the great thing about it is there isn't one right answer. The system caters to many different styles of playing. I know people who didn't use gambits at all and others who used them as much as possible.
Again, this is hardly unique to XII. And there's a difference between "catering to" and "allowing for." I keep bringing up specializing XII's characters. It's extremely hard to do, seeing as they all start out in relatively the same place on the license board, which is an invisible customization system.
Certain people liked certain weapons. Myself, I liked two swords and a gun/bow. I'd follow the gunner so I could see the battle a bit better. For other people they might not like this strategy, but it's okay because there are a million other combinations to choose from.
To some extent, there was a versatility with the weapons you could use that wasn't there before. I will give you that.
It all depends on how you like to play and that's what made it something new and exciting.
...No it didn't. There were class systems in other FFs. You can accomplish the same thing with materia.
To be honest that was my biggest problem with playing Tactics when I got to the point that I stopped. It felt like rather than build up a team that you liked and that worked with the way you liked to play games, you needed up build a perfect team with every job because one battle you might need this and the next one you'd need that to beat it.
In a conversation about strategy, do you really think this is a good point to make? That' the thing about XII: No matter how strategic it tried to be, it's still a main series game, which means you can easily power through the main story. And, in my opinion, you can do it easier than in some of the other games.
I recall getting to a boss where you needed to steal his sword or else you had no chance.
That is bullshit. I went through the entire game TWICE not having stolen anything. And your conclusion may have been the wrong way to go about things, anyway, because some enemies have a sort of invisible maintanence skill, keeping their equipment from being stolen &/or broken.
Guess what, I didn't have a thief or ninja or whatever you needed, let alone one with that ability. So I was expected to spend hours and hours training up for that or pray that I'd get really really lucky?
If that's the strategy you felt you needed, then yes. Levelling/training is a common element in RPG games. Honestly, it sounds to me like your team just wasn't very good, if you couldn't withstand the attacks & deal some damage yourself. No offense, but Tactics was hard. You had to be on the best of your game for several battles. That doesn't mean you needed a perfect team, but if your only option was to steal the weapon, does that really indicate a good team? Is the team well-balanced if you don't have a relatively simple class like a thief with basic abilities? Those are the questions you need to ask yourself.
No thanks. But hey, that's just me.
Tactics was like most games. You could play it a lot of different ways. But there was an emphesis on strategy. That's why it's called Tactics. Frankly, if you put yourself in the shoes of an FFT fan, it's easy to see why the rest of the Ivalice Alliance becomes little more than an insult. Everyone talks about how simple TA's gameplay & story are. That's not what Tactics was about. Everyone talks about how brilliant XII's story is, & how strategic its battles are, but then they talk about how confusing Tactics was on both levels. Umm...since when did "strategic" & "brilliant" become synonymous with "easy to grasp"? They're practically antynomous!
