I love the Final Fantasy series. Before I was afflicted with the disease known as WoW, I used to mostly prefer console RPGs. I first saw FFXII at E3 two years ago. I was not impressed. What was this real-time game that claimed to be a FF title? What had they done to my beloved FF conventions?
Since then, I’ve been keeping my eye on it. It came out in Japan to rave reviews. I had a friend play it in Japanese and rave about it. I tried the demo that came with Dragon Quest VIII. And I still wasn’t convinced.
It came out last week and a friend picked up a copy. I thought, hey, maybe I’ll take a look. So we sat down and traded off playing through the first few hours of the game. It starts with a gorgeous pre-rendered cinematic with hints of Star Wars and the epic battles of the Lord of the Rings movies. There was a bit too much onscreen text after that. I felt like I was in a bizarre history lecture, like maybe I should have been taking notes to keep the politics all straight. But then we got into the game. And the game was good.
So much is different. It no longer has a fixed camera - you can rotate the camera any which way you choose (though the controls are backwards by my standards). Combat doesn’t take place on a different screen, it happens on the main play level. You can see and avoid monsters in the world. And the big one is, of course, that the combat is real-time.
It’s not bad like I expected. I got used to it and started to really enjoy how it worked. It’s strange that you can run around while waiting for your attack to come up. But I think I still have many hours of play ahead of me to figure it out. You can use the system to automate a lot of the more monotonous aspects of typical combat, but still have the option to be as much of a control freak as you want when it’s called for.
After we played, my friend said “I guarantee you’ll buy it within 48 hours.” Oh, a challenge! I don’t know if me caving and weaseling another joint play session counts as a loss. But I still haven’t bought it. 
There are many game mechanics that are different. But they’re good. And it still has the amazing production values - gorgeous ingame and pre-rendered cinematics, great voice acting and a story that keeps you playing. Plus a new leveling up mechanic that’s kind of cool. I’m just trying to work out when I’ll have time to play with everything else I have going on. But I’ll be buying it all too soon, I’m sure.