Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings - 63% Completed
- Storyline keeps the chapters fresh and lures you back in for just one more battle
- Battles are repetitive, and while some have unique goals, they all almost play out with the same strategy.
- The AI is atrocious and do not even try to actually win battles. Often a few attacks to a small army will be enough to make them retreat.
- Suffers from “too many playable characters” syndrome that often force you to just use any characters that has strong area of effect specials or ones that raise heroes. I would assume a poll of the most played heroes would result in pretty much the same character sets.
- Levels that are hard only because you are underleveled for having never died are pointless extensions of gameplay, especially when they are part of the storyline!
I can safely say that this game is somewhat addictive in small bursts. Being portable, I often find I play this game when I am either riding somewhere or waiting for something, and it’s ironic how far I’ve gotten into this game without taking time to reflect on why I am still playing this game. The secret lies in success in small chunks and repetition, much like games of ole. It gives you enough information in the story to play the next chapter which leads to a nice transition from act to act. 
The 100 Word or Less Summary:
The general story takes place a year after Final Fantasy XII for the Ps2, and the central characters Vaan and Penelo has fufilled his role as a Sky Pirate by commandeering (stealing actually) his own ship. In doing so he travels to the floating continent of Lemurés above the clouds where he learns to summon monsters using auricite crystals. Throughout 10 chapters he fights his way with his friends and allies in a real time strategy game that has a decent amount of action but not very much challenge and depth.
The gameplay initially feels more advanced then what you expect from a DS game or any Final Fantasy game for that matter. Everything happens in real time and you sometimes control up to 30+ units. At the beginning of a battle you are given mission goals, which can be defeating all enemies on the map or sneaking to a specific spot. You are given a chance to see the units the enemy will have. All units are classified between ranged, melee, and flying units and the entire game revolves around a rock-paper-scissor relationship of which one type defeats another. Ranged dominates flying, flying dominates melee, and melee dominates ranged. In addition all units have a type of element, and each element has another element that it is strong or weak against.
In addition to these attribute types for units, you have levels and are limited by only bringing 5 types total to each battle. Each character commands a troupe of whatever units you summon for them, generally consisting of their own battle type.
For early battles all of this feels very daunting, but after a few chapters you start to realize the game is easier than it looks and has very little depth, at least compared to how much is almost promises.
Once you get the hang of the ds controls, which do a fairly good job at allowing you to micro manage your units (although not a great job), you start to find that any battle that gives you a summoning crystal needs almost 0 micromanaging. Even if you commit suicide, as long as you keep on hero alive you can usually rally and make a comeback as there are very little resources that prevent you from building back your armies. The only mission types that offer a challenge are the ones that have no summoning crystals which means that unless you resurrect your hero with another hero, you will not be able to come back. In theory this sounds like a challenging situation, but generally if you spam area effect attacks and just keep summoning more espers… the AI never adjusts and you win. Unless of course the units are 20 levels ahead of you, to which the only thing you can really do is play even cheaper and send “bombs” (a type of esper that commits suicide once hit to deal a lot of damage) over and over one by one until you clear most units and then run in to win. This… of course… is only effective until you come across units 40 levels ahead of you, which then your only choice is to level rather then even play the fight to begin with.
Luckily, the art style, dialog, and story keeps this game lovable and passable. There are occasional times where the fights are fun, usually in the earlier stages before you unlock stronger weapons and level 3 espers. I am interested in finishing this game, but I am not sure if I have the stamina to get to 100% completion. I’ll keep you updated!