New Details on Final Fantasy XII Battle System

[Fuzz]

With high anticipation for the upcoming installment to the Final Fantasy series, any new information gets fans stirred up.

It is already known that the battle system will be part realtime and part ATB, but recently there appears to be some more extra depth involved. First of all, a "Chain" system has been revealed. Basically when you keep attacking enemies of the same race without killing enemies of a different race in between, your Chain counter increase. Increasing the counter will lead to getting better and even rare items from the enemies as they fall.

Next up is the multi-hit combos. Every time you attack there will always be a chance that you'll launch into a 6 hit combo rather than just doing a single attack. This high hitting, high damage occasion happens at random. But how often it occurs is fully dependant upon your equipped weapon and therefore by getting better weapons you'll increase your chance for combos. On the defensive side, shield guarding is actually handled the same way. Sometimes your character will put up their shield to block an attack when struck by an enemy. Again, this a random occurrence that will be dependent on the quality of your equipped shield.

Other new info is that while you're out battling on the map, enemies will not only be fighting against you but against themselves as well. In order to give the game a realistic feel, enemies of different races will now attack each other on sight. Also enemy races will have their job classes within the species. One of the early races in the Square Enix Show demo had monsters in the fighter, monk, and red mage class.

Since Square Enix is still keeping Final Fantasy XII wrapped in mystery, not even showing it at the Tokyo Game Show this week, these little bits of info are all that we can go on to try to slowly solve the mystery of how the final game will play.

Source: 1UP

[Bryan]

Enemies fighting against themselves, eh? Sounds interesting, as does the job classes within the enemy races. I can see how this could be both a cool idea and a really bad idea at the same time. I'm curious to see how it actually works in gameplay.

[LocoColt04]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

First of all, a "Chain" system has been revealed. Basically when you keep attacking enemies of the same race without killing enemies of a different race in between, your Chain counter increase. Increasing the counter will lead to getting better and even rare items from the enemies as they fall.

This actually makes perfect sense. There was an unwritten rule about this in FFIV, so it's actually nothing new. The only way you could score the Mage and Bomb summons in that game was to kill insane numbers of Mages and Bombs successively, and just hope for the summon to drop after the battle.

I like this. It gives me a reason to go hunting things, searching for the rare drops. It's also like FFXI in that regard, now that I think about it.

[Setzer]

Woah I'm surprised I didn't notice this thread a while back. Well actually all the things Fuzz said sounds good to me. I mean the idea of enemies fighting other enemies seems great! it can give a whole new flow and feeling to the game. Also the combo system sounds wonderful, and adding it is good. I know adding to much can give it a bulkish feeling with a heavy learning curve, but with what's said I like the sounds of it all. it seems like they're really trying to step it up and not just rehash the same old game. Anywho yes I like all that was told thanks for the info Fuzz.

im gonna miss the old battle system i mean almost all the final fantasy has the old battle system i dont know some players might not like it

[relm]

The way this sounds, and from the video
previews of FFXII battle sequences that I have
watched, I can now say that I am VERY excited!

Like, loco said, many similarities to how battle
looks in FFXI. I'm glad they were able to implement
something like this, straying from the old turn-based,
wait mode, type of battle. With this, battle's should be
a lot more fun & strategic to play, as opposed to turn-based
button-mashing.

[penelo rocks]

the new featurs of this game look very good a new land mark for the series with the new battle system.

This game truly lives up to the hype it seems to be receiving!
I've only played about 2 hours into it so far, however it is quickly becoming one of my all-time favourite games.
I know many of you might like the game to be a complete surprise, so ill put the rest of this post as a spoiler...only highlight if you don't mind knowing a little about the game in advance...

Spoiler: The battle system is similar to the system of Kingdom Hearts, where you will actively run around while fighting, and to attack a monster, you need to lock onto them first, however when you open the action menu, the battle will freeze. (which is where the semi-ATB concept comes in) Controlling multiple characters (yes you can actually control any of the characters, unlike the seemingly random, and often stupid actions of Donald & Goofy in KH) in an active battle is made surprisingly easy, thanks to the Gambit system (yet another amazing square-enix idea) The license system is awesome, similar to the sphere grid of FFX, but instead of a character being confined to a single point on a one or 2 way track, the character is able to spread out in any direction, from one of their 2 start points. The whole point of the licenses is to basically gain the ability to use an item or magic. The license board appears to be split into sections, so if you want a character to have lots of Technicks, aim for the Technick section, where several lie in wait, all grouped together. The gameplay, and especially battles, are reasonably fast, meaning its very possible to get attacked by several characters at once, so it's vital that you keep your party members alive... against some of the early enemies you will need all the backup you can get.

The next set of spoilers will serve as proof that I have played the game, only highlight these if you don't believe me. Wait a month and these will be proven right...

Spoiler: It will be about 20 minutes before you get control of Vaan (the main character The story begins in Dalmasca, in what i guess could be called a seige The king will die... The princess seems to have taken her own life...guess again! Vaan is an orphan The first "Hunt" is for a creature named the Rogue Tomato...hint: avoid the dinosaurs!!! The first scene you will find Vaan in, you must fight 3 large rats In the desert, find the kid named Jinn. He is sitting near a small Dark Crystal, and has a sore foot The story for Vaan begins 2 years after the seige in Dalmasca, in his hometown of Rabanastre

Enjoy...

[Masasume]

o.O How in hell did you play it already?