Summons/Quickenings, not so much?

[Locke4God]

I love XII,,,, I absolutely love running around this world, and I love the license board, the characters (all of them), and the story. It feels more real than any other game in the series.

But I wasn't so impressed with the quickenings or the Summons. I might have been spoiled by X's Aeons, but I was sort of hoping for more control. Instead it goes to this weird berserker screne where you're Summon just does it's thing.

As for the quickenings, well it's just unclear what's even happening. It just seems like it has a big, bright, colorful, fast moving screen, but in the end you have very little control of what's going on. Again in referencing X, there you had to enter complex button comands, complete a slot machine, or some other mildly skilled action to increase your damage. XII's version of chaining attacks just doesn't feel nearly as fun.

Your thoughts?

[Belugn]

Everything you typed down here mirrors my exact opinions about it too. The aeons of FFX were SO MUCH FUN. And they were actually useful in battles. The GF's of FFVIII dealt high damage when you had their boost, or if they weren't the damage dealing type, it at least (most of the times) came with a nice status buff to your characters. And also worked as a sort of damage shield while it loaded. A whole lot of the battles relied pretty heavily on GFs, which turned boring and frustrating after a while but...not useless.
The espers of FFXII? In my opinion, useless. It's not even fun summoning one of the more scary looking ones like Zalera to scare the fluff out of a giza bunny. Or squish it with Chuchulainn. Ok. That is kinda funny. But you can just as easily just beat down your enemies, and not wasting your precious MP at that.
In the FFXII International version I think you are actually able to maneuver your summons. I think I'd used the espers more if they came with that option, or if they would at least come out to fight alongside all of your allies. I always find myself rather DYING than getting some sort of advantage when I used espers on bosses. The character who summoned the esper pretty much immediately has to cast protect/shell and curing spells on the creature, and easy doing that when you just used up pretty much all of your hp just on the summoning. It's SUCH a short while the esper is out there in battle too, and it's not precisely easy to fulfil the conditions for their final blows either. (Rendering them even MORE useless.)

Quickenings. I don't know, but to me they're just unlogical. One time I get a chain around 30, other times I'm not even able to chain AT ALL. I'd use it SOMETIMES on bosses when it was at the edge of defeat already anyway. REALLY messy system.
I also find them quite random. All the characters are just suddenly really skilled in the arts of mist usage, summoning waves, tornadoes and burning flames of pure mist to make your enemies suffer, wishing they never were born.
Though...it never really did that much damage. Not when I used it anyway.

Almost as messy as this post, sorry if my rambling is all over the place somewhere. I think it's about for me to get some sleep haha.

[Gilgamesh2000]

I thought the summons on FFXII were okay but you are right a little more control would have been nice. In the harder battles the esper's final attacks were so hard to execute because they died so fast since there were only two of your characters the summoner and the summon.

[Belugn]

I'd like to see someone who manages the espers pretty well, if there are some "esper strategies" or something out there. But as I've already stated, some of the conditions that has to be fulfilled in order for the esper to perform it's final move are ridiculous.

The espers got some of the best soundtracks in the entire game though. : )

[Locke4God]

How do you fulfill conditions for Espers to execute final attacks? I've just been letting them do whatever and eventually they do it. But I've really only used Bethias or whatever his name is so far.

[Loaf]

You must reach certain requirements with the summon and the summoner, whether it be health status or some other stuff. Gotta just look them up.

[Kisuke]

honestly throughout the entire game I rarely used my espers I think on my next play through I will use them a bit...

[Belugn]

Hmmm I guess you have Belias and Mateus? I don't quite remember actually. But I know that there are some espers that only perform their final attacks when certain conditions are fulfilled, like if you and the esper have that much hp and so on.

And I think there is some sort of weird stats that decides even how much damage the final attacks will deal for each espers. Like one esper called Shemhazai. Her final blow's damage is decided upon how many times you've used Soul Devour and (or?) Knots of Rust. ...preeetty random. Now when I think about it, maybe it was just the damage factor that was the weird thing, now that I'm looking around, I don't seem to find anything about the conditions of them dealing out their final blow than keeping them alive for those 90 seconds that they are summoned, my fault. I do however think that Zalera's condemantion goes off instantly when the foe's hp is below 10% or so...if I'm remembering it correctly! Geez I don't know my FFXII anymore.

But I am CERTAIN I've read about one esper's final blow where you have to have a status effect or something like that on yourself in order for it to use it, help me out here? I can't seem to find anything.

[KeybladerXIII]

Belugn is right, most of the higher-tier espers like Hashmal and Zodiark have certain conditions like HP>10% or User: Blinded to use their ultimate attacks.

I thought that the espers in XII were very useful, especially the ones you got early like Mateus. The quickenings were what annoyed me. I always used them as an easy way out of a boss fight, but chaining them together and seeing the animation for Ruin Impediment or Heaven's Light or Red Spiral over and over and over and over again was really boring. I know it was my fault for using so many quickenings but I wasn't going to stand around to find out the kinds of attacks a stupid Mark knows or how strong my arch-nemesis Demon Wall's attacks are.

[bobbo087]

I agree, The Espers would be more fun if you had some say in what they did and when because I have noticed that on some occasions they will in fact HEAL the enemy. As for the quickeninngs it is just like playing the slot machines in the way that it all just comes down to mere luck in getting good concurrences.

[Belugn]

What I don't get is how the Quickenings WORK. Sometimes I just find it more useful to just bash all the buttons instead for just shuffling. Or maybe it's just me. They make no sense what-so-ever, and the time runs out differently or well SOMETHING. Okay speaking of quickenings seems to frustrate me I should stop. xD I was just. Really. Really disappointed in the quickenings/overdrives of the characters. Since everybody already could use any armour and weapon with the licenses, the characters felt sort of bland when it comes to what their role were. (Fun that you could shape your own warrior, but it still didn't make that much of a difference so it could as well have been set.) So when the quickenings that at least were unique for each character just..wasn't really unique either. I mean, is there any special effects to any of those epicly named moves that they've got? Like one of Balthier's, that one with the wave. Does it have something like water effect, or..anything?..

@Bobbo087: Healing your enemy too on occassion? That's terrible. You're sure they just didn't throw a magick that the foe was absorbing?

[Locke4God]

I don't think the Quickening moves have Elemental effects. The reason I say that is I know I used a lighting Quickening against the Lightinging Esper and it beat the crap out of him, which wouldn't seem to make sense.

You bring up a good point though, since the game doesn't identify how much damage each attack does, it leads one to wonder what they actually do.

Also a good point from earlier is that they seem more like bail outs for bosses. Half of the bosses I faced, I'd get my ass kicked the first time, and then the second time, go in for a round of quickenings, switch out all 3 characters, do another round of quickenings, and by that point the boss, if not already dead, was close enough I could finish him off with just standard attacks. So they sort of eliminated the need for any serious strategy.

Eeeeesh, am I knocking this game down a peg or two? I hope not. It was my favorite. Quick somebody build it back up.

[Moogable]

I rarely ever used espers in fights, unless I was just screwing around to see how hard they could hit. Quickenings however, I used for a ton of storyline bosses. Late game, though, they just didn't seem as useful, especially since I Prefer to have a lot of MP in reserve for healing/buffs/offensive magic. Granted, I did use them to finish off Zodiark XD

Difficult marks like the Shadowseer, Ixion, and the like, definitely need to just wail on it with attacks. Quickenings might have helped, but only as a finisher, as most bosses and marks at this point have that annoying spell called Fearga. (Massive AoE that drains MP)

[Belugn]

Haha don't worry, FFXII is my favourite too. You can discuss it forever, and it never gets boring or old! (At least that's what I think.)

I guess I just fail at quickenings and espers then. When I summon an esper or use my quickenings, I always find myself in a tight situation right afterwards, if it didn't finish of the foe in question I mean. Low on MP and all that. The only boss so far that my quickenings and espers actually were a great help for me was against Judge Bergan. My quickenings took out lots of his minions, and then I used my newly aquired ally Mateus to power Bergan himself down a great deal.

I do however sometimes use Espers on more difficult normal foes, or rare games. Summon them, quickly cast protect or shell on them, and then elixir or ether up my mp again, and then faces the foe and my esper gets to hack away at it for the summon time it's got left, the summoner healing it.

I liked that the espers had to be given to the characters. It could have been even cooler if the espers perhaps could give some sort of stat up or whatever to the one it was given though. ...imagine how overpowered a character would be if he/she was given all the espers. ...then again perhaps that was why they didn't include that option. I did however have a problem with which espers would go with Vaan and Penelo. I just couldn't see let's say...Penelo summon something like Zalera. Or Vaan commanding something as epic as Chaos. ..or Belias. ..Or Mateus. ..or any esper at all actually. Don't get me wrong I still liked Vaan a great deal.