WARNING: This blog post may go off into a tangent or two. You have been warned. -EiS Staff.
SO I bought the big special edition version of Final Fantasy XII from EB Games last week. I was a little disappointed that all I got was a fancier box and a lame DVD that could have been done better as a fan project but I only paid 30 bucks for it while it was originally sold for 60 so I'm not upset about it.
I've been playing for a week pretty heavily but I'm starting to get tired of the game. Although it's not necessarily a bad thing, the game is getting way too hard for me. I'm at the part of the game where I'm re-entering a key location after an attack from the bad guys and I'm getting my butt whooped by the boss. This after spending possibly nine hours on one dungeon not because it was hard but because it was so freaking big and because I had to deal with yet another super hard boss who kept kicking my ass until I figured out a good plan. I don't want to bore you with specifics (if you're an FF Fan then ask and I'll tell) but there's a lot of new stuff in this game that isn't in the previous Final Fantasies or any other JRPG that I've played before that gives this game a steep but healthy learning curve.
Hard bosses aside, I'm also annoyed by the protagonist, Vaan. While there are cooler, more grown up characters in the forms of Basch, a tarnished bad-ass of a knight, and Balthier, an upper-class version of Jack Sparrow, Vaan is just some sort of anime rip off of a Lou Perlman boy band member. And, while I'm avoiding spoilers for the story (which isn't very original aside from its veiled and possibly unintentional similarities to the US/Middle East conflict) I hear that Vaan isn't even that important compared to Balthier. Granted, every other character is cooler than Vaan except for Penelo who is just a throw away character put in so that Vaan can have a girlfriend (Vaan is like so into women. Yeah.) However, Vaan is the one who gets the most screen time during cut scenes so he is, like it or not, the star of the show.
Square Enix, the Japan-based publishers of the Final Fantasy series, seems to be responding to western criticism of Vaan and other feminine looking lead characters in their games, by creating a new character called The Conqueror to co-star in their new game, The Last Remnant. Conq is big, muscular, and apparently likes to kill a lot of people. Just as pretty-boy characters like Vaan are stereotypes of Japanese RPGs, The Conqueror seems to be Japan's stereotype of the hyper macho heroes found in American games like Gears of War. While he sounds interesting, he's almost as tiring as Vaan is because he's still a cliche. This is pretty unfortunate as the more traditional protagonist of Remnant, Rush Sykes, is a more appealing looking character than Vaan and his ilk. While he's still a teenager, he's obviously male and doesn't look like a prostitute. In other words he's everything you want in an RPG lead, a blank character for players to project themeselves on without feeling creeped out by playing a hermaphrodite.
Someday JRPG developers like Square Enix will take a page from western RPG developers like BioWare by allowing players to create their own characters* instead of forcing us to stick with characters who don't appeal to us. They struck lightning with the character of Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII (7), not to mention beloved villain Sephiroth, but afterwards they seemed to lose their way. Final Fantasy VIII (8) had Squall who was okay although his game was seen as too deviant from the other games, but the following characters of Zidane, Tidus, and now Vaan have all been criticized as being too whiny and too feminine looking for most western male players. While many female players have stated that they like the character designs as opposed to the hyper macho men and over sexualized women found in other games, even many ladies have been put off by recent Final Fantasy heroes and others have been put off by being forced to yet again have a man as the protagonist--though they'll get their due when Final Fantasy XIII (13) comes out with FF's first lead heroine, Lightning. However, I know that at least a small portion of male gamers won't like having to play as a woman--and others will relish this for reasons ranging from getting to watch a sexy virtual butt to deeper feelings of gender inadequacy and body alienation. All that aside, I think it would be really exciting to see a new Final Fantasy game go back to the series' roots by allowing players to at least pick a class and name for their hero. Choosing gender would be a massive plus. Getting to chose hair, eye, and skin color especially would be great for those of us FF fans who don't want to play as another stock white guy. Maybe they can even do that for the next edition of Final Fantasy XII. It's not like Vaan is that important a character anyway, if what others say is true. If I'm just going to be given a blank character to project myself onto, why can't I have a character that at least looks a little like me?
*Final Fantasy XI (11) doesn't count becasue it's one of those big online games
