I'll go through this bit by bit, (with his post in red italics):
Now, here's some complaints that I think you missed: The story & characters are terrible, the Espers are weak & the player does not have many options with them, the limits are poorly designed, the areas are often put together with little to no regard for a target level, there are long tedious dungeon/field treks with little storyline payoff, & my biggest one, it completely sucks at its goal of being part of a mini-series, this "Ivalice Alliance" shit.
First of all, I never thought the story and characters were terrible, though storyline I've always thought exists in games as a secondary feature behind gameplay. If a game has a bad storyline that only "ruins" my gameplay experience very slightly.
You're right, the espers do change very little the gameplay (from my experience at least), I never used them, I don't see this as much of an issue though as they're not central to the gameplay
The quickenings are not poorly designed, the main purpose of the quickenings are for a last-resort attack. When you are low on health and normal fighting is not enough to beat the boss, then the randomness of the quickenings is you're last hope of standing a chance. As they're damage calculation includes an extreme random multiplier, they give you a chance of succeeding against a boss which otherwise you'd have no chance.
Also consider this, obtaining the quickenings multiplies your max MP by however many you have. Each quickening on the board can only be acquired by one character... A lot of people complain how the FF12 characters have "very little difference between them" (which I don't think is a problem anyway) but if you want to max out their potential MP use, you have to take them in different directions.
About recommended level, I guess you're right, but I think its better that way... I've never seen character-levels as a goal but as a means to accomplish a goal. I've noticed a lot of people aim to reach certain levels, where grinding is their means to reach that goal... but the way I see it is that your levels are a by-product of the game itself, they are a means to accomplish a goal, not a goal themselves. I've always thought that if you're giving the player a "target level" to reach then that takes away from the flow of the game. If there is an area with strong monsters, I want to find out myself how strong I should be in regards to my own skill level.
Last point on this paragraph... I love dungeon crawling, especially when the game uses a self-revealing map system. I tend to find that big dungeons have that "relaxing yet challenging" feel to them. I love wondering around, bumping into a dead-end, turning back, checking the map, fighting enemies along the way. I could sit down for hours crossing dungeons if I had to. I have no problems with long paths and going the wrong way. Like I was saying about self-revealing maps, if you bump into a dead-end you still progress because you've discovered a "wrong" way. Also when you think of FF13 and it's linearity, people complained about that. On the contarary what I really dislike is being completely lost and end up running in circles, or not knowing what NPC to talk to to progress the story
1. Dude...it's an MMO fighting system. Reviewers have said that. It's not just moving around while fighting. More on that part, I'd suppose my problem IS that it doesn't change the gameplay. Movement should allow for better ability to evade. We shouldn't have so many enemies that come out of nowhere when it was advertised that this would "eliminate random battles." And in the process, it made it a LOT harder to actually avoid tedious fights.
Ok, I'm not too sure about the whole "MMO-likeness" of the game, but even if we say for now that it is exactly the same as an MMO fighting system, is that a bad thing? I love FF12 but I'm not interested in playing MMOs at all
I really don't see how movement not affecting the battles is a problem at all. People never had a problem with the inability to move during before so why is it a problem now that you're able to move without effect on the battles? Now I'd understand if for example, FF7 allowed to move whilst in random battles but had no effect, moving in that case would be a pointless feature. But FF12 does let you move because you're still in the "world" during fights... I thought it would be more annoying if you saw an enemy and then your characters couldn't move until the enemy dies, because in that instance the sudden inability to move would just slow down your progress
Even though I'm a big fan of random battles in RPGs, I dont think FF12's system was a bad one, you could say it did remove the random battles... my main point is that I don't think random battles are a bad thing anyway in games like this, and I don't understand why people hate them so much (I've gone through this in a previous blog post)
2. Straw Man, frankly. It IS true that you can make gambit systems that will fight entire battles for you. There are players who set up gambits to fight the entire Yiazmat battle for them while they take a nap. This IS a bad thing. A game should not be made so that you can spend hours not playing it. To be fair, the Gambit system is promising, but this is a pretty glaring flaw.
Personally, I found that only the bosses near the beginning can be done with ease just using the gambits themselves. But even if I am able to beat a boss with just gambits alone, I still have to set up the gambits myself. Not only that I'm having to constantly check to make sure that everything's going alright... most the time I find myself fighting a boss (especially that group of annoying small big-headed fruit things) and I'll find that things aren't going quite right, or the situation changes and I have to rearrange my gambits, this happens a lot.
I am sure there are people who can set up a perfect gambit configuration for Yiazmat, but you have to remember that there are people out there who are total obsessive with FF12... I don’t think many people can do that. I think most people wouldn't want to fight Yiazmat and just leave it up to chance, considering how long the fight is (several hours). Now if I was to fight Yiazmat (which I haven’t yet but I REALLY want to) I would not be sleeping as it happens, I'd be there to make sure I'm doing the best I can (don’t forget you need to actively move to restore MP over time, and you have to manually switch party members yourself)
3. There are 2 main problems with the license system. A, it's stupid. Gameplay restrictions in Final Fantasy are often linked to the storyline. This was done in the most slipshod way this time around. You're not exactly upholding the law. (B) Everything is shoehorned into this system. Gambits, summonings, equipment, abilities. It really cuts down on the strategic element, especially since you can't plot your course ahead of time without a guide. The thing is that this puts additional work on the player for something simple for no good reason. Also, you straw manned AGAIN. They're saying that, logically, you should not need a license, not that the game lies.
You said "Gameplay restrictions in Final Fantasy are often linked to storyline" now I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, I can think of two things that you could mean:
1. The storyline is fixed, you can't change the storyline yourself
2. What you're limited to is determined by your position in the storyline.
I assume you meant the second, but I'll answer both just in case... all Final Fantasy games have a fixed story line, but storyline =/= gameplay. In all FF games your limitations are determined by your story progression, especially in the more linear ones (FF4 and FF13). But in the more open FF games your limited by storyline not as much, such as FF12 and FF10-2. but even FF12 limits you by storyline to some extent... you can't acquire more powerful equipment/abilities until you reach the shops where they are located in the story. Now FF12 does give you opportunities to get things earlier if you work your way around, which just adds openness to the game... I think this whole linearity vs openness (in gameplay) isn't such a big deal, they both have strong and weak points.
As for your second point on this paragraph, I don't really have much to say... it would be nice if they let you see what all the licenses are before you're next to it so you can plan a route more. However I don't think that's much to do with the lack of user-friendliness, more so just a different way of setting the board up. If the internet didn’t exist (and people weren’t able to look up what's on the board) then discovering what exists on the board would be an element of gameplay, but since people feel like its "their right" to look up what exists on the board then people look it up without considering it "cheating"... I'm not saying it necessarily is cheating, for me, it's just an element of game-research but I just find it interesting how people feel like a full knowledge of the board is their inherent right, rather than their task. (again, remember, I'm not saying I disagree with you here, I just think it's interesting).
I'll give you an example of something that is really user-unfriendly... the FF13 crystarium, you have to manually hold down the X/A button to slowly put in points towards a crystal, and is harder to navigate round than it should be. FF12's interface if you ask me is the most user-friendly I've ever seen, but I'm going slightly off topic here.
Ok, final point. You said that you should "logically not need a license". But the thing here is that we're arguing semantics. If you replaced the word "license" with "skill" would it really make a difference? what about "materia"? The term "licenses" only exists to match the theme of the game. The only reason such restrictions become more obvious to people is because the game actively says so. There are many other features of games that make no sense using "real life logic"... like in FF7, why can't Cloud equip one of Vincent's guns, surely there's no logical reason why Cloud would be physically unable to hold a handgun. Using "real-life logic" you could make it so that he can, but is less skilled with it. FF12 uses "law and order" as it's theme, so licenses are used. Similar to how FF8 uses "abstraction" as a theme, what is Junctioning? why can each GF only be juctioned to one character at a time? How is it that you can hold 100 tents but not 101 potions?
Ok, that's my response, please let me know what you think.
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