Official Final Fantasy XII (JPN) Thread (read RULES in the first post)

Bebpo said:
Can you or maskrider tell me what's a good bitrate and codec to use for HQ game videos? My capture card is average quality and captures in MPEG2 files that are around 130megs for 2 min clips and I've just been using Xvid (deinterlace [blend fields] + resize [640x480] + crop) with around a 1500 bitrate which knocks them down to about 20megs. What would you guys recommend for higher quality?

My usual settings are 640x480 2-pass VBR WMV9 1280Kbps/96Kbps (V/A), deinterlace mode depends on the video, FF XII is 30fps and I scan through the file (manually) to find the field swapping points and weave them, for sections that fluctuate too much, I use interpolate/blend.

I use Xvid sometimes, also 2-pass.
 
Created an early world map from some screenshots

edit:
The map has been updated to my latest location, those earlier in the game and don't want to be spoiled should not click the link to that map that I posted before.

http://z-o-g.org/imgs/misc/ivalice-dalmasca.jpg

Some screens

http://z-o-g.org/imgs/misc/ff12-caps-08.jpg
http://z-o-g.org/imgs/misc/ff12-caps-09.jpg
http://z-o-g.org/imgs/misc/ff12-caps-10.jpg

http://z-o-g.org/imgs/misc/ff12-south-gate.jpg
http://z-o-g.org/imgs/misc/ff12-downtown.jpg
http://z-o-g.org/imgs/misc/ff12-village.jpg
http://z-o-g.org/imgs/misc/ff12-vaan.jpg

Save point
ff12-save.jpg


Save and teleport point
ff12-save-tp.jpg
 
maskrider said:
Created an early world map from some screenshots

http://z-o-g.org/imgs/misc/ivalice-dalmasca.jpg

Can I use that as a reference placeholder on my FFXII guide site? ^^;

In fact, are you interested in helping out in general? We're just 3 guys at the moment, and Bebpo is providing captures for all the detailed maps. If we had more people it would be easier to spread out of the work more especially for the databases and such. :D
 
duckroll said:
Can I use that as a reference placeholder on my FFXII guide site? ^^;

Sure, no problem.

duckroll said:
In fact, are you interested in helping out in general? We're just 3 guys at the moment, and Bebpo is providing captures for all the detailed maps. If we had more people it would be easier to spread out of the work more especially for the databases and such. :D

Let me know what you need, I'll try to help.
 
Blimblim said:
I can host your videos too if you want ;)

Your new site rocks blim!! Good work

Bebpo said:
Random battle video. No real spoilers. Also note the game isn't that easy; I was just going through an old area with lvl.1 type enemies at the time of capture :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NscE_D7OqZ0

I have some videos in nicer quality but I think maskrider will take care of all the high quality awesome encodes. I'll just do the quick and dirty ones :P

awesome!! Such great animation and graphics! I love the fast paced battle system. Can't wait!
 
I posted about this in one of the old pre-release threads, but obviously no one could confirm or deny it at the time, so here it goes again...

Can anyone who's played FFXII for a good while and has found out any kind of crucial story details on Brasch help me clarify this:

(spoiler from Ogre Battle - March of the Black Queen)
Character description: Ashe

Captain of the Zenobian Royal Guard under King Gran Zenobia. Rashidi used his magic to disguise Gares as Ashe, which is how Gran and the royal family were assassinated. Ashe accepted the blame for Gran's death, because he was unable to protect the royal family. Ashe was imprisoned for 24 years. He was resigned to his eventual death from old age, until he was freed by the Liberation Army. He met General Debonair on the battlefield and was able to show him the error of Empress Endora's ways.

Judging from the small amount of things someone who hasn't played the game or looked at any 2ch spoilers knows about the plot, it basically sounds like (FFXII speculation)
Matsuno not only re-used the name "Ashe" for FFXII, but also re-used the back story for Brasch's character. Actually, some of it sounds like Ashley Riot as well, heh. Anyway, if anyone has encountered some kind of "twist" on this matter, can you just confirm with a PM if happens or not (so I can stop worrying about plot re-hashes)? :)
 
maskrider said:
Sure, no problem.



Let me know what you need, I'll try to help.

Great, thanks a bunch. After playing through the weekend I'll be organizing stuff and figuring out how best to catalog the entire game and present it as the best guide possible for everyone. :D
 
FFT = 2nd favorite FF

Im so glad Matsuno and Sakimoto worked on this game.

The fucked up part is I didnt even know until today! I checked out the gameplay footage, and I thought "What the hell, that music reminds me of FFT, what the hell, that worldmap reminds me of FFT. YES! Late to the hype party!
 
Duckroll:

I think the 706 Old Valendian is probably some type of time period counter that is more than years, like century maybe.

Since the game says "2 years after."

I checked it out again and it does indeed say 706 both in the intro and when the game actually starts.

Also, the monster hunt difficulty goes way up after like the first 3 monsters. I'm having a hard time defeating them unless I spend some time lvl'ing up and preparing for it.
 
Matix said:
-(Source: *Famitsu*)-

FINAL FANTASY 12 (PS2): New (?) Japanese Launch Video:
http://www.famitsu.com/game/news/2006/03/16/103,1142471099,50083,0,0.html


h-103_50083_twe0010.jpg.jpg

h-103_50083_twe0001.jpg.jpg

Here's the Ikebukuro story, which I nailed it on the head, had about 100 people there this morning.

-(Source: *Famitsu*)-

Final Fantasy 12 (PS2): Potions with your new software! FF12 is popular at Ikebukuro's Bic Camera as well

http://www.famitsu.com/game/news/2006/03/16/103,1142468959,50082,0,0.html


h-103_50082_top.jpg.jpg

h-103_50082_kao.jpg.jpg

h-103_50082_poshonyama.jpg.jpg


I'm actually in two of these pictures :D
 
My coworker just brought this in... this is just an impression of the first 20 minutes, which as everyone knows, is basically the opening "trailer" movie, the real opening movie, and about a minute of the tutorial. :)

First of all, yeah, it's a bummer that this isn't in progressive scan or 16:9. I can only imagine what the CG movies and the game itself would look like at higher resolutions. The movies are stunning and immersive beyond belief, however, so it's easy to forget about this.

The one bummer is that when this game comes out in English, it's going to be Kung-Fu Theater dub time, since all the lip movements are synched to the Japanese dialogue. Looks fantastic here, but it'll probably look pretty silly once it's localized. Based on the look, tone, and setting of the world, I hope they get British actors and actresses for the VOs. American English would sound kind of silly, IMO.

Music is also very, very good. I like the very beautiful main FF theme at the beginning, and then the very nice nod to FF4 in the second half of it. The music overall sounds very upbeat and more professional than it ever has. I'm already falling in love with the soundtrack.

The realtime sequences are quite nice, too. Framerate looks like it jumps between 30 and 60 from time to time, depending on the scene, but when you're running around, it looks like it's a rock-solid 30. Texture work is phenomenal. Characters look really smooth... almost having a 2D hand-painted look, and the environments exhibit very beautiful color work and modeling. It's a joy just to spin the camera around to see what the artists did.

Anyway, it was probably very, very bad that I took the sneak peek earlier... now it's going to be one of the most agonizing waits for it to hit stateside. Must... be... patient.
 
One area where the game seems to deliver is the soundtrack. All of the tracks Ive heard so far are excellent!!! Amazing for some of them!
 
ghibli99 said:
The one bummer is that when this game comes out in English, it's going to be Kung-Fu Theater dub time, since all the lip movements are synched to the Japanese dialogue. Looks fantastic here, but it'll probably look pretty silly once it's localized. Based on the look, tone, and setting of the world, I hope they get British actors and actresses for the VOs. American English would sound kind of silly, IMO.

I thought Square resynched the lipflaps for FFX, X-2 and Kingdom Hearts, so I have no reason to suspect they won't do so again for FFXII.

The acting is really quite excellent though - not a single seiyuu cliche among the lot of them, it's really much more like a decent live action film. Normally this would be damning with faint praise, as Japanese actors are frequently quite poor IMHO, but the actors behind the characters are really doing an excellent job and the cutscene direction is sublime.
 
I went to Angela Aki's little appearance at Shibuya Tsutaya today with a friend. Missed her rendition of "Eyes On Me" (which I heard on CD already... and kicks ass!) but I was able to catch all of "Kiss Me Goodbye", which was great. She was signing posters and CD covers for her single. I got to go up there, and she spoke to me in Japanese, and then I said "Thanks, but I'm not Japanese" and she's all like "oh.... THANKS." :lol

 
I've got a gameplay question for those playing. In terms of using gambits, what the heck is the point of the ones that are just names or "yourself"? I mean its not letting me put two things so I can't do "yourself" + "MP > 50%" = "Fire" which is what I'd like to do for my mage Vaan and then have "enemy in front of you" = "Attack". Is there some kind of way to combine them?
 
Nah, she didn't. I was hoping she would though! I bought Kokoro No Senshi just for the Today cover. I brought to the performance, but they wouldn't let me get it signed by her. :(
 
Reno said:
Nah, she didn't. I was hoping she would though! I bought Kokoro No Senshi just for the Today cover. I brought to the performance, but they wouldn't let me get it signed by her. :(
No way! Awesome!
 
BluWacky said:
I thought Square resynched the lipflaps for FFX, X-2 and Kingdom Hearts, so I have no reason to suspect they won't do so again for FFXII.
Well, I can speak for FF10, since that's the most recent one I played, and my buddy assisted in some of the ADR sessions... the lip movements remained synched for the Japanese language track, so the American voice actors had to kind of awkwardly time their speaking to try and best match the lip movements and timings. In some cases, it looked alright, but for the most part, I thought it was rather distracting.

BluWacky said:
...the actors behind the characters are really doing an excellent job and the cutscene direction is sublime.
Absolutely agree with you. It very much reminds me of how blown away I was when I first witnessed the Vagrant Story cutscenes. Man, gives me goosebumps just thinking about those.
 
Bebpo said:
I've got a gameplay question for those playing. In terms of using gambits, what the heck is the point of the ones that are just names or "yourself"? I mean its not letting me put two things so I can't do "yourself" + "MP > 50%" = "Fire" which is what I'd like to do for my mage Vaan and then have "enemy in front of you" = "Attack". Is there some kind of way to combine them?

The names are to target the named character. Each character has their specific gambit menu, so if you want Vann to cast fire, just do "target enemy in front + fire." Remember that the order of each slot is important. For example, if you put "target enemy in front + fire" infront of "target enemy in front + fight," that character will cast fire until he/she runs out of MP. If you want the character to heal in mid battle, put that gambit slot at the top or the character won't do it until the battle is over. The target gambits are either blue or red (can't remember for sure atm), blue is targets aiming towards your party members, and red is against enemies. So if you do "yourself" + "MP > 50%" = "Fire" that would mean cast fire on yourself when you have more than 50% MP, which is not what you intend i think.

Fran is my support character right now, so her gambit is like this.

1) "Fran + Protect"
2) "Party member < 50% HP + Heal"
3) "Enemy targetted by leader + Slow"
4) "Enemy targetted by leader + Blind"
5) "Enemy targetted by leader + Attack"
6) "Party member < 70% HP + Cure"

I turn 1, 3, 4 on and off depending on the situation. So if they are all on, fran will constantly cast protect on herself whenever it wears off. She will heal any character below 50% HP in battle. If both of those conditions are satified, she will cast slow and then blind to the enemy that the leader is currently fighting. Once that's done, she will join in on the attack. At the end of the battle, she will heal everyone so they are above 70% HP.

I personally have 1, 2, 5, and 6 as a basis for all the characters. Unless they are tanks, which wouldn't have any type of healing maybe except at the end of the list. Gambit is much fun to use. The one thing I can't figure out atm is how to use the Library gambit. You can't associate it with any target, but so far I haven't been able to enable it. I think it's only possible when you have the accessory that enables the library skill constantly. I'll try it tonight.
 
Srider said:
The names are to target the named character. Each character has their specific gambit menu, so if you want Vann to cast fire, just do "target enemy in front + fire." Remember that the order of each slot is important. For example, if you put "target enemy in front + fire" infront of "target enemy in front + fight," that character will cast fire until he/she runs out of MP. If you want the character to heal in mid battle, put that gambit slot at the top or the character won't do it until the battle is over. The target gambits are either blue or red (can't remember for sure atm), blue is targets aiming towards your party members, and red is against enemies.

Fran is my support character right now, so her gambit is like this.

1) "Fran + Protect"
2) "Party member < 50% HP + Heal"
3) "Enemy targetted by leader + Slow"
4) "Enemy targetted by leader + Blind"
5) "Enemy targetted by leader + Attack"
6) "Party member < 70% HP + Cure"

I turn 1, 3, 4 on and off depending on the situation. So if they are all on, fran will constantly cast protect on herself whenever it wears off. She will heal any character below 50% HP in battle. If both of those conditions are satified, she will cast slow and then blind to the enemy that the leader is currently fighting. Once that's done, she will join in on the attack. At the end of the battle, she will heal everyone so they are above 70% HP.

I personally have 1, 2, 5, and 6 as a basis for all the characters. Unless they are tanks, which wouldn't have any type of healing maybe except at the end of the list. Gambit is much fun to use. The one thing I can't figure out atm is how to use the Library gambit. You can't associate it with any target, but so far I haven't been able to enable it. I think it's only possible when you have the accessory that enables the library skill constantly. I'll try it tonight.

God I can't wait for this game to come stateside......
 
Srider said:
1) "Fran + Protect"
2) "Party member < 50% HP + Heal"
3) "Enemy targetted by leader + Slow"
4) "Enemy targetted by leader + Blind"
5) "Enemy targetted by leader + Attack"
6) "Party member < 70% HP + Cure"

That looks like grand fun. Having the ability to significantly tweak the ability of your party between fights and areas has always been a favorite of mine in good rpgs. Combined with the alleged challenge of fighting in XII... :)

How about the camera? Is it easy to figure out what everyone is doing in combat and where the enemies are? Or do you just trust the gambits and worry about your directly-controlled character(s)? Is a lot of manual camera movement required in combat to keep perspective? Is the camera more well-behaved than it was in the demo?
 
Srider said:
The names are to target the named character. Each character has their specific gambit menu, so if you want Vann to cast fire, just do "target enemy in front + fire." Remember that the order of each slot is important. For example, if you put "target enemy in front + fire" infront of "target enemy in front + fight," that character will cast fire until he/she runs out of MP. If you want the character to heal in mid battle, put that gambit slot at the top or the character won't do it until the battle is over. The target gambits are either blue or red (can't remember for sure atm), blue is targets aiming towards your party members, and red is against enemies. So if you do "yourself" + "MP > 50%" = "Fire" that would mean cast fire on yourself when you have more than 50% MP, which is not what you intend i think.

Fran is my support character right now, so her gambit is like this.

1) "Fran + Protect"
2) "Party member < 50% HP + Heal"
3) "Enemy targetted by leader + Slow"
4) "Enemy targetted by leader + Blind"
5) "Enemy targetted by leader + Attack"
6) "Party member < 70% HP + Cure"

I turn 1, 3, 4 on and off depending on the situation. So if they are all on, fran will constantly cast protect on herself whenever it wears off. She will heal any character below 50% HP in battle. If both of those conditions are satified, she will cast slow and then blind to the enemy that the leader is currently fighting. Once that's done, she will join in on the attack. At the end of the battle, she will heal everyone so they are above 70% HP.

I personally have 1, 2, 5, and 6 as a basis for all the characters. Unless they are tanks, which wouldn't have any type of healing maybe except at the end of the list. Gambit is much fun to use. The one thing I can't figure out atm is how to use the Library gambit. You can't associate it with any target, but so far I haven't been able to enable it. I think it's only possible when you have the accessory that enables the library skill constantly. I'll try it tonight.

Mother of . . . that's the coolest thing ever, I love the idea of that. It's almost like programming your own character AI, and I love how it logically cascades down the list so you can give priority to certain conditions.

One question though, does it test against the gambit list continuously during the battle? You say she'll cast protect on herself whenever it wears off, but you imply that once she gets to #5 she'll just attack continuously until the end of battle (otherwise I'd assume she would go ahead and do #6 at some point during the battle). However, what if she's doing #5 and protect wear off, or her slow debuff wears off on an enemy? Does it cycle back through so she can reapply those or is she stuck doing #5?
 
teiresias said:
Mother of . . . that's the coolest thing ever, I love the idea of that. It's almost like programming your own character AI, and I love how it logically cascades down the list so you can give priority to certain conditions.

One question though, does it test against the gambit list continuously during the battle? You say she'll cast protect on herself whenever it wears off, but you imply that once she gets to #5 she'll just attack continuously until the end of battle (otherwise I'd assume she would go ahead and do #6 at some point during the battle). However, what if she's doing #5 and protect wear off, or her slow debuff wears off on an enemy? Does it cycle back through so she can reapply those or is she stuck doing #5?

It cycles priority as conditions are satisified. If they are not satisified, then it automatically does it again in the prioritized fashion. So, if protect wears off... and slow wears off enemy... she'll cast protect on herself, cast slow again on the enemy, and then go back to attacking.

I believe that's the case.
 
Srider said:
The names are to target the named character. Each character has their specific gambit menu, so if you want Vann to cast fire, just do "target enemy in front + fire." Remember that the order of each slot is important. For example, if you put "target enemy in front + fire" infront of "target enemy in front + fight," that character will cast fire until he/she runs out of MP. If you want the character to heal in mid battle, put that gambit slot at the top or the character won't do it until the battle is over. The target gambits are either blue or red (can't remember for sure atm), blue is targets aiming towards your party members, and red is against enemies. So if you do "yourself" + "MP > 50%" = "Fire" that would mean cast fire on yourself when you have more than 50% MP, which is not what you intend i think.

Fran is my support character right now, so her gambit is like this.

1) "Fran + Protect"
2) "Party member < 50% HP + Heal"
3) "Enemy targetted by leader + Slow"
4) "Enemy targetted by leader + Blind"
5) "Enemy targetted by leader + Attack"
6) "Party member < 70% HP + Cure"

I turn 1, 3, 4 on and off depending on the situation. So if they are all on, fran will constantly cast protect on herself whenever it wears off. She will heal any character below 50% HP in battle. If both of those conditions are satified, she will cast slow and then blind to the enemy that the leader is currently fighting. Once that's done, she will join in on the attack. At the end of the battle, she will heal everyone so they are above 70% HP.

I personally have 1, 2, 5, and 6 as a basis for all the characters. Unless they are tanks, which wouldn't have any type of healing maybe except at the end of the list. Gambit is much fun to use. The one thing I can't figure out atm is how to use the Library gambit. You can't associate it with any target, but so far I haven't been able to enable it. I think it's only possible when you have the accessory that enables the library skill constantly. I'll try it tonight.

Yes I know how it works, but I was just asking if the gambit system didn't suck and I your answer was "no, actually it sucks but look at the other gimmicky stuff you can do with it instead!"

You know, because logically you'd want a gambit that went by the conditions of ONLY YOURSELF and not your party. If a human player was playing a black + white mage, they would want to keep casting offensive spells until their MP got down to about 50% and then at that point they'd want to reserve MP for healing only and switch over to physical attacks.

This is like the most normal thing that's been in rpgs since the dawn of time, and from what I can tell and what you just wrote, you can't do it in FFXII. You can tell your mage to start healing people when SOMEONE'S MP gets below 50% but you cant' tell it to do it when your own MP gets low. On top of that you can't say to do X magic attack until Y point in time.

So yeah, you can make all kinds of gimmicky stuff like you have, but the core stuff that makes or breaks the game (MP usage, healing) is stupid and you have to do it yourself.
 
Amir0x said:
so now it sucks Bebpo :lol

No it's the best game ever, but the Gambit system doesn't seem very well thoughout. It's annoying when you can't set the AI the way you want and have to try to figure something out within the game's constraints.

And yeah, I'm not very happy that I just spent 3 hours grinding (and fighting the boss over and over while having to run away with the entire party dead except 1 character and the boss with < 15% life left) to beat an optional boss I guess I wasn't supposed to fight this early and all I got was a stupid hat.
 
Bebpo said:
No it's the best game ever, but the Gambit system doesn't seem very well thoughout. It's annoying when you can't set the AI the way you want and have to try to figure something out within the game's constraints.

Gambit seems a crucial part of the whole battle system. If it really sucked, I'd imagine that's a big negative against FFXII. This isn't the case?

Bebpo said:
And yeah, I'm not very happy that I just spent 3 hours grinding (and fighting the boss over and over while having to run away with the entire party dead except 1 character and the boss with < 15% life left) to beat an optional boss I guess I wasn't supposed to fight this early and all I got was a stupid hat.

lol. That's like the most rewarding sounding thing ever. You worked so hard, and you got a stupid hat... but you also have your PRIDE.
 
duckroll said:
No, there is nothing like it in KH.

yea there is, you customize there decisions on healing, attacking, ect. And in KH2 its really more advanced(compared to the 1st one) its not exactly like Gambit, but it is some what like it.
 
My Arms Your Hearse said:
Perhaps I'm slow, but as per Bebpo's video, four party members are confirmed?

We talked about it in spoiler tags a little bit back - the fourth member is not a first-class party member (you can't directly control them) but otherwise takes actions likes your other members.
 
Well, to address some things.

Bebpo:
I believe it will be possible to do what you wanted. You'll just have to find a gambit that says "MP > 50%," which I'm pretty sure there will be one later on in the game. If that is indeed in the game, then you can do exactly what you just described. Cast magic until MP goes below 50% then focus on healing.

The good thing about gambit is that it doesn't force you to rely on the gambit itself. You still can issue commands and override the gambit at point in time. This makes the game more fun imo cause there are times when your nicely planned gambit simply doesn't go the way you intended cause of some random factor like the enemy unleashing a super strong attack that drains everyone's health, or if the enemy suddently goes into berserk mode making you have to make adjustments mid battle either by adjusting gambit, or override the commands, or simply turning off all gambit and go completely manual. I think it's simply a matter of how much you understand the system to learn to use it to your advantage.

Regarding the camera. The camera focuses on the leader. The AI is smart in the sense that long range characters will stay far back as long as there is room to do so. This will protect them against melee attacks most of the time. So you won't be able to see the long range characters at time cause they are behind you, you would have to spin the camera around to see them. One of the nice things in the game is a red arrow pointing you towards the enemy you have targeted. This is something beyond the normal targeting lines. The target lines disappear after a while unless the target is changed. You really have to be on the ball to keep track of everything that is going especially if you are playing in ATB mode. The game also has a camera track button that will home in on the leader's current target. You can switch the leader at any moment in time, and one of the really cool thing is that you can actually change party member at anytime. This lets you swap in and out support characters and melee character mid battle for some really interesting and fun strategies and combinations.
 
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