[JemyM]

Should be no surprise but I have now started Final Fantasy XII and im currently working myself up the first levels while learning the new system.

Wow this is different from earlier FF games. It is still a FF game, it have the familiar ingredients such as talking cactuses, the rideable Chocobo's, the improved magic such as Thunder becomes Thundara that becomes Thundaraga, but the combat mechanics is revamped from scratch.

The exploration and combat remind me about Gothic, KOTOR, NWN2 or maybe even a MMORPG. Random encounters are gone. Monsters walk around in the open and can be attacked on sight and you can even spend some time planning before you attack. I find myself running over dunes chasing wolves for XP as this was any traditional european/american roleplaying game. No more wiggling the analog stick until the screen flash into a random encounter. This makes combat far more fun and far less annoying.

Gone is also "My characters to the left, the monsters to the right, we are taking turns", everybody instead bash eachother in realtime and instead of having to assign actions in combat every turn you program your allies AI, alot like what you do in Baldurs Gate.

The character system is alot more open. It's a welcome return to see a five slot inventory system as FFVII/FVIII/FFX and FFX-2 was terrible with only 2 slots. It's also welcome to see that I can take my characters anywhere I want without going through a razor sharp "this character will always be your white mage, this character will always be your heavy hitter" party-role system like previous games were. While some characters have advantages such as more speed or more magick I am still allowed to take the characters in any direction. I can make everything from a rear white mage to a full frontal heavy-hitter or tank.

I can already tell that I am going to love this game. It helps that the story is well told.