The Shrine

If I couldn't wait before, I am going to be ripping my hair out waiting now. This is the first title in the Final Fantasy series to receive a perfect score by Famitsu.

I had a VERY good feeling about this game, it's had a LOT of work put into it. This just raises my confidence level that this one may be my favourite RPG to this date by the time of its North American release.

I've wanted it for some time. Looking forward to the new battle system.

http://www.the-magicbox.com/0603/game060308a6.shtml

Some more screenshots, one of them near the end contains a shot of the world map.

Not looking forward to the new battle system, but I'll pick it up regardless cause it's Final Fantasy.

My own opinions in short:

I haven't really had a chance to explore the battle system yet, and I haven't really played much of the demo yet. Either way, the battle system is not what I have ever been very interested in with RPGs: though this one gets rid of random encounters which in my opinion is a BIG plus. I would actually prefer it if RPG's had very limited numbers of battles, going through a cave and fighting 87 battles against the EXACT same enemies using the EXACT same strategy every time is not my idea of a good time in an RPG (that's probably why I prefer more strategic style battles such as those in FFT/Lunar/Skies of Arcadia/Chrono Trigger even if a few of those games are limited). I only have limited experience with the FF12 battle system (playing the two year old demo that came with Dragon Quest Cool, but from the further descriptions I have read on IGN PS2, I do see the FF12 battle system as finally having something to offer me.

What I am really looking forward to in Final Fantasy 12 is the vast and beautiful world that there is to explore. The story is another thing I have very high expectations from considering the development team. I see this as Matsuno's first real big shot, and he took his sweet time in the making of this game, so I am expecting something highly excellent. As far as the dungeon design goes, if Vagrant Story is any example of what these guys are capable of, we should be seeing something special; Vagrant Story FAR surpasses anything ever done in a Final Fantasy in my opinion.

I have no basis to really know what the towns will be like, but I do think that even I could design great towns. I enjoyed the towns in a lot of the Final Fantasy games. FF10 really offered me nothing interesting in that field which I felt dragged that game down in my eyes; the towns were graphically pretty, but as bare and simplistic as the early SNES and NES FF titles. The late SNES and PSX titles had much better towns; Final Fantasy 9 is a bit of a question because it really only has two towns that I particularly liked, Lindblum and Alexandria; and even those I did not find as interesting as town locations in the previous three Final Fantasies.

With Famitsu's 40/40 score, I have some faith that this will be an RPG that I liked. It's the first RPG to ever get a 40/40 score. Adventure titles such as Ocarina of Time and Vagrant Story are still games that I play once every year or two simply because I can't get enough of them for too long.

At the very least, I totally expect to enjoy this game as much as I do Final Fantasy 8; which is my current favourite RPG by Square.
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