{"id":53902,"date":"2022-02-25T06:00:51","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53902"},"modified":"2022-02-25T13:37:58","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T18:37:58","slug":"ff12-sightseeing-tour-part-7-where-is-my-buster-sword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53902","title":{"rendered":"FF12 Sightseeing Tour Part 7: Where is my Buster Sword?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week Rocketeer is betrayed by Vossler<\/a>, the tall, humorless, duty-obsessed military guy who wants to guard the princess. I was glad to be rid of him, since I already have one of those on the team and Basch isn’t any fun either.<\/p>\n

In listing his grievances against Vossler, Rocketeer says:<\/p>\n

he gets a fucking greatsword by default, while I have to dick around with sword-and-board for entirely too goddamn long;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hunted in all the shops I could find in Dalmasca. I checked the Bazaar. I stopped and talked to every pissant trader I found. I even hiked to the other side of the Giza plains to Nalbina Fortress and checked those shops. I checked with every merchant in Bhujerba. I honestly thought I was losing my mind. Obviously<\/b> I’m supposed to have a buster sword. There was probably one offered for free in the tutorial and I somehow missed it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here's the shop interface, in case you're curious what that looks like. It seems like my entire party is behind the curve on gear right now. I'm not sure what I was doing?<\/div>
Here's the shop interface, in case you're curious what that looks like. It seems like my entire party is behind the curve on gear right now. I'm not sure what I was doing?<\/div><\/p>\n

I was hours into the game, and Vaan was still slumming around with a sword and a small wooden shield like he was a starting character in Skyrim. It was embarrassing. How did I mess this up so bad?<\/p>\n

It was quite a shock when I looked online and discovered that I hadn’t made some ridiculous blunder and I was having the intended experience. All of my characters were using more or less conventional real-world weapons, and I wasn’t missing out on a buster sword, a gunblade, an arm-cannon, a sword made of water, or other stylishly ludicrous weapon.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Welcome to the No-Fun Zone<\/h3>\n

Of all the characters in this story, Cid is the only one who seems to be having a good time. And he doesn’t show up until the halfway point. Also, he’s a bad guy. Everyone else is a humorless mope.<\/p>\n

Nobody tells any jokes. There isn’t any romance, aside from the one that ends in death before gameplay starts. Nobody wants to play cards or engage in any treasure-hunting minigames. We don’t chase chocobos, put on a concert, play videogames, gamble away our gil, rescue an adorable animal, or compete in a sports tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about this seriesAgain, I’m talking about games 7 through 10 here.<\/span> is its sense of playfulness. All of that has been removed or toned down to make room for this downer plot. Final Fantasy XII<\/i> is like a version of the Matrix where they cut out all the kung-fu and gunfights so they had more time for scenes of everyone sitting around the ship in rags, eating food paste.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But of all the fun things they decided to get rid of, removing oversized swords bugs me the most. I always felt like that was a signature feature of the franchise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You don’t get any big swords until very late in the game. And even then, they’re just regular big swords. Two-handers. You never get the chance to swing around something the size of a surfboard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it’s not like this game doesn’t have silly weapons! Remember our fight with Judge Ghis<\/a> a few weeks ago?<\/p>\n

Awesome, once I kill this guy I can give the big sword to Basch and the spikey thing to Vaan. Unless I'm mysteriously prevented from looting the superior weaponry of my foes.<\/div>
Awesome, once I kill this guy I can give the big sword to Basch and the spikey thing to Vaan. Unless I'm mysteriously prevented from looting the superior weaponry of my foes.<\/div><\/p>\n

We run into lots of foes with outrageous weapons. But none of those weapons seem to land in our hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More than anything, this makes me think of the “abandoned MMO” idea Rocketeer has alluded to. While it feels a little weird to play a Final Fantasy game where the party is equipped with disappointingly sensible weapons, this is how your typical MMO works: You spend the entire game on a treadmill, working towards the endgame when you get all of the best toys.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I just took what the game gave me. I didn’t open up the wiki and go sidequesting for exotic gear. I tried reading about how the Bazaar workedRocko will talk about that next week.<\/span> but it was so mercilessly boring I couldn’t be bothered. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week Rocketeer is betrayed by Vossler, the tall, humorless, duty-obsessed military guy who wants to guard the princess. I was glad to be rid of him, since I already have one of those on the team and Basch isn’t any fun either. In listing his grievances against Vossler, Rocketeer says: he gets a fucking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53902"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53926,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53902\/revisions\/53926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}