The Rise and Fall of 12

I finished up Final Fantasy 12 the other day. As I’ve mentioned before, I was kind of late to the JRPG party and still have several old games I plan on eventually playing through. 12 has its problems, but one thing it did was get me invigorated like never before to play all these older titles I have been more or less putting off. Ten or fifteen hours in and I was already thinking about getting FF9, Chrono Trigger and Kingdom Hearts to play next. I’m still eager to play these other games, in fact I picked up Kingdom Hearts yesterday, but about halfway through FF12 whatever had me engaged fizzled out and died.

FF12 has a pretty boring combat system, but what got me interested initially is the same thing that gets me into all RPGs, the rich vibrant world. There is a new place, a new set of rules, and a new epic storyline waiting to unfold. 12’s story was decent enough, but there was a distinct change in its pacing right around the halfway point. Coincidentally, or more likely not, this is the same spot I used as my example when I claimed JRPGs are too long. I looked up Wikipedia’s plot synopsis for this section of the game. It consists of three sentences:

Now unable to use the Shard, Larsa convinces Ashe to seek Gran Kiltias Anastasis, who lives in Mt. Bur-Omisace, for his approval of her as queen of Dalmasca. Vaan and Penelo travel with the entourage, which includes Basch, Balthier, and Fran. On the way, the party rescues Fran's sister, Mjrn, who was possessed by manufactured (artificial) Nethicite in the process.

These three sentences describe over five hours of time in the game. After that there is a dungeon, and then another five or so hours of nothing but traveling before getting to a very short dungeon. After that, there are two very lengthy dungeons in quick succession followed very promptly by the end of the game.

What I’m getting at is that the last half of the game time-wise is primarily filled with plot irrelevant traveling and grinding. It’s very hard to stay engaged in a story when there are multiple five hour gaps in between something important happening. Pacing of story is incredibly crucial to keeping players immersed in a huge game world. No matter how clever the combat system is, and they usually aren’t, they will always start to feel stale after 40+ hours of using it. FF12’s pacing very clearly dive bombed at the halfway point and I’ve never been so aware of a developers attempt to artificially lengthen a game as I was while finishing this one.

To make matters worse, 12 didn’t even have a remotely engaging combat system from the beginning. By about a quarter of the way into the game, I had enough Gambits (macros) and common sense to make my party almost entirely self-sustaining. They buffed themselves, healed themselves, resurrected each other and even attacked the same enemies in unison. All I had to do was run into the first guy in a group and make sure I removed debuffs put on me in a timely manner. After awhile I could have even set them up to remove debuffs, but I figured I should at least leave something for me to do. Some of the boss fights could still be challenging, but the monster grind was essentially non-interactive. I’m also fairly certain that with a few minor tweaks I could have taken out the final boss without ever touching the controller.

Without the well paced storyline, 12 had essentially nothing to keep me interested in completing its main quest for several hours at a time. If not for my absurd perseverance and need to see the credits roll before I can deem a game finished (a trait most gamers do not have), I would have stopped before ever reaching Mt. Bur-Omisace. I’m glad 12 rekindled my waning interest in JRPGs (not sure how it did that), but the last half almost extinguished it. Here’s hoping for FFXIII….

Why are JRPGs so Long?

I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 12 recently and once again I find myself asking the same question I ask every time I play a JRPG. Why are these games so freaking long? Their stories, while generally epic in scope never really seem to take anymore time to tell than your standard action/adventure game. At least once you cut out all the filler.


For example, at one point in FF12 my party acquired a special item called the Dawn Shard, but did not know how to activate it. In order to find out, I had to go south of Rabanastre, across the Giza Plains and west through the Ozmone Plains to the tribal village of Jahara. There I had to find certain elders to ask whom eventually had me speak to their head elder who told me he didn’t know. All was not lost however, I ran into another lead in the village, he joined me as we headed east across the plains again an into the Golmore Jungle with the intent of talking to a wiseman at the base of Mt. Bur-Omisace. Of course halfway through the jungle I ran into a magical barrier. Turns out one of my party members, Fran, knew who was causing this barrier. I went to her secret home town in the jungle to find this person. Naturally, she wasn’t there and vague references to the Henne Mines were all I got out of her kinswomen. So I headed there, fought my way deep into the mines, killed a giant monster and found our girl. Excellent, barriers down, I can proceed. After getting back to the jungle I found a giant pissed off dragon who had this wonderful move that debuffed my entire party with almost every negative status effect known to Square Enix. After dealing with him, I found yet another town, and then after crossing a short snowy area I reached the mountain base.

Sweet, this simple and largely plot irrelevant task ended up taking me over five hours. I know a game has to have gameplay, but we berate shooters and slashers for getting repetitive after 10 to 15 hours, while the average main story in a JRPG is somewhere between 40 and 60 hours. The combat in them varies, but I can’t think of a single JRPG whose combat I consider more engaging and that stays interesting longer than any other genre out there. So why do JRPGs get to be so long? Why do we want them to be so long?


Lately, people have been debating the merits of lengthier games. Several gamers, myself included, would rather play a shorter game of high quality rather than one filled with a dozen dungeons of fluff to trudge through. It makes sense, for the first time ever gamers as a demographic are adult in the majority. All the children of the 80’s and 90’s that grew up playing games are now in their twenties and thirties and have real responsibilities that take time. Finishing a 60 hour game would probably take an average father with a full time job two months to complete.

I love JRPGs as much as the next guy they have great stories, the best developed characters in video games, and vibrant and interesting worlds. But all of that could easily be condensed into a third of the size and we wouldn’t be missing much at all. I think some of the bigger western RPGs have the right idea. Take Oblivion for instance, you could sink 200 hours into that game if you wanted too, but the main quest is still doable in 10 hours. Leave all the optional stuff in there for the completionists and the students on summer break and just trim the fat off the story. Anyone who claims all the fat is what makes the stories so good are full of it. Of all the things required of me during that FF12 anecdote up there, the only part that lead to any extraneous plot/character development was the bit involving Fran that told us of her clichéd history with her sister and town. The entire Jahara part of the story could have be cut without anyone batting an eye.

I’ve spent the majority of my first year since graduating college goofing off and working part time at a grocery store. I beat a game or two a week and am still wary of starting a game like Persona 3 FES because that feature touted on the back of the box. You know, the one that says over 120 hours of gameplay. If I’m hesitant to start this game, what hope does the rest of the world have?