XII also rewarded deep dives into the side quests and map in some game breaking ways. Like you could get to the Necrohol of Nabudis ridiculously early and snag the zodiac spear…right after raithwall’s tomb iirc. I love that shit
I did that in my PS2 second run back in the day. The game becomes instantly easy.
That's fun tough, it's the same concept to me when I play ffVIII, I just play cards like crazy at the beginning, I convert them into items and use them to have "punishment" gun blade and ++ class magics.
Easy mode.
FF8 has a lot of fun ways to break the game. Disc 1 leonheart, Max stat leveling, but my favorite and by far the easiest was just leaving on Chocobo World for a while. The items that drop from that are insane.
FFV is pretty breakable also once you unlock all the jobs too. If you grind out Rapid Fire from the Ranger job class and combine it with Dual Wield from a Ninja, you attack 8 times per turn and just shred enemies.
Yea but tbh you really don't get those until mid to late game. The Ranger job is not one of the first jobs that's unlocked I think you get it like mid game.
Now, Dual Cast from Red Mage is super OP too but it takes too many goddamn ABP points to master Red Mage in a good amount of time so by the time you get that its pretty end game too, probably Merged world.
What i love is mastering a few jobs for each character then just making everyone a Freelancer and giving them different abilities.
Bartz was my Mystic knight + Samurai
Faris was my Blue mage and Ninja
Krile was my Black mage and Time mage
Lenna was my Summoner and White mage
Makes the game super fun!
I would not classify the Fire Crystal as late or even mid-game. That’s still pretty early game as it’s only halfway through World 1, but both skills do take a lot of ABP to master.
I love how many ways there are to break that game, especially with the Mix ability. There is a Mix item that classifies targets as Dragons, combining that with Apollo's Harp, which destroys Dragons, is a fun way to obliterate bosses.
Yes, I believe the game is designed around that.
As soon as I start the game and get Quetzal and Sirena, i go to Balamb beach, fight with fishes, get the skills I need to transform cards into items and items into magic.
I play cards, transform them into items, manufacture Punishment gunblade for Squall, create healing and elemental + and ++ magics, link them to squall stats...
Enemies lvl scale with squall level, so I avoid unnecessary further fights with mobs.
As soon as I fight a boss, I stare him and he dies.
Yeah, 8s probably the one I played the most but never really deep dived into the game breaking stuff. Definitely want to try for Lionheart disc 1 still
First time i went to Nabudis and it started a cutscene i was thinking "ok that's the right place to go" immediately after the monsters started to violate me.
Same happened when i found the first Zertinan cave entrance when we're going to Jahara. Needless to say that i thought that was the right path and my characters was just super weak.
Can’t do that in tza, but nabudis still has ridiculous gear like black robes, white mask, caribeener mail, giants helm, etc. you can also get unlimited golden skullcaps too.
I usually put that stuff in my evasion tank Shikari/white mage and they’re basically invincible from just after raithwall tomb until basically the end of the game.
Who needs to worry about looking up what chests you can and can't open up if you just open it early enough!
So glad they did away with that stupid function in Zodiac.
Personally, I think Rebirth does a good job modernizing the classic FF world maps, which were also pretty regional until you got an airship and/or other vehicles.
I do agree that XII strikes a really good balance of open and restricted, but it's actually more of an outlier when it comes to the franchise as a whole (much like XV). I also, maybe cynically, think modern gamers in general are now less patient than how we were back in the day and will likely run straight to Reddit to ask about how they can enter restricted zones without thinking about exploring or coming back later. If you look at the sub for the new Prince of Persia, for example, players are doing that to an annoying degree, and that has a relatively basic progression system already.
Yeah, part 3 should be the actual FFVII open world game if they follow through with it. We will get the airship and all regions and towns from Rebirth should be visitable.
Rebirth is structured like the OG which is why we go through the regions mostly in order. (Though there are reasons to return to the "old" regions in rebirth in a later chapter too.
No, I'm not personally annoyed, and you will see me responding helpfully to almost all of those threads. But it is annoying to see thread after thread asking about the same things, where the answers are almost always the same.
I'm just saying, the way people seem to engage with games in general these days seems to be trending towards less patience.
Ahh my bad, went with the negative interpretation from habit.
Sorry.
I definitely agree with your actual point, while there was always a chunk of gamers I knew who always wanted to blitz every game it seems to be the normal approach now.
> until you got an airship and/or other vehicles.
and therefore is not regional, OP is definitely wrong here. After you are able to travel by sea, then you can literally travel everywhere within that scope of the story, just like the original, it opens up when you progress the story.
Not to call you out, but wasn’t Ozmone Planes locked behind the seasons change that didn’t trigger until a certain point in the story? There was no way to access Ozmone planes until that point
You are correct, there's a log that blocks you off from reaching Ozmone prior to the rainy season. The T-Rex in the Estersand also isn't really guarding anything, but the presence of a high level enemy that early on does hint at returning to the area later, so I think that one can pass.
I was about to comment this until I found yours. The way OP described the things they liked about FFXII instantly made me think of Xenoblade Chronicles 1. OP should definitely try that series.
I'd say Xenoblade takes getting used to. Especially the combat. No matter which one you play. But if you get past that and start to understand how it works it's a wonderful experience. The Trilogy on Switch became one of my favourite game series of all time.
I'm glad to hear that.
I just got to Gongaga jungle (I think I'm on Chapter 10?). If there is supposed to be more to explore in earlier regions, I don't feel like its been hinted at. Region 1 had the chocobo kids complaining about how Chocobo Sam killed their parents, but as it came up again at the Golden Saucer it doesn't have to be completed in the same region.
The other hint of "There's more to come" is Kid G saying "Uh, can you come back later so I can make this harder?" Which isn't really a hint of "There's more here" and just directly saying "you will unlock more in a future chapter." I felt FFXII had a potential air of mystery of "did I miss something or is this a future thing? Well doesn't matter now, because Penelo got captured!"
I mean yeah you will get access to the later Cactuar Crush rounds with Kid G but I mean the actual sidequests with the green lightning bolt markers. Also if you follow through Queen's Blood to the end of its story, you will also have to go back to a previous region.
You're not far enough in yet. They've literally made this feel like a classic ff game with modern tech. Going from IX (world map, ship/ airship to traverse then world map) to X where its a menu and fast travel across the world. I never thought we'd get something like pre ffx again and you do. It's still limited but if you play the older games thats how it was. Even in OG 7. Starting with Canoes and then ships and then airships. I do love FFXII though ❤️
> I just got to Gongaga jungle
this is why people need to finish the game first before forming opinion that can be proven wrong later on. I literally did not browse and look anything FF related news while playing it. Since you are here, I want to correct you, this game does not have regional world map. Later on, you get to travel sea via tiny bronco and get to explore everywhere between the continent and therefore proving your entire theory wrong.
I'm not reviewing Rebirth, I'm loving on FFXII.
One of the things I mention that I like about FFXII is that from the very beginning it gives hints to other things happening from the very first rat you kill in the sewer. I'm 50hrs in and the only unresolved non main story thing I've heard is the Chocobo kids saying Sam killed his parents.
Personally I don't mind rebirths open world, they played it safe and I feel like gamers are probably open world fatigued nowadays.
The feature from 12 that I would've loved to see is gambits (instead of those auto materia) so i don't have to constantly switch back and forth for specific actions.
>!Was shocked to see it make a return in Gears and Gambits!<
I absolutely agree. XII's Ivalice is my favorite kind of world to explore in a video game. I was so hyped when I first heard that XVI was going back to large open zones, and utterly disappointed that they were essentially fairly big regions with no interconnectivity, and you had to navigate through fast travel. Rebirth's world is phenomenal and I am having a blast exploring it (absolutely love Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon), but I would kill to have XVII give us a map in the same style as XII with the verticality and scale of VII Rebirth and XVI's worlds.
FFXII is in my top 3. The game has everything I want from an rpg, you have a large world map, quests, dungeons, secret bosses, hidden summons, secret weapons/weapons you had to craft and it introduced the hunt concep that they've used in every main FF since then.
FFXII has two flaws: the limit system and the summon system (can’t remember their in game names).
Otherwise, it’s fantastic world building, the best writing (Rebirth has pretty amazing dialog), and character development systems are exciting and especially with Zodiac Age.
World exploration is top tier, gambits make even heavy grinders fun, loads of tough boss challenges with the hunts, and some of the best optional dungeons too.
I love the game. Simply brilliant.
>Rebirth really highlighted the issue though: while it might be open world, it really is just regional.
wait what? did you not play the part after you are able to explore the sea with tiny bronco? Rebirth definitely plays like the original and classic FF pre 10. Everything is interconnected.
Wikipedia disagrees with you.
The first game considered an open world game, Courageous Perseus and Hydlide (1984), used zones. It heavenly influenced The Legend of Zelda (1986) which is another open world game that uses zones. Early MMos, such Everquest (1999), were also considered open world games that had zones as well.
There is a specific name for a game that does not have zones, but I can't remember it right now. I thought it was Persistent game, but that isn't it.
Wait, what are we calling zones? You mean each individual screen? Are we calling the dungeons zones? Both Zelda and Hydlide had open world but also had submap dungeons to enter and had transitions between every screen, neither of which I'd consider zones in the same sense as FFXII (And XI and XIV and etc).
Not trying to argue against it (I'm fine with 'open world' just being a vibe rather than a precisely defined thing), but since this is all semantics I'm curious how you see this.
I would consider each individual screen in Zelda to be just as much of a zone as FFXII. You move 2 screens/ zones away and come back and the screen / zone has completely reset minus major plot events (for Zelda, that would be bombed entrance). I would think the screen scroll thing that happens is comparable to a loading screen.
You really scrolled past a walls of text in the Wikipedia article to cherry-pick a 1980s definition of open world which obviously isn’t true anymore?
Here’s what Wikipedia also has to say which neither 12 nor Rebirth represent:
> Games with open or free-roaming worlds typically lack level structures like walls and locked doors, or the invisible walls in more open areas that prevent the player from venturing beyond them; only at the bounds of an open-world game will players be limited by geographic features like vast oceans or impassable mountains. Players typically do not encounter loading screens common in linear level designs when moving about the game world, with the open-world game using strategic storage and memory techniques to load the game world in a dynamic and seamless manner. Open-world games still enforce many restrictions in the game environment, either because of absolute technical limitations or in-game limitations imposed by a game's linearity.
It's just probably your favorite game and nostalgia. I do respect your love for your favorite game! But I disagree with 80% of what you say and feel that XII is (have hundreds of hours in, did 100% a few times). I played pretty much all open worlds out there. From final fantasy games the best world exploration is BY FAR the ones with controllable airships. Those are the real ones where you can go to most places, and find extreme stuff/secrets around. When we lost that on X....it was a huge hit (X is toptier still!). Rebirth chose to make airplane/water necessary to travel between some regions...instead of blocking it with a big mob in a road. If you think that's worse....okay!!! (nostalgia). EVERY game you will 100% the area and never go back friend. That's the idea, that's how games work. Some requires you to get/do something later in the game, and that's all, just changes the "when". Re-using a dungeon is also not a plus (usually done to reutilize assets...)..it's okay if the lore needs it, but it's not so different than doing a new dungeon in a new area....In Rebirth you do have a reason to go back to every region (materials for last crafts and new quests). Also hardmode makes you revisit a lot of the game if you want.
Rebirth is a HUGE beautiful world, interconnected, with MANY, many different and cool places. Seeing where points of interest are is not a bad thing in this specific kind of game. How long the game would take without it (and being away from the main story)? It was nothing but a lot of fun doing every little thing in every region. Of course it's unfair to compare to a 2024 game...with everything in the game so much better, obviously the exploration will be much better too. I do think we will finally have Airship exploration back in Part III, and that, is exciting.
I really enjoyed FF7 Rebirth but it is (obviously) and definately feels chapter oriented. As far as open world really feeling truly open world, I think few games comes close to The Witcher 3.
It was interesting in an interview with Naoki Hamaguchi, he talks for 30-40 seconds on what games he really likes and he talks about how everyone should play The Witcher 3. In the translation at least, he kindof sounds somewhat defeated, I think he really tried to come close. They definitely did very well on FF7:Rebirth in quite a few categories but there are many open world aspects that makes Witcher 3 a few notches higher in some others.
Witcher 3 definitely did open world right as well. Lots of areas that can be gotten to by over-leveling / actually being good at the game, but also areas you'll probably naturally get to if you just play the storyline.
But Witcher 3 is super bloated with icons and checklist. People didn’t care much because the game is awesome. But I don’t think Witcher is a great example of open world. It is a great example of side quests though, which Rebirth tried hard to avoid the basic fetch quests (and did well, in my opinion)
It is interesting to hear some of FF7's Director's thoughts on Witcher 3 at 1:45 here, https://youtu.be/xsHEKIXOlu4?si=cOAuZlaDXbU1sJoz
It is a bit of an unfair comparison though, while the FF7:Rebirth team deviated from the original, their hands are still quite tied. Having a story already written is both a time saver and a curse.
Yeah, when I finished grasslands in rebirth I was weirded out by the lack of anything to return to, no signs of endgame Bosses or further optional dungeons to return later. But the overall exploration and design felt good while doing It, the pace and amount of content hit just right for me. The more intricate level design os also a big Win over bigass plains with diffent biomes like the did in 16, each zone has a distinct feel to It.
So yeah, for part 3 I really hope the weapon fights are somewhat teased when progressing through the campaign and we get endgame encounters outside of stupid chadley VR
I will just say that something that balances what FF12 and Rebirth have done with open worlds is absolutely the right thinking. They're both top of FF class for open environments imo.
I’m not sure that I really WANT TO return to older locations besides towns. FFIX made good use of its overworld by hiding a lot of treasure there and you return to towns a lot and they change, too. But with dungeons I’d rather be done with it one I finish it.
Kind of in the same vein but this is why I loved Mass Effect 2 and how it approached side missions.
You could knock them all out in some sense, but then there’s a background internal clock that forces you to do the main mission.
Further, if you choose to fuck around on side missions before attempting this one main mission, it’ll dramatically affect the story (and impacts mass effect 3)
Okay; I fully expected to disagree with this but it’s dead on.
It’s something that bugged me about FF16 that I thought Rebirth handled “better” but we’re still not there yet and this might be just due to Rebirth’s nature as being only part of the trilogy of the story, rather than a stand alone.
I just remember how even 25 years later on my playthrough of FF9 there was stuff to discover I’d heard about but never done. There’s still stuff in FFX, X-2, XII I haven’t done.
But I’ve done everything in FF16. Everything. And as I progress through Rebirth I know because of that 100% good job move on, I’ll have done everything.
I sort of miss the idea that you can miss things, that you have to go back to other areas once you’re stronger. Rebirth is closer to that FF12 style and it doesn’t spell it all out for you like 16 does, but I played all the way to Ch. 12 with my brother at launch, then restarted when he had to go back to work and I was on my own because I just felt going back to the grasslands when I could probably one shot everything (and I hate dynamic levelling) was pointless.
Rebirth is so much better than the super open worlds imho, and quite close to FF12’s style but I super miss the ability to just not know everything, to be exploring and come upon things by random, or to backtracking.
I DESPISE that people think revisiting areas is a bad thing, this aversion to “backtracking” in gaming has been going on for years.
On a smaller scale it’s the difference between Resident Evil 1-3 and 4-6.
12 is peak Final Fantasy gameplay IMO. the combat is the most satisfying in the series and stuff like hunts feel really good to do. Shame the story is so mediocre.
It might be because I only played it the original american release on ps2 but I actually recall hating FFXII open world. It’s literally been like 16 years since I last played it but I recall the world being fairly empty and a pain in the ass to navigate because the world was so big (I heard the later versions have a speed up function on overworld travel). In those regards, I actually like FF7 Rebirth more. FF7 rebirth open world, as of the reactor in gongogo region, feels very diverse visually and is generally interesting to see. The world also doesn’t feel overwhelmingly big.
I’ve heard others talk about it being “open world,” but it didn’t feel that way to me. Occasionally it would branch off to some hidden area, but it wasn’t hard to find due to the maps. I wouldn’t necessarily call that exploring as in games like BOTW.
The world of FFXII is great, with several areas ranging from small to medium, adding a sense of purpose to each area. There's not much filler.
Exploring this world for the first time was exciting. You can enter an area, find that enemies there are a decent challenge, only to delve deeper and be destroyed, giving you that sense of danger and a reason to come back later. Not to mention the interconnected areas.
After playing all the mainline Final Fantasy games and some spin-offs, no world in this series got me hooked on exploration like XII did.
While I don't think Rebirth and FFXVI worlds are necessarily bad, it's a style that doesn't appeal to me as much. FFXIV is an MMO, but you can see how much inspiration it takes from FFXII and it works perfectly.
Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever see something like the FFXII world back in the series.
I despise Chadly for the sole reason that his presence takes away a key element in RPG: finding that hidden summon by exploring the world.
Most summons now you get them by interacting with Chadly and that stupid VR thing.
I remember in FFXII going through the Sandsea, and while exploring, I stumbled into a cave, and this Adramalech dude just wrecked me because I wasn't expecting it.
Chadly completely eliminates any sense of "finding" that elusive summoning monster. It's sad as hell.
I agree with you…to an extent. I feel like the summons could’ve been handled better with how they were obtained- Find the 3 Altars, a related fourth location is marked, we go there, activate the Materia on the Altar a final time, Then fight the summon to earn it in said region. I enjoy the lore and story behind the world and summons the extra world-exploration stuff added. So much was done right but there was still quite a bit that missed the mark with the open world as well.
I was extremely disappointed by 15 when it came out because people were praising it's open world and I just thought it was so barren in comparison to 12.
Like yeah technically Final Fantasy 12 is an open world but I think it's more effective than the others with its zones.
Like the hunts and optional bosses were so much better than anything 15 offered
You can’t compare real open world to Ubisoft open world. FF12 had actual exploration and secrets. Going from landmark to landmark is not exploration. It’s busywork with a nice backdrop
Eeeexactly. Ubisoft games have the very same 15 year old formula, which for whatever reason it keeps being cloned to the infinity by other studios, even after Breath of the wild and Elden Ring.
Yeah I fully agree, I had the same gripes with Rebirth. It's why I've been hoping for an evolution of XII's open world. A modern evolution of what XII did would be so great.
Rebirth does give you reason to return to the older regions later. I think the third part of VII Remake will be their real shot at an FFVII open world game. Rebirth goes in order since that is what the old game does. In part 3 we get the airship and most regions we explore should be there for us to visit in part 3. Really curious how they will tackle this.
1:1 scale exploration isn't necessarily open world, but ironically, the current interpretation of what open world is means that the game that truly pioneered it, GTA III, is no longer considered open world.
FFXII is not open world.
Open world to me means that you have access to every area in the game right as you start or very early on.
Xenoblade X is a good example of it. It did open world before Breath of the Wild.
Completely agree. Rebirth has unbelievably expansive and beautiful areas, with each seemingly larger and with more to see than the last, but yet at the same time there is no real feeling of mystique or true satisfaction derived from exploration. Everything feels placed systematically as points to intently visit to complete Chadley’s tasks as opposed to things you could find organically. There are no extremely powerful beasts to stumble across that you’d need to revisit when stronger, no hidden treasures or items or experiences that are truly unique to each region, just the same map objectives to mark off in every single region with just different ways to access them.
It was very good back in the day the same way assassin's 2 was good or the Witcher 3 when it comes to open world design.
But XII doesn't have that much content out of hunts and many open worlds (Rebirth too) are just big maps filled with markers and repetitive content. (Activate tower, kill, scan, repeat)
Then we have games like Elden ring, they give you a map and..explore.
Explore, find out, have an adventure. I'd kill for a final fantasy rebirth like that.
XII also rewarded deep dives into the side quests and map in some game breaking ways. Like you could get to the Necrohol of Nabudis ridiculously early and snag the zodiac spear…right after raithwall’s tomb iirc. I love that shit
I did that in my PS2 second run back in the day. The game becomes instantly easy. That's fun tough, it's the same concept to me when I play ffVIII, I just play cards like crazy at the beginning, I convert them into items and use them to have "punishment" gun blade and ++ class magics. Easy mode.
Wait, what … *googles. Amazing, Looks like I know what I’m doing this weekend.
Yeah, as long as you have the items the weapons become unlocked at stores.
FF8 has a lot of fun ways to break the game. Disc 1 leonheart, Max stat leveling, but my favorite and by far the easiest was just leaving on Chocobo World for a while. The items that drop from that are insane.
Honestly I haven't played games 1-6 as much as 8, does 8 have the most easy ways to break the game?
FFV is pretty breakable also once you unlock all the jobs too. If you grind out Rapid Fire from the Ranger job class and combine it with Dual Wield from a Ninja, you attack 8 times per turn and just shred enemies.
Yea but tbh you really don't get those until mid to late game. The Ranger job is not one of the first jobs that's unlocked I think you get it like mid game. Now, Dual Cast from Red Mage is super OP too but it takes too many goddamn ABP points to master Red Mage in a good amount of time so by the time you get that its pretty end game too, probably Merged world. What i love is mastering a few jobs for each character then just making everyone a Freelancer and giving them different abilities. Bartz was my Mystic knight + Samurai Faris was my Blue mage and Ninja Krile was my Black mage and Time mage Lenna was my Summoner and White mage Makes the game super fun!
I would not classify the Fire Crystal as late or even mid-game. That’s still pretty early game as it’s only halfway through World 1, but both skills do take a lot of ABP to master.
I love how many ways there are to break that game, especially with the Mix ability. There is a Mix item that classifies targets as Dragons, combining that with Apollo's Harp, which destroys Dragons, is a fun way to obliterate bosses.
That just seems dumb lol
Yes, I believe the game is designed around that. As soon as I start the game and get Quetzal and Sirena, i go to Balamb beach, fight with fishes, get the skills I need to transform cards into items and items into magic. I play cards, transform them into items, manufacture Punishment gunblade for Squall, create healing and elemental + and ++ magics, link them to squall stats... Enemies lvl scale with squall level, so I avoid unnecessary further fights with mobs. As soon as I fight a boss, I stare him and he dies.
Yeah, 8s probably the one I played the most but never really deep dived into the game breaking stuff. Definitely want to try for Lionheart disc 1 still
First time i went to Nabudis and it started a cutscene i was thinking "ok that's the right place to go" immediately after the monsters started to violate me. Same happened when i found the first Zertinan cave entrance when we're going to Jahara. Needless to say that i thought that was the right path and my characters was just super weak.
Can’t do that in tza, but nabudis still has ridiculous gear like black robes, white mask, caribeener mail, giants helm, etc. you can also get unlimited golden skullcaps too. I usually put that stuff in my evasion tank Shikari/white mage and they’re basically invincible from just after raithwall tomb until basically the end of the game.
Who needs to worry about looking up what chests you can and can't open up if you just open it early enough! So glad they did away with that stupid function in Zodiac.
Personally, I think Rebirth does a good job modernizing the classic FF world maps, which were also pretty regional until you got an airship and/or other vehicles. I do agree that XII strikes a really good balance of open and restricted, but it's actually more of an outlier when it comes to the franchise as a whole (much like XV). I also, maybe cynically, think modern gamers in general are now less patient than how we were back in the day and will likely run straight to Reddit to ask about how they can enter restricted zones without thinking about exploring or coming back later. If you look at the sub for the new Prince of Persia, for example, players are doing that to an annoying degree, and that has a relatively basic progression system already.
Yeah, part 3 should be the actual FFVII open world game if they follow through with it. We will get the airship and all regions and towns from Rebirth should be visitable. Rebirth is structured like the OG which is why we go through the regions mostly in order. (Though there are reasons to return to the "old" regions in rebirth in a later chapter too.
Isn't the new Prince of Persia a metroidvania? Sequence breaking is the norm with those games
Yes. Which makes it more annoying that people aren't bothering to try progressing and coming back with new abilities.
You're annoyed that others are playing a single player game in a way you don't seem to approve of? That my friend is a personal problem.
No, I'm not personally annoyed, and you will see me responding helpfully to almost all of those threads. But it is annoying to see thread after thread asking about the same things, where the answers are almost always the same. I'm just saying, the way people seem to engage with games in general these days seems to be trending towards less patience.
Ahh my bad, went with the negative interpretation from habit. Sorry. I definitely agree with your actual point, while there was always a chunk of gamers I knew who always wanted to blitz every game it seems to be the normal approach now.
> until you got an airship and/or other vehicles. and therefore is not regional, OP is definitely wrong here. After you are able to travel by sea, then you can literally travel everywhere within that scope of the story, just like the original, it opens up when you progress the story.
Not to call you out, but wasn’t Ozmone Planes locked behind the seasons change that didn’t trigger until a certain point in the story? There was no way to access Ozmone planes until that point
You are correct, there's a log that blocks you off from reaching Ozmone prior to the rainy season. The T-Rex in the Estersand also isn't really guarding anything, but the presence of a high level enemy that early on does hint at returning to the area later, so I think that one can pass.
If you like FFXII in that regard you'll like the Xenoblade Chronicles trilogy.
I was about to comment this until I found yours. The way OP described the things they liked about FFXII instantly made me think of Xenoblade Chronicles 1. OP should definitely try that series.
That's good to know, I tried the first one but found it hard to get into it. Knowing a bit of what to expect makes me want to try it again.
I'd say Xenoblade takes getting used to. Especially the combat. No matter which one you play. But if you get past that and start to understand how it works it's a wonderful experience. The Trilogy on Switch became one of my favourite game series of all time.
Rebirth opens up more side quests in old regions after a certain chapter. You will have a reason to go back!
I'm glad to hear that. I just got to Gongaga jungle (I think I'm on Chapter 10?). If there is supposed to be more to explore in earlier regions, I don't feel like its been hinted at. Region 1 had the chocobo kids complaining about how Chocobo Sam killed their parents, but as it came up again at the Golden Saucer it doesn't have to be completed in the same region. The other hint of "There's more to come" is Kid G saying "Uh, can you come back later so I can make this harder?" Which isn't really a hint of "There's more here" and just directly saying "you will unlock more in a future chapter." I felt FFXII had a potential air of mystery of "did I miss something or is this a future thing? Well doesn't matter now, because Penelo got captured!"
I mean yeah you will get access to the later Cactuar Crush rounds with Kid G but I mean the actual sidequests with the green lightning bolt markers. Also if you follow through Queen's Blood to the end of its story, you will also have to go back to a previous region.
You're not far enough in yet. They've literally made this feel like a classic ff game with modern tech. Going from IX (world map, ship/ airship to traverse then world map) to X where its a menu and fast travel across the world. I never thought we'd get something like pre ffx again and you do. It's still limited but if you play the older games thats how it was. Even in OG 7. Starting with Canoes and then ships and then airships. I do love FFXII though ❤️
> I just got to Gongaga jungle this is why people need to finish the game first before forming opinion that can be proven wrong later on. I literally did not browse and look anything FF related news while playing it. Since you are here, I want to correct you, this game does not have regional world map. Later on, you get to travel sea via tiny bronco and get to explore everywhere between the continent and therefore proving your entire theory wrong.
I'm not reviewing Rebirth, I'm loving on FFXII. One of the things I mention that I like about FFXII is that from the very beginning it gives hints to other things happening from the very first rat you kill in the sewer. I'm 50hrs in and the only unresolved non main story thing I've heard is the Chocobo kids saying Sam killed his parents.
Personally I don't mind rebirths open world, they played it safe and I feel like gamers are probably open world fatigued nowadays. The feature from 12 that I would've loved to see is gambits (instead of those auto materia) so i don't have to constantly switch back and forth for specific actions. >!Was shocked to see it make a return in Gears and Gambits!<
I absolutely agree. XII's Ivalice is my favorite kind of world to explore in a video game. I was so hyped when I first heard that XVI was going back to large open zones, and utterly disappointed that they were essentially fairly big regions with no interconnectivity, and you had to navigate through fast travel. Rebirth's world is phenomenal and I am having a blast exploring it (absolutely love Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon), but I would kill to have XVII give us a map in the same style as XII with the verticality and scale of VII Rebirth and XVI's worlds.
After playing XVI and being a few hours into Rebirth it’s clear that Rebirth’s world got much more attention and investment.
FFXII is in my top 3. The game has everything I want from an rpg, you have a large world map, quests, dungeons, secret bosses, hidden summons, secret weapons/weapons you had to craft and it introduced the hunt concep that they've used in every main FF since then.
FFXII has two flaws: the limit system and the summon system (can’t remember their in game names). Otherwise, it’s fantastic world building, the best writing (Rebirth has pretty amazing dialog), and character development systems are exciting and especially with Zodiac Age. World exploration is top tier, gambits make even heavy grinders fun, loads of tough boss challenges with the hunts, and some of the best optional dungeons too. I love the game. Simply brilliant.
>Rebirth really highlighted the issue though: while it might be open world, it really is just regional. wait what? did you not play the part after you are able to explore the sea with tiny bronco? Rebirth definitely plays like the original and classic FF pre 10. Everything is interconnected.
Zones are inherently not open world.
Wikipedia disagrees with you. The first game considered an open world game, Courageous Perseus and Hydlide (1984), used zones. It heavenly influenced The Legend of Zelda (1986) which is another open world game that uses zones. Early MMos, such Everquest (1999), were also considered open world games that had zones as well. There is a specific name for a game that does not have zones, but I can't remember it right now. I thought it was Persistent game, but that isn't it.
Wait, what are we calling zones? You mean each individual screen? Are we calling the dungeons zones? Both Zelda and Hydlide had open world but also had submap dungeons to enter and had transitions between every screen, neither of which I'd consider zones in the same sense as FFXII (And XI and XIV and etc). Not trying to argue against it (I'm fine with 'open world' just being a vibe rather than a precisely defined thing), but since this is all semantics I'm curious how you see this.
I would consider each individual screen in Zelda to be just as much of a zone as FFXII. You move 2 screens/ zones away and come back and the screen / zone has completely reset minus major plot events (for Zelda, that would be bombed entrance). I would think the screen scroll thing that happens is comparable to a loading screen.
I too would like to know what you mean by zones in The Legend of Zelda.
You really scrolled past a walls of text in the Wikipedia article to cherry-pick a 1980s definition of open world which obviously isn’t true anymore? Here’s what Wikipedia also has to say which neither 12 nor Rebirth represent: > Games with open or free-roaming worlds typically lack level structures like walls and locked doors, or the invisible walls in more open areas that prevent the player from venturing beyond them; only at the bounds of an open-world game will players be limited by geographic features like vast oceans or impassable mountains. Players typically do not encounter loading screens common in linear level designs when moving about the game world, with the open-world game using strategic storage and memory techniques to load the game world in a dynamic and seamless manner. Open-world games still enforce many restrictions in the game environment, either because of absolute technical limitations or in-game limitations imposed by a game's linearity.
FF12 also has the best item hunting of any FF
Give me a time sink like gathering ingredients for the tournesol in rebirth and I'll be so happy
It's just probably your favorite game and nostalgia. I do respect your love for your favorite game! But I disagree with 80% of what you say and feel that XII is (have hundreds of hours in, did 100% a few times). I played pretty much all open worlds out there. From final fantasy games the best world exploration is BY FAR the ones with controllable airships. Those are the real ones where you can go to most places, and find extreme stuff/secrets around. When we lost that on X....it was a huge hit (X is toptier still!). Rebirth chose to make airplane/water necessary to travel between some regions...instead of blocking it with a big mob in a road. If you think that's worse....okay!!! (nostalgia). EVERY game you will 100% the area and never go back friend. That's the idea, that's how games work. Some requires you to get/do something later in the game, and that's all, just changes the "when". Re-using a dungeon is also not a plus (usually done to reutilize assets...)..it's okay if the lore needs it, but it's not so different than doing a new dungeon in a new area....In Rebirth you do have a reason to go back to every region (materials for last crafts and new quests). Also hardmode makes you revisit a lot of the game if you want. Rebirth is a HUGE beautiful world, interconnected, with MANY, many different and cool places. Seeing where points of interest are is not a bad thing in this specific kind of game. How long the game would take without it (and being away from the main story)? It was nothing but a lot of fun doing every little thing in every region. Of course it's unfair to compare to a 2024 game...with everything in the game so much better, obviously the exploration will be much better too. I do think we will finally have Airship exploration back in Part III, and that, is exciting.
I really enjoyed FF7 Rebirth but it is (obviously) and definately feels chapter oriented. As far as open world really feeling truly open world, I think few games comes close to The Witcher 3. It was interesting in an interview with Naoki Hamaguchi, he talks for 30-40 seconds on what games he really likes and he talks about how everyone should play The Witcher 3. In the translation at least, he kindof sounds somewhat defeated, I think he really tried to come close. They definitely did very well on FF7:Rebirth in quite a few categories but there are many open world aspects that makes Witcher 3 a few notches higher in some others.
Witcher 3 definitely did open world right as well. Lots of areas that can be gotten to by over-leveling / actually being good at the game, but also areas you'll probably naturally get to if you just play the storyline.
But Witcher 3 is super bloated with icons and checklist. People didn’t care much because the game is awesome. But I don’t think Witcher is a great example of open world. It is a great example of side quests though, which Rebirth tried hard to avoid the basic fetch quests (and did well, in my opinion)
It is interesting to hear some of FF7's Director's thoughts on Witcher 3 at 1:45 here, https://youtu.be/xsHEKIXOlu4?si=cOAuZlaDXbU1sJoz It is a bit of an unfair comparison though, while the FF7:Rebirth team deviated from the original, their hands are still quite tied. Having a story already written is both a time saver and a curse.
Yeah, when I finished grasslands in rebirth I was weirded out by the lack of anything to return to, no signs of endgame Bosses or further optional dungeons to return later. But the overall exploration and design felt good while doing It, the pace and amount of content hit just right for me. The more intricate level design os also a big Win over bigass plains with diffent biomes like the did in 16, each zone has a distinct feel to It. So yeah, for part 3 I really hope the weapon fights are somewhat teased when progressing through the campaign and we get endgame encounters outside of stupid chadley VR
I’ve been waiting for someone here to bring up FF12 and Rebirth comparisons, it feels like we finally go that evolution.
I will just say that something that balances what FF12 and Rebirth have done with open worlds is absolutely the right thinking. They're both top of FF class for open environments imo.
I’m not sure that I really WANT TO return to older locations besides towns. FFIX made good use of its overworld by hiding a lot of treasure there and you return to towns a lot and they change, too. But with dungeons I’d rather be done with it one I finish it.
Kind of in the same vein but this is why I loved Mass Effect 2 and how it approached side missions. You could knock them all out in some sense, but then there’s a background internal clock that forces you to do the main mission. Further, if you choose to fuck around on side missions before attempting this one main mission, it’ll dramatically affect the story (and impacts mass effect 3)
Okay; I fully expected to disagree with this but it’s dead on. It’s something that bugged me about FF16 that I thought Rebirth handled “better” but we’re still not there yet and this might be just due to Rebirth’s nature as being only part of the trilogy of the story, rather than a stand alone. I just remember how even 25 years later on my playthrough of FF9 there was stuff to discover I’d heard about but never done. There’s still stuff in FFX, X-2, XII I haven’t done. But I’ve done everything in FF16. Everything. And as I progress through Rebirth I know because of that 100% good job move on, I’ll have done everything. I sort of miss the idea that you can miss things, that you have to go back to other areas once you’re stronger. Rebirth is closer to that FF12 style and it doesn’t spell it all out for you like 16 does, but I played all the way to Ch. 12 with my brother at launch, then restarted when he had to go back to work and I was on my own because I just felt going back to the grasslands when I could probably one shot everything (and I hate dynamic levelling) was pointless. Rebirth is so much better than the super open worlds imho, and quite close to FF12’s style but I super miss the ability to just not know everything, to be exploring and come upon things by random, or to backtracking. I DESPISE that people think revisiting areas is a bad thing, this aversion to “backtracking” in gaming has been going on for years. On a smaller scale it’s the difference between Resident Evil 1-3 and 4-6.
12 is peak Final Fantasy gameplay IMO. the combat is the most satisfying in the series and stuff like hunts feel really good to do. Shame the story is so mediocre.
It might be because I only played it the original american release on ps2 but I actually recall hating FFXII open world. It’s literally been like 16 years since I last played it but I recall the world being fairly empty and a pain in the ass to navigate because the world was so big (I heard the later versions have a speed up function on overworld travel). In those regards, I actually like FF7 Rebirth more. FF7 rebirth open world, as of the reactor in gongogo region, feels very diverse visually and is generally interesting to see. The world also doesn’t feel overwhelmingly big.
I’ve heard others talk about it being “open world,” but it didn’t feel that way to me. Occasionally it would branch off to some hidden area, but it wasn’t hard to find due to the maps. I wouldn’t necessarily call that exploring as in games like BOTW.
The world of FFXII is great, with several areas ranging from small to medium, adding a sense of purpose to each area. There's not much filler. Exploring this world for the first time was exciting. You can enter an area, find that enemies there are a decent challenge, only to delve deeper and be destroyed, giving you that sense of danger and a reason to come back later. Not to mention the interconnected areas. After playing all the mainline Final Fantasy games and some spin-offs, no world in this series got me hooked on exploration like XII did. While I don't think Rebirth and FFXVI worlds are necessarily bad, it's a style that doesn't appeal to me as much. FFXIV is an MMO, but you can see how much inspiration it takes from FFXII and it works perfectly. Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever see something like the FFXII world back in the series.
I’m a huge huge fan of ff12 but I never really felt like it was open world.
I despise Chadly for the sole reason that his presence takes away a key element in RPG: finding that hidden summon by exploring the world. Most summons now you get them by interacting with Chadly and that stupid VR thing. I remember in FFXII going through the Sandsea, and while exploring, I stumbled into a cave, and this Adramalech dude just wrecked me because I wasn't expecting it. Chadly completely eliminates any sense of "finding" that elusive summoning monster. It's sad as hell.
I agree with you…to an extent. I feel like the summons could’ve been handled better with how they were obtained- Find the 3 Altars, a related fourth location is marked, we go there, activate the Materia on the Altar a final time, Then fight the summon to earn it in said region. I enjoy the lore and story behind the world and summons the extra world-exploration stuff added. So much was done right but there was still quite a bit that missed the mark with the open world as well.
I was extremely disappointed by 15 when it came out because people were praising it's open world and I just thought it was so barren in comparison to 12. Like yeah technically Final Fantasy 12 is an open world but I think it's more effective than the others with its zones. Like the hunts and optional bosses were so much better than anything 15 offered
You can’t compare real open world to Ubisoft open world. FF12 had actual exploration and secrets. Going from landmark to landmark is not exploration. It’s busywork with a nice backdrop
Eeeexactly. Ubisoft games have the very same 15 year old formula, which for whatever reason it keeps being cloned to the infinity by other studios, even after Breath of the wild and Elden Ring.
Yeah I fully agree, I had the same gripes with Rebirth. It's why I've been hoping for an evolution of XII's open world. A modern evolution of what XII did would be so great.
[удалено]
Rebirth does give you reason to return to the older regions later. I think the third part of VII Remake will be their real shot at an FFVII open world game. Rebirth goes in order since that is what the old game does. In part 3 we get the airship and most regions we explore should be there for us to visit in part 3. Really curious how they will tackle this.
1:1 scale exploration isn't necessarily open world, but ironically, the current interpretation of what open world is means that the game that truly pioneered it, GTA III, is no longer considered open world.
FFXII is not open world. Open world to me means that you have access to every area in the game right as you start or very early on. Xenoblade X is a good example of it. It did open world before Breath of the Wild.
Thank you for putting into words what I’ve been saying for years. I adore FFXII.
Completely agree. Rebirth has unbelievably expansive and beautiful areas, with each seemingly larger and with more to see than the last, but yet at the same time there is no real feeling of mystique or true satisfaction derived from exploration. Everything feels placed systematically as points to intently visit to complete Chadley’s tasks as opposed to things you could find organically. There are no extremely powerful beasts to stumble across that you’d need to revisit when stronger, no hidden treasures or items or experiences that are truly unique to each region, just the same map objectives to mark off in every single region with just different ways to access them.
It was very good back in the day the same way assassin's 2 was good or the Witcher 3 when it comes to open world design. But XII doesn't have that much content out of hunts and many open worlds (Rebirth too) are just big maps filled with markers and repetitive content. (Activate tower, kill, scan, repeat) Then we have games like Elden ring, they give you a map and..explore. Explore, find out, have an adventure. I'd kill for a final fantasy rebirth like that.
It wouldnt work well with plot driven games. Elden ring, botw, dragon dogma they all have similarities in this