Final Fantasy XII-2
Still enjoying the game.

1) Guest party members make everything so much easier. Especially killing marks. And though the game sets you up for disliking the Ultan-Yensa, I kinda feel sorry for running through their territory and slaughtering them all. It's a slaughter. I run near one of them, and since they're hostile, my three PCs and the guest all run up and go slash-slash-slash-slash-dead-who's next?

2) An extension of #1: except for the plot, boss fights and marks, and wandering around looking at the pretty scenery, this game is really boring. I mean, with gambits, I don't even have to think in order to decimate the inhabitants of the world. I just have to run near them. I can wade into the middle of a tunnel filled with skeletons, go make dinner, come back, the party's killed everything and healed themselves. All the game doesn't do for me is move the characters on to the next area to do more bad-guy slaying. There's only been one area where I actually had to watch their health and pull them out of combat because the security guards were auto-respawning quicker than the party could kill them. I know the game's got a kill counter. I wish it'd show me the actual number. I may be single-handedly responsible for the near-extinction of a few species of animals and sentient humanoids.

3) And just when I was starting to congratulate the villains on having a complex, well thought out, and successful plan, without any hints of gross incompetence, it's time for another Good Idea/Bad Idea.

Good Idea: Testing the magic crystal you took from the good guys to ensure you don't return home with a dud.

Bad Idea: Testing the magic crystal you took from the good guys, against orders, in your airship's most sophisticated testing facility available: the engine.

The End.

4) I'm liking the place names in this game. I want to steal them and claim they were my own.

5) The skycity of Bhujerba, apparently located on a cloud, also apparently has giant wings. It is also the location of the Lhusu Mines, where they extract magicite from the mines. Also in the clouds. One of the city's random moogles made the comment that the magicite is what enables the city to fly, and wondered about what happens when all the magicite is mined. (The mines are almost depleted.) Quite clearly, this city is doomed.

6) Does Fran speak more later in the game? I really like her voice, though I can't pin down the accent. And Balthier's british accent has just the right amount of arrogance to make his opening quip "I'm the leading man" perfectly believable. This voice acting rocks, compared to the last game I played, Xenosaga 3, in which the voiceovers randomly paused in the middle. Of sentences, or at the end. Of a page of text.

7) I forgot about this, until Balthier asked the same thing: WTF is Vaan doing on the adventure? He's been drawn into things because when he was doing his noble thievery schtick he's a (noble) thief stealing from the castle, and just happens to fall into an on-going plot that he's only tangentially involved in because of his brother, and then becomes further involved only because his not-really GF gets kidnapped. But apart from that, why is he even there? He hasn't done anything particularly noteworthy, and nothing he's done has really affected anything anyway. He really does start this game as a nobody, even more so than Zidane or "This is MY story" Tidus. Why exactly are we supposed to like Vaan?

8) Maybe it's too early in the game, but aside from the pre-existing friendship between Vaan and Penelo, there hasn't been any sort of love interest mentioned on part of any character. Doesn't the main male character in FF games usually fawn over the main female character? Or am I only assuming that's the case because I've only played FF 9 and 10? (In any case, it's fine, because I see no reason at all for Vaan to get the girl. I'm just unclear as to whether the girl is Penelo or Ashe)

9) I know it's more "realistic" this way, but it's also really annoying that, in towns, in order to buy stuff, I have to go to seven different shops because they only sell one kind of thing (weapons, armor/shields, accessories, items, magic, techniques, and gambits).

10) I wish the game would tell me which tile on the license board I have to purchase to use a given piece of equipment.

11) I don't have enough money, to the point that I'm actually hampered by it. Don't really recall this happening to this extent in any other RPG I've played. Maybe I need to steal more?

12) On gambits: maybe that's the whole point of this game: develop a complex enough gambit rules list to ensure that your characters can take down bosses with your eyes closed? In that case, I need a "run around in circles" gambit action so my party restores their magic after combat, and a "crap, we're all dead, switch to backup party" gambit. I also need to assign additional conditions, e.g. "If ally HP <= 20%, Hi-Potion, but only in combat", so I don't use up my potions out of combat.