PixlBit

Personally..I thought FFX was weak as hell.  It does nothing I can't find better in other entries. The ony good thing it did was turn order being displayed on the screen...which crpgs had been doing for 20 years already. 

FFXII was amazing to me. A breath of fresh air for the series and JRPGs in general. Grand in scale, tons of content, lavish monster designs, lots of secrets, some good dungeon crawling atmosphere.  I never did finish the game, as I got caught up in grinding strats that took a long time. It's hard to complete a game like that because I start becoming obsessed with getting everything.  The biggest mark against it is that it's a wiki/strategy guide game. You will miss out on a lot of stuff that isn't intuitive to see or obtain. Second flaw is that many of the Espers are weak in combat. Was disappointing to summon this large creature just to have it go down in a few rounds. Thirdly, HP bloat on bosses; there is a point where knowledge and execution drops off and it's just about how much patience/time in the day you have.  Once you figure out your gambits/tactics for something like Yiazmat, it becomes a dull game of attrition. Not the kind of "challenge" I'm into.

Good luck with the platinum.

Most of the high-end hunts are indeed endurance matches. Zodiark, by contrast, has only a fraction of the HP but is a complete asshole, and the game forces you to get your gambits together to beat him as quickly as possible or you're going to have a lot of problems.

The Espers are a lot more buffed in this game. The more powerful ones can have HP in excess of 9999 (it just shows as 9999 unless their actual HP drops below that), and they can now do more than 9999 damage (so can your characters, for that matter, with the right weapon/armor combos). They can also now be controlled actively through the battle menu and even be made the controllable character while on-screen, whereas before they just followed their gambits, which includes choosing when to use their super attacks. You don't have to wait for the exact right one-in-a-million combination of circumstances for Ultima to use her big attack. With those things in place, the weakest link ends up being the summoner, who can still get dogpiled on by the enemies.

I played FFXII too much on the PS2. Beat it twice, did all of the sidequests, and I got the prized Order of Ambrosia clan rank. Needless to say, I have no urge to go back and play the Zodiac Age (even though I am curious of the changes the Zodiac Job System brings).

Did you beat Yiazmat yet? Though not difficult, I remember that being quite the marathon.

Happy 10 years. I think I'm at 14 since I joined 1up.

Each character can choose two license boards, which can't be changed once they're set. The second one doesn't come until after a certain milestone in the story. You really have to think about your builds if you want to get the most out of the game. The Espers and Quckenings also play a role in the license board as a lot of licenses are locked behind Espers and Quickenings, and each Esper can still only be assigned to one person.

The Espers are much more powerful, especially the level 3 Espers. They can also be actively controlled when they are on screen.

Your characters can now inflict more than 9999 damage and can have up to 19,998 HP with a base 9999 HP and the Bubble Spell.

The elite weapons and armor, by contrast, are somewhat harder to get for the most part. That invisible merchant in the Necrohol of Nabudis no longer sells you every top-level spell in the game, you have to actually go out and find them.

I haven't beaten Yiazmat yet. I'm trying to get Zodiark, and am using a lot of colorful language in the process. Zodiark is a cheating SOB.

Holy crap, I know all of those people and I think I've also been here or 1up about 10 years. 

I started at 1UP in 2010. Seven years blogging. 

I really want to preorder Ni No Kuni 2. Just don't have the money right now. 

My brother played FFX.  He knows very well the kinds of games I like and don't like, and he said I wouldn't like it, so I never tried it.  I learned later that there is a character in FFX who uses plush toys of FF characters as weapons, which sounds cool as heck.  That would be something I would do if I were in a FF game.  But my brother said I still wouldn't like that character, so poop.

Nothing about FFXII has lured me in to want to play it, so I don't know much about it.  Maybe you can convince me otherwise, but it'll be a challenge.  Only thing I know about that game is there is a character who has bunny ears!  If I were in charge of making that game, that character would also have a carrot sword and the Dragoon "Jump" command for that character would change to "Hop."  Probably a good thing I'm not working for Square-Enix, huh?

Speaking of which, I have a private meeting with Square-Enix next week at PAX West.  I can't wait for that!  Next year, Square-Enix is releasing a big boy console version of the Dissidia games, and a 3-D remake of Secret of Mana!  They're trying hard to win me back!

Hey you put my name in your blog!  I still miss 1up.com from time to time.

I don't remember the year I started on 1up. It was a while back though!

XII probably seems like the FF I'd enjoy most since I'm more a WRPG guy and feel like it takes a lot from them, but I'm waiting for it to go down in price at a time when I don't have so much to play. I still haven't finished X either and would like to beat it, I really enjoyed what I did play.