Often summed up as "Anime Star Wars", FF12 is a bit of a controversial entry - the Gambit system, effectively giving you 100% control over your party, was maligned as complex, and the story is a lot more political and slightly more abstract than other games in the series.

I played FF12 because i really enjoyed Matsuno's work on the Bozja storyline of FF14, and although i took a break between beginning it and actually finishing it, it didn't disappoint. FF12's main story is effectively a subversion of Chosen One plotlines, although anything more would definitely need a spoiler warning. To a degree, the story somewhat subverts the idea of a Evil Empire and Good Kingdom - but again, you'd have to play for it not to be more of a spoiler.

FF12 suffers slightly from the lack of real character development - only Balthier, Ashe and Basch get any real development, and Vaan gets less - with the other 2 basically along for the ride. I don't particularly think this is too much of a sore spot, but also it'd have ended up more interesting to me if, say, there was more chances for the party to feel like a party.

The soundtrack is phenomenal and atmospheric, and most of the graphics still hold up despite the age of many of them - oh, and you're definitely going to want to toggle on English VA - it's completely exceptional and very widely liked.

i played this primarily because i had played DDLC on a whim, heard it mentioned, and yet again am a sucker for metafiction. i obviously won't go into the plot more than general strokes here, but Aoi's extremely, extremely endearing and i liked most of the slice-of-life stuff because of her. i liked a lot of it, and although the very very end felt mastrubatory, the majority of the last act was fucking insane, disorientating, and horrific.

oh, and for the record - most of the sex scenes made me crack up. however, for the purposes of getting the fullest experience out of the ending, i gotta suggest getting the patch if you get it off steam