Final Fantasy XII Order Now

Oh how I hate this bloody game. Let me count the ways...well ok not really.
Seriously, though Final Fantasy XII is a travesty. It's the worst Final Fantasy game in history other than Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest on the SNES. Why? It's boring, plain and simple. For times sake, I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail here, but here's the gist of the plot. The game takes place in Ivalice, the same Ivalice as Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. An evil empire is gobbling up neighboring kingdoms left and right and the small kingdom of Dalmasca is caught in the crosshairs. It falls, the king is killed and now it's up to the king's daughter and her team of unlikely heroes to take back Dalmasca and destroy the empire, really nothing special. Actually now that I think about it, Final Fantasy XII's plot is an awful lot like Final Fantasy II's (the real Final Fantasy II, not the one that's really Final Fantasy IV). They're very similar, they both have an evil empire is expanding its territory and a small group of rebels from a defeated nation beat it back. But regardless, even a forgettable plot like that can be overcome if the characters are good...and it's in this category where Final Fantasy XII fails miserably. All of the central characters in this game are flat, uninteresting and, really, half of them have no stake in the massive conflict going on around them. Vann & Penelo are useless. The only reason the latter joined the fight against the empire is because it seems she has nothing better to do with her time than babysit Vann. And the only reason Vann is going along is because he's hero worshiping the game's horrible Han Solo rip off Balthier. Fran, Baltheir's answer to Chewbacca, serves no purpose other than sexual eye candy. In fact, the only real members of your party that really have anything to lose in this game are Princess Ashe and her shamed Captain Basch. It's really sad when you consider that the minor NPC characters you encounter as you progress through the game are more interesting than your party.
But now let's talk about the thing I hate the most about this game, the game play. First off, the combat is boring. Unlike past Final Fantasy games, there are no random encounters; all of the battles in this game take place in real time, with enemies on the field. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, Xenosaga had its enemy's running around after you on the field and Xenosaga was bloody amazing. And KOTOR's combat is nearly identical to FF12's and look at how awesome that game was, but it is more often than it isn't. Put simply, FF12's combat is a bloody mess. You could be engaging one enemy and then out of nowhere 5 of them show up and start attacking you. And there is no recovery time, if you're not on your toes your dead. And running away from battle is impossible. You don't become invisible to the enemy for second like in other games where the enemies are on the field, they just follow you and, more often than not, you get pulled back into a battle when you really don't want to.
Anyway, like Kotor, you only have control over one character while the rest you have to program ahead of time with the games poorly thought out, overly complicated Gambit system, Gambits are commands that you buy in stores or find in the feild and then program into the party members that you're not in control of. Sure combat in past Final Fantasy games was slow and a little sluggish but at least they let you have complete control over what your party did in and out of battle. FF12 doesn't and the result is pure frustration, even when you program your party, to say, heal people after a battle. They have no sense of conservation; remember how in RE5 when Sheva would waste entire health sprays on you whenever you lost even a minuscule amount of health? Well that's pretty much the problem here. You can have one character set to heal you after a battle but when he or she does, they don't stop until you have full health, even when you don't really need it they do it. It's wasteful to the say the least. I can't tell you how many boss battles I've lost because of this. Sure you can turn the gambits off but when you do the characters just stand there and watch you get slaughtered, and besides which, when you're in the heat of battle in an RPG like this, you forget that you can make your party do stuff manually seems to make very little difference. So I ask you, what is the point of this? Either have the computer control them completely with the only input from me being `do this' or `attack that' or give me total control of my party members, not both.
But the thing I hate the most about this game's gameplay is the God damn License Board. Since when does it make any sense that I would need a license to use a sword I just found lying randomly on the ground? And what makes worse, you need a License to equip everything, and no, I'm not kidding. Every piece of armor or weapon you can equip, and every skill and spell in the game requires you to open the menu, go to the license board and then unlock it. And that's assuming that you have enough license points to do so. But you know what else really grinds my gears about the License Board? All of the License Boards are the EXCATE SAME. No, I'm not making this up, there's no difference between one character's license board and another's. They're all the same. There's no customization what so ever. Pardon me for asking, but didn't I just say that this game takes place in the same universe as Final Fantasy Tactics, why isn't there a job system or some variation there of? Say what you will about Final Fantasy VIII's junction system or FFX's sphere grids but I'll take those over this license board BS any day. And, come to think of it, if this takes place in Ivalice, then where are the other characters from past FFT games? Like Ramza, Marche or better yet Orlandu, that would've been awesome. Sure FFTA's Montblanc is in this game but he doesn't join your party or do much of anything for that matter. I'm just saying that if the PSP remake of the first Final Fantasy Tactics can have Balthier, then I see no problem with FF12 having Ramza.
Alright, alright that last bit was a personal complaint, but all my other points are still valid. Bottom line, FF XII drove a wooden stake into Final Fantasy's heart. To quote the one who calls himself `Yahtzee' (replacing the words "Silent Hill" with "Final Fantasy") "For me the Final Fantasy series is over, and unless Final Fantasy XIII can convince me otherwise, then I will remove six of own vertebrae, curl my spine back, and EAT my own ass!"
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