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FFXII's story was good, don't get me wrong. I've never had a complaint about SE's plots or graphics. My issue with FFXII was not being able to get my characters to do what I wanted. I forget which battle it was (I think it had a big turtle, wasn't too far in), but I kept getting killed because whoever I had as the healer kept trying to melee with a boss. I kept trying for a good week, and finally just gave up. When I fail because of something I'm doing wrong, that's one thing. If I fail because the game mechanics don't play nice, that's something different.
I may be an old-school curmudgeon, but I miss turn-based combat systems. I understand SE wanting to keep the attention of today's twitchy ADD gamers, but I like to take my time in battle. If I want an action-RPG, I'll play Diablo or Titan's Quest or Fable...
Why didn't you just, like, turn off his "Attack" Gambit...? Problem solved.
Though, if the boss was casting Berserk on them, that would make them attack and not heal. Which would have been solved by a "Target:Any" or "Target:Berserk" ---> "<insert item/spell>" gambit.
The system was NOT hard to use. I just got irritated that you couldn't "save" templates. Annoying to have to switch back whenever you killed a boss.
Part of the reason you don't get Turn-based games anymore is that it is a waste of resources, and basically means innovation stops. We've seen jsut about every TB system we can imagine without adding time into it.
XIII DOES use a turn-base system. You just, from what I understand, only control one character at a time (dunno if the rest have AI or are programmable, but I'm pretty sure you can switch them). And you line up skills (or activate them slowly, as you want them, if you don't want to line them up.
I really like that SE has chosen to make this game difficult. Whenever I play TB games, I tend to be surfing the web at the same time. Like, battle animations are nice... the first 200 times you see them.
Now, the fights are faster, though still menu-based, and you get healed to full after each one, because they expect you to take a LOT of damage. Thank you, god, for a game that may actually hold my interest to it, rather than my PC.