Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings for the Nintendo DS is a spin off of the PlayStation 2 (PS2) Final Fantasy XII (FFXII) game. Square-Enix totally went back to the drawing board on this one. The end result is pretty damn good. Forget all the turn-based mechanics you normally see in Final Fantasy Titles. Similar to Final Fantasy XII for the PS2, The game is real-time. However, this game resembles more of a traditional real-time strategy. Each member of your party is called a group leader. For each group leader, you can summon monsters to fight with them, or espers. Each leader and esper falls under one of three categories, melee, range, or flying. Like most strategy games, one category bests the other. Here we have, melee beats range, range beats flying, flying beats melee. You can mix and match your groups for more advance strategies.

The controls are very straight forward. You use the stylus like a computer mouse. To attack an enemy, simply click on a character then click on the enemy. They will walk across the entire terrain to reach their destination if needed. Using the stylus you can select entire groups by clicking on the leader icon at the top of the screen. You select any individual character at anytime. You can also push the X button to select all. This works well sometimes, if the mission is to destroy a single enemy in the middle of a crowd. As with traditional Final Fantasy games, each leader acquires new skills as they level. As in the PS2 FFXII, your leaders possess a quickening skill, which unleashes devastating results. You can tell your leaders to always use a certain spell or skill like ‘Fira’ whenever it is available. However, at the same time you can go in and manually use any of their skills at will. Additionally, giving you experience points even if you die is a very nice touch!

I”m charmed by the over all presentation of the game. All the major songs from the PS2 version in the game. Although they are not a real orchestra, they songs are included in their fullness. All the main heroes from the PS2 version are in the game. This game is one of the answers to my longing to find an rpg that looks, smells and taste “epic” but it really isnt. Final Fantasy XII for the DS can give you a quick action-rpg battles and at the same time satisfy the rpg feel by including, levels, crafting, and free roaming. In my opinion, this game is the best translation of an RTS on the DS. I look forward to seeing more RTS type games on the DS. The only thing I could wish for is online wifi multi-player battles.

Tags: 2-Bit Blogger Picks, Review, RPG, Square-Enix

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 9:20 am and is filed under DS, Nintendo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.