Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings

Author's Rating:

Pros: characters, gamplay, music,

Cons: no voice overs

The Bottom Line: 
This is one of the best handheld Final Fantasy games Nintendo has ever made!

Author's Review
When this game first came out I kind of wanted it but there were other games that were already out that I wanted more. Ever since I played Final Fantasy X for the PS2 I have been a big final fantasy fan. I finally got another chance to get the game one time but there was another game I wanted a little more. I ended up getting Final Fantasy XII Revenant because the gamestop my dad went to didn't have the game I was looking for so I just got Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings because I had wanted this game too. As soon as I got the game I started to play the game. Instantly I was having tons of fun and didn't want to stop playing the game. This was now my favorite Final Fantasy game on a handheld system, even over Final Fantasy III. To find out why this is the best Final Fantasy game on a handheld system please continue reading my review.

Story

The story takes place one year after the events of Final Fantasy XII and now Vaan is a full fledged Sky Pirate and Penelo is his trusted navigator. The true story starts when Vaan and his friends Kytes and Filo go to investigate the airship that was outside the city. They end up getting into the ship and it ends up taking off without one of them controlling it too. Right before it took off Penelo and Tomaj climbed on board looking for Vaan and his friends. So all five friends were now traveling to a group of floating lands. The Sky continent of Lemures is where they end up. After they save and meet Llyud a aegyl who has lived in Lemures for his whole life the real story begins where they have to stop the Judge of Wings from destroying Ivalice.

Gameplay

There are many character in the game that you will meet and join your party. Here is a short description of the main characters:

Vaan - He is a young sky pirate who's adventures through Ivalice has thought him a lot. He is also a captain of his own airship and loves to travel the skies looking for an adventure to take on.

Penelo - She is Vaan's childhood friend and she is always there to lend a helping hand or even a proper scolding if necessary. She is Vaan's faithful navigator and she stays faithful even when Vaan gets off course in new ways.

Kytes - He is an orphan who lives in Rabanastre's Lowtown. Kytes is one of Vaan's closest friends. He has been studying magic and practicing magic in hopes to become a sky pirate like Vaan.

Filo - She is another orphan from Lowtown and she always follows faithfully in Vaan's footsteps. She still has the emotional scars from the war, but she doesn't let that get to her. Especially when she dreams to become a sky pirate just like Vaan.

Tomaj - He is an old hand from the Sandsea, which is a tavern located in Rabanastre. He collects important information for Vaan and his friends to help them on their adventure.

Llyud - He is a aegyl warrior from the sky continent of Lemures. He exhibits a curiosity that is not commonly found among the other aegyl living on the continent of Lemures. He regards himself as something of a curiosity just like everyone else.

Balthier - He is a Legendary sky pirate who loves to fly to ends of Ivalice in his beloved airship the Strahl. When the great war ended he stepped out of the limelight and kept his whereabouts well hidden from everyone.

Fran - She is mysterious and quiet as most viera are wont to be. She shares a great bond of unshakable trust with her fellow sky pirate and partner, Balthier. She and Baltheir are always together and never seem to be far apart from each other.

Ba'Gamman - He is a vile and ruthless headhunter who has been marked with a bounty on his own head instead of him marking someone else with a bounty are their head. He still has a grudge against Vaan and his friends and will go to any lengths to get them.

You will also meet other familiar characters that were in Final Fantasy XII but I am not going to spoil the surprise of it.

When you are aboard the airship you use either the stylus or the control pad to move Vaan through the airship. The top screen shows a map of the airship and bottom screen is where all the actions take place. When a talk icon appears above the NPC's head you can talk to them by tapping them or pressing the A button. The menu icons are displayed at the bottom right corner of the bottom screen. The two menus are the Main Menu and the Airship Menu which can be opened by tapping the icons or pressing the button that corresponds to the menu. To open the Airship menu just tap on the icon or press the Y button. You can also access the Airship menu from the world map which I will mention later. The selections on the menu will vary with your location and the selections are: Bridge, Sky Saloon, Launch, and Disembark. At a certain point in the story you will be able to go to the Sky Saloon where you can buy stuff at shops. You can buy weapons, armor, and accessories at Tomaj's shop and you can buy materials used to make new weapons at the Material Shop. Then you can use the materials you find and buy to make new weapons at the Forge. You have to have a recipe book to make weapons and you can only forge the weapons that are listed in the book. You will find many recipe books through battles and the story. When you are on the bridge you can check the Ships Log to find some interesting information and look at your party's log entries. Also located on the bridge is the Notice Board that Tomaj put up to give optional missions for them to do.

While flying the airship you can either use the stylus or the control pad to navigate the airship. To land the airship and get off it just touch the land icon or approach a landing spot and then select "Disembark" from the Airship Menu in order to travel the world map by foot.When on the World Map either in the airship or on land the top screen shows the World Map which is the map of the sky continent of Lumures. On the bottom screen if of course where all the action takes place. The bottom screen basically shows an up close image of the location you are at and Vaan and Penelo appear as really small people on the the world map. The names of the places are place right above the place and your next destination is marked with a orange or red flag. There is only on landing point on each island and you have to either lap the land icon or approach it to land the airship and get of it to walk the rest of the way to your destination. While on land in the World Map at the bottom right corner you have three icons for each menu. These three menus are the Main Menu, Notice Board, and the Airship Menu. The Notice Board icon only appears after it becomes available at a certain point in the game. Just like when you are moving on the airship and moving the airship around you can either use the stylus or control pad to move the character around on land.

To open the Main Menu you can either tap the main menu icon or press the X button. While in the Main Menu the top screen still shows the world map. On the bottom screen is the list of sub-menus and then a head shot of each of your party members and their name and level. There are a total of six sub-menus on the main menu and they are: Equip, Ring of Pacts, Espers, Inventory, Primer, and Save. When you tap a character with your stylus the character status will appear on the top screen. The Equip sub-menu lets you equip your party members with a weapon, armor, and accessory. Each character can only equip one weapon, one armor, and accessory. When you enter the equip sub-menu the characters status displays on the top screen,while the bottom screen lets you equip the character by tapping the equipment you want to equip or unequip. To switch between the different characters in the equip sub-menu you either tap the arrows on either side of the same of the character in the orange rectangle at the bottom of the screen or press the L or R button. The next sub-menu is The Ring of Pacts which doesn't become available until you obtain the Ring of Pacts through the storyline. With the Ring of Pacts you will be able to use auracite to forge pacts with the espers. These espers you will be able to summon them during battles. To form a pact with a esper just tap the esper's icon and it will ask if you want to form the pact. The more espers you form pacts with and the more missions you complete new espers will eventually become available, but only completing certain missions will unlock new espers. The next sub-menu is Espers where you can configure your esper troupes. During battles you can summon Espers that are assigned to your currently active Esper troupe. You can have up to three esper troupes and there are five slots in each troupe. There are three ranks of epsers and you can only have one rank III esper in your troupe. I am not completely done with the game so I am not sure if it will increase to three rank 2s or if it stays at two rank 2s but that's what I have seen so far and then there are two rank ones. There are six different types of natures and each esper has a nature and they are grouped by their nature. They are also grouped by if they do melee damage, ranged damage, or flying damage. Melee units are strong against ranged units,while ranged units are strong against flying units, and flying units are strong against melee units. Healing units on the other hand are subsets of ranged units. Each character is also classified as either a melee, ranged, flying, or healing. The next sub-menu is Inventory which of course shows all your items which are divided into different categories. Items with a check mark by them mean they are currently equipped. The second to last sub-menu is Primer which contains basic gameplay knowledge that you can check at any time. The last sub-menu is Save which of course lets you save your game and there are two save files to save your game.

The first thing that appears before the battle starts is the objectives. The battle is only won once the objectives are reached and if the objectives are not met in the course of the battle you loose the battle and its game over. Each party member is called a leader and each of them can command up to eight espers. The leader and their espers are called a "group." They are also both referred to as "units" Before the battle begins you must choose the party members that are going to be in the battle and choose the esper troupe you are going to use in the battle. When everything is all set just tap the Begin button at the bottom of the screen to begin the battle. In some battles there will be one or more characters that cannot be removed from the party and have to participate in the battle. These characters will be marked with a key lock icon which means they are locked in the party. When a battle starts the top screen shows a overview of the battlefield. The unit leaders are marked by either blue or red body with a head and that all, and your unit leaders are blue and enemies unit leaders are red. Espers are either blue or red dots on the battlefield and again the blue are your espers and the red are the enemies espers. The yellow starts on the map mean the unit is knocked out. Blue or red squares are summoning gates on the map and the blue summoning gates are yours and the red summoning gates are the enemies. Spots that are marked by an apple are foraging spots where you can forage food to replenish HP and spots with pots are scavenging posts where you can sometimes find weapons or auractite. A spot marked by a crystal means that there is a soul crystal there and your soul crystal is blue and the enemies soul crystal is red. In some missions you will have to destroy the enemy soul crystal and make sure they don't destroy yours. The units HP gauge appears right above each of the units and as the unit gets hurt the color of the bar changes from a green which means full power and when the HP bar turns all the to the color gray that means the unit is defeated. To have your units attack enemy units you can either tap one character to have only have that character attack, tap the tab at the top of the bottom screen which selects only leader and if you tap it again it will select the leader and its group. If you want all your units to attack at once either press the X button or drag the stylus on the touch screen so a selection rectangle will appear, and all the units inside the rectangle will be selected. To have them attack an enemy just select your units and then tap the enemy you want to attack and when you select the enemy or enemies a picture of crossed swords. When the battle objectives are met the battle is won and all the party members get experience points and the characters don't even have to have been in the battle and they still get exp. In the beginning of the game the enemies are not that hard except the bosses are a little hard even in the beginning. The enemies will get harder the farther you get in the game. I don't know about anyone else but I have actually had to stop and train many times before I was able to get farther in the game. Like where I am in the game I have been spending a lot of time leveling up so I can beat the current mission in the story.

Each character has some magicks and abilities that they can use in battles. After using a magick or ability it takes a short amount of time must pass before you can use it again. If you want to dismiss a esper just select the esper and select dismiss. Each unit leader can have one and only one skill set on gambit. This means the unit leader will automatically use the assigned skill as they see fit. As the game progresses the leaders can learn special abilities called Quickenings. Like in Final Fantasy XII the leader can only use their quickening one the mist charge gauge is full. When a leader's Mist Charge gauge is full a orange circle will appear in the characters tab which mean they can now use their quickening.


At the start of every battle each group leader is assigned a certain number of Espers from the selected Esper troupe, and its the epsers that match the leader's attack type. On most battlefields you will find some summoning gates usually you start next to your summoning gate. You only start with one summoning gate then there are enemy summon gates and sometimes you will find neutral summoning gates. Enemy espers will come out of the red summoning gates from to time unless you capture it and make it yours. Only leaders can capture summoning gates though and once the bar turns blue while you are capturing the gate it becomes your gate. Then you can summon more espers to help you but you can only summon the espers that are on in the troupe you chose at the beginning of the battle.


Controls

You will use the touch screen and stylus for many actions like tapping icons, items, enemies, objects, people to talk to them, and move around. The A button can also be used to talk to people, select objects, and in battles it moves the camera to a friendly summoning gate. The B button is used to cancel selections and deselect units in a battle. The X button is used to open up the main menu and it is also used to select all units when in a battle. The Y button is used to open the airship menu and to select units by group while in battles. The L and R buttons are used to cycle through pages and switch upper and lower screens. The Start button is used to bring up the pause menu while in a battle and the select button is not used at all. The control pad is used to make selections, move Vaan/party on land, and control camera while in battles.

Graphics

The graphics in this game are real good and but are not much better than the graphics were in Final Fantasy III for the DS. The cut scenes in the game are really awesome and cool to watch. Other than the cut scenes the graphics are that stunning, but the characters and the espers are pretty colorful and there is a bit of detail to them but it is hard to put detail on the small units. The battlefields are a little colorful too and have a little detail to but they could had done a lot better with the graphics in the game. The only thing that really stood out was the small amount of cut scenes.

Sound

The music in this game is the same music from Final Fantasy XII and I have always like the music. I have always like the final fantasy theme music and I like to have the sound up whenever I play the game. There is very little sound effects to the battles in this game. Unfortunately once again Nintendo didn't put voice overs in this final fantasy game just like there was no voice overs in Final Fantasy III.

Overall the game is very fun and I recommend this game to any final fantasy fans. I don't see any problem with this game and I would recommend this game to anyone who has a Nintendo DS.