Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings Review

So for those that haven’t read my FF12, let me start by saying “I loved FF12.” Now let me also say that this is not FF12 in any way besides some characters and the world it takes part in.

Revenant Wings (RW from here out) takes place after FF12 and follows Vaan, Penelo and some new characters as they venture into sky pirate fun. However they quickly find themselves in the middle of a war between gods beasts angels and pirates.

The story is a decent one. Enough to make it a stand alone from FF12. Besides some returning characters, most who haven’t played FF12 shouldn’t be lost here.

For those that have played FF12 will find Vaan taking the lead for once here. Also the story is a LOT more light hearted and ‘cutesy.’. Although not too cutsey, it can take away from establishing serious moments. But hey, it wouldn’t be the Vaan we know.

The graphics are great. It takes place in a 3d environment with 2d sprites. The sprites are very well animated and give off amazing character. There’s just not much here to not like.

The gameplay is the interesting part. The game uses the top screen for a map generally and bottom is used as the playing field. At the beginning you’ll control 1-4 main characters but over time those characters labeled ‘leaders’ will have many minions following them.

You can select leaders and their minions by tapping their portraits, select individuals by tapping them out on the field, or grab multiples in an area by outlining them. Once selected you can tell them to attack, move, gather, etc by tapping their target.

Sound familiar? It’s sort of like a real-time-strategy… but not really. About the only thing it takes from an RTS is the overhead selecting of units thing. It really feels unique to it’s own thing. To be honest I hate RTS but I enjoyed this because it didn’t have any of the features of an RTS.

Each level has an objective such as defeating enemies, taking down leaders, living through a zone, reachong an ally, getting resources, and more. There’s tons of missions and some repeatable. It also features a weapon creation.

Now for my peeves. The controls. While I had no problems with the controls all the way late into the game, at some point when the difficulty gets high it becomes hard to micro manage your units. That coupled with bosses that seem to abliterate your characters in a split second, it can get frustrating (I’ve yet to finish it as I gave up near last chapter).

Another problem that arises is trying to get your characters to move how you want. Often I got extremely frustrated trying to get my characters to kill a healer. With healer at hand the enemy becomes very well invinsable at times (wish penelo was that good). I often found myself recommanding my units over and over to get them to ignore other enemies to kill the healer.

The leveling is also annoying as each side level bears little and distribution seems uneven. That coupled with lack of out of group sharing leads to no motivation to max out characters. Which is part of the experience for some.

The game also leads you often to think your not leveled enough as most thing out level you by 10 or 20 levels. Not even sure why they show levels.

Peeves aside this is really a gem. Doing something quite unique so I give them props for this. Check ot out.