I've decided I'd like to alternate my Text-light Picture posts with my more rantish ones. Give an alternation of text and picture. Alternatively (and yes, I do recoignize how many variations of this I've used) I could just tie the pictures more into what I'm writing about and combo them every time; though I might find it more constraining to write to a picture, rather than just using the picture where it goes well with the words.
Anyways, I've got a fair chunk of time (though still mail and lunch to burn some of that) and no coworker, so not only is there solitude broken only by the annoyance of customers - and I hate Christmas season because it's no longer people with 1 box, it's people with 16 boxes - and the radio. The River does not have enough variety, but at least I can stomach half it's playlist, and zone the rest mentally.
Picking up with FFXII chatter I've finally reached the Knight of the Round status, having beatdown every hunt offered to me before Giruvegan (where I should be headed now). I've gained acceptance to the Rare Hunter's club, with no kill past the first turtle (There had better not be any other Rares that are triggered by "Stand in place X for awhile" cause that's just fucking stupid) turned in, but I think 3-4 Trophies earmarked. Beatdown the Hell Wyrm, which was more than I'd bargained for going in blind. It was a particularly brutal battle without Holy Absorb but I triumphed after about 2.5 hours of straight battle (Epic, yeah). Cost me 7 Phoenix Downs, 1 X-Potion, 1 Hi-Ether, and 1 MegaElixir (After a particularly bad Judgement).
I've decided after playing all this time with it, that the Gambit system is like 70% of what I desire out of it. The automation of mundane rebuffs, target acquisition, etc, is brilliant, but it's flawed. What gets me is the acquisition of Gambits.
Take them out of the stores, give me like 10 generic ones to begin with (really broad, like the HP Triggers as 1, MP Triggers as 1, Enemy Types (Flying, Boss, Regular), Spell-Effect Present, etc.) and make their refinements or improvements be granted storyline. In fact, I heartily reccomend giving Gambits as a reward for fights that would've been best served with the Gambit, proving your worth. Right now they're far too swingy, either useful or useless depending on the situation. The fact that I have to specifically trigger on various status-effects irks me, or on Elemental Weaknesses. And the game doesn't respond too brilliantly to "Immune" or "Reverse" or even Stealing. The game could've been smarter, and really I think it should have been, but the gambits should've been harder to obtain to balance it. Even better, they could be some token system, so that there's some strategy in the selection what Gambits you're going to need/use and what the player is going to do himself.
Aside from Stealing, and smart casting spells without taking all the lines to do it though, the system does function, and I do it mostly by hand anyways (Like anyone who's played Baldur's Gate will). So why the rant about Gambits? Easy, because of the rant about Treasure Chests. Overlooking the whole "Don't open these chests" thing for the spear (Note to designers, if you're going to pull that kind of crap, at least do it Crono Trigger style -- That is all) the random chests are pretty much my bane. 90% of the time, even with the Armlet, they contain plity amounts of gil, potions that I have had 99 of for ages (and nothing to do with them, unlike FFX where it's Bahamaut has learned to cast Cure, which while useless, was cute and solved the problem of having 99) or they give me a Gambit. And not just any Gambit, but the same Gambit, over and over and over. I swear, I have Gambit: Self at least 6 times, and Every Copy of Gambit: Hp % twice, including something like 12 copies of Hp 60%, for no good reason. The gil I can store at least, even though I have 1 mil, with the tiny donation of 50K from Montblanc for the Hell Wyrm kill (Worst, Clanleader, Ever), the potions I could at least use with aplomb and replace them. But getting a Gambit I already have? Fucking stupid. There's probably some piece of FFXII's code in there that's commented out, advising development that a redundancy check on the Gambits would be wise, because there's no point to addition copies (And this is have the reason I say they should be bought with special Gambit Curreny, if you're going to sell them instead of making the Sidequested).
I could rant about the Loot System, and how it'd be 100x better served by a Sidequest Recipie-Driven segment for the ultimate weapons, ala Final Fantasy VIII's Weapons-Magazines or a Tiered Craft system functioning like Kingdom Hearts Synthesis; but that's really all I have to say. The blind aspect isn't cool, it's just complicated and annoying, especially with the interaction of multiple recipie loot elements.
