Surtur's FFXII Preview Sort of Thing

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May 2012

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[Surtur]

So the English version of FFXII kind of... leaked online a little while back.  I tried holding off on d/l'ing it and waiting to pick up the actual version in stores... but in the end, I caved.  I'm weak, leave me alone.
Anyway, so I've been playing for a couple of weeks now, and I thought I'd share some of my initial non-spoilerish thoughts, because I know how much everyone is always dying to hear what I think about everything.
So far I am loving the crap out of this game.  That isn't to say I don't have any complaints... in fact, I have quite a few - but they're all merely nitpicky.  Overall, it's crazy fun.  The gameplay is extremely addictive, and I often find myself playing just for the battle system, as opposed to having to suffer the battle system in order to advance the plot, as is usually the case with most RPGs these days.  It does take some getting used to, though.  There's no question that I found it a bit awkward at first - especially because when you start the game, you only have one character in your party, which winds up playing sort of like a dumbed down Vagrant Story.  The game is honestly a lot more fun once you have more people to manage.  This gets even more fun once Gambits are unlocked, and you can do things like have secondary characters automatically cast Cure on you when your HP falls below pretty much whatever amount you think is too low, or something.  For example, I have one character set to cast Cure when anyone's HP falls below 30%, and another character set to use potions if anyone is in an HP Critical state.  It's nice to have so much control over when items and MP should be used, and I hope if other companies are going to copy any aspect of the FFXII battle system, they choose to copy this style of friendly AI management.  The level of customization afforded by the Gambit system makes the AI actually extremely useful, rather than annoying, which is unfortunately a really rare thing in games.  I'd love to see a Gambit-type system in all kinds of games too, not just RPGs.  It'd be sweet to be able to control targeting or ammo management or medkit usage between characters in an FPS, I think.  I dunno, maybe I'm crazy.  At any rate, I'm digressing.  The battle system is really fun, is the point.
There are, however, two things about the gameplay in FFXII that I don't like - one really minor, and one... less minor.  The really minor one is that the camera kind of sucks ass.  It's not a big deal, this being an RPG and not, you know, a platformer, but it does bother me a little simply because there's so much detail in the environments (anyone who's played Vagrant Story should know what to expect - the art design is really similar, and if you recall how detailed and beautiful that game's environments were for the time, you'll have a pretty good idea of how detailed the FFXII environs are), I often feel the urge to just stop and admire my surroundings - only I can't, really, because the camera doesn't give you a very good look at them.  This game really badly needs a first-person view.  Or just the ability to pull the camera back more.
The bigger complaint I have is with the license board, which I think is really really dumb.  The license board is similar to FFX's sphere grid, only instead of just being for stats and magic, it's also for weapons and armor.  What this means is that not only do you still have to buy weapons and armor, but in order to actually equip them, you now have to find the specific square on the license board that contains the license for them, and activate that with your license points (LP).  I have no clue what the point of this is except to add tedium to the process of buying equipment.  What's worse is that this is also the case for magic, now.  Just activating the square for a particular set of magic(k) skills doesn't actually give you those spells... you still have to buy them.  It's not terribly annoying, honestly, because so far I have always had enough LP to activate whatever magic/weapon/armor I needed to at any given time, but it is... bewildering.  It just seems like such an odd and pointless addition to the game.
Story-wise, the game is not as original or unique as, say, Vagrant Story was (it's actually fundamentally pretty cliche), but it's told in such an intensely interesting way, with such an interesting cast of characters (probably the most interesting cast in an FF game since 6) and so much intrigue, that it doesn't feel cliched at all.  It feels like something totally new.  It's just a much more mature and complex take on this kind of story then any other game I've played.  So far, anyway.  I still get the feeling (about 15 hours in, now) that I'm only teetering on the edge of the real meat of the story.  That is to say, the shit has not yet hit the fan.  I hope that doesn't sound like a complaint, because, I mean, it's not - the game is really enthralling so far.  I just get the feeling that there's something big on the horizon that'll totally alter the story's direction in some major way.  I could be wrong, though.
I'm not too crazy about the localization... Vagrant Story's translation this is not.  I'm not talking about the voice acting, though, which is probably the best dubbing job I've ever heard.  Almost every character in this game sounds awesome (I can think of only one character - a minor one - whose voice I hate - he speaks fairly early in the game... like, right after the opening scene, and he sounds like he's trying to do a bad Connery impersonation, or some awful cross between a British and Austrailian accent or something).  There's none of that exagerration of emotions and abundance of unnatural pauses that plague other dubbing jobs.  I feel like these voice actors are actually taking their characters seriously, and trying to sound like normal people, instead of overacting every single line to the extreme.  So yeah, voice acting = sweet.  But the actual writing is just... awkward.  Sometimes they seem to be trying wayyyyy too hard to be eloquent, and the meaning behind what the characters are actually saying gets all muddled and confused - this would be better if you could at least replay old cutscenes, but since you can't, I sometimes have to pause after a cutscene ends to think about what the hell they were just talking about, lol.  And I don't feel like I can get a good grasp of the dialect used by the characters, either.  Most of the time they'll speak in what sounds like normal, modern-day English, but then they'll occasionally suddenly switch to using some archaic words or speaking in, like, early-modern English for like one sentence.  It just feels a little unbalanced.  It's not too bad, but... just don't go in expecting Vagrant Story.
Graphically, the game is pretty much what you've come to expect from Square.  The character models look fantastic (I really love the eyes), and, especially in cutscenes, move and act like real people.  The draw distances, however, are occasionally a problem - not for the enviornments, but for the NPCs.  Often you'll be walking around a town, for example, and see a bunch NPCs suddenly pop up out of nowhere right beside you.  It can be a little weird.  But once they've all loaded, lol, the cities look full and alive, which is pretty awesome.
The CG is pretty wonderful (and surprisingly abundant), although the CG models sometimes look totally different than the in-game models (I'm looking at you, Vaan and Vayne), which can be a little jarring.  The CG seems to be used in the way that Matsuno said it should be, though - primarily during cutscenes depicting something that couldn't be done very well with the in-game engine - usually involving airships or vast landscapes.  Most cities I've visited in the game so far have had a quick CG intro, as well.
The game's opening is also, for the record, probably the best opening scene ever.  Even better than FFVIII's.  I am totally in love with it.
As I am with the whole game.  It's pretty amazing, and it's been well worth the wait so far. 
Just... nevermind the fact that I kind of cut the wait short, myself.
cough

[SLDFKnight]

It sounds like it's a really good game, but I still don't think I'm going to get it. I've been pretty disappointed in the whole FF series ever since X. 

FF used to be the old standby. Endearing characters (complete with "I've seen this before" familiarity) melodramatic yet engaging story, simple iconic battle system. Now it seems like the series is abandoning all the things that made me love it in the first place.

Taking chances and doing something new is laudable, but I don't want somehing too different. I didn't ask for girly-man character designs or Everquest-y combat so I don't know why Square is giving it to me.

[Surtur]

Yes, I agree that it totally sucks that instead of the 8,938,263rd ridiculously cliched Japanese RPG on the system, we get like the 4th unique and original one.  Looks like you'll have to resort to playing one of those rare 8,938,262 RPGs that are exactly the same, in order to fulfill your desire to play something you've... already played.
Honestly, there's already a sickening amount of RPGs on the system that have the same characteristics you apparently look for in the genre... each more exactly the same than the last.  No one's saying you have to buy FFXII, but I can hardly see why it would bother you that it's not just another notch on that list.

I would, however, really recommend at least giving it a rental.  You may think you don't want something different, but I'm pretty sure the game will win you over in the end.

-Surtur would like to note that Vaan honestly does not look that girly in the game.  Not nearly as gay as in those original promo shots.  The only gay thing about him is that he wears a vest with nothing underneath it - but after Ashley Riot's pants with the butt holes, that doesn't seem so bad anyway.

[TheContact]

I have to agree with Surtur here, mainly because he's totally right.  Different is good, there's already way way way too much of the exact same old uninspired RPG design out there already.  I'm excited that FF12 seems like something different (and fun!), and it's the only reason I'll be buying it.  If it were the same old, it wouldn't even be on my list of games to buy. 

If I want the same thing again, I can turn to my library of over 50 RPGs on various systems over the last 10 years and play one of those.  Hell, there are fan-translated ROMs of RPGs I haven't played that are probably the same crap (only, at least they're 10 years old now).

[SLDFKnight]

It's not that I don't like it for being different. It's just that I've come to expect certain things from the series and when I don't see those things I get disappointed.

I think Square did a very interesting thing by making a series out of seemingly unrelated games, but still giving them all an immediately recognizable FF flavor. Maybe playing the game would change my opinion, but based on the previews if it weren't for the chocobos and airships I probably wouldn't have been able to guess XII was a FF game.

I understand that things get boring without a certain amount of innovation, but when a series becomes as iconic as Final Fantasy has, certain things come to be expected from each game. To me the battle menus and the "jump, jump backwards" animations were as much a part of the series as moogles and black mages.

Maybe I haven't played enough RPGs to get tired of the "same old same old" like you all have. To illustrate my point: I loved Wild Arms F. Sure, the plot and te characters have been used 1000 times before (they weren't even innovative when the original game came out) but that didn't stop me from enjoying the game. I was thinking "whoa cool, it's like a western movie" not "oh lame, I've seen that before." Maybe FF with real time combat is fresh and clever to you guys, but to me its just WoW with rabbit chicks.

If Square had released the game with a different title I wouldn't have a problem with it. (Except for the character designs maybe.)

[TheContact]

Well, I think the point is that FF12 being different isn't of any great loss to you, because there are hundreds of other RPGs that don't break from tradition.

It's not the real-time combat that's nice (active time battle is pretty much "real time"... just with lots of waiting).  It's that the game mechanics are so much more fluid.  I don't see how you can feel nostalgic about horrible concepts like random battles and pointlessly detached battle arenas.  Those have never been there because they were good, they were there because of technical limitations.

[Surtur]

To me the battle menus and the "jump, jump backwards" animations were as much a part of the series as moogles and black mages.

Er, they still have battle menus.  And the characters do sort of leap forward a bit when attacking too, lol.  I don't think they leap back, though... I don't know if that's a major loss to you.  But here's the thing that a lot of FFXII decriers aren't really noticing for some reason:  if you really want it to be, you can make FFXII pretty much exactly the same as past FF's, only sans loading screens for battles.  Turn off the gambits for all your characters, and then when you get into a fight, choose the actions for each character individually (they won't do anything if you don't have gambits on).  There.  Classic FF combat, only every battle takes place on the main screen. 
Though if you consider load screens a big part of what makes the series work, I don't know if I can really help you. 
I guess you could like... you could pause, shout "shhwissshhhh!" and then unpause everytime you run into an enemy.
If you wanted to. 

I loved Wild Arms F. Sure, the plot and te characters have been used 1000 times before (they weren't even innovative when the original game came out) but that didn't stop me from enjoying the game. I was thinking "whoa cool, it's like a western movie"

Actually, I... also like the Wild ARMs series (it's not my favorite, but I do really like it all the same), and for the same reason.  The western aspect of the WA games is something that I think is pretty cool (cause, I mean, I like westerns), and that's not really present in other RPGs.  But if there were suddenly like a million western-style RPGs, and then Media.Vision put out a non-western Wild ARMs game, I don't think I'd care (well, if it was good, anyway).

Maybe FF with real time combat is fresh and clever to you guys, but to me its just WoW with rabbit chicks.

  Well, as I said in my first post, it's the Gambit system that makes FFXII fresh and clever to me, not just that it's got real time combat.  Like I said, when you only have one character in your party, it's nothing special (not bad, mind you, just nothing special) - but once you've got a full party, the gameplay gets really fun, engaging, and addictive.  The Gambit system does away with a lot of the tediousness of the genre.  Battles go by faster, while you still maintain the exact same level of control for all characters that you had in all previous FF and FF-style games.  And it seriously cuts down on the incessant single-button pushing that's been plaguing the genre for years (attack attack attack attack attack attack attack attack attack attack potion! attack attack attack attack attack).
It's just really innovative, even if it should have been pretty obvious to developers before now: give the user plenty of freedom to customize the AI the way he wants, rather than force him to deal with crappy, useless AI that'll totally screw up any user's individual playing style.  I, at least, haven't seen anything quite like it.

[bajunid]

Hi, Thought I'd just chip-in.

Well I caved in too....just can't resist the temptation.

Once I start, i got sucked right in...and once you get to manage a team of your own with Gambit on, it's one of the best thing that have ever happened to RPG.

I hate to repeat myself, but Surtur really nails it with his preview sort of thing and I'm totally agree with him on this...plus I'm only 25 hrs into the game.

My only gripe with the game (apart frm what Surtur had already mentioned) is in the sound dept...The I agree that the voice acting is great...but to me the 'recording' is not as sharp/good (for the lack of a better word) as FFX. I tried to hook it up with my Yamaha sound system and it makes the 'bad' recording sound much more 'clearer' (clear here means 'bad') to your ears. (I reaally need to improve my vocab...not to mention grammar).

On an unrelated note, I'm planning to buy a PS3 when the stocks is somewhat more available from Play-asia.com which is a company somewhat like Lik-sang. Don't whether they will have the same prob with Sony and I'll end up not being able to buy it from them.

[TheContact]

Note: The PS2's sound hardware is awful.  At best things will sound terrible.  All the sounds and stuff have to fit in 2MB of memory, so they're not going to sound very good...

Random reasons why the voice acting doesn't sound as crisp - they probably have more world data to buffer in, so the buffer size for the audio streams (voice, for example) is probably smaller... and so the data has to be compressed more so that it doesn't stutter as it's streamed.  It's likely that they're pushing the PS2 in other departments more than FFX, so sound had to take the hit.

It makes even more sense in light of the lack of battle loading screens and other breaks that allow for loading data from the disc.

[SLDFKnight]

Before it came out I couldn’t understand why they would change the combat system so much. In fact after playing the demo I really thought it was terrible. Now seeing Kara play the game it makes sense. It’s not bad, It’s just not for me anymore. It’s for a different sort of gamer and that person will really like it.

Yeah this is basically it for me too. PA is great. I don't think they sold out.

[Surtur]

Here.

The mood in the office this morning is somewhat tense. We all spent the weekend playing FFXII and we came back today completely divided regarding its quality. I have to admit that after putting in nearly fifteen hours over the past two days I’m prepared to call it the best FF game I’ve ever played. I know that’s at odds with what I said on Friday but it’s the truth. Tycho and Robert are actually playing together and they’re at about the five hour mark. They came in this morning saying the game was trash and I can’t blame them. They’re knee deep in what I’d describe as the tutorial phase of the game. If you played Kingdom Hearts II you’ll remember that’s a game that doesn’t actually “start” until nearly eight hours in. I don’t mean like you don’t start having fun until then, I mean you literally don’t even see the title screen until you’ve dicked around with Roxas for eight fucking hours. FFXII felt the same way to me. It’s extremely slow to start but now I’m having a hard time putting the controller down.

The big thing for me was that I finally started to understand the combat system. I don’t just mean I could manage it, that’s not hard. I mean, I understood what they were trying to do and how it isn’t a departure from turn based combat but actually an interpretation of it. I almost said refinement there and maybe I should have.

So the big complaint and the one I had for probably five hours was that I wasn’t actually doing much during most combat situations. My gambits took over and my characters just did their thing. It wasn’t until I got to the first boss Firemane that a little light bulb went off over my head and I really “got it”. I was literally stopping the action after every turn and adjusting my characters actions, or making new decisions. It was for all intents and purposes a turn based encounter. Now, this is where I wish I was Tycho because I want to explain the combat system as I understand it, but I’m not sure I’m up to the task.

When I think about playing FFX or IX and I think about the battles that take place between bosses I remember that I was never really in too much danger. When a battle pops up between your party and let’s say some wolves in X you just select attack on all your characters, maybe toss in a fire spell for fun and then watch the wolves bite it. Most of the time you weren’t sweating over what each character should use their turn for because a single miss step could mean game over. Sure you could fuck up and die but you really only had to get serious during boss fights and handful of other tough mobs. Most of the time, it’s just you selecting the same moves over and over, occasionally dropping a healing potion. Well all that FFXII has done is stream line that process. I’m not pushing “X” as much but I’m doing the same things. It was hard for me to get my head around at first because I wanted to believe I was doing more than that but I wasn’t. I wanted to believe that every fight in IX really required strategy but it didn’t. People feel like their being taken out of the driver’s seat, that the car is just on autopilot now. The truth is that you may have been driving the car before but the fucking thing was on rails. You just grind through monsters until you hit a boss and that’s when the combat really gets interesting.

It’s funny, I should have realized what was going on when I played Enchanted Arms. One of my favorite features of that game was the ability to have your characters just do the same move they did last turn. Rather then having to go and select in from the menu it was automatic if I wanted it to be. Obviously I could tweak it and change that when I wanted but much of the time I just want my healer to heal, my fighter to hit and my wizard to cast spells. The Gambit system lets me tell my characters how I want them to behave. At anytime I can stop the action and make adjustments but for a lot of stuff I don’t need to. All its doing is saving me the trouble of navigating five different menus to tell a character to do the same thing they did last time.

When I hit a boss all of that changes. Just like in previous FF games, now I really need to think about what everyone’s doing. I have my gambits as a sort of failsafe running underneath but for the most part I’m stopping the action all the time to adjust each character’s target or change a spell. Everything I love about controlling multiple characters through a difficult turn based fight is right there. That’s the thing, the new system means the game is as deep as I want it to be whenever I want it to be.

Well there, that’s how I feel about the new combat system. I hope that made sense even if you don’t agree. The rest of the stuff about the game isn’t as important I don’t think. I love the story but that’s because it’s Star Wars meets LOTR. Obviously not everyone is going to dig that. I think the writing and the voice acting are the best in an FF game to date. Again that’s open to interpretation. I think most importantly for me beyond just getting my head around the combat is that I really like these characters. For me it doesn’t get much better than Balthier. Like I said, everything else is secondary though. If you don’t like the gambit system and the way it affects combat then you won’t stick around long enough to enjoy the rest of it. I just felt like it was important to tell you guys how drastically my impression of the game changed over the weekend. Maybe it’s still not for you but I’d recommend giving it some time. You may find out that it’s exactly what you wanted.

-Gabe out

I just want to say that I totally saw this coming.  Ever since Gabe said he picked up the game, I was counting down the days until he told us that he had gotten a full party and had changed his mind about the battle system.  So once again, I must reiterate: the game is awesome.   If you give it a chance, you will quickly understand that it is a real huge improvement on the previous FF system.  And you'll like it.

[Sirus]

I have to say I like this whole regional accents thing they're doing. It really does make sense when you think about it, and helps make the world seem a little more like...well, a world.

Hearing whities in Bhujerba talk like Indians (Dot, not feather) is stil a little odd, though.

[SLDFKnight]

Yeah I saw that the other day. I'll probably be picking up the game in a few months after I get decent at Dark Crusade and finally finish XS3 (damn you hakox!) I'm hoping I don't end up like Tycho though and not like the gameplay but really enjoy the rest of it (hello XS2?)

[kostjan]

So yeah... Almost four months after I got it I finally finished FF12.. What can I say? This is definitely the longest I played any of the FF / Console RPGs: the last save of mine is at 85 hours and some, plus I figure I've spent a good hour and half violating everything and anything that moved on Bahamut... That's pretty close to my 90-some-hours-before-I-got-bored of Oblivion last year, a game in which there is much more to do... What does that mean? That FF12 is pretty damn good, at least from game play point of view. Ah, it was so fun beefing up my low-level characters through that "stupid high-level cave near Rabanastre", going for elite hunts to beef yourself even more, and then walking through Necrohol of Nabudis like though the playground, subjecting the stupid living dead from the pinnacle of your 20 level advantage over them. Granted, the fighting system takes most of the credit for the game's ability to draw me over and over again.

The story and character development, though, is a different matter. It sucked, royally. First of all, I do realize that the games' target audience are teenagers, but playing a 17 year old when you're almost 26 is about as much fun as I had with playing Justin in the original Grandia, 7 years ago. Then you are thrown into a cast of 6 characters, good half of which are dull and empty. Penelo? Who cares about playing her, really? No background except the "parents dead and Vaan's friend", no growth... Arg! Basch? After a promising start as the king's assassin, he wades into emptiness until the last couple hours of the game. Fran? She is interesting on many levels, besides the fact that she has a super-model body in a sexy outfit, as if she just ran off the photoshoot for Playboy. However, we learn nothing of her during the game, except that she's is at least "30 years older than she looks", has affinity with magic (er.."mist"), and that she was banished from her town. The game suggests that she's Balthier's girlfriend, but then again nothing is there to confirm or deny it. There is no story on how they met, why she ended up with him, or even why she was banned (other than "she left to travel the world of humes"). That's a shame. As for Ashe... Well, she joined the collection of "annoying and stupid female leads", headed proudly by Rinoa. I'm surprised she didn't reveal that she's a witch (or bitch?) in the middle of the game... 

The villain? I see no point for the player to hate him. Sure, Mr. Solidor comes as a typical unlikeable character that is in charge of an evil "empire"... Evil empire makes him very  mean... But unlike Kefka, he does not kill his servants (at least not directly), and does not dream of total world annihilation - he only wants his country and his people to be prosperous. He is more in the league of Lunar's Ghaleon (who ultimately believed that the world needs a Deity, and given Althena (or what was her name?) was doing a lousy job, aimed to replace her). The difference is that Ghaleon is a much more interesting, developed, and ever-present character, while Vayne was just a "filler" villain - I was sure til the end that Balthier's dad going to end up as the big bad baddie...

Needless to say, the story was a mess, and frankly it was almost as if it was non-existant to me - I had the feeling that the game progressed for the sake of progression, in almost pathetic "anything goes" way.

Is FF12 a great game? It is, definitely! If you haven't tried it yet and have a PS3 or PS2, by all means, get it. Except that if you're like me - do not expect much of a story (something that I kinda came to expect from a FF title). Instead, think of it to be in the same league as the timeless Super Mario classic games - no story, but oooooh so much fun!

[Surtur]

Wow, I... actually agree with kost.  I haven't read Revelations, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing this is supposed to be one of the signs of the Apocalypse. 

This, and Ottawa winning the Stanley Cup.

Brace yourselves, people.

But yeah, my final thoughts on FFXII, which I finished months ago, but never really got around to writing, are as follows:

The gameplay is magnificent.  Based on gameplay alone, this is by far my favorite FF.  It really addresses a lot of the issues plaguing RPGs today, and it's addictive as fuck.  You know... assuming you're some kind of sex addict.  For those who complain that it's a game that "plays itself," it's best to think of it as a strategy game (ie. starcraft, warcraft, etc.) on a much smaller scale (with only three characters, instead of hundreds).  It's really not any more automated than that, and a lot of the fun of it comes from working out strategies using Gambits to make your characters uber-awesome.  I still believe that anyone who actually likes RPGs and actually tries this out, instead of just judging it beforehand, will end up loving it.

But storywise, the game has problems.  Basically, it just feels like it's all set up and no payoff.  There's just so much stuff that should have been fleshed out, that just... wasn't.  What's there I thought was pretty well-written, and ultimately decent, but not really all that memorable - the problem lies in what, and how much, is missing.
Pretty much the entire main cast, except maybe for Vaan and Penelo, are really interesting, and have a lot of potential.  But that potential is squandered, because we never really get much background info on anyone.  I desperately wanted to know what exactly happened to Basch and his brother that tore them apart and caused them to head down such different paths, but the game barely shows us anything of that. 
Balthier was a Judge?  Cool!  What was that like?
...Oh.  They're... not going to tell us.
How did Balthier and Fran meet?  No clue.  Why are they working together?  Ditto.
There's just so much potentially interesting backstory to this game that, if it had been included, could have really elevated the story to something truly awesome.  But as it stands it just feels really incomplete.
Vayne is a cool character, and maybe even a cool antagonist, but he's an awful villain.  The one thing he has going for him is that he's definitely the smartest villain in an FF game; he knows how to use politics to his advantage, in order to, for example, keep Ashe from meeting with the Marquis and being able to form an effective rebellion.  He is apparently ruthless as well, but we're only told that... we're never really shown it.  The closest we get is when he kills his own father in order to eliminate the Senate (which was, admittedly, a sweet scene).  We're told he was ruthless in eliminating his brothers, but we don't see any of that.  If we had, it really could have helped solidify and round out Vayne's character.  And that's not even to mention the fact that Vayne is barely even in the game.  For a villain to be great, we need to really feel his presence, and as kost pointed out, with Vayne we just don't.
Same with the Judges themselves, who are infinitely cool in concept, but barely do anything (that we can actually see) in practice.  I would have loved to see the Judges carrying out their own ruthless brand of justice, and especially to see more of the bickering between Judges that is apparently pretty prevalent, as evidenced by that... one cutscene.  That seemed interesting, but ultimately turned out to... not have any effect on the story at all.
The only thing I disagree with kost on is that I don't think that Ashe was anywhere near as bad as Rinoa, geez.  She was just bland, like the rest of the cast.  There was potential in her inner struggle between wanting revenge for the death of her husband, and wanting what's best for her kingdom.  But the lack of story in general in the game kept this from really developing in any interesting or really surprising ways.
I think ultimately the character who's most well-rounded, and undergoes the most development, is Basch's brother, Gabranth (I think that was his name).  One of the things I really loved about the story was it's theme of justice, and nowhere was it really felt more strongly than in Gabranth, who has almost sold his very soul for the sake of justice, and loyalty.
So yeah, the story was just really disappointing, and like I said, felt very incomplete.  The only thing that made the characters tolerable, in spite of their lack of development, was that at least I liked most of their personalities - heck, even Vaan had a personality I could get on board with.
So, yeah, it's best to just think of this game as a total dungeon crawler.

Best thing about the game, though?  The Vagrant Story references.  Those ruled.  The fact that the last boss of the game is a giant VS reference is totally awesome.  I am, however, annoyed that "Riskbreaker" isn't the highest rank you can achieve from hunting.   I resent the implication that Ashley isn't the epitome of leetness.

Also, I have yet to try the fishing minigame.  Just thought I should mention that.  I really ought to go back and try that out already, huh?