Vaan just broke level 60. Everyone is level 40-42. Taking a detour before I go to Jahara, to explore the Highwastes. I am not sure where else I can go at this point. It feels strange being this high a level, with just about everyone with two complete license boards, before I even have 2nd tier black magicks like Fira or Thundara. I've been in a few encounters that have been overly difficult because I'm lacking effective offensive abilities.
Like my first time through the game, I still don't understand Quickenings. Sometimes ten re-rolls gives me nothing, sometimes I get 12 in a row. Sometimes I need to double-tap a face button to select an option, because despite an input prompt appearing there are no attack names ready. And the name "quickening" is laughable when you consider how dull and slow the animation is. It's the worst part of combat by far.
I find some of the status conditions redundant. What's really the difference between disable and stone? Sap and poison? It feels like more could be happening here.
I wish Square would have experimented more with the combat in FF12. Gambits are unique and fun to play around with. This feels like a great place to build from. I imagine a game that lets you chain if/else and provides a few more options for programming your characters. "If ally has status reflect and is below 30% health, use X-potion, else if ally below 30% health use Cura." Rules like that would greatly expand what's possible. You could even implement a total logic limit or something so you'd have to weigh having many simple rules against fewer, more complex ones. Even separating the target from the logic check would be nice. Like "if self has status blind, use sight unseeing on nearest enemy." Right now there is no option to effectively use sight unseeing via gambit, as far as I can tell.
Is there anything out there that does this? That features more robust, programmable character behavior?
