Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

November 30,2007 - If you're a fan of Square Enix's games, good or bad, the DS is the system for you. For one reason or another, the RPG powerhouse developer/publisher has released more strategy-type RPG's than the standard ones everybody has been accustomed to seeing. We've seen another lackluster entry into the Mana series with Heroes of Mana, an old school title that goes beyond hardcore strategy with Front Mission, and now Square is taking the similar combat system from Heroes of Mana in a sort of different direction with a follow-up to Final Fantasy XII. The attempt to bring some strategic flair to the Mana series left players a bit dazed, but has it worked in this Final Fantasy XII follow-up?

Revenant Wings picks up right where Final Fantasy XII left off. A year after the events in FF12, we find newbie sky pirates, Vaan and Penelo, navigating the skies in search of more treasure. During their treasure hunt, they end up on a new continent called Lemurés where they meet Llyud, a member of the winged aegyl race. Apparently Llyud's continent is not supposed to be seen in the public eye, but a series of unfortunate events has led evil sky pirates to breach their once hidden home. Now it's all up to Vaan and a cast of familiar characters to help Llyud on his quest to conceal his home.

Thankfully, the plot isn't exceedingly complicated and it's fairly unique enough to recommend to fans of the PS2 game. If you haven't played the PS2 version, don't worry. Revenant Wings doesn't really draw on events from the original game, but the characters will joke around about them. Either way, the narration is pretty good with the long, drawn out explanations to give newcomers a good feel of what's going on.

At its core, Revenant Wings is a real-time strategy game played entirely with the stylus and the touch screen. Unlike your traditional strategy RPG that features combat on an isometric grid, Revenant Wings doesn't use a grid nor have your units move a certain amount of spaces or anything like that. Instead, to make a unit move, you simply tap on the unit and that tap on a specific area on the map to make it travel there. The speed that he or she will travel in will depend on their actual speed rating as well as their experience. The maps in the game are relatively big, so you can use the D-Pad to freely move the camera anywhere you choose. While that's fine, you don't actually have the freedom of changing the angle of the map, so when there comes a time where you have to target a specific unit to heal it and he or she is in a crowded area with a whole bunch of other units, it makes everything a lot more difficult. This is a big annoyance in the game and the only way to truly get around it is to make every unit move out of the way to clear up everything.

You use all the units at once simply by tracing a box around all the characters, and then pointing at where they should be headed. At first, your gut would tell you to just have your entire army single out one enemy and take it out, but it's not that easy. Your main units have three separate methods of combat: melee, flying, and ranged. This works out in a Fire Emblem-style, paper-scissors-rock kind of fashion. Melee units, like Vaan, rely on hand-to-hand combat when chosen to attack. They have the advantage over ranged units. Flying units do all their fighting in the air and since they fly, they're a lot faster than any other unit, and terrain doesn't really affect them. Flying units have the advantage over melee units. Ranged units focus more on "Magick" (that's what they call it in the Final Fantasy universe) and are probably the slowest units available. They have the advantage over flying units. In addition to this, there are separate elements to Magick users, and they're pretty self-explanatory if you've played this kind of game before (water beats fire, etc.).

Each character has a set of special abilities that they'll learn as they progress through the game. Vaan has elemental moves he can perform with his sword, and Penelo has a bunch of healing abilities like Curaga that are really vital in the quest. These abilities can be used both manually and automatically. Using them manually is as easy as pointing your stylus at a character followed by going through a bunch of quick menus, and you can set a specific ability to what's called a Gambit and the AI will use the abilities at the appropriate times (hopefully).

The unique thing with Revenant Wings is that the allies, the main characters, have their own army to head. It's called the Ring of Pacts, and you'll have access to it during the first chapter. The Ring of Pacts allows you to pick and choose from over 50 familiar creatures from the Final Fantasy universe and have them help out with your battles. A lot of them include past enemies you fought in random battles in the previous games and other familiar critters such as the chocobo and the cactuar. These are essential to your success in the game because you'll do a lot of fighting in separate packs, and triumph in the game depends on your ability to lead the proper armies into the proper areas.

As previously stated, because of the game's depth and apparent challenge, it's not advised that you have your entire entourage single out one enemy, but later in the game your army will be strong enough to do just that. It's not so much where we have no choice but to blame Square for being lazy in the game's development stages, but it's more due to the fact that you'll have access to side missions very early in the campaign. If you choose to do them all right away, it's natural that you and the characters will benefit from the actual training, and it'll be a whole lot easier to clean house. It's not that you shouldn't take part in those missions, but if you expect the game to continuously be more challenging, you should probably save them until you reach the end.

Part of what made Final Fantasy XII so great was the incredible atmosphere that the world of Ivalice presented. Revenant Wings also takes place in Ivalice and the environments are flat-out stunning. The overworld map looks nice with the various cloud effects, and the sprites used for each character are reminiscent of some of Square's other recent 2D titles. It looks silly to see an entourage of mini soldiers fight each other, but that's what it is. Square has never been a slouch when it comes to visual appeal, and Revenant Wings continues the tradition. The lavishly detailed cutscenes that make use of the ActImagine codec are simply amazing, and Revenant Wings features no shortage of them. Almost every chapter makes use of a different cutscene and it's just really cool to see how such visual power can be done on the DS, using both screens quite effectively.

The game's sound is also extremely well done. The original game features an epic soundtrack that worked extremely well, and Revenant Wings follows the proper suit. It even has the traditional music found in other Final Fantasy games and it's truly nothing that tires anybody out. The game just sounds like the way a Final Fantasy game is supposed to sound like.

The battle system isn't perfect by any means, but it works out a lot better than it did in Heroes of Mana. A lot of the DS strategy games lack the ability for the user to turn the map around to view things from a different angle, and that's where all of these games, including Revenant Wings, falter. At that, the main campaign should take at least 20 hours to complete, not including the many side missions there are to take part in. It's not as long as most other strategy games, but with great graphics and sound, a good story, and terrific fan service, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings should be a perfect holiday gift for the Final Fantasy fan in the family. If you're not into Final Fantasy XII or the series itself, it's at least worth trying for the unique battle system and to experience a game with top-notch presentation values but with a steep $40 price, those not into FF12 might want to wait a bit.

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