#location: tchita uplands
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Valendia, A Land of Fertile Soil and Flourishing Civilization
The region of Valendia is a land blessed with fertile soil and a mild climate. This region thrives on its agricultural wealth, particularly wheat farming and chocobo grazing, while the coastal areas along the Naldoan Sea are bustling with shipping and fishing industries.
Though the area surrounding Archades, the empire's capital, is naturally barren, Archadia has overcome these challenges with its unparalleled technological advancements and abundant human resources. These attributes have solidified its status as a dominant power in the region.
The former border of the empire, Phon Coast, is guarded by the Imperial Air Force, it stands ready to repel potential air raids from the Rozarrian army.
<- While air travel is highly advanced, the region also keeps well-maintained roadways. These routes are complemented by numerous secure rest areas, offering travelers safe and convenient stops during their journeys.
#ff12#location: archadia#location: phon coast#location: balfonheim#location: cerobi steppe#location: tchita uplands#ffxii#final fantasy 12
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i just wanna make you feel okay .
Billie Eilish starters . accepting
There was a saying about the walls in Archades having eyes and ears - such was the cost of living in a city where information (or gossip) was so incredibly valued. Ever since her arrival to the capital, Melissa had been keen on projecting the right persona: she needed to be harmless, innocent, and enchanting in the right ways, to draw people closer while they remained oblivious to the Bhujerban’s intentions.
And while making her a figure sponsored by the Marquis of Ondore himself helped Melissa reach places a random entertainer wouldn’t be otherwise admitted to, it did make things horribly complicated when she required to act while being unseen and unheard. Luckily, when one had the devotion of a sky pirate and his beloved airship, many places could be accessed to ensure some degree of privacy - a well-cast magick and a flight to desolate locations could very well do the trick.
They didn’t go far - the Tchita Uplands had a spot where the Strahl could be safely anchored to, and the pair of lovers remained inside; the altitude of the ship was enough to give Melissa some satisfaction, the view of the tranquil plains at the night doing wonders to her spirit. Archades was a big city - tall buildings would sometimes obscure the view of the sky from the ground and the Bhujerban had to battle terrible homesickness there.
Balthier didn’t seem to mind taking her to these distant places - in fact, he seemed as at ease among the clouds as if he had been born there himself. Probably something to do with the unrestrained freedom of these heights, but Melissa liked to jest that her beloved shared some of the Sky City blood. After all, a man as dashing and bold as he was had to be connected to her homeland in a way.
“Thank you for bringing me here tonight, kanta,” Melissa murmured, straightening up from her seat and moving to extend a hand to him - Balthier had been leaning over his chair as if his body was made of even more flexible stuff than hers (and she was the dancer!); languidly slouching from his side, it was endearing to see how he became one with his ship, as Fran frequently remarked on.
The sky pirate’s familiar hand clasped hers in response, his rings making for a comforting presence (one of them long since adoring Melissa’s index - a gift for the darker days and where her soul threatened to break under the weight of her mission). His look softened then - and the stars of the night sky outside seemed to be reflected on Balthier’s gaze momentarily, a thumb of his caressing the back of the Bhujerban’s hand.
“I just want to make you feel okay,” he declared, rather solemnly, but the chuckle that followed from his lips was warm and relaxed, filled with adoration, “Anything for you, my dear Lilian.”
#famuran#v: FFXII#billie eilish starters#replied#I made this one cute#sometimes they deserve the cute things#and not just the P A I N#<333#(also don't mind me editing the prompt to sound more ~refined~)
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Honestly, as much as I'd love for something like a general level-up for monsters after, for example, beating the game (aka defeating Vayne and taking down the Alexandria), it would certainly be a bit of a toll if you were to try to really complete the game with all the grinding that it might take. It's theoretically good for leveling up but if you up the ante too much then moving through places can become very tiresome and boring even.
I think FFXII does this thing really well where instead of upping the level cap of everything they sort of unlock areas from already known locations and gives them new rooms with harder enemies, bosses, espers and items. This happens in areas like the Garamsythe Waterducts (sorry if I write the names wrong, I only played the game in Spanish) on your quest to defeat Cuchulainn, the seasons changing in the Giza Plains, the new zones in the Lhusu Mines where you can fight Gilgamesh, the bottom floors of the Ridorana Lighthouse where you can defeat the Shadow Man hunt... The game baiting you into thinking you'll enter a new area of the Henne mines from the Feywood, but then you discover you have to have 10 espers and talk to the Garif geomancer to unlock that new area of the mines, which turns out to be huge, filled with new monsters and a secret esper... Sometimes these areas are mandatory for progression and the way it's done they feel fresh and new but also kind of familiar.
The only gripes I may have with how FFXII's map is built from the perspective of post-game completing is:
1. when they introduce that kind of content in an area that doesn't expand like that or that works just as a nexus between bigger or more story-wise important locations. I love the Hell Wyrm fight but I hate that it had to happen in the Sochen Cave Palace. It could have been the secret boss in the Ridorana Lighthouse's bottom floor instead (though I admit that seeing two boss rooms in the Palace after finding the map and only having fought Mateus up until that point did make me curious).
2. There's some huge areas of the game that don't have enough map connections to justify their size, or, if this makes sense, they're too open. I'm mostly talking about Phon Coast and Cerobi Steppe. In the case of the first one, it's absolutely HUGE. Like, MASSIVE in size. And it's maybe not a very interesting place to go through or explore (still amazing though imo), the only relevance it has is that the hunter's camp is there. The thing that I'd mostly criticize its design for is, well, it's vast. Like, really vast. It feels too open somehow to only connect the Salikawood to the Tchita Uplands. Cerobi Steppe is like 3 massive open fields in one as well. There's the windmills thing but that's that. Giruvegan's too unnecessarily zigzaggy but I understand what the map designers wanted to convey with it (and I love the view). Which leads to the Crystal. I'd need a huge new comment to talk about the Crystal.
This Enemy Is Too Strong
So like, I've been playing Final Fantasy XII again, and I've been thinking about in comparison to that other single-player MMO, Xenoblade Chronicles. There's a lot I can talk about there, and I probably will later, but the thing I wanna talk about is level scaling.
The thing is, right, both of these games let you fight enemies that are far above your current level. They just go about it in very different ways.
Xenoblade Chronicles is largely a linear game. You will go to Colony 9, then Gaur Plain, etc. It's a chapter structure, the Switch version literally has chapter markers.
But these areas are massive, you can spend several hours in one just exploring the place. And from the very first area you can venture off and find monsters way above your level. They're just scattered around the place, Xenoblade has some of the most level diversity you'll ever see in an RPG.
And since a lot of them attack on sight, or on hearing your footsteps, or detecting the game's magic equivalent, it means you genuinely have to watch out when you're exploring. Like, this is an ecosystem that you have to keep in mind, and it's honestly pretty damn lifelike in a lot of ways.
FF12, on the other hand, is different. Let's start out with the major difference in terms of structure. Yes, this game does have a linear story, but you have a fair bit more freedom in what areas you can access and when.
From the beginning, you can go to the Estersand, the Westersand, or Giza Plains branching off from the hub city of Rabanastre. You'll have to go through all of these branches at some point, but the freedom is pretty nice for an open world feeling. If you visit the Salikawood early, and get past a boss, you can visit Nabreus and Nabudis, optional lategame areas that will almost certainly kill you if you try to go through them too early. It's a lot of freedom for a game like this, and I appreciate it for that open feeling.
...But this runs into a problem when you get down to the realities of each area. Because FF12 doesn't really have level diversity in its areas. If you're encountering a high-level enemy, that's because you're in a high-level area. If you can't fight one enemy in Nabudis, you're probably not going to have a good time in Nabudis. And, conversely, going back to an old area kinda sucks, because every enemy is a pushover.
If you want to actually play at the right difficulty level and have a good time, you basically have no reason not to just play the story normally. And it honestly makes the game feel more gamey. FF12 just doesn't have the kind of unique enemy behaviors that XC does, and it makes each enemy feel like, well, mobs in an MMO. I can appreciate in some sense, like FF12 is not trying to hide the fact that it's a video game, and in a lot of ways that's really good. But it kind of makes the game feel more lifeless, you know?
In a post-BotW world, it can be kind of trite to think about these kinds of semi-open-world games. Like yeah, it's the Switch era, everything is open-world now. Fucking Sonic and MegaTen have these massive areas, you can't escape it. But there's a lot of room to talk about how to do these things well.
If anybody sees this, which I fuckin hope people do, tell me what you think about this! How do you like these kinds of games to be structured, and how much do you care about stronger enemies?
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Tchita Uplands
The Tchita Uplands is a sprawling, verdant grassland situated in the southern hills of the Archadia region. It serves as a vital crossroads with roads connecting several key locations: the former Kingdom of Nabradia to the west, the Imperial Capital of Archades to the north, and the bustling port city of Balfonheim to the east.
Scattered throughout the uplands are ancient, crumbling ruins believed to predate the Galtean era. These remnants of the past are being meticulously studied by researchers from the Imperial Academy, offering valuable insights into the enigmatic civilizations that once thrived in Ivalice.
<- The vast, lush Tchita Grasslands are renowned across the Archadia Empire as a key region for breeding fine chocobos.
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