Holy CRAP! FFT and FF12 share the same world?!

[CaesarCV]

That's mostly right, although I remember hearing somewhere that Vagrant Story isn't actually canon to Ivalice. When it was created all of the references were put in more for fun than to imply it's the same setting, which perhaps makes sense given how magic and the like work completely differently in that game. It's kind of a complicated mess since certain games (like Tactics) are more retroactively Ivalice than anything. It's...not always easy.

[Sylvain]

I really love Ff12 story but I find the battle system to be really lacking and boring (at least until now, but my character are lv 40 so I don't expect much change at this point)
And fft is the one game that made me discover the FF franchise.
#bringtimemagetoff14

[Theodric]

FFXII's battle system is what you make of it, really. You can effectively play the game in a turn based manner, or you can let it play automatically after setting up gambits to suit one's personal tastes. I myself typically pick one character (usually Basch) to control manually whilst setting up Ashe and Balthier to perform automatically.

You can also access certain high level enemies during the early/mid-game for quite an interesting challenge.

[WilhelmWhite]

snip

I loved FFXII's battle system, and did it the same way :P. (Only difference being I manually controlled Fran, and set up gambits for Ashe and Balthier). I will say that mist quickenings -while they have epic animations and effects- did a disappointing amount of damage. Even with longest quickening chains I've been able to achieve, it still barely left a scratch on whatever boss I was fighting.

[CaesarCV]

Setting up the Gambits was honestly one of the more entertaining parts of the FFXII battle system, at least for me. Maybe it just engaged my programming brain, but being able to define behaviors to such a degree was a blast.

[Apoptomon]

Hey now, what's wrong with Vaan? (I mean sure he could be a bit annoying with his cockiness, but I didn't think him and Penelo were 'useless' in a plot/characterisation sense).
Honestly I kind of wished FFXIV's Rabanastre/Garamsythe maps more closely resembled the 'real deals', but I guess they wouldnt have had room for the boss encounters...

Just to nip some common misconception in the bud, though (and keep this discussion relevant to XIV lore): the Lesalia and Dalmasca of Hydaelyn are not the same as those that appear in Ivalice Alliance. This is a different planet in a different universe with an alternate take on the story of the War of the Lions (so says Matsuno himself).

[Naria]

The gambit system is actually one of my favorite combat systems in an RPG. I didn't find it boring at all. Certainly not anymore that manually hitting all the same commands when faced with trash mobs. In boss fights I frequently ended up changing my gambits as the fight went on to adjust as well as manually controlling characters. The addition of the job system fixed most of my gripes with the combat. It is an impossible dream but I still wish we could have a version of gambits for fairies/egis in XIV.

. . . and now I want to go replay XII. I'm suppose to raid tonight.

When 1.0 first came out I kept expecting Garlemald to be similar to Archades because of the similar visual design. That hasn't really turned out to be the case. Vayne was a great villian--one who was so charismatic that you wanted to like him even when all reason said you shouldn't. The closest that FFXIV has come to a villain like that for me is Gaius but he fell short because of scarce development. I think Vayne is part of the reason I was disappointed in Zenos--when he was announced I was hoping they would be similar archetypes but Zenos just turned out be far less compelling or threatening.

4.2 spoilers

Hopefully they will take his resurrection as a chance to fix that.