From a gameplay perspective I can agree. The world is gorgeous as well, and there are a ton of things you can do. Here's why I hate it. I'm a massive story nerd. I love a good story. I think the background for FF12 has a great story, but it was extremely poorly executed. You had characters who have motivation for going on a journey, but its never actually executed properly.
Case in point. Vaan has his reasons for journeying through the death of his brother, but its only mentioned a couple times and once he meets Basch, it disappears entirely so he becomes a background character in the game where he is technically the main character.
Ashe should have been given the Laguna treatment from Final Fantasy 8. Laguna appears now and then during a break in the story for his own mini story to drive forwards plot happening in the background, which again is what Ashe should have had. She's should have been doing little plot points in the background to try and regain trust within her kingdom and rally people behind her to overthrow the empire before she joins the main party. Instead she mentions she wants to get her kingdom back, but never actually takes any action towards it other than the main story plot.
Basch for the most part ends up as the main character going against his brother Galbranth who has more dialogue and story put towards him than Vayne the actual main villain of the game.
And that's about it. I feel like everything story-wise in 12 is quarter-assed. They couldn't even half-ass it. Plot points aren't fully explored. Everything else about the game is pretty great. Though I will say I was extremely disappointed it had the combat system it had, but that's more of a personal preference than anything against the actual game.
Eh to be fair pplenty of rpg villains have little dialogue. Gabranth was literally the poster boy for the game though. Basch wad originally intended to be thr MC so story was probably already mostly wrote out by the time higher ups said he was too old. Or the maker made him more important as a fuck you to those who insisted he used a younger MC cause it was how he wanted the story and wasnt budging.
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Cid- "looks like that overgrown lobster just got served!" Bartz-"with cheese biscuts AND mashed potatoes!"