11. Final Fantasy XII
FFXII took 5 years in development before getting its release, and it shows. The game is massive, huge areas and environments coupled with a huge amount of voicework. That reason alone draws many into it, but it's fair to say that FFXII has its share of downfalls too. Chief of which is pacing. Story and gameplay pacing are very, very slow in this game. It takes forever to level up, forever to find decent weapons, items and gambits and forever to get the story moving. FFXII plays like an MMO, with a gambit system that's good conceptually, but bad practically. You can't just assign a gambit however you want, you actually have to buy or scrounge around for gambits to do even the simplest of things, which is annoying. Add to that the whole license board system which forces you to buy licenses before you can use a weapon. And finally the additional problem of all characters basically ending up similar to one another. The story isn't that much good either. A dour military plot that doesn't directly effect the main party moves at a snails pace. Add to that the presence of Vaan as the main character, when he doesn't fit in much at all and has some very annoying moments. There's not much saving grace here. I didn't even like Balthier, oddly enough for the same reasons people don't like FFXIII's Snow. So why is it ranked here? Because in spite of that, there are some good moments in the game. The world is huge and exploration is always fun, even if having every enemy in an area chasing you is annoying. Plus the battle system worked so that you could even auto-level. That's....awesome. And finally, because FFXII has one of my favourite FF characters ever, Reddas. Reddas acts and develops more than some of the main party members all in under... 5 hours of screen time I believe. Nice pacing there. Plus the dialogue is all kinds of awesome, even if the story can't match it.