Home Games Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

FF: Revenant Wings

Role Playing Game
Releases: 11.20.07
Square Enix
Square Enix
ESRB: Everyone 10+

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

Final Fantasy XII continues in this DS RTS sequal.

by Sarah Schutz

If you’re chomping at the bit for a new Final Fantasy game, this should tide you over for awhile. It is, by no means, the masterpiece that was Final Fantasy XII, nor does it quite live up to the popular portable, Final Fantasy Tactics. Revenant Wings is, however, the first Final Fantasy game that makes use of the DS touch screen, which works well with the RTS genre. Unfortunately, Revenant Wings is having a bit of an identity crisis. While it labels itself as a Real Time Strategy game, it is far too similar to its RPG predecessor and fails to succeed in either genre.

Revenant Wings loosely follows Final Fantasy XII. It takes many of the characters, most notably Vaan and Panelo from XII and follows them on their sky pirating adventures. In lieu of full RTS gameplay, Revenant Wings adopts many of RPG gameplay features of XII including gambits, leveling up systems and special moves for each character. While the gambits are dramatically simplified, they are still generally used to allow you to engage in combat without micromanaging your armies. The game becomes an RTS with its mission based levels and its summoned armies. You can choose to either micromanage each character and its summoned sprites or direct them to operate in groups (which is much, much easier). Vaan’s “Ring of Pacts” in combination with summoning gates allow you to suppon more sprites under your control. The game uses the traditional RTS triad of melee, flying and ranged combat allowing for strategic interactions between your armies and your enemies. Also in true RTS form the gameplay is a bit pokey and arduos. The small screens of the DS fail to capture a lot of the action and armies can be difficult to navigate as you summon more sprites. Revenant Wings does succeed in making brilliant use of DS technology, giving the gamer gorgeous cinematics and a true Final Fantasy soundtrack. While the game falls flat in many areas, it is still quite a achievement for the RPG/RTS category on the DS and will quench your thirst for Final Fantasy goodness while waiting for your next fix of bigger and better FF titles. It’s a solid Final Fantasy game and an asset to your DS collection.

While the game is worth playing for true Final Fantasy plans (and I consider myself one of them), I still personally take issue with playing such epic games on a portable console. I understand that this is becoming the trend, that larger, more immersive games are being created for portables, but I still prefer my portables for more casual on-the-go gameplay. Once in awhile while on vacation, I’ll appreciate a longer, more in-depth portable game, but I am beginning to wonder where the portable category is going as they are able to handle better graphbics and more epic gameplay. Portable games have always been brief entertainment for long car rides, not extended RPG games. Portable consoles are becoming as expansive as their larger, HD counterparts.

Great graphics and solid FF gameplay

Can’t decide what it wants to be.

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