The basic story is that there is an ambitious thief named Vaan and he has some grand ideas of sneaking into the palace and stealing valuables. While doing so he meets a cast of characters including royalty like Ashe, guards like Basch, Veira like Fran and Sky Pirates like Balthier. Last but not least Vaan's friend Penelo joins him to make six characters. You also get a Guest from time to time that you will not be able to control.

Gone are the slow turn based days of Final Fantasy 10 and the Final Fantasy's before that. Enemy battling is much more active with the battles themselves taking place on the same map that you're walking on for once.

To accomodate the new battle system you can create gambits for your characters so as to promote smooth combat. For example, you can have a certain character cast Protect on your party if it wears out. Or, if your HP is below 30% you can have a character cast Curaga on that person. At the same time you can set up a Gambit to cast fire on an enemy with a fire weakness. This is convenient no doubt but you must understand the gambit system otherwise you may find the gambit system betraying you at a vital time.

Final Fantasy XII seems decidedly more difficult than some of it's predecessors. Part of this is the amount of hard side quests that are available early, and part of it is that some of the rare boss fights can drive you insane.

While the storyline of Final Fantasy 12 is pretty linear, there are a plethora of sidequests to catch your eye. Most notably are the hunts that pop up after various story events or new areas are opened up. Hunts usually are some of the toughest monsters you'll face and the challenges result in great rewards usually. In addition to the forty five hunts there are 13 espers that you can fight and acquire. Five espers are within the story but the other 8 can only be acquired if you do some searching out.

The Sphere grid of Final Fantasy X is replaced with the License Board system. This allows for a lot of freedom when choosing what type of "class" you want your characters to be, and even allows you to create a completely balanced party if you want. While this freedom is nice at the beginning you'll find that toward the end, all of your top characters will be able to do everything and be a jack of all trades.

Below is the walkthrough for each section of the game. Hunts and Espers and other sidequests are spread out throughout these walkthrough pages, but the Hunts and Espers are collected below also for your convenience. More will come and we'd love to hear your suggestions as well.