Granted, I’ve only played roughly an hour and fifteen minutes of Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings so far…but come on! Out of that time chunkage, Fran was only on screen for about less than 60 seconds, uttering maybe two lines or so of dialogue. The Mist made her woozy. Yeah, it always does that! She’s allergic! Then her and ever-charming friend-at-hand Balthier disappeared from the story as Vaan and his cohorts went on adventuring and stealing an airship of their own.
As the only non-Hume character playable in Final Fantasy XII, Fran really stood out. Also probably because of the bunny ears, revealing outfit, long legs, and devilishly good lisp. Seriously, one could listen to her talk all day. Get that woman a phonebook to read from! She made playing FFXII feel like an actual fantasy game; sure, the other citizens of Rabanastre helped, as did magically ornamented locales and flying ships…but Fran, as a part of your active troop, helped seal the deal that you were on a quest of a special kind, with a special kind of people. Visiting her fellow viera in the hidden land of Eruyt Village was one of my favorite parts of the game.
And so, Revenant Wings is not doing her justice. Not one lick. Spoiler alert for an old game!
See, at the end of FFXII, it’s believed that both her and Balthier perished during the final battle craziness. That terrible thought was dashed as Vaan later learned–much later, like almost a year later–that the two partners-in-crime were still at it, and that they wanted to meet up to go treasure-hunting, thus giving us the starting point for Revenant Wings. This really short meeting of Vaan and his old friends lacks oophm; it’s supposed to be the first time they’ve seen each other in awhile, since one party thought the other dead actually, and there’s no reunion-like talk, no “hey, remember how Ashe was actually the main character and not you, Vaan?”, nothing; only tips on being a sky pirate from Balthier, a complaint about the Mist from Fran, and then a TTFN (ta-ta for now) if ever there was one.
In short: NEEDS MOAR VIERA LOVELINESS.
Grinding Down 