The License system
It's one of the great novelties of Final Fantasy XII, although it is slightly reminiscent of the sphere board of FF X. Your characters progress in two ways:
1) through experience points awarded when victorious against an opponent (not against some enemies - more coming soon!). As your character gets more points, they level up, and with each level gained they see their various stats progress at the same time
2) through license points awarded when victorious against an opponent. Those license points are used to "buy" licenses on the board. Licenses can allow you to use magicks and technicks, weapons and armors, as well as improve your stats. This is the part we'll focus on here
The License Board Basics - How it all works
You go through a tutorial about using the license board at the same time the "license" entry is added to your party menu (when you talk with Tomaji, in the Seasand bar, in Rabnastre - see Chapter #1.1). However, it's a brand new system, so I thought going through the basics once more here wouldn't hurt
(1) The License menuOk, for starters, let's look at the license menu. Open the party menu, choose license, and you'll see something like this (1), with the name and icon of the character in the top left corner, and the number of license points available in the top right corner. Of course, at this point of the game, Vaan is alone, so only his license board shows up, but as other members will join you their boards will appear as well. All members progress on a similar board (with a couple of restrictions, but more about that later), yet each has its own, i.e., if Vaan acquires the license "white magic 1", it will only be available to him. In order for, say, Penelo to use "white magic 1" spells as well, she will have to acquire the license on her own board. The colored squares indicate licenses that have already been acquired. Also, you can see that the board is divided into two blocks. Let's have a closer look
(2) A closer look at the boardsThe top board is the one with all the different types of magicks and technicks (more about those in the "Magicks and Technicks" section - coming soon!). This is also where appear accessories licenses, as well as stats increases (a few squares, when activated, grant HP or other stats increases). The board represented below is the one for weapons and armors. Both also have a certain number of special squares for Mist Knacks, whereas summons appear only in the topmost part: the squares in both those categories can only be activated by one character for each - once a Mist Knack square is activated by one member, for instance, it disappears for all others (more about that in Mist Knacks and Summons sections - coming soon!)
Now, if you look closer at the top board, one square is selected, and there are informations at the bottom. The star by the name of the license indicates that the character has already acquired it. The name of the technick is in white, which indiactes that the character has already bought/acquired the corresponding technick as well (here you have "steal" from the start. Other skills will have to be bought in shops). On the other hand, if you look at the bottom illustration (2), you can see that the character has acquired the license (since there's a star), and that he has a mythril sword, since its name appears in white. However, the name "mythril blade" is still in grey: it means the character doesn't have that item (and therefore can't use it, duh!). What does it all mean? Well, easy - to use anything, weapon, armor, magic, skill, etc, you need a) to acquire the license and b) the related item. If you have a weapon, but not the license, you can't equip it (and obviously, if you have the license, but not the item, you can't either....). Now of course, you just need to know how to acquire a license
(3) Acquisition of a new licenseSo, to get a new license, it's pretty easy, really. You can acquire any license that's been revealed on the board, i.e., any which description is available but that hasn't a star by the name yet (they appear with the logo indicating the category they are a part of). Just choose one and click on circle (or X for the NA and European versions) - provided you have enough License Points (as shown in the top left corner), you'll be asked to confirm your choice. Once it's done, you see that all the adjacent squares revealed as well, licenses that you can also acquire when you have enough points again
That's it for the basics. More, including the complete plan of the license board, coming soon!
