PAL FFXII in early 2007

Final Fantasy XII will be released in Europe in early 2007.

The PlayStation 2-exclusive latest game in the epic RPG series has been out in Japan since mid-March, and will be released in the US on 31st October.

Square Enix Europe president and CEO John Yamamoto said the game "looks set to become one of the crowning glories of PlayStation 2".

Set in the world of Ivalice, FFXII follows princess Ashe and Vaan - a young resistance fighter and a young adventurer respectively - who are brought together by the invasion of their home, Dalmasca, by Arcadia.

Unlike the first ten games in the FF series, XII's battles take place in real-time on the exploration screen, and introduce "active dimension battle" (ADB), which involves using a Command Window to specify attacks and then waiting for a Wait Time Gauge to fill up before the action is performed.

Mind you, that simplistic description probably doesn't do it justice. For more on that game, which has proven controversial due to the nature of its battle system, see our review of the Japanese version.