Is Final Fantasy Type-0 Still a Possibility?

Probably not.  Still, hope springs eternal and all that.

If' you're unaware of what Final Fantasy Type-0 is, then you're likely part of the overwhelming majority which likely includes at least half of Squeenix itself.  So, for the uninitiated, Final Fantasy Type-0 is the renamed Final Fantasy Agito XIII, which was one of the three games announced back when Final Fantasy XIII proper and Versus were also announced, all as arms of the Fabula Nova Crystallis branding.  In 2006.  And, as we all, know, that has gone so swimmingly with one and a half of those three titles having actually seen release.  I say half, of course, because one of Final Fantasy Type-0's many changes, aside from the transition from a Cell Phone game to a full-fledged PSP title, was its name to Type-0 for its Japanese-only release.  In 2011.

Being that it's been so long since its Japanese release on a platform that didn't particularly do well in the West, most everyone has just assumed it will never see a Stateside release.  Or rather, if you still believe that it will see a release in the West, you're one of the outliers, since there's almost no reason, no incentive to do it.  Except making fans happy and selling a product, but who the fuck cares about that.  Certainly not Squeenix unless it's Eidos-developed, sells more than any iteration in the entire franchise it's a part of, yet is still 'underwhelming' which I am not bitter about at all, no sir.  None of this is helping, however, and is only tangentially related to the game, so let's shift gears.

As stated, Agito XIII began its life as a Card-based game for Cell Phones and eventually transformed into a sort of real-time action RPG with online and social elements that eventually was known as Type-0 on the PSP.  A game so large that it required two UMDs, and remains one of the few titles that have ever needed this functionality.  To say that it grew and evolved into something quite different than it started is an understatement, and that's not only for the game itself.  In its humble origins as a Cell Phone game, nobody seemed to really care for it, as it would just be another After Crisis or similar - a game that wasn't very good and we didn't get it anyway - and it was only after it started evolving, became a PSP game and went unreleased long after XIII came out to its polarizing opinions and Versus became considered vaporware that it was turned to, latched onto, even.  There had to be one project from this Fabula Nova abomination that wasn't going to cause some sort of rift, the same opinions as XIII or the same nebulous assurance of quality unseen with Versus.  Type-0 was all at once something more tangible and more tantalizing than either of the other projects.

With that set of circumstances, it's not hard to see why the game has a sort of cult undercurrent of support and hope behind it.  From its pre-release information, the videos that showed it off, it seemed to have the things that are missed from older games, that it had some itch of the Final Fantasy Formula in it.  A story that seemed genuinely heartfelt, or at least keyed to play on your emotions.  An overworld that you eventually gain an airship to traverse, as well as Chocobos to do the same in a much more limited fashion.  It felt like taking those classic games and actually 'evolving' them with the multi-player aspect to it, rather than taking a game and tacking on something to it.  Or attempting to attach it to every single mechanic the game offers.  Or at least, this is all the impressions I've gathered since I've barely heard a peep about it since it was actually released in Japan.

It's not impossible to consider that Type-0 has become much more than it actually is because of all of this, and that, should it ever actually see a release, it might be taken as "underwhelming".  In fact, I would almost bet on it, since we are a fickle bunch like that.  Still, we can all be proven wrong on things.  If this trademark registration of "Final Fantasy Agito" (dropping the XIII entirely) is, in fact, indicative of a re-release of Type-0, a Western release at that (or even an international release that is actually international), then it will prove enough people wrong there to believe anything.  But I personally don't buy it.  Perhaps I'm overly negative of Squeenix these days, but this seems to easy.  It would be a soft-ball pitch to just do this and have it mean an actual localization of the game.  Or even an enhanced Vita version of it that would actually be released to the west.  I'm betting on them taking this opportunity and striking out, and in a spectacular fashion. 

So really, I'm either betting on a PS3 HD Remaster that will stay Japan-Exclusive, or that this is just for a Cell Phone/Tablet game and will actually be the card game promised all those years ago.  Prove me wrong, Squeenix.

no, seriously, prove me wrong and while you're at it, announce a Drakengard 3 localization so that I can love you forever

An Addendum to the Final Fantasy XIII-2 Review

Something that I really worried about with the Final Fantasy XIII-2 review while I was writing it and while I wasn't writing it, since I did start it and then not get back to it for a while, was the fact that it was, indeed, a wholly negative review.  It's not something that I relished doing, that I particularly -wanted- to do in the sense that I don't like being a complete negative nancy about things as I was.  However, there's absolutely no way I -could- write anything about Final Fantasy XIII-2 other than what the review contains.  The review is simply my opinions, my judgements and my appraisals of the game, just the same as any other review I've done.  The only difference with the other reviews is that, generally, the games I reviewed that aren't Final Fantasy XIII-2 are games that I liked.  Or, in some cases, games that I absolutely adored for the parts that they were compiled of.

That is the sort of pitfall I worried about way back when I considered Reviews being something beyond the scope of what I felt comfortable doing.  Obviously, I'm not going to like every game, and we've all read enough reviews that are negative that we've simply tossed aside without a care.  The reviewer didn't get this, didn't understand that, didn't know the importance of that, the list of reasons that we use to discredit reviewers that don't like the games we like is endless and they come so easily that we don't think about it.  As the reviewer, there's no way you can back up anything you write as a reason for why you dislike a game because that's what it is - a dislike, an opinion, something that's steeped solely in your view of matters which is different from everyone else's.  In the end, I just ended up feeling a little bad about writing so negatively about Final Fantasy XIII-2 is what I'm building up to, because even though I tried to be objective, tried to steep things in objective terms, it's impossible to do that completely.

Of course, when I think about the time I spent with the game, I don't feel anything but wholly and completely justified.  It's a weird balance, I suppose, and it's a weird thing to just honestly dislike the game as much as I do, but that's what it is.  Clearly I'm not writing a review of a hot new game to inspire site hits or anything, as I literally posted the review a year late for that, and I'm not trying to use hyperbole for effect.  I just unfortunately thought the game wasn't good for reasons that exist on a mechanical level, something a little more concrete than not in the wholly wobbly situation regardless.  I would try to be constructive about it, but I already gave all my constructive ideas for Final Fantasy XIII itself - the sequel went completely in the opposite direction, so all I would say is "come back and go the -other- way" which is really kind of an obvious thing.

I guess the point I really wanted to make here is that, in all reality, I'm just bummed that I didn't like Final Fantasy XIII-2.  I was all prepped to do so, and perhaps that was part of the reason why I couldn't, but whatever the reason, my time spent with it was simply miserable and it had no reason to be.  Final Fantasy XIII was a wonderful, if flawed base to make a game from, yet XIII-2 cannibalized only a few parts and not even in complete fashion, making it so that it honestly would have been better if they just hadn't tried it in the first place.  It's rare when a sequel completely and totally underperforms its predecessor, by a measure that's clear and not a difference of opinion over trivial parts.  This was a categorical failure across the board as far as I'm concerned, and unless someone can make me see the 'truth' or inform me of just what I was doing wrong, that's all I can say about the game.  It's not fact - it can't be - but being as objective as I can be, I just can't see it any other way.

That's just a real shame.  I'm not particularly thinking Lightning Returns is going to be the redeemer either.

Lightning Returns Trailer Goes Out Early

So, this is a thing that technically happened yesterday, but, well, so did something else, so I talked about that instead.  Since THQ filing for bankruptcy is kind of a bigger deal than a leaked Squeenix trailer or a trailer that Squeenix released early because it doesn't make any sense and thus makes perfect Squeenix sense.  If you were not aware or have forgot forced it from your memory, the next game in the Final Fantasy XIII series is called Lightning Returns™:  Final Fantasy® XIII and it is....well, it is a thing.  A thing that probably shouldn't exist because it only exists to finish XIII-2 which was a tacked-on mess which I assure you that I am still working on reviewing it to let you know the extent of that.  Lightning Returns is also something that is completely not what I expected going off the trailer versus what we were told in the 'announcement' of it.

As a refresher, Lightning Returns was sort of introduced as a more Action-RPG hybrid game in which Lightning is out to single-handedly save the world because she is so special for reasons that are inherently unapparent.  Don't get me wrong, I -like- Lightning, I'm just saying there needs to be more to a whole "Savior" angle than "Well, she got picked to be a Guardian for something", and I don't care if that -something- was important, it's still kind of dumb that there wasn't really a lot of backstory about it.  Presumably that will be -in- Lightning Returns, or maybe they'll just run with it still and we'll just figure the reason is "The creators of the games really liked Lightning", since that's as good an explanation as any.  The main theme to Lightning Returns is that, basically, 'Time is of the essence' in the most literal way possible because it is a malleable thing for Lightning at least, which, as I said, sort of gives it a Majora's Mask feel to it.

The similarities end there, however, especially since this trailer has come out and shed a little more light on the battle system.  Now, you see the way it was described gives you an inkling of something a little more....well, like I said, Action-y than RPG which we're all pretty much used to by now.  The pessimistic part of me looked at Dirge of Cerberus which was meant to be an action game and despaired and then looked at Crisis Core and only felt the barest bit more comfortable with the idea.  Still, there was a chance that that sort of thing could've been cool - I don't know how it would've worked magic and paradigm switches but I would've left that up to Squeenix.  You'll notice that is all in past tense and that is for a pretty obvious reason if you looked at the video (provided it's still up, I'll try to replace it with a new one if it gets taken down) and this is the point where I urge you to test the video and, if it works, move on to the next paragraph.  Of course, if it doesn't, move on to the next paragraph anyway.

So yeah, that is definitely still a turn-based battle system.  It does look like, indeed, there is more direct control over Lightning with it, but it is still Turn-based and that is positively worrying.  Even though I liked Final Fantasy XIII, the battle system was -only- good when you had three characters in the party, which is to say nothing of XIII-2 which spent most of the game having three characters in the party and -still- ended up being terrible.  To say that I can imagine a single-player version of either system being fun is a stretch that I'm not willing to make and while I'm sure it will be more tailored to the single-character experience, I cannot move away from being skeptical at best.  I mean, unless they throw a good portion of the battle system and encounter design out the window, it's going to be a rather large annoyance and I don't think Squeenix is actually -capable- of balancing the game properly to keep the experience fun but challenging.  Hell, I don't think they can manage just making it -fun-.

Honestly, there's not a whole lot in that entire trailer that instills me with anything resembling confidence.  Lightning's new outfit is stupid - it's backless with all sorts of poofy things that flap in the wind as she walks and jumps around, generally just being superfluous and adding a lot of area to her character which is unnecessary.  The game itself as it's shown in the trailer has to be alpha footage because it's...well, it doesn't look very good.  And the animation is a bit choppy looking.  Which begs the question "Why did they release a trailer that looked like that" and the answer is 'Nobody knows!'  Hopefully some follow-up trailers paint the game in a more positive light, but, well, the whole 'skeptical at best' thing.  If there's one positive that came from this whole thing, however, it's that this gif came from it.  I mean, just look at that gif.  How can you -not- love that?

But no, seriously, that's about it for positives.

The Perilous Power of Preconceptions

To say that I go into every game with absolutely nothing to sway my opinion of it, positively or negatively, would be an outright lie, as it is an impossibility.  To say that I try, however is not a lie at all, but just how successful I am at it is..well, probably suspect.  The last two games I have played have probably been victims to this and the next one I am looking forward to playing will likely fall into it as well.  At least, the next game that I am looking forward to playing outside of things that I might expect as gifts or something.  Basically, the next game that I am looking forward to purchasing and popping in the Playstation for a play is the game that I worry I will not be able to judge objectively because of what I already know of it.  What that could mean means that it is, indeed, a very valid concern to have.

The game I'm talking about, of course, is the above-pictured Far Cry 3 which just got a rather glowing review from Chance that is, in fact, entirely responsible for my desire to pick it up.  I had absolutely zero interest in Far Cry 3 prior to the review, which is unfortunate, since I just saw another FPS, but I am assured that it is quite more than that, something much bigger and much better than that.  In fact, what I have been promised, by Chance, is that the game is a tantalizing package of fun that offers things that I -want- and things that I cannot get in other games.  The prospect of a compound bow, of complete stealth in a FPS setting, of situations where I can make my own 'stories' of conquest as it were is almost mouth-watering and by the end of the read, it was all I could do to -only- put the game on my "Dear Mogs, you have to buy this, Love Mogs" list, rather than try to figure out the easiest way I could go out and purchase it -now- (or the best equivalent to 'now' which is generally 'tomorrow'.)

I am excited for Far Cry 3 and that is a dangerous scenario since I was also excited for Final Fantasy XIII-2, having been assured by the echo chamber that is the internet that it was 'the fun one', and overall a 'better game' than XIII.  While I tried to stay impartial, I was -hopeful- to say the least as, even though I liked Final Fantasy XIII, it had its many, many flaws, and to say that I was disappointed with XIII-2 is like saying The Big Bang was kind of a thing that happened.  It is infinitesimally understating matters and when I get around to reviewing the game, I imagine I will make that much clear.  However, in a similar fashion, I went into Final Fantasy XIII expecting something bad, indeed almost feared playing it, yet managed to walk away with a net positive feeling of the game.  That's the rub of it all, really, we color our experiences of a game, the end result of it, by what we went in expecting and, in general, I don't think it does a -lot-, but unfortunately when it does, you can't help but wonder what could have been if you just hoped for something different.

The difference in the scenarios, I imagine, is that what Chance has offered with his painting of Far Cry 3 is something that is tangible, where Final Fantasy XIII and its sequel were always unknowns.  Hearing of sneaking to the tops of towers and shanking a guy before clearing a base with a silenced sniper rifle or, indeed, a compound bow is something that I can quantify enjoyment out of in just theory.  Basically he is describing things in a positive light because they are inherently positive, with not much left up to 'opinion' as it were.  Final Fantasy XIII's battle system, on the other hand, is more objective in that someone can basically love or hate it for the -exact- same reasons, and it just has to be something you accept and/or enjoy, or something that pushes you away completely.  I'm sure it could be argued that Far Cry 3's activities have the same propensity, but look, you know what I meant, damnit.  There just seems to be something of a thrill to be had with Far Cry 3's offerings, simply as they are, where FFXIII could always have been something that just wasn't 'for' me.

Whatever the reason, I think it speaks volumes that it took just a well-written review to put a game directly on my radar, and towards the center of it no less when I had previously intended on giving it no other look than the one I had given to acknowledge it existed.  Yet it is always those experiences, -those- stories that seem to be the ones that end in a complete high note or an unexpectedly low one simply because the amount of pressure the game actually has on it is palpable.  I am confident in Far Cry 3's ability to deliver, however, and when I pick up a copy, likely post-holidays, I cannot wait to delve into its delicious-sounding offerings.  Of course, you know that means that you are totally on the hook, Chance.  So if I don't like the game, that's squarely on your head for making me so excited for the game.  Because I am so very excited for it if that wasn't completely and totally obvious.

How Final Fantasy XIII Could Have Been Better

So yes, I know this is one of those hokey things that people with a little too much self-importance does or whatever you might think, and I don't generally like doing it, but I liked Final Fantasy XIII enough that I've actually put thought into considering how it would have been better received.  Not only by the general audience who seem to regard it mostly with disdain for reasons that are fairly obvious, but by myself, who will openly admit that I like it in spite of it.  I am in the odd position in thinking that Final Fantasy XIII does a lot of -good-, but it simply does not capitalize on that, make that shine, and instead you're left with flashes of things that are good, but are so quickly done, you can't even get a good approximation of them on a glance.  Instead, it's obsessed with doing precisely everything counter to that which, as I stated in my review, oftentimes leads to a dissonance on a level that you just cannot even plan.  I mean, when you have basically the same story done twice in your game, yet it works completely differently in both cases?  You have done something wrong.

Regardless, it's not simply enough to say "Those good things, do those more", because, as I said, a lot of players might not have gotten to said parts, or because they went so fast, it's hard to say they were even good to the people who, at the point they were in, might've just glossed over them in a race to the end of the game.  And it's hard to say that if they ran with what was good that it would've been a good game because, from what a lot of people are saying, XIII-2 does that and while I don't see that (Aside from having bigger, non-linear-ish areas), I'm....not really having a whole lot of fun with XIII-2 yet.  I'm not even in the double-digits as far as hours played yet, I don't think, so I don't have a full approximation of the game (will get to this point some other night having played more), but I can tell you that I'm longing for much of what XIII had to offer, which I'm sure comes as a strange statement to many.  Still, I feel like I can put down a few key examples of things and posit as to how changing them around would've made the game stronger overall.

Yes, yes, linearity.

That is basically -the- complaint to have about XIII and it varies from talking about the whole game, to the map design and such.  While exaggerated as these things tend to get through the internet filter, it's not false in so many words, since, well, there is almost -never- any reason to go any direction but forward.  Oftentimes, there's also no real ability to move in any direction but forward.  The only occasion where you will find yourself allowed to revisit locations you've been to in the game once already comes at the very tail-end of it in a way that feels....well, tacked on as a sort of "Okay, people probably didn't do everything in the one open-area in the game, so let's give them a way back" way.  I'll spoil it now, I guess since it doesn't really matter, but in the actual Gods-Honest end area, literally steps before you fight the final boss, you can go back to Gran Pulse if you want to run around the wilds and be free, or do some more Ci'eth Stone missions because there's goddamn 64 of them and you aren't going to be able to do them all when you get there because it launches some fuck-off hard monsters at you in some of them.

It's worth noting that when you beat the game, you can load your clear data to be dropped into this very same spot with the option of going back to a (presumably middle-of-being-destroyed) Cocoon (spoiler alert) or the aforementioned Gran Pulse through means of the same "Hey they just magically appeared" portals, thus giving you the barest hint of 'Post-game'.  You also have the highest-tier of the Crystarium unlocked when you beat it (yes, you read that right), giving you something to aspire to in terms of a system for advancement as well, which gives you a purpose beyond the Cie'th Stone missions for continuing to play.  But for pretty much every point in the game before Gran Pulse, you're technically supposed to go one way and you're kind of stuck doing it because there is literally no way to go the -other- way, as in the one you just came from.  And even after the big open Gran Pulse area, it bottles back up until you get to end-game where, as stated, you can go back to the playground if it's really that important to you to do so.

The issue with Gran Pulse itself is that it is massive, indeed, but it's pretty much only massive in comparison and that size isn't really used well at all.  As stated, there are Cie'th Stones dotting the landscape and, should you choose to undertake the missions that are offered therein, then congratulations, you get to run around for extended periods of time to the other end of the map or to a different section of it entirely or something.  Just....running the whole way there.  Eventually, you can unlock Chocobos that makes the travel time easier, but that's after you've run around for at least a dozen missions and at that point it hardly seems like an 'upgrade' in the sense that it's almost a necessity for some missions and it's actually a necessity for a few.  Regardless, it's just a large area for the sake of being large and, in the grand scheme of things, that makes it a little less large in fact, since there's whole swaths of area you don't need to, nor will you, frequent after perhaps going there once.  In all honesty, you're tossed from the 'corridor' that people make the bulk of the game out to be into a medium-sized room with landscape painted on the walls to make it seem bigger than it is.

Crystarium Overhaul

The Crystarium is, if you don't know already, the big mechanic in FFXIII through which you buy your abilities and grow your characters when you shake your fist hard enough at the screen to earn CP to spend.  Which is, of course, just me over-exaggerating how difficult it is to get CP early on, since, well, that's when you want CP.  It's a big, flashy thing to be sure, and is quite pretty to look at, though at its core it's basically just discs with bubbles on them that are connected by lines and those lines are the funnels through which you spend CP from one bubble to the next.  Yes, they're 'crystals', but the bulk of them look like bubbles, so that's what I called them.  It's a system that's built purely on its layout and that is, of course, inherently where the problem lies because it just wasn't laid out well at all.  The starting points, which is to say, the only points you get to use at all for half of the game, are designed in a way, in conjunction with the rest of the completely micro-managed game design prominent in the first half of the game, to ensure you have only x abilities, y stats, and z skills.  There is no way to 'game' the system, since all you can do is unlock what's there and then sit on an ever-growing mountain of CP until you advance the story enough (i.e. fight the next boss, or the boss after next in some cases) to open a new disc or two of the Crystarium.

In a lot of ways, the Crystarium can be likened to the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X in that it's divided in a way that gives everyone a little something unique to start with, but eventually allows everyone to pick from any class (or 'build' in FFX's case).  This seems like it can't go wrong in theory because how hard is it to take something and repurpose it in a way that's good?  Not hard at all.  (Wait for it.....wait forrrr iiiiiit...)  Unless you're Squeenix who, if you haven't paid attention, are just not good at doing the same thing twice or doing something again well.  Taking something that's supposed to promote versatility and then tailor-making each one in a way that literally prevents everyone from being versatile is literally the only way to mess it up so guess what Squeenix did!  I'm sure it's not obvious from the subtle context clues, so I'll just spell it out in the broadest, easiest terms here.  The Crystarium, at its fully unlocked potential, is made to allow your characters to be great in three classes and such so badly in the other three that it's not even an option and is, in fact, a waste of CP.

If you'll allow me to use Lightning as an example, then I'll say that of the six classes (which are Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, Synergist, Saboteur and Medic), Lightning is only proficient in Commando, Ravager and Medic.  What this means is that, when you get the ability to actually buy into the Synergist, Saboteur and Sentinel trees, you're use to spending around 3,000 to 6,000 CP for a modest increase to your stats and a higher-end ability which eventually goes up to 12,000 CP, but they're on rather large discs, so the spread goes over-time.  When you look at the first disc for, say, Sentinel, it's no surprise that it starts off as a tiny disk as you're probably use to in starting off.  What -is- surprising, is that the four or five bubbles on that disk, for like HP+15, Magic +3, etc. cost the same 3,000-6,000 you're used to spending for three times that benefit.  And those small discs?  That's all there is.  To the very top of the tree.  You learn maybe a third of the skills that someone who is proficient in the class will learn and the attribute bonuses never get good.  For exorbitant CP costs all the while.

Beyond it just working out that some characters are just awful at some classes by design, the other problem with the Crystarium is that it's wholly and completely limited.  The Crystarium 'unlocks' at like four different points in the game, through which you get to go up a couple disks, to getting the 'other' primary classes, to eventually being able to go into any tree, as mentioned, to having full access to the whole of it in post-game.  Two completely arbitrary limits on a system that, again, is based on a system built around versatility is missing the entire point and is, in fact, -counter- to the point, and just shows that it wasn't thought-out well in terms of its own design.  It was thought out in terms of the 'narrative', which is what governs the first half of the game unquestionably.  There's many ways that it could've been done better without simply copying the Sphere Grid, like just....making sure everybody gets the same, but cramming it all into the post-game update if that was even necessary or something, and Squeenix just didn't think of any while the game was being made and it showed in a rather unfortunate way.

Pick a Focus (hurr hurr) and Stick With It

This, for all my praise of FFXIII's narrative and story (so, like, the Nautilus part basically) is the single-most frustrating part of the game simply because it had the chance to be the best -part- of the game and utterly and completely wasted it.  You see, Final Fantasy XIII is like a bad novel in that you don't even have to worry about the plot holes or anything, because they writers completely and totally failed to keep consistency in the important bits, the things you'll notice, that anyone with a brain will notice, and they introduce a lot of things at the start that seem cool and interesting, but are relegated to fluff because they're completely and totally overlooked and -gone- by the second half of it all.  What remains, even, is something that lacks exposition of any kind and is just....well, not good.  By and large because at that point, you simply have accepted that what is is because simply that's what it is, since the game refuses to expose any of its intimate details unto you within its own narrative.  (By the by, anything that's explained in the datalog can go fuck itself.  TALK ABOUT IT IN THE GAME.)

The most irksome thing is pretty much what the entire foundation of the game itself rests on:  the Fal'Cie and their relationship with humans.  The Fal'Cie are pretty much the primary focus of the game in a very, very roundabout what and the telling part of just how much they're not explained is that I played the entire game and I cannot tell you what a fucking Fal'Cie is.  They're 'Gods' of some sort, apparently, I got that much, but you're given no explanation into their existence other than "The Maker made them", and there's very little there to allow you to understand why the do what they do.  And what they do is turn human beings into l'Cie which are, basically slaves, for a single purpose - a 'Focus'.  Only that 'Focus' is apparently only given to l'Cie in a hazy, hard-to-remember dream that they have to then remember and then carry out.  Needless to say, a lot of l'Cie are created and few succeed in their task.  'So what happens when they fail?', I hear you ask, since there are a lot of failures.  Simple answer?  I don't fucking know.

At the start, the game sits you down and tells you that l'Cie have one of two things to look forward to:  either they complete their Focus and are granted eternal life within crystal, or they fail to complete their Focus in the time they have and they turn into monsters known as Cie'th.  Now, at this point, you probably recognize the term Cie'th because there are Cie'th stones on Pulse.  Apparently, these Cie'th stones are people who were Cie'th so long that instead of getting killed by the wildlife there that exists solely to murder you, they became stones that forever agonized their inability to complete their Focus, and that single-mindedness can be heard by other l'Cie who are close enough, which translates into you completing their Focus for them which does nothing.  They don't un-stone, they don't un-crystal, they simply float there forever and offer you the chance to re-murder the unique entity that they were supposed to kill and failed to do.  Some of them allow you to teleport to other Cie'th stones.  I don't even know what the fuck.

So, I mean, I guess l'Cie become Cie'th and then die or not die for long enough to become stones that float around for eternity.  I don't know.  I don't really even care anymore, since I am so let down by what the perception of what Fal'Cie and l'Cie were when the game started explaining them.  You see, with the way the game was describing Fal'Cie, I was expecting these all-powerful humans that could enthrall Humans, binding them with magic to a task, something like a Vampire and their ghouls.  And you know what?  Blah blah, nobody likes Vampires, but that would've been cool.  So when the game was like "Hey, we're about to go meet a Fal'Cie" I was so very, very excited.  I was wondering just what one looked like, and wondered if it would end up being the main antagonist of the game, or would be like a mid-boss or something like that.  I was incredibly curious about it, is the point, so I rushed forward to take a gander, expecting something really cool.

It was not cool.

What I ended up running into was a giant machine that I beat mercilessly to no avail because after the fight, in a cutscene, it sort of kind of transformed into something and used giant energy tentacles to brand the party and blah blah blah.  It sucked.  It was completely uninspired, and in no way, shape or form was I ready to expect a machine, and I -guess- that's a plot twist maybe or something, it still sucked.  The worst part of it?  You never see that Fal'Cie again.  In the entire game.  That's just one example of how completely and totally flubbed the whole Fal'Cie thing was in the entire game, and believe me, there are plenty, plenty more of them.  I'm sure you don't doubt that whatsoever.  And that's how just about every important plot point is handled, in that you get the barest hints of what's going on and absolutely nothing else, so that you can't even really figure out what's going on.  Not to mention that some of the things the game -does- tell you with a level of certainty are, sometimes, completely and totally circumvented by things that happen later on.  It doesn't know where it stands, so you have that much less chance of knowing that very fact yourself, and that's just poor all around.

Hilariously, I stand by my assertion that there -is- a good game within Final Fantasy XIII, but as you can see, it's buried under a mess of trouble and poor craftsmanship.  For that reason, there's just no way it can be expected to shine, and that's a real shame.  There are even a couple of other points I probably could've gone on at length over, and may yet some other night, but I think this is enough elaboration for now, since these are, in no uncertain terms, very big issues in themselves.  I suppose my only defense in stating that I liked FFXIII is that the verve I speak about the game, and the clear amount of thought I've put into it suggests that I feel deeply for it and because I can't love it for its faults, I can hate it for what it could've been but wasn't.  The funny thing is that, these issues here that I have, the vast majority of the internet (I think) will tell you have been fixed in Final Fantasy XIII-2 and that XIII-2 is fun, where XIII was not.  And it seems easy to consider, right?  I mean, they couldn't get it more wrong a second time, right?

If you said "right", then you haven't been paying attention.  But that?  That is a topic for another night.

Review - Final Fantasy XIII

I like Final Fantasy XIII.

There.

I said it.

It is not a deep, extensive or even grand affection for the game, but it is an affection for the game, which is probably the strongest statement I can make of it.  I never thought I would be at this point, where I have both beaten the game and walked away with anything positive, but it happened and I'm honestly not sure why.  It's honestly the most confused I've been about a game in a long while because I like it and I know some reasons why, but I can't pin down the exact whole of it, leaving the question "Why don't I dislike it, then?" to which I just have absolutely no answer.  I think part of the reason for that is that in absolutely no one way is Final Fantasy XIII not an absolutely overly complex game.  That is, as you might figure, mostly a negative point against it, but it really does work in its favor, apparently, so I guess there's a silver lining to it.

If I had to boil Final Fantasy XIII down to its three biggest strengths, which is to say that is what I'm going to do here, then the first strength of the game, the one you'll notice first assuredly, is that the game is fucking gorgeous.  Yes, we're supposed to like a game of its merits and not by how pretty it is and blah blah blah, but when you're faced with a game that is as absolutely, unashamedly good to look at as Final Fantasy XIII, you can't help but appreciate it for that.  Because it's not enough that the game is beautiful to look at in cutscenes, which it honestly is and I would probably pay money to watch Final Fantasy XIII as a straight movie done purely in the FMV graphics because they are -that- good looking.  It's not enough that there is an almost wonderful level of detail actually put into the whole of things, creating lush visuals that make sense and, for the few indoor spaces, as in domestic places, that are in the game there's a certain, undeniable amount of architecture thought out, as well as some decent interior design.

The entire world that is Final Fantasy XIII is absolutely stunning to look at.  Even though the theory that a lot of games for a while there used fifteen shades of brown and little else is a little overblown, there are an unfortunately scarce few games that actually take from every little inch of the color wheel, and actually make the effort to make those colors vibrant, to make them pop and give the entire visual a constant glamour no matter what it was that you were looking at.  I made that lead-in, obviously, to say that Final Fantasy XIII does just that and is pretty much the entire basis of it being wonderful to look at.  But I try not to gush so much about that as the important bit of that which is the bit where I point out that the design of things isn't that bad, which is an important distinction to make, especially when it concerns Final Fantasy as a series and especially especially when it comes to Tetsuya "I Made A Goddamn Belt Dress" Nomura.  Yes, dude has done a lot of good stuff aside, but you're always as bad as your worst moment, thus the distinction.

Character design is actually something I'd throw out there as another positive about the game's look because, well, I really -like- the way all of the characters look.  Nobody really feels over-accessorized or anything of that sort, merely appropriately detailed and some characters are downright minimalist.  Snow, for example, has a skull cap, trench coat, gloves, pants and boots.  That is basically all there is to his design and it -works- because it's a decent look and more importantly, it fits Snow's character exceptionally.  Dude is just a simple guy who likes punching things which you all know I can certainly respect.  He's not particularly flashy, but he wants to be noticeable and memorable as the Hero who saved someone because that's just what he does.  That translates really well just by how he looks, and of course in how he acts and talks as well, but I'm not quite to that part yet.

Well, okay I am, actually.  The second strength that Final Fantasy XIII has is its characters.  One of the best things that Squeenix did with the game was setting it up like they did at the start, switching between various perspectives across the characters who eventually made it into groups.  This gave them time to introduce everyone individually and give them a backstory, a motivation and such, establishing them all as their own character.  In the long run, everyone more or less had a real start point and a real end point with tangible development between with the bulk of it being really really well done.  It did go on a little too long at the start with the whole switching stuff, or perhaps that they just switched too much, and the actual 'party' wasn't formed until.....essentially 20 hours into the game, but it's a solid concept that was done well enough that it worked out.  Especially since the arcs set up real, actual conflict within the party members in a way that was, at least, set up well, if not followed up on well enough.

I'm treading into spoiler territory now, and I do so with no shame because you either know the intricacies of Final Fantasy XIII's story (or at least the broad strokes), you don't -care- about the intricacies of the story, or you know how to skip a couple paragraphs.  The two main 'conflicts' within the party were basically the same situation told two different ways and in a spectacular show of range, it failed miserably with one execution, and was the best goddamn part of the entire game with the other.  I have absolutely zero idea how you manage that, how such a thing is even possible technically, but Squeenix managed it and if nothing else, I applaud them for their long-standing ability to have absolutely no idea what they're doing at most times apparently.  But at the same time, I'm not judging -too- harshly because, as I said, the one part is so well done that it is literally my favorite part of the whole game.

So I won't talk about that one first.  Let's talk about Hope Estheim and Snow Villiers.  This one was mostly spoiled in all the previews and such, so I won't dwell on it too much, but I do have to do -some- leading into it.  Basically, the entire game starts with a 'Purge' which is basically when the ruling government gets a bunch of people in an area and sends them to another planet, except they don't, they just straight-up murder them somewhere.  A resistance group, NORA, led by Snow just happens to know this and are on hand when stuff goes down (thanks to Lightning) and they have a chance to rescue a bunch of people about to be Purged.  Two such people are Hope and his mother, coincidentally named Nora, and when Snow asks for volunteers to help fight, Nora decides she wants to shoot things instead of being near her kid with the knowledge that they were both almost about to get killed.

Snow and the rest of Nora take on soldiers and blah blah blah when reinforcements come, wreck a bunch of stuff and Nora falls off a bridge to her death.  Hope, of course, sees this sees Snow survived and instantly decides that he has to remedy that, except he doesn't really....know how to do that.  At all.  So he just sorts of festers impotently for a while before a series of bad decisions leads him to follow Snow (with Vanille in tow) which gets him close to Snow, whom he simply does not confront in any way, shape or form.  It's incredibly awkward and by some measure, I understand that it's supposed to be, but much like the laughing scene from Final Fantasy X, it blurs the line between intended results and actual results.  This theme carries on for at least ten hours into the game, if not more, until it reaches an apex and has absolutely no payoff whatsoever because of an accident that necessitates they work together and it all just sort of melts away.  It fizzles out and is wholly unsatisfying.

This is where it gets a little more spoiler-y since I'm going to move on to points that weren't spoken of freely before the game came out.  If you take what is basically the exact same layout of "Person A accidentally causes Person B to lose a family member" and apply it to Sazh and Vanille, that works out to what I was stating is the best scene in the entire damn game.  Without getting into too much detail, Sazh has a son who, prior to the events of main-game FFXIII was turned into a l'Cie which is basically a death sentence.  Vanille is more or less the reason for that and yes, it wasn't on purpose any more than Nora's demise was Snow's fault, but they were still basically catalysts to their incidents.  Thing is, Vanille -knows- what happened - she was there after all, but while she's traveling with Sazh (just the two of them as the party split happens, which keeps every group to two people annoyingly) it....well, never comes up.  Even after Sazh tells his story of why he was on the Purge train that got derailed and started their whole little adventure, she says absolutely nothing about it.

This has all the same elements as the Hope/Snow angle in that it's established and has time to build before it comes to a boil as it were, since you are given time to know just what is going on and anticipate when it's all going to come crashing down.  It's just that, for Hope and Snow, it sort of just flops, whereas with Sazh and Vanille, it's an absolute trainwreck, but in a good way.  It's compelling, it's dramatic and it's very -real- the way he reacts when he finds out the truth.  I won't spoil that much, as it's something you honestly have to see unfold, and it's also best done when you actually have something invested in the game itself, but it unfolds in an absolutely amazing way.  It is, like I've said three times already, my favorite part in the entire game, and I think the part that legitimizes it from a story-telling perspective.  I don't know how it was done so well, only that it honestly was, and for that, I can only really applaud everyone involved.  Even knowing how it would turn out, how it would end, and what the aftermath would be, I couldn't help but be invested into it and find it as powerful as it was.

That is no small part of what I insist that FFXIII's characters are its second strong point, and perhaps even the strongest point the game has, but it's not the only part.  As I said, every character is established as their own entity which is criminally overlooked sometimes, and while some characters do border on stereotype, I would say that they all have enough depth that they're firmly not in that category.  Nobody feels flat or one-dimensional and everyone is noticeably different in behavior and outlook at the end than they were at the start, and there's not really any point in between where I questioned that change.  I admit that of the six, Hope was my least favorite and I do believe he saw the least amount of growth and development, but I even grudgingly admit that he did grow as a character through the game and with a little tweaking, could've been far better than he ended up.  Still, it's good that that's one of FFXIII's strong points because any good character is built on its battle system, its story and its characters.  Final Fantasy XIII has two of those.

Final Fantasy XIII's battle system is an odd, odd thing in that it is very focused and very well-designed under a certain group of circumstances, and then is utilized for half of the entire game improperly.  As in Squeenix, the people who made the battle system, force you through 20 hours of gameplay in which the battle system, the entire backbone of the goddamn game, is used in a way that it was not intended.  I will again refer you to the theory that Squeenix has absolutely no idea what they're doing at any given moment before moving along because I feel that is quite necessary.  For those not in the know, FFXIII's battle system is sort of a last bastion of Turn-based combat in that there is still an ATB gauge which still governs what your (controlled) character does (you can only be the leader, no one else) which you pick by auto-battle which considers the enemy and generally lines up a good variety of attacks to use, or by manually selecting abilities open to that class at the time.

Where it all changes up is that, with the class system, everyone is forced into particular roles that can only do so much.  Healers heal.  Commandos hit things.  Ravagers cast spells that hit things.  Et cetera, et cetera.  This is where the paradigm thing steps in.  You have what's known in-game as the Paradigm deck which is basically six slots with which you pick six combinations of the classes open to your characters to be at any given time.  Generally you want to stick with a good variety, make someone a Commando and someone else a Ravager, stick a Sentinel and a Medic together, etc. just so everyone plays off everyone's strengths.  It's a system about versatility that, considering it has only six slots, is a bit limited, but not incredibly so.  At any point in a battle, you hit L1 (on PS3) to open your Paradigm deck and switch, adding an element of strategy to battles.  Need a heal?  Switch to a paradigm with a Medic.  Need to build up a chain fast?  Switch to your Com/Rav paradigm or, if you're feeling lucky, Double Rav, hoping that the chain gauge doesn't deplete too fast.

You'll notice that I'm talking in terms of twos, which is what you're faced with at the start of the game through, again, about the 20-hour mark.  (Which is basically a straight-shot, as everyone says.  I mean, there's no real place that's good to grind in and actually no real reason to grind until you get to the latter half of the game, so you're really just pushed into going from plot point to plot point.)  The problem here, which is indeed a very big problem is that the Paradigm Battle System is intended for three party members.  Or, if not quite that, then it works -best- with three party members which is to say it works at all.  The system is just too...boring when you only have two people in it, or at least having three people outshines it that much that it feels flat otherwise.  When you have three party members in Final Fantasy XIII, the battle system is fun and it's interesting in that it's just interesting to look at, but you start getting a real feel for just how important all three characters and their roles are since just one difference could be the difference between getting stomped in a battle and winning unconditionally.

Again, how Squeenix was seemingly that clueless as to what was fun and what wasn't and what worked and what didn't boggles the mind completely and totally, but intentional or not, the battle system is an absolute treat in the circumstances with which it's allowed to truly shine, making it the third strength of the game.  If I didn't realize that when a small tweak in my party line-up was the difference in fighting a nearly unwinnable battle against the final boss and kicking said boss in his goddamn teeth so fast he didn't know what the fuck, then starting up Final Fantasy XIII-2 certainly made me realize it.  The game, of course, begins with only two characters using roughly the same battle system and it just serves to reaffirm my thoughts because it's boring as shit.  I'm told I'll get access to the third party member situation soon enough and it's pretty much right at the start of the game so that's fine, but the system just was not built for two people.  I cannot bury that point in any more than I have here and given that you've got to wade through so much shit as you do to get to the point where you have three people all the time, I can see why a lot of people threw the game aside in frustration.  Hell, I almost did that but in the end, I'm glad that I did.

That right there, that measure of being glad that I played the game, despite -everything- it has going against it, is why I thought it was worth it to actually attempt getting into it and reviewing it.  Even now, I've still got a lot of unresolved feelings about the game itself and I suspect a lot of them will just remain that way no matter what.  It's just such an -odd- game in that it actually -is- a good game under Squeenix's best efforts to the contrary when that's almost never the case.  Regardless of that, or perhaps -because- of that, I think it's probably one of those games that I'll never be able to completely forget which means that, by some measure, it is a fairly special game, for better or worse.  Certainly not my favorite game in the series, but I have a -lot- more opinion on it, a lot more general feelings and thoughts about it than most other games in the series, so that's saying something there.  And once again, I just have to come back to the bit where I said that I'm glad I played it, because even though I didn't love it or even like it at times, I feel like it was worth seeing it through.  I really think that says a lot more than I could hope to do otherwise.

The Good

• The Battle System, under the right circumstances, is rather good and fast-paced
• The Characters are all at least fairly well fleshed-out and aren't just stereotypes or one-dimensional
• It is probably the prettiest game that came out in 2009/2010 by a wide margin
• The Sazh/Vanille team and arc is so good by any standard, and especially against the rest of XIII
• The music is pretty good with only a few tracks bringing it down overall
• Character design is tastefully well done, as is the general world that FFXIII features
• There are at least a lot of good -ideas- going on

The Bad

• You don't get to use the Battle System properly for 20 hours
• The overarching story is predictable and not particularly engaging unlike the character stories
• So many missed opportunities
• The mishandling of the game is apparent at every moment, reminding you that it honestly could've been good
• Eidolon Fights are still stupid
• It is just as linear as you've heard
• It takes an absurd amount of time to 100%

Mogs Says

Final Fantasy XIII is not perfect.  It's not even close.  But it also doesn't have to be perfect or close because what it is is pretty good.  It's a good game done poorly, unfortunately, and you can only get to the point where the game is fun and interesting after a bunch of stuff that's done improperly.  It's certainly not for everyone and even not for folks who might consider themselves RPG-lovers because there is a 20-hour section of bad gameplay before it gets to how it was supposed to be, and is only then completely enjoyable.  At one point, Squeenix might have had something really really good with the game, but they wobbled it far too much and everyone suffered for it.  Still, they couldn't destroy everything good about it, and what's there and good is oftentimes great.

Eidolon Fights Are Stupid

So, I wasn't planning on talking about Final Fantasy XIII two nights in a row, certainly, but I have to have a bit of a rant and there's dick-all else happening so that's what's going on.  Since I really have to just put this out there and be angry about it so I can move along with the game, otherwise it's just going to fester and I'm going to shake my fist at folks and be angry for a good portion of the rest of the game.  I'm certainly not unique in complaining about the Eidolon fights, which, Eidolons are Final Fantasy XIII's version of summons, and I'm certainly not breaking new ground here, but that's not the point.  I'm specifically not really caring about whatever the rest of everyone says about the game having played it and only care about what I'm thinking about it as I play it.  And what I think about Eidolon fights is that they are, as says in the topic, stupid.  Incredibly so.

Let me sort of explain just -how- an Eidolon fight begins so that I can help illustrate the areas in which it is dumb because I am in fact this petty.  So, these come out around in different story points, all of them pre-determined as is the entirety of the first whole chunk of game I'm learning, and they're kind of out of nowhere.  Since I mean, I certainly didn't look at a bridge and go "Well.  That's where I have to fight Odin." even though yes, that bridge is where I had to fight Odin.  The battle starts and immediately, the Eidolon will then cast Doom on the party leader.  Final Fantasy XIII operates under the logic of "If the Leader falls, we are all fucked", so this is a very bad thing and in effect puts a very restrictive time limit on the battle.  So now with a time limit, you have to understand that you cannot defeat the Eidolon, but instead have to do certain things enough times within the time limit that will make the Eidolon 'Yield', meaning you'll be able to form a pact or whatever and enter Gestalt mode.

These yield conditions aren't generally difficult, at least, the first two weren't since it was basically "Block and do Chains" and "Do chains and heal" respectively, but it's the amount of times you have to actually do them versus the time it -takes- to do them versus the actual time that you have in the battle.  It's incomprehensible how this was thought of as a good idea since I had to play the Odin battle six times doing the exact same thing before it worked fast enough to win me the battle.  It is purely down to luck and not much else, since, well, there is not a whole hell of a lot that you can actually -do- for yourself at this point in the game.  Paradigm shift and auto-battle, or decide between the paltry few abilities you have accrued by this point which takes precious seconds you don't have.  Not really a hard decision to make, even if it's the one that apparently isn't fool-proof.

So, I'm spoiling things, but nobody even really cares at this point, so I'm certainly not going to and especially not when it comes to this pile.  Odin's yield conditions are the second ones above, or specifically they're listed as "Yields to those who create attack chains" and "Yields to those who heal the wounded".  Smack him around and heal.  Easy enough, right?  Right?  Hahahahahahahahahano.  Odin starts the battle, casts, and you'll want to definitely paradigm shift to Dual-Casters (Both Ravagers) before anything else.  Smack him with attacks whilst he rides up and pummels the fuck out of Hope (85% of the time) or Lightning (happened to me once) and switch to Double Dose (Both Medics).  Heal heal heal heal heal until he enters a defensive stance, Paradigm shift to Dual-Casters again, rinse, repeat.  This creates effective attack chains and allows you to heal to satisfy the conditions as well as generally not dying.  Because he likes murdering the hell out of your party and he don't even care.  This is the strategy I used six times.  This is the strategy that worked precisely one time out of the six.

There is something inherently wrong with that.

The issue generally lay with the fact that in his rampant dickery, Odin would launch Lightning up into the air, preventing her from doing jack-all.  Or the issue would lay in the scant few times that Odin just straight up killed Hope with a combo instead of almost killing him, losing me precious seconds as I threw a Phoenix Down down and he built his ATB back up.  And there was generally just issue with the Gestalt meter just not filling up because I don't even know.  The whole of it just resulted in me being incredibly frustrated (which wasn't helped by a switch to Sazh and Vanille as they had to sort out several parties of Bombs and Pulsework Soldiers directly afterwards) and a lot less forgiving to the system as a whole.  This is just a step closer to that precipice, I fear, to where I simply jump off the ledge, giving the game both fingers as I fall into the comforting arms of something sweeter and something more enjoyable.  But I'll soldier through, as I'm not completely turned off by my experience, and I'm still seeing little bits of potential.  I just want the game to let me chip away at everything preventing me from getting to that fun core.  Because I -want- to like it, damnit, I really do.

So I've Been Playing Final Fantasy XIII

I haven't played long, but I can already start to understand the myriad of complaints that have been leveled at Final Fantasy XIII in the time after it's been released, but I'm not really prepared to add to them, at least not yet.  I can't say that I've actually had fun playing the game yet, but it's only been a few hours really, and in an RPG where you'll spend a good 40+ hours through it, that's negligible and not really indicative of the overall experience.  When you start it, you're just supposed to be learning the systems that will take you through the game, and it's after that point, when you have the tools, that you're meant to be able to make of them what you will and there's where the fun comes from.  In picking this and that, making these combinations as you see fit, and fine-tuning them as necessary.  That's when the real experience starts, for me at least, which is usually well past the intro.  Still though, in a series where you make kind of a big deal about the way it's intro'd, I'm not quite sure what I think of Final Fantasy XIII's intro myself.

I feel like Squeenix was doing what they -do- and trying to throw you into a scenario at the start where you're already in a situation and the only way to get any idea on what's going on is to get through it.  Make you look for your answers and wonder a little, that sort of thing, while also keeping you interested because there's a ton of shit going on.  In Final Fantasy VII, it was the whole infiltrating and blowing up the Mako reactor, in Final Fantasy VIII it was getting you tested for SeeD by sending you into a Mercenary Mission, and in Final Fantasy XII it was giving you a likeable character as he was set upon a mission....and then killed him off to give you Vaan.  We....don't talk about that anymore.  Regardless, XIII throws you right into the thick of things, but I sort of think that perhaps they threw us too into the thick because of the way the actual beginning sequence is orchestrated, which I think is more than a little off-putting for anyone who might not be initiated in Final Fantasy games or even RPGs as a whole.

You see, during the first couple of hours, the 'party' as it were has more or less just not met up and you end up spending a little bit of time with just about everyone individually or at least mostly individually as their own 'story' starts to get set up.  In theory, it's kind of brilliant and something that -should- happen, because it sets everyone up as a fleshed out character instead of "that guy who stabs stuff" or "that girl who is a healer" and you would expect that their story would only progress naturally as the game goes on.  In execution, however, it....sort of loses something in that there were about nine character swaps between the three or four 'parties' (counting some where one was left out separate since sometimes that meant controlling the -other- person) in the first two hours of the game as everyone raced towards the same conclusion for their own reasons.  I'm not sure -what- bothered me about it in particular, but it just didn't work and that's a shame.  Perhaps if the switches had been less jarring or if more information had been spread out during them instead of literally just moving some of them forward a bit instead of them just 'showing up' at an area, or if there'd just been less of them, it would've been better, but it just began to grate a little.

And so far, that's kind of been the mantra of the game as a whole, in that it's -trying- to do something right, but the way it does it just grates.  It's dangerously close to being something enjoyable, but falls short and it feels like any minute now, it'll break that barrier, yet I'm not sure if it will.  The rumblings of the '30 hour tutorial' (in that the first 30 hours are a tutorial, and not the 'real' game) have certainly instilled me with a fear, since I feel like I know from where that draws, but I haven't let pessimism take hold yet.  I do, however, find it a bit odd that when the battle system is supposed to be unique and great because it offers on-the-fly customization (ala Paradigm Shifts) I'm limited in its useage in the formative moments of the game, where it should be teaching these things.  You don't get to use it at -all- for the first few hours, and then once you're inducted into its trappings, you're not given the full thing.  You see, game, I know that at some point, I'll be able to do what the fuck ever I want with classes, but you won't -let me-.

Characters only start out able to use a few different classes and more unlock as the game progresses (Not everyone even starts with the same, meaning people have defined roles in a game with on-the-fly customization) and that breeds a battle system where I can only do so much with it in terms of using that customization.  Pre-made values are all that's available to me, with 'witty' titles to them like Slash & Burn (Commando/Ravager) and War & Peace (Ravager/Medic, I think) and that's governed by who is in my party which -seems- to change every five minutes.  I mean, this is the point where it kind of sucks being a guy who knows about games because I know what the fuck is going on, because it's that transparent that the game is just trying to make me use everyone in every scenario to get a feel for them, but I just want them to knock it off.  Let me try this out, take away the training wheels already.  I got this.

Despite all the negative things I say about Squeenix, I almost always genuinely hope they put out something good because what they do put out is...kind of uncontested anymore.  There's simply not a whole lot of RPGs out there, even ones that pretend to play at the old style as FFXIII does with its clinging to the ATB system in a sense, but there are some of us out there who do quite enjoy RPGs.  Just make a good game, and we'll buy it, anyone out there making games, don't worry about trying to 'keep up' with trends or anything, just don't include the trappings that classic games had that we have outgrown.  What those are, I couldn't tell you right now, but I assure you, there are some out there that are unnecessary anymore, that you can make a good, proper RPG without including them.  With any luck, I'll grow to enjoy the game, but I'm not really going to put any bets on that.  I just want to get through it to the fun that supposedly awaits me on the other end.

And Yea, As I Prepare To Gaze Into The Abyss

...I regret nothing.

I'm closing in on the point where I will fully have AssRev in the bag, completely and totally and were I in better health, tonight would be a review for it.  Or a review for Retro City Rampage.  Both of which I -want- to do, but I can't stay focused enough to even attempt.  I need to build up a verve, an energy to really put out something of that length that maintains quality I'm happy with, so I am more than willing to wait for when it'll be right than to attempt it and fail.  Which surprises me, because I would never describe myself as a patient man, but I suppose that sort of thing just comes naturally when you care about what you're doing.  Anyways, melodrama or whatever that is aside, with AssRev out of the way, I'll be heading off to new journeys to get through the backlog that I carelessly add games to at a whim because I am extremely short-sighted or something.  My options are various and tempting, though my eye has been warily trained at Final Fantasy XIII since its release, admittedly merely because of those that came before it, and the polarizing nature of its content has had me even more curious.

I've stated various times that I feel like I am too lenient on most games, most of the time (not all of them, of course, as you'll see with the few Ragequit posts I've made) so a lot of the time, I'll still find a way to speak positively about games that others have panned, probably rightly so.  Of course, there are times where I find that my opinion falls right in with the general consensus out there, and in those cases, it just cannot be helped - you like what you like and you can't really do a whole lot about that.  Still, when I see a game so polarizing, I can't help but want to try it -just- to see which side of the fence I land on - a simple curiosity to sate rather than hoping for an experience or preparing myself for a flop.  My standards are low that way, in that I'm not expecting -anything-, but also -everything-, simply for gathering purposes, that I may come up with an aggregate of my feelings, my own thoughts, of whatever the game is in question.  That's sort of my mindset with Final Fantasy XIII, or as best at it as I can.

I fear that I may already be a little painted in my opinion of FFXIII because of 'Hope Estheim' (Who, for some time, I thought his name was literally Hope Esteem which is disgustingly cheesy and inexcusable) who seems to fill 'that role' as that character you just say "ugh" to for the most of the game before he does a turn for awesome or something and I roll my eyes because I am not swayed so easily.  What I mean is that I already have a little negativity built for the game which is unfortunate and I should know better, but I have been trying to put it aside.  It may be a few days yet before I begin the game, depending on how kind AssRev's MP is to me (and how easily this infection surrenders from my body), so I may be able to 'cleanse' myself of these off thoughts of the game, ready and eager to put it through its paces in my own way

Given my history with Final Fantasy as a series, being that I have only dabbled, never really conquered aside from a handful of games, it's actually a bit of a mystery going in because maybe I just won't beat this one either.  Obviously, you go into any game expecting to beat it, but attention spans fade when it comes to RPGs, and I can already feel the tug of Deus Ex:  Human Revolution, but I think the thing that will inspire me forward is the prospect of playing FFXIII-2, which is apparently, by all accounts, fun.  I -seek- fun, I live for it in games, and I want to always find fun in the games I play.  I expect to find -some- within the confines of FFXIII, but I expect more from the sequel.  And that alone, I believe, will be enough to bring me through the entirety of XIII, if just to be able to experience XIII-2 and try to make sense of its story, which is probably a fool's errand.  Whatever the outcome, I'm sure I'll end up throwing it out here!

Bleeeurgh

I'm not sure if it's been obvious with the last few posts, but I just haven't been feeling all that up to par these last few nights.  I've felt a little sick-ish (which teaches me to never joke about getting sick, even in the comments of one of Chance's posts) and the overall climate is just interfering with my ability to really process things.  Interestingly enough, I looked back a year and found this post this was basically around the same time (a couple weeks earlier, sure) that suggested a situation much the same as my current one.  I'm going to suggest that it simply speaks to my inability to tolerate climate changes initially, since I'm not sure if there's anything else that would follow a schedule and get me all slumpy like this.  Because I am decidedly in a slump of proportions that I dare not consider, lest I make the hole any deeper than it is already.  That's how slumps work, right?  Right?

Anyways, it's a little more than the weather I suspect and I'll not bore you all with the details (mostly because I don't care to share them), but things have been changing around in my life a bit fairly recently which also might have something to do with my day-to-day.  I got a new job of sorts, which means a newer, shinier flow of cash that has afforded me the ability to actually buy games that I would have otherwise passed up on in favor of games that I simply could not do without.  It's a foreign concept to me at this point, seeing as I've been a regular tightwad the last couple years, but the splurging -has- been a bit therapeutic and will only help myself and my blog in the long run.  In the last week, I've picked up copies of Deus Ex:  Human Revolution, Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIII-2 for the simple fact that FFXIII-2 was on sale for fifteen bucks and I am not about to pass that up since I actually want to play XIII-2.  XIII?  Not so much, but I cannot do things out of order, so I picked it up at the bargain (less bargainy than the sequel) price of twenty dollars at a different store because the one I purchased XIII-2 from was fresh out of copies of the predecessor, much to my chagrin.  And while I was getting XIII, I saw DE: HR and had one of those "Eh, why not?" moments - a literal whim that I have not experienced, or at least not acted on, for months - before grabbing it and throwing down the $40 for the both of them.

I've had my eye on Deus Ex for a while now - probably since before its release on premise and pedigree alone, but I never found the impetus to pull the trigger and I'm not sure why.  It has the aesthetic I crave, it's been touted as a generally pretty good game (aside from a few design flaws) and it offers a level of constrained freedom that I find tantalizing against the more 'actual freedom' design off some of the sandbox games I've been playing as of late.  It is a game that I have wanted, yet I never found the reason to give it that shot.  With any luck, my whim of throwing a twenty dollar bill at it will pay off with dividends and I will be at least half as enthused with it as I was (and remain) over a certain other game that I cannot help but associate with it in my head.  Alpha Protocol was basically -my- Deus Ex in lieu of not being Deus Ex.  The amount of replayability it offered based on making your character different, as most took to doing with Deus Ex thanks to the body mods and such, in the same world to see how it shaped around you was tantamount to wizardry for some back then, just as it remains with Alpha Protocol.

Similarly so with Final Fantasy XIII, I had always intended on picking it up, but I also never really saw a scenario in which I would pick it up for lack of time or desire.  After finding that the shine has, indeed, quickly faded from AssRev, I'm that much more wary of other games that the internet as a whole has similarly disliked, especially FFXIII, as the reasons for its reviled nature are more numerous than several other games combined.  Yet at the same time, those naysayers generally have positive, or at least less damning things to say of XIII-2 which has me intrigued certainly.  Being that I have not actually finished a Final Fantasy aside from 7 and 10 (kind of 6, but it's cheating a little - I played a game from the start of the second half of the game, beat it, and then later started a new game and made it to the point where I picked up my initial play.) and only dabbled in the other titles, who's to say I won't wring some enjoyment out of it?  Aside from common sense and the like.  Yet if I must suffer through XIII to get to its sequel, to the 'fun one', then that's something I'm willing to do.  If I beat Dark Void (well, less beat it and more conquered it with my platinum trophy) for only the sake of spite, than I can muster up enough bluster to soldier through XIII, even if it is a cluster.  (Okay, little forced, but I had to)

With any luck, this little spell I'm stuck in will be gone within the next few days and I can get back into posting things of actual substance.  Seemed to have cleared up last year, at least, so whatever's going on will clear up here as well.  I suspect one of the main problems is my lack of a definite sleep schedule as my job has me getting up and going at times where I would normally be....well, sleeping.  Meaning that I'm sleeping far less overall.  I'm sure I don't have to point out the obvious with that, so add that with the climate change, as well as the thought that I might just have a cold instead of the climate being a thing (or as well as, perhaps) then I suppose it's understandable that I find it difficult to function in the areas that I normally find it fairly easy to function in.  Still, with any luck, I'll get things sorted, but just in case, the next few days might be a little bumpy in terms of what gets posted and when.  Just a heads-up!

What the Balls is This?

Now, I've never claimed any particular affinity for the Final Fantasy games that don't have Tactics in the title and this is a well-documented fact, but it's not that I wish the series ill or anything.  It exists outside of my particular tastes and that's fine, that's totally understandable and acceptable.  I mean, I have partaken in a few entries that I do genuinely enjoy, but overall I don't love the series and that just happens.  But when something really really awkward and strange happens, you have to point it out and say "Wait, no, no."  And this is quite possibly what has happened with Final Fantasy XIII-2.  I mean, not the whole game, but at least this one aspect of it:  The Chocobo theme.

I must first stress this, that this isn't from an official channel and is most likely a fake, but I'll get to why I could be persuaded to think otherwise later.  Regardless, it's made its rounds and I can't find anything else to really talk about but this, so here it is.  The video I'm about to embed is apparently going to be the Chocobo Theme from Final Fantasy XIII-2 and it....just sounds terrible.  I mean, I could forewarn you with everything that it entails, but I figure that just prefacing it with terrible and then letting you experience it yourself is the best course of action here.

Now, the obvious first instinct after listening to that is that it is, in fact, entirely not possible to be a thing what is real.  That's what I thought, but people more well-versed in Final Fantasy matters than I seem to be able to believe it, in fact citing another seemingly out-of-place song as a defense to it being a chance.  Again, will get to that in a moment, but I'm focusing on this.  There is honestly nothing that is not terrible about the Chocobo theme except for the laughs you get at listening to it.  And the fact that it kind of grows on you because of that.  I've been listening to it as I write this so my opinion is, well, fresh, and I started off being nearly offended by it and now I can't help but laugh at everytime he yells "Do you think you can ride this chocobo?!"  I don't know, this might be one of those times where my opinion sways directly -as I'm writing about it-, which is a rare event.

Regardless, that being an actual, official song in Final Fantasy 13-2 is an entirely possible reality (which is getting better by the minute for the above-mentioned negative to positive-in-a-bad-way reaction I've had) because, well, who knows anymore?  Final Fantasy 13 was a real departure from a lot of the 'conventions' of a normal Final Fantasy which is why a lot of people were turned off to it, and I can only imagine they're going to continue to press that for 13-2 for the people out there that actually, genuinely enjoyed 13, since they'll obviously be the ones buying this up.  I know that I personally still need to give 13 a good shot before I can comment on it one way or another (despite my whingings about the names which are certifiably dumb.)

The reason why this was presented to me as an absolute possibility is because there is a clear, definite example of an already existing Final Fantasy game getting a song on the soundtrack that is far, far beyond the scope of what you'd expect.  You probably know of it already, but the example is "Otherworld" from Final Fantasy X which has instantly rekindled anything resembling interest I have in FFX (alongside of the PS3/Vita versions).

Sounding like it's straight off of.....well several soundtracks that is not for a Final Fantasy game (and almost along the lines of Rammstein, again told to me before I heard it which I have to agree with), this was apparently undoubtedly in Final Fantasy X even though I don't remember its inclusion.  Supposedly it's more or less "Jecht's Theme" which makes perfect sense for how in-your-face awesome it is.  I don't know if it's 'okay' to like this song or not, unironically, but I do, since I do enjoy me some rock and Rammstein.  Regardless, the point is that it is fairly atypical for a FF soundtrack as is "Crazy Chocobo".  This might not be an entirely bad thing, all things considered, but it's certainly a thing worth mentioning and talking about.