Final Fanta...zzzzzzzzz!

Let me preface this blog by saying that I love Final Fantasy games in general. Obviously VII has a special place in my heart, but I also think Tactics is one of the greatest games of all time (I had the U.S import) and really enjoyed VIII, IX and X too. I have every single PS1 and PS2 Final Fantasy game in my collection and they will probably stay there - some things are too awesome to sell.

However......

Final Fantasy XIII is easily the worst in the series so far. It is not just the amazingly linear nature of the game (which has been discussed to death) but also the fact that most of the sidequests come after you complete the game - why? - and the story and characters as so underdeveloped. The reason people loved VII was because of the great characters and superb stories. When a certain character died you actually CARED, hell I was still praying for some kind of miracle revival come the end of the game.

The newest title has none of that. The characters seem cold and unapproachable, and most of them seem far too self absorbed to really invest yourself into. Some of the dialogue is also pretty damn cheesy and does not really help to suck you into this, admittedly, gorgeous world. Plus the battle system almost insists on taking all the cool decisions away from you. Sure you could select your own attacks but then you would lose valuable time and get beat on - better to just hit Auto Battle time and time again.

With a sequel now in the works you would hope that Square will learn from some of the feedback and make a game that lives up to the series lofty traditions. Hopefully I will have finally finished off XIII by the time it arrives, as I'm in the process of polishing off the full 1k. With the majority of the Ci'eth missions and item grinding still to come it may take me some time, but hopefully I'll get there as it is pretty much the only title I'm playing right now.

Oh - other than Halo ODST, which I did some more of this morning. Annoyingly the tracking for the kill achievements seems to reset when you reload the game, grrr! Still killing Brutes with a plasma pistol never gets old, ha ha! If I could get two more games off my list I would be a happy bunny.