FFXII Made Me Do It

Ryan,

So the dude loved FFIX and Chrono Cross, eh? Good. I enjoyed Cross a lot. One of the smartest gaming-related decisions I made was ordering a copy from amazon a few years back. As we discussed before, Cross certainly does have a slow, near pointless start. Once you cross (ha!) the slump hump, things do get better and the game settles into the very good-to-great category. Or at least, I think it does. From what I've read, most people either hate CC or love it. They're diehards one way or the other. Though some of the diehard love may be embellished by the diehard hate that the game unfairly receives.

As far as criticisms, FFIX seems to be in the same boat as CC, interestingly enough. There's either blind hate or blind love. It's been called the worst FF as well as the best. I bought my copy. We'll see.

No, you're not a part of the fanboys I referred to. FF7, as the first mega successful "mainstream" RPG, brought many fans to the playstation brand and to Final Fantasy/RPGs. There's an unholy sect of FF7 fanboys whose RPG resume' began, and in some cases ended, with FF7. These are the fanboys who will have no part of any earlier FF and bitch about every subsequent post-FF7 Final Fantasy because it's not FF7. These are the fanboys who want an FF7 remake simply because they want to play a "real" FF again. I want an FF7 remake because the original's early 3D visuals are a facepalming eyesore.

Have you finished FFXII? I was hyped for that game. A major FF in the FF Tactics universe?! Sign me up. Loved the art style and the characters were cool. No one got on my nerves. The story, from what I played, had me intrigued and seemed like it was going places. The battle system killed me. I don't have to love an RPG's battle system to enjoy or just simply play the game. And I didn't mind FFXII's, until you got to the point where "random" enemy encounters were unnecessarily difficult and damaging to your party and the boss battles were encounters seemingly based purely on luck. Against my will, that battle system drove me to, if not hate the game, then put it back on the shelf unfinished (which is almost the same thing). Every once in a while, I'll pop the game back into the PS3 only to once again place it back on the shelf an hour or so later. I got the limited edition, though, so at least the box is nice to look at.

Nice TV, btw. Watch The Dark Knight on that bad boy? Or RAW in HD?