Happy New Year + Final Fantasy XIII

me- MEEE TOOOOO

Happy New Year!  So 2012 begins and with it the apocalypse as well.  Only 12 more months until the end has come.  Until then, I'll probably play more games and watch anime as usual.  2011 has been an interesting year for me in both playing games and just life in general.  I finished my first year in college and began my sophomore year (okishly).  And for gaming, I actually placed decently well in one of the games that I actually care about so I'm pretty happy about that.  Though I still need to play more and get better.


But, for the past few days before New Year's, I've been playing a bunch of FF XIII.  I've clocked about 20 hours into it and so far, I've been able to enjoy it at least a bit.  Beyond this point, there's the possibility of spoilers, so if you wish to avoid them, skip this post pretty much except the last paragraph.  I guess I'll begin with a short description of each character and what I think of them so far in the story.

IT ALL MAKES
SENSE NOW

Sazh - Best character in the game so far.  I would describe him as the normal guy out of the group who has humor and is pretty cool in general.  Nicknamed "Frocobro" by one of my good friends back in college
Lighting - Cool character with an awesome gunblade that folds up and shit.  How that actually works, I have no idea, but she's pretty cool.
Fang - Also pretty cool.  Has a lot of similarities with Lighting in that sense, but has a lance instead.  Also jumps on a dragon and kills it.  Just like a dragoon.  A dragoon.
Snow - He's kinda annoying I have to say, but at least he does stuff.  Also punches people in the face which is pretty amusing.
Hope - I'm not too sure whether he's more annoying as someone who can't decide what to do, or when he tries to pretend he has a pair of balls.
Vanille - This game's Riku/Selphie/Yuffie.  In other words fanservice and genki girl all in one.  This tends to be
annoying to me so that's about all I can say about her.


Aside from some derpy characters, I'm pretty much ok with the cast.  As for the story, I like the main concept behind it with Fal'cie creating L'cie and stuff, but there's some stuff that I don't really like about how they go about executing it.  For example, the way the story kinda throws you in to it is really weird.  In the beginning you start with Sazh and Lightning and you go around beating up guards and robots in your way, but this whole time, the game never explains to you why for a good 5-6 hours.  Same when you meat Snow, Hope, his mom, and Vanille.  I originally thought for some reason that Snow and Hope's mom knew each other and was really confused by the string of actions that followed.  By starting out in the middle of the Purge without really explaining much threw me into action that I couldn't really care much about.  I was pretty ready to give up the game at that point because not only did the story make no sense to me, but the gameplay was really easy at that point in the game.


Which brings me to the next point I want to discuss, gameplay.  Final Fantasy XIII gives you a battle system in the beginning except that it's only like 25 percent of what you can do and what's possible, and hides the rest away from you worried you'll get confused by all the other options and decide to hide them away from you.  Throughout the game, they have slowly given you different parts back and after about 15 hours in, you get all of the capabilities that the game gives you.  I have to say because of this, I was really bored because of the limited options that they gave you, they had to change the enemies that they gave you such that they would be killable without say a dedicated medic class healing you, generally making it "mash x until the battle is over" which is just brain dead.  Now where I'm at, it's a little bit more interesting now that they give you the option to customize your paradigms kinda like FF X-2 which allows a little bit more flexibility over your characters.

I hate this guy :<

Overall, I'm kinda okay with the game so far, but hasn't particularly "wowed" me in any sense so I can't really give it props.  As for other things in life, I learned that a particular friend of mine got pretty damn good at Melee since the last time I've played him >_<  I haven't played that game in so long, but it's still fun to play even now, though making technical errors are always kinda frustrating.  Also, Catherine is an amazing game that I need to play really soon cause it's insane, but amazing at the same time.
In random news, I'm going skiing over the next week or so.  We'll see how going to Apex goes, but at least while I'm there, I'll play through Ghost Trick hopefully and possibly lug my PS3/PS2 over and play some games, but we'll see about that.  Until next time!