Fresh Fish Served Daily

My only previous experience with FF was playing through about ten hours of VIII, which I picked up on a whim when I first got the PS2. People liked to tell me the reason I didn’t like FF was because I played VIII first, which is usually tagged as one of the worst FF games. But I never really understood that line of thinking. I mean, it’s still a FF game, right? It’s turn-based, there’s a complicated and somewhat melodramatic storyline, and the characters have funny hair. I blame my initial dislike on my dislike for turn-based combat plus all of the arcane shit that all FF games have in them that isn’t explained properly in the game. Sure, after you play one or two of them you know what Esuna is and what it does, but if it’s your first time you just have to try it out to see what happens.

Fast forward to early this year. I picked up a copy of Final Fantasy XII thinking “what the hell, Dane likes the FF games, so he can play and I’ll watch.” After about thirty minutes I had wrested the controller away from him. Another day and I started spending time levelling up and hunting marks while he was at work. By the time I completed the game I had clocked in over a hundred hours. Since then I’ve given the series another chance, and I am at various stages of completion on VII and the DS version of III. I still like XII the best, though I am definitely enjoying the others. I had a conversation with someone at Dragoncon in which I was told that I liked XII the best because it has pretty graphics. Fanboy elitism aside, perhaps he would have thought differently had he known that I own a Wii, not a PS3. I love XII because random encounters are gone, the gambit system is brilliant, and I like ALL of the characters. (Penelo could be a bit ditzy at time, but she’s a fifteen year old girl so she’s forgiven.)