Final Fantasy

We Battle Together with Friends… but Why?

HIGH Replaying classic Final Fantasy moments with the accompanying soundtrack.

LOW Having to play the same tracks over and over to unlock new features.

WTF The nonsensical phrases characters say before a stage begins: "Friends, now we joke eternally in vain…"

Thanks to an Xbox 360 port, Minecraft has finally gotten into the eager hands of creative console gamers. But as creative as they may be, they have a ways to go to match what PC gamers have been creating (and posting) since Minecraft was in beta. A perfect example of this is this recreation of the steampunk city of Midgar from Square Enix's Final Fantasy VII. Minecraft forums user CJ_Campbell has unveiled his labor of love (along with some of his other non-Final Fantasy VII works) for our admiration and envy.

In a way, it's good to see that there hasn't been the reaction to February's NPD data that I anticipated. On the flip side, February was another month of deep Year-over-year (YOY) negatives and presents questions to me about just how long the current console cycle can remain viable.

A Tale of Two Time Travelers

HIGH The beautiful metropolis Academia.

LOW "To Be Continued..."

WTF Why is Noel wearing parachute pants?

Keep a tissue at the ready as we bid Tim a fond farewell. But before he takes his final bow, we explore the light and dark sides of BioWare with Star Wars: The Old Republic and the Mass Effect 3 demo. Plus The Horror Geek tackles Final Fantasy XIII-2; surely it can't be worse than its predecessor... or can it? Featuring Tim "Yup, I put my name first" Spaeth, Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, and Richard Naik.

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I have more to say about Final Fantasy XIII, but that post is so depressing to write I thought I'd hold off for now and elaborate on a point I made in my post discussing its combat mechanics. Role-playing games tend to get broadly divided into "turn-based" and "action" categories, distinctions that are not particularly informative, often get used inaccurately, and don't usefully elaborate the relationship between the player and the system.

The worst reason to hate Final Fantasy XIII is because of its linearity. Non-linearity doesn't necessarily improve a game, and following a constrained path doesn't necessarily make it worse. All Final Fantasy games, including the most highly praised ones, have been essentially linear in both story and world design.

Despite respectable review scores and reasonably good sales, Final Fantasy XIII is widely derided, for many good reasons and a few bad ones. Defenders of the game often point to the battle system as the game's saving grace. I found myself sharing the sentiment when I played through the game recently.

Last time I checked in, I explained how I quickly went from level 1 to level 10 doing Guildleve quests at Camp Black Brush outside of the starting city of Ul'dah. The grind to double digits was really fast (far faster than it was in Final Fantasy XI before Square Enix made leveling so much quicker in that games). With mobs in the region giving less experience and skill points (experience needed to grow in physical levels, SP needed for leveling your specific job or class), I decided it was time to head to the next Guildleve hub—Camp Dry Bone.

In the last entry, I spent a lot of time talking about what signing up for Final Fantasy XIV was like, how you create your character, and how the game compared to Square's previous MMO, Final Fantasy XI. Moving forward, we'll be taking a look at my first few days in the game's world and how everything works.