Wizard's FöЯum v3.0™

Yeah, picked this up on Saturday, and am really enjoying it. Then again, I kinda enjoyed VIII.

It seems a lot closer to X than any of the other games tbh.

After about three hours this is starting to get good

The levelling system is pretty cool, very FFX.

Well I'm at ten, and it's still the same but with harder enemies.

You guys are all gay.

One word*: LARP.

*acronym

Disc 2 after 11 hours. Was expecting it to bee much longer than that. Still, not much has happened or changed since I started it.

It's meant to take 20-25 hours to get to the Pulse overworld and 20-25 to completion from there. Not sure if that includes optional stuff but that's 40-50 hours in any case. No disc swap on PS3 ofc

So... I've sunk about 17 hours into this in 3 days. The opening of the game is possibly one of the worst things I have ever played, you are thrown into a world that is going completely ape shit around you and people start explaining it with terms that it doesn't explain. Fal'cie, L'cie, Pulse, Cacoon... WHAT?! I played about 2 hours of it and gave up and went online to see what the hell was going on.

I'm around 14 hours in and also hated the blast of jargon at the start. I'm also not keen on the fact that the game is forcing me to use two character parties when three is far more fun. Some of the areas are just too long as well, Chapter 4 was about twice as long as it should have been.

Still really enjoying it though. The combat system is bloody fantastic and the characters are actually pretty good. Voice acting is a lot better than expected. It's also the best looking game I have ever played.

Totally agree, although the combat system has fucked me over in places with the 2 man teams, there's a trash mob in Palumpolum that can pretty much waste Snow from full HP if your not in the tank/healer (and using stealguard) combo in one move. The voice acting is great apart from Vanille, I dunno if it's part of the character design but in some places it sounds like a computer with an Australian voice synth is reading her lines

Vanile is pretty dreadful all round but as there's hints of something darker there, I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt. For now.

Sazh is pretty much the best character in a Final Fantasy game since Red XIII though.

Not sure how far you are, but Vanille's peak is in Chapter 8 and while there is development after that, it wouldn't change your mind about her. I also ended up loving Sazh which really surprised me as my first thoughts on him were "Crap, a token black guy." While the story isn't quite the best, the characters are defintely the best selection with the best growth of any FF game (except Hope, he stays an annoying little dipshit).

Quick warning, make sure you keep your saves for the beginning of chapters 11 and 12 as the FMVs are fucking fantastic!

Up to Chapter 11 now and oh my, Gran Pulse is so pretty. Pumped something like fifteen hours into this over the weekend though so I'm going to slow down a bit and play some episodic stuff like the second RE5 add-on for a breather.

There's various aspects to this game I really like and the story does start to get its hooks in eventually. As I said before, the battle system is superb, probably the best battle system in a JRPG I've ever experienced. For all that though, there's something about the game that just makes it hard to love. Every time I start to feel like I'm getting really invested in it and can feel the first tinglings of being blown away, it does something completely counter-intuitive to spoil my enjoyment. I found the section from halfway through Palumpolum and into Nautilus right up to the boss fight at the end of Chapter 9 absolutely enthralling, with the story finally starting to go somewhere, enemies that were rewarding to fight, and also a little challenging, and finally being allowed to play with three characters in my party - and to choose my party composition.

Then Chapter 10 comes along, a massive two and a half hour trudge through an incredibly dull environment, fighting some really shitty enemies that take ages to die, for not a whole lot of reward.

That's followed by the most amazing CG sequence I've ever seen in a game and then Gran Pulse, which is certainly a breath of fresh air. Problem is, after pushing so hard to get to Pulse, I can't help but feel a little underwhelmed by the tangle of caverns I'm forced to run through to go anywhere. The open areas are nice, mind.

Currently this is hovering somewhere in the 7 to 8/10 region. At times it's bloody fantastic and is an easy 10/10 but other sections are so dire they'd be lucky to scrape a 4. It's just such a schizophrenic game.

However, this is maybe the best music in any Final Fantasy ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brEgqsq9o0k

Isn't that just like every other Final Fantasy game, or even every JRPG? Jumping straight into FF7 you've got SOLDIER, Avalanche, Shinra, Mako, Materia, a reactor blowing up and god knows what else, and then you hit the backstory of Cloud/Zack/Sephiroth thing and the whole thing takes a turn to the (even more) confusing. And that's held up as the prime example by most people. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, but I had no idea what was going on till about halfway through disc 3 and a trip to the internet.

FXIII is actually quite accessible, they seem to have gone out of their way to put the information out there - the characters will explain stuff in cutscenes, and when that fails you've got your Datalog in the menu. I'm definitely enjoying it, but I've got so little time for games now, I'm going to have to take a week off work to get through the back-log.