So, the resident Final Fantasy Fan was finally able to get a system to play FF13 on. I got an XBox 360 yesterday along with 3 games, FFXIII, Blue Dragon, and RE5. RE5's controls on XBox suck and it's going to take a long while to me to get used to since I was all about the PS2 with RE4, but that's not the subject here.

This is all about FFXIII is this topic.

Very few times do I eat my words about video games, but I did now. I thought that FFXIII was a curse upon the earth. Well, I've played 15 hours into the game and besides the whole "Game Over if Leader dies" concept in this game, everything is pretty much top notch.

I heard that the first 20 hours of the game were boring, however I don't find it that was at all. I think the complaint is that it feels like the game is going nowhere and while I can see why, I think it's the right pace.

I can't remember if people thought that the story was hard to understand or not, but I find it very easy to understand and it seems like a good one. It's unique anyways.

The game is very environmental and while it may seem that some of the scenery gets repetitive, it's still great, especially with the music that goes with the areas. Not all the music is top notch, but there's a few good tracks that I plan to optain in order to listen to from my Ipod.

As for characters, I think a lot of people have problems with them, but besides Hope here and there, they all seem pretty good in my book. I don't know too much about Fang yet, but something tells me I'm not going to like her. Of course, I think it'll be because of her personality and not because she's just a bad character. It's the same with Lulu. I don't like her but not because she's simply a bad character.

The battles do seem pretty good and like I said besides a game over if the Leader dies it is pretty good. Another thing I have a small problem with is the fact that a some enemies have so much HP that to efficiently kill them you have to stagger them, which can make some battles long and if you screw up the Chain Guage resets, however, I quickly learned how the guage works fully it terms of charging it up fast yet making it's decreasing speed as slow as possible, so it's not that big of a problem anymore.

Both Vanille and Serah quickly rose on my favorite FF Character list, even though Serah isn't a playable character. They round out the top five for me, so now it's Rikku 1st, Yuffie, then Penelo, Vanille and finally Serah, pushing back Relm from the fourth spot and Rydia the fifth.

I will wait for my actual rating of the game until I actually finish the game so I know it's story and later content. It will probably end up being tied with the third best FF in a three way tie, or slightly lower at fourth.

lol, do you just have something against the male characters in final fantasy or what

Spyden has a point...

I hope in playing this new FF that you kind of see my way that Lightning is not really a Cloud Strife wanna be character.

Short answer, I'm a guy. I do love the girls. The cute girls.

That explains your location

Finished the game and here's my brief take on it.

Near the end, the battles seemed to get really long and annoying and in the last area I was forced to switch Vanille out (Sorry baby) for Hope so I could have a Synergist. I don't think there was ever a final dungeon that unmotivated me to play this game. Battles were just long and uneventful.

I had trouble with Orphan's first form when he switched to his Dark side of attacks and wasn't able to beat him without upgrading equipment and accessories. I was waiting to see what the best choice would be for each weapon so I didn't waste materials, but I figured what the hell...

After upgrading, everything else went down like a cheap sack of potatoes. Barthandelus went down in 3 and a half minutes, the first form of Orphan is around 4 minutes, and Orphan's 2nd form, the final fight, in 1 minute and 52 seconds.

The final dungeon's monsters as well as Orphan showed the horrible weakness about having a Leader die - game over. Orphan's Progenitcal Wrath attack has a high chance of instantly killing someone. If he uses that one your leader and you don't have sufficient death protection, which how protection works in this game it sucks, the game basically says "f**k You". At least in Persona 3 you could switch Persona's to guard against instant death attacks since they were either Light or Dark Elemental. I didn't might it much in that game, but in this game...