Now Playing: Final Fantasy XII

 Why is everyone wearing so little clothes!?

Everyone loves floating heads.

 No, seriously, not only are characters wearing few clothes, what little they wear is, well, little. Look at Vaan's pathetic child-size vest. But I digress, my Halloweenesque games are done, so it's time I sink my claws into another JRPG, and one I avoided for a while. The reason I avoided XII was the combat system, it looked dumb. Buuuut Xenoblade showed me that MMORPG-style combat can work, sadly, after playing about an hour, and trying to solo Thextera with Vaan(which proved impossible, I can only manage to lure one its two guardian wolves!) I simply aren't having much fun with it. Yay, there's Vaan waiting like an idiot to strike because even though we're not going by turns any more we still have the ATS. I dunno, I'm not feeling the combat, at all. But at least it's not XIII.

 That said, as soon as I popped in the disc and the first cinematic played... nobody does grandiose openings like Final Fantasy, be it our first glimpse at Cecil's wrongdoings, Terra's assault on the snow village, Cloud and Barret taking down a Mako Reactor or even Squall and Seifer's duel, Tidus' big game... Square just knows how to make an opening. And this is no exception, I had no idea what was going on, but it looked cool, goddammit.

 As for the game as a whole... I played about two hours, did some desert grinding and... I think it's alright, but nothing remarkable. The combat system is really bland, I mean, I've only had one-man parties so far, but I doubt it'll get as involved as Xenoblade's various statuses and what not. The setting is kinda interesting... but because it reminds me of Rogue Galaxy, truth be told, I'm not very fond of Final Fantasy's Ivalice setting. And the character designs... they are kinda bad. Ashe's outfit makes no sense. Seriously, how is that skirt thing supposed to stay in place? And what the ******** is she wearing over her midriff? And why is she only wearing armor on her legs? Vaan's not too far behind with his silly vest and weird looking musculature. I can't stand Penelo's hairdo either. Balthier is cool though.

 But look at the bright side, my first impressions and overall expectations are relatively low, so maybe, maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe it can surprise me.





....but maybe not.