Financial Fantasy

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Another year, another Final Fantasy game...  Well, maybe not if you only count the major releases.  However, their has been at least one game released in 17 of the last 23 years, with some years seeing the release of more than two. The franchise has been on nearly every platform imaginable. One exception being PC, perhaps because it might get into a fight with WoW to see who's better at making the player grind.

It's undoubtedly a financial success, whether or not you like the series. Bungie has much to learn when it comes to prolonging a franchise well beyond standard practice as well as capturing an audience on both sides of the world.

And of course, this year's big release is that of Square-Enix's Final Fantasy XIII for PS3 and Xbox 360. Final Fantasy XIII has so far been well received, with good scores for both platforms. The vaunted Famitsu has given it a 39/40, a near-perfect score. Keep in mind, though, there are currently only 13 games that have ever received a perfect score from Famitsu, one of which is Nintendogs (I kid you not).

For those of you familiar with Japanese games, it features yet another "battle system" with an unnecessary name (Active Time Battle). It would be like Call of Duty naming its gameplay the "Point at Enemy and Shoot" system, or something equally obvious.

I, for one, am not a fan of JRPGs games in general. Sure, I've played games like Golden Sun and some of the old Nintendo 2D versions of Final Fantasy (better than most of their 3D counterparts, in my opinion) back in the day, but they're just not my style.

I like my Western RPGs just fine, thank you. Over-sized swords don't cut it when you have a hard time telling whether a character is male or female, and the dialogue makes you wonder if its writers have every actually interacted with another human being. I will say one thing:; the cutscenes (while poorly written) have some amazing graphics, especially when it comes to people. Just don't get too sucked in -- that pretty lady might actually be a dude.