November 15, 2006
November 18, 2006
November 26, 2006
December 8, 2006
December 19, 2006

November 15, 2006

I mean, okay, I do care that somebody as sexy as Fran is named Fran, for the love of God. Square-Enix seems to have something of a penchant for giving the gorgeous girls horrible, horrible names; Beatrix was kind of an okay name, Lulu was irksome until I got used to it, but Fran, for God's sake! Nobody in a battle bikini should be named fucking Fran - especially if she drives an awesome flying motorcycle thing shortly after being introduced.

Her accent confused me a bit at first, because it kind of shounds a bit like she hash a speesh impediment - "The Godsh do not shmile upon us" and whatnot. But I'm okay with it now. Really.

And her partner (life partner?) Balthier is the only character so far who's been even mildly amusing. He's kind of fun in his piratical kind of way. He provided me with my first quote of the game - which was ten bloody hours in, I might add. I mean, yeah, it's supposed to be all boring solemn and dramatic and whatnot, but I'm just not digging it. I want another Tales game now.

I've gotten caught up by now, but strangely enough, it only took me about seven hours - probably because I didn't spend so much time wandering around the towns. But, really, I'd only been to two towns so far (Rabanastre and Bhujerba), and I can't imagine that I spent five hours just checking them out. I guess the dungeons wouldn't take as long, either, but still. It's frigging weird.

Also, whose idea was it to bring along all the strips of festering flesh from the Stilshrine of Miriam? I mean, okay, zombies don't have very much that you can steal, but their flesh? Who was it that thought, "You know, zombie skin is so in right now. We'd better bring some of this stuff along"? And how did they get the rest of the party to agree to skinning the zombies before they left?

Aside from that, who the hell would buy festering flesh? I sold it to the merchant guys outside of Bur-Omisace, so maybe they're a bit desperate after the attack, but what do they expect to do with zombie bits? Make tents out of it? That would smell terrible.

Yeah, you heard me. I am knitting while playing a video game; the laws of nature demand that these activities be kept separate, since they both ought to require to hands at all times. But no. Square-Enix came up with this ingenius plan to make gamers do nothing but sit around and watch action bars fill up, because the characters do everything automatically. Get enough gambit slots and you could even take a nap while you play your game! I figured that since I wasn't actually doing anything, I might as well get working on my Christmas presents.

And believe me, there is plenty of time to spend knitting. These dungeons are fucking enormous; I think I spent about half of my natural life in that Tower of Whatsit (which was way too big to be a lighthouse, by the way. A hundred floors? Are you kidding me? Who the hell would climb that every day to flip the lights on?).

But, really, the boring-ass battle system and tedious, repetitive dungeons are nothing compared to the plot. I mean, the plot in and of itself is alright; it's just that nothing ever happens. It feels like I've spent several lifetimes (Vierra-length lifetimes, at that) just wandering around and hoping for some kind of character interaction - anything to break the tedium, for the love of God. I'm almost considering abandoning the game altogether, but I kind of like the characters (except Basch, who could just disappear and I wouldn't even notice), and the plot is just starting to pick up - after forty hours.

*Sigh* If I didn't owe my childhood memories of FFVI and FFVII to Square, I'd be about ready to start loathing them about now.

Not in a good, "God what a bastard," villain-y way, but in a "what were they thinking when they made this fuckwit a member of the main cast" sort of way. He's so boring. His VA is the worst part; he has this horrible, bored drawl that reminds me of the boss guy in Office Space. No villain should ever have to be boring; being interesting is the whole point of being evil!

But I'll admit, I still don't really know a damn thing about Vayne - or any of the other characters, for that matter. I've been playing FFXII for ninety-five hours - ninety-five hours and counting - and I still don't feel like I've gotten to know the characters. And do you want to know why? Because nothing happens. Ever. I would really, really like to get to know a bit about these people, because they seem like they could be rather interesting, but no. Those ninety-five hours have been eaten up by dungeon crawling and watching action bars fill while I knit. Character development? Plot? What's that?