Setting The Pace For A Friday.

I've wanted to write a lot more than I did this week.

For starters, my scabs are gigantic and hard. The wound on my hand that I took a picture of the day I got into the bike accident is ridiculously hard and thick.

Here's a friendly reminder for those of you who forgot about it, or missed it!



This week has been kind of hellish at school. I have a 12-15 page paper due on Tuesday of next week (November 21) and I haven't actually started writing it yet. I spent a few days this week begrudgingly working on a transcription of a group meeting I had three weeks ago. One might be surprised at how long it takes to transcribe 10 minutes worth of discussion between 4 people. For me, I estimate that I spent 4 hours working on it, split up over a number of days where I couldn't bear to pull myself away from Final Fantasy XII.

Which is one of the most fantastic games I've ever played. A lot of the people I know who like games, but don't like traditional console RPGs because they "are gay" or "all you do is select things in a menu and watch your guys do stuff" might appreciate this game more. It was directed by Yasumi Matsuno, who is the guy behind Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, the latter being one of my other favorite games ever.

What this game retains from Tactics aside from the same in-game universe, is a feeling that every move in a battle is important, and that there are many factors that can affect the flow of even the most basic battle. In past Final Fantasy games, one might have gone through a basical battle by having two of their party members select attack, a third would cast spells, and a fourth would heal these party members. Well that isn't completely gone, because of course you still attack and cast, but present in this game are the elements of time and distance.

Now you might say "yeah man I saw time in a previous Final Fantasy game you know you had a meter that filled up and when it filled you could attack but that is basically the same as any other final fantasy you know so I still think this one is gay," but this is handled differently. You attack far more frequently, and everyone has the same timer. In fact, your attacks are so frequent that often times you really don't have the time to sit around and think about what your next move is going to be. The gauge fills up that fast. The distance between your party members and an enemy or group of enemies matters too. Spells have different ranges, depending on what kind of weapon you use (ranged weapons vs. melee weapons) your attacking distance matters too.

I'd link to a YouTube video to further illustrate what I'm talking about, but the framerate on YouTube isn't really cutting it for this game, and everyone knows that since the advent of YouTube no one can be bothered to download a video file any more, or even go to another site that doesn't work quite as well even if the quality is much higher.

Basically, if you like Final Fantasy games, you should play this game. If you like tactics or strategy in games, you should buy this game. And lastly, if you're one of those people who has been turned off to the Final Fantasy series or console role-playing games in general because of the classic turn-based fighting system, you might want to give this a try. I hesitate to call this game a single-player console MMO, but that's what it feels closest too. Only without the hideous addiction.