delight!

I woke up today feeling nostalgia and excitement. Today, my friends, marks a week to the release of Final Fantasy 12. What can I say? I wait with bated breath for these days, few and far between-the day a game comes out that's worth a shit. I'm a Square fangirl, no doubt about it. I defend mightily when someone bitches about their too-long cutscenes or murky storylines (even though there are select times when I agree.) When Square releases a FF title though, I can always be assured I'm going to get a rich, vividly imagined story, detailed characters that I will remember long after the game is over, and a world absorbing enough to make me long to come back to it. This chapter marks the beginning of a completely new format for Final Fantasy-doing away with turn based battles altogether. There is no interruption in gameplay (although I have to say there was something about the wait screen as you dissolved into a battle that I loved about past games) and battles run seamlessly with gameplay. I'm especially thrilled that characters more or less start as blank slates ability-wise. Square has been clear that Final Fantasy11 was the inspiration for a lot of these concepts. I'm really delighted with this. I would have continued to play FF 11 if the balance of healers vs other races had been better. For all I know, by now it will be.

Cheers Square, for being innovative, daring, and consistently producing stories that engage players' hearts and minds. You rock.