[Guitar Woman]

Well, it does the same thing when you win.

Also, Final Fantasy 13 plays like Chrono Trigger for retards. I kind of like it.

The story is sorta interesting but very badly written; about one in three cutscenes makes me facepalm at some point, and reading the Datalog is absolutely required to comprehend what's happening. fal'cie? l'cie? Sanctum? Pulse? What the fuck am I listening to and why are there so many apostrophes?

Edot:
This game seems to be so badly written that it loops around to become interesting again if you take a step back and consider how fucked up all the characters are really acting; I'm enjoying the game better by assuming that most of them are mentally ill to varying degrees (or in Snow's case just retarded fucking assholes who date high-school girls).

People keep saying that Lightning is just femme-Cloud but she's really more like Solid Snake, a hot-shit adrenaline junkie soldier who is generally incapable of functioning without being in battle all the time, both because she needs the rush and because it's all she knows. Right after she decides to just assault Sanctum headquarters, the loading screen's recap says something along the lines of "With no clues to follow and time running out, she's made Eden her target. Having a target is simple; having a target is something she understands." Which, to me, implies that she doesn't know how to deal with problems in ways other than killing them. I really liked that moment when she decides, "fuck it, fuck Cocoon, fuck the fal'Cie, fuck my Focus, and fuck the l'Cie rules; I'm just going to go up there and wreck the shit of every motherfucker who's crossed me." She's essentially doomed no matter what, possibly to a fate worse than death, but also happens to be a walking magical nuke, so she uses that to lash out in anger at whatever's there. It's something I personally would want to do in that situation, it felt like a very human reaction.

I'm finding her general behavior more and more distraughtening as time goes on, especially the way she doesn't attempt to discourage Hope from going after Snow for revenge; she knows full well that the main reason he's following her is to get strong enough to kill him, and she doesn't care - she gives him what he wants. The way that she doesn't seem to see anything bad about that means there's something wrong with her. Hope is 14 years old. He's a confused, pissed-off teenager with selfish, reckless, horrible, and above all completely misinformed motives, and encouraging and training him to murder someone (her brother-in-law, no less) is not good guardian behavior; something like that has a high probability of completely ruining his life and/or driving him crazy. You can already see it starting in a bit after Light begins bonding with him, and Hope develops this creepy, creepy fixation on a memento jackknife she gives to him. He pulls it out and bares the blade whenever he's having a hard time dealing with something (which happens in every cutscene), and then he just stares at it while he talks; it's some fucking serial killer shit. Lightning seems at least partially creeped out every time he does it, but she's not stopping him or going "dude, you're acting fucking creepy. not cool" and taking the knife away, she's enabling him to be a crazy fuck. I guess she figures that since they're either going to die within the week (or more likely before the day is over), get encased in crystal for eternity or turn into zombies, Hope's future mental health doesn't matter, as long as he's an effective sidekick until everything is over. From where I'm standing, Lightning and Hope have an incredibly sick and mutually selfish relationship, even with the warm and fuzzy bonding scenes; they've been using each other since they teamed up, and they're exacerbating each other's shit big time. I don't know if the game intended for me to think this or if it's going to follow it up, but I really hope that's the case because it's damned interesting and tragic and I've had a genuine emotional response to it (creeped the fuck out).

Anyway, 10 bucks for this game was a steal, even if the only good parts of the story are there completely on accident. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a new Final Fantasy so much.