The RPG Completion Quest: Revised

[James]

Just a note, it'd kind of help if you listed what platforms these games were on. And also, you don't need to name every known RPG ever made.

More on FFX-2: I'm loving it. I've gotten more Garment Grids, and each one has different stat bonuses attached to them. Some have more slots for dresspheres than others, some give the user the ability to cast magic, and others give protection from different status affects. Using these natural abilities, and combine them with certain dresspheres (using a grid that will allow you to cast Thunder spells regardless of job class can be very helpful when you're not going to use a Black Mage, for example) really does provide a great amount of skill and strategy to be put into your equipping of grids and spheres.

And as I said before, learning skills is actually quite fast. You can select what skill you want to learn (some are available right at the start, while others requires certain skills to be learned). You gain 1AP (on average) every time an enemy is killed. On top of that, you gain AP when each character performs an action attributed to their job class. If Rikku's a Theif, and she uses Steal, she gets 1AP. So learning abilities isn't based on how much you fights so much as it is how much you do in those fights. Rikku's a white mage right now, and I've only got two more skills to learn before completing the class. It's very fast and easy, so you're not spending hours upon hours just to learn one or two abilities.

The only downside is the mission-based gameplay. Many of the missions are optional, but do flesh out the story and provide the feel of the other FF games. It's like if you took any FF game, broke it down into every quest, and you were told "OK, you can CHOOSE which of these quests you want to do." So it's all connected and does play out very much like the other games. But the fact that there's missions and segments and such almost makes you feel compelled to play just for a little bit instead of a long time. I'll pick up the game, go through an area, complete a mission or two, and then feel like turning it off. It's not boring, by any means. It's just... It kind of feels like the game's telling you "OK, turn me off now. You did enough for the day." It's both good and bad, depending how you look at it (if you don't have a lot of time to play games, it's nice to know you can do a little at a time and feel like to accomplished something).

I guess the only REALLY bad thing is the music. A lot of it sounds like it came straight from a 70's blacksploitation film. The rest is either passable piano tunes, or annoying looped musical diddies. But all of it is forgetable. Really disappointing, given that the music has been one of the best things about the FF games.

Long story short: ANY fears you had about the changes made in ths game, or ANYTHING you had heard about it that made you think it was really lighthearted or un-FFish, forget them. It's definitely Final Fantasy, complete with an involving story and interesting characters. At least rent it if you're unsure. But... umm... I will tell you the first 10-15 minutes of the game won't change your mind (all your fears and things you heard are pretty much condensed right into the beginning of the game), so just keep pressing past that.