I promised myself I wouldn't do it agian.
After playing Final Fantasy X and loving every minute of it (Except Blitzball but that goes without saying) I eargerly anticipated the arrival of Final Fantasy X-2, hoping that it would continue the sombre storyline of the original. I was interested in learning more about the characters and seeing where life had taken them since the end of the previous storyline - I bought it on the day of release, powered up my PS3 and sat silently for the next four minutes feeling the expression on my face slowly change from excitement to disgust.
You might think I'm being dramatic, or possibly just exaggerating, but watch the intro for yourself and tell me how you feel about it.
Being the fan boy that I am, I still gave it a good shot, but the whole game was completely filled with this flowery, girl power fuelled flirtiness that you just couldn't avoid. When did Final Fantasy become a sci-fi franchise anyways? Where's the Wizards, why aren't there any Moogles anywhere? I don't know if they were trying to make it appeal more to girls or if they were just horribly drunk.
I chalked it up to Square having an off year, but when Final Fantasy XII was announced, I approached it cautiously.
It wasn't a bad game really, it was just too much like an MMO. Forcing players to grind experience from easy mobs in leiu of content might work in MMOs but it's not suitable for a single player game, and so my opinion of the franchise started to change.
When Final Fantasy XIII was announced, I was nonplussed. When they spent more than they ever had before on marketing it I was even more skeptical, but part of me thought - Hey, maybe they know they made the past few games bad, so they're trying to show people that they're really confident about this one - my mistake I guess.
The rule of marketing held true, and it seems that for every dollar spent on marketing, the game was dumbed down an additional 1% for the mainstream, and yes that is accurate math.
Needless to say I didn't enjoy FFXIII either. Not many people did.
Yet somehow it still has a direct sequel.
Logic would tell me that if I didn't like the direct sequel to a game I loved, I probably wouldn't like a direct sequel to a game that I hated, but I'm a fan boy, logic has no place in this discussion.
So now I find myself with nothing to do on a Saturday, Final Fantasy XIII-2 having been released just this week and even though I know that I'm probably going to hate it - I'm just going to go buy it.
But I'm serious this time - no more excuses - if this one is bad I'm going to write off the whole franchise for all of eternity.
Probably.
