I am a little late getting to this since I have turned off the Internet at my house, but looks like Square Enix has released some new (a month ago, but if you haven’t seen them yet…) shots to get you all excited or upset at the latest Final Fantasy installment.

No real information comes with the screenshots, just names of characters and that is about it.  Hope you like looking at pictures, cause that is about all the info there is.  That gun the girl is carrying is pretty cool looking though.

Check them out over at Famitsu.

I decided after getting my Japanese stimulus check that I should use it for something good, like video games.  I chose to pick up another new PSP and the games Final Fantasy: Dissidia, and another secret game that I will review at another time.  Dissidia turned out to be more than I thought it was, which was great.  The game looks beautiful, plays pretty well, has a mediocre story, and lots of extras to keep the player interested.

The Basics

Dissidia lets you control one of ten characters from the first ten Final Fantasy games.  Some are main characters and some are not.  There are a couple secret characters as well but I won’t be dropping any hints and ruining it, so if you wanna know who they are, sorry!  As you complete the game you can unlock the ability to play the bad guys that are also a big part of the game.  All in all, though, there are 22 characters to choose from, so it’s a pretty decent selection.

The story is a pretty standard affair.  Good, evil, crystals, and fighting.  There really isn’t too much to say about it, it’s really just there to keep the game rolling instead of moving constantly from fight to fight for no reason.

The Fighting

The battle system in Dissidia is very action orientated.  This is very different from the RPG games that the characters involved in the game are used to, but if you have played Kingdom Hearts or Crisis Core you will pick up on the combat really quick.  Combat can become repetitive if you just feel like winning as opposed to trying different things with your character. 

As you level up you unlock and master abilities.  You can completely change the play style of each character from how they act when you start with them, but it takes so long to get into the interesting abilities, you have already programmed you’re muscle memory to a certain play style so it may make you feel weaker to change it up a lot.

Each character has two modes in battle. One is your regular look which you will see most often.  As you beat on your opponent, though, they lose small crystal flashes or something which you collect to fill your EX gauge.  When that gauge fills, you can go into “EX mode” which is a buffed version of your character with a different outfit (which is usually a lot flashier).  Also, your special attacks get much more interesting in this mode. 

Square really thought about its fans with the EX attack.  Each character has their own cut scene-style special attack — you participate in this attack which reminds me of the limit break attacks.  You either do a combination button press, or a button mash, etc. to try and get a perfect attack.  Those of us that aren’t very good at these sorts of situations, have no fear — there is an ability the characters learn at later levels that does this automatically for you, but as another neat little thing thrown in by Square, until you master the ability, the character can screw up the limit break.

You also get the ability to equip armor and weapons on the characters along with rings that make the character stronger throughout the game.  Something I didn’t like about this was nothing changes on the character when you equip new stuff.  Something I really liked in FF7 and beyond was seeing a new weapon in the characters hands when I upgraded, not a big deal but it would have been nice to see.

The characters to me are very unbalanced.  This is honestly not a con to me.  It just means that I will have an unfair advantage against some characters and others will have an unfair advantage against me.  This may ruin the multiplayer mode for a lot of people, but really that mode isn’t the point of the game or even really focused.  It does make the story mode annoying sometimes when you get stuck on a character that you aren’t good against and they just mash you into the ground for hours at at time.

Some characters are able to easily tear through the game.  Onion Knight, for instance, has moves that really don’t require you to get near the enemy if you don’t feel like it, thus winning every match for you easily.  Characters like Squall and Cloud seem really weakened and are expected to get in rather close to fight their opponents.  Their specials are nice, but working up the combo takes a lot of work.  The characters can level up to 99 which I thought would take a very very long time. Luckily, as you level the stuff the character can do scales up so you are always gaining large amounts of experience for them.  I took Warrior of Light from level 45 to 89 in about two hours on a lazy Saturday.

Graphics, Music, and Other

The graphics are superb in this game.  Models look a little sharp and jagged but as this is a PSP game, this is to be expected.  Otherwise the game has very well done cut-scenes and character design in general is rather pretty.  The music is all songs taken from the games and some wonderful vocal tracks for important boss battles.  Honestly, though, if I have to hear that choir sing about Sephiroth one more time I’ll probably smash the game.

The main point of the game, it seems, is to play until you unlock everything.  One of the first things you do when you start the game is tell it what day you will play the most often and how often in general you will play.  This will help you get through the game faster and help you unlock more items in the catalog.

The PP catalog is where you unlock all of the goodies that come with the game after you finish the story mode.  You can unlock all the “evil” characters to play with them in quick battles, unlock items for the calendar, unlock icons to decorate your multiplayer card, etc.  There is a ton of things to unlock, and of course after you unlock a bunch of different things, you unlock the ability to unlock more stuff, so you need to play the game more to pay for the rest of the stuff.

All in all this is a really good game.  It is a bit repetitive, though.  You fight the same battles over and over for ten stories with five chapters each.  I think the average amount of fights per “chapter” is around five so that is 25 fights a story, at 10 basic stories that is 250 fights.  Those ten stories, though, aren’t the end of the game, and you have a few more modes to go through to clear all the fights.  To even begin to unlock everything, you better be ready to play well more than 1000 matches.

On the Ripten scale I give this an 8.  It’s easy to pick up and play whenever, and you get a lot of fan appreciation.  It can get boring, but it is just a fighting game, the only reason there is a story seems only to force you into taking a break every few minutes.

The newest bit of info to be listed over at Famitsu says that with the Wi-fi connection you can go shopping for items online. This is an interesting idea and allows for a lot of modification on the server side.  The game may not be coming out for another five months almost but the info keeps on a flowin’.

Every piece of news that comes out for this game makes waiting for July that much harder.  When the news came out that you could interact with other people over Wi-fi I was happy that they were using the abilities of the DS but upset that there really wasn’t a reason to do it other than to say hi to people on your DS, and show off what you have done.

Now that you can go shopping this adds another level to even connecting with people.  The news states that you should probably access the online shop each day because items will be on rotations and new items will appear in the shop.  You should also connect with friends and shop at their store because they might not have the same set of items that you do, causing massive amounts of people to be bouncing between all their friends stores.

If that isn’t enough to get you excited there are still two more little tidbits.  The first being that there will more than likely be holiday related items in the stores to buy for your character.  Christmas and probably New Year’s being the big ones at first.  The second bit is that they are also adding downloadable quests like the Monster Hunter series has had for a while.  This should really boost replayability of this title.

Source:  Famitsu

Star Ocean 4 released on the Xbox 360 in Japan has hit the list of one of the best selling games for the system in Japan.  Sitting high with Blue Dragon and Tales of Vespia.  It seems as though Japanese RPG’s are the way to 360 sales in Japan.

The Square Enix game went on sale on February 19th and has been selling nonstop ever since.  The numbers listed so far put it at around 166,000 copies sold since that date.  Blue Dragon selling 203,000 and Tales at around 170,000.

Those are some really decent sales numbers, and even though some skeptics say the 360 will never do well in Asia, it seems they really just need to make sure to release games that are popular for that area.  Someone should tell Microsoft that not everyone likes Halo.

Source:  Famitsu

Square Enix’s latest in the Dragon Quest series (coming to the DS on March 28th in Japan), is all the talk.  Pre-orders are rampant at local 7-11’s and you see more and more people with slime toys every day.  A new feature that is being added uses the Nintendo WiFi technology to let you discuss the game with other people and gloat through your DS.

The article over at Famitsu really doesn’t go too deep into the information, but basically you meet other players that are playing Dragon Quest at a certain Inn, kind of like you would bump into new and interesting people at a hostel while traveling around.  These people have all setup a profile (hopefully) that shares a bit of info about themselves and maybe what they like about the game.  You can also see all the neat things they have done in-game and compare your advancement.

There seems to be a small chat function and the ability to possibly add friends.  So basically this is just like MySpace for your Dragon Quest character.  I guess that’s pretty neat.  Hopefully some more info about what else this game can do with Nintendo WiFi will surface, but maybe I am being optimistic.

Source:  Famitsu

Any Dragon Quest fan knows exactly what I am talking about when I say the word slime.  The blob from the famous game series has been released as a plush toy many times over, now it’s getting a tech upgrade.
Famitsu reports that these new stereo speakers will go on sale on March 28th and retail for around 48 USD.  The speaker is rather large and also includes a stand to hold your DS while you play.  It seems a bit big though and might just get in the way more than anything.

I assume this is for the really die hard Dragon Quest fans, which I know plenty of.  I’ll stick with headphones myself, but if you are so inclined to have a speaker that doubles as a stand for your DS, try and find yourself one of these.

Source:  Famitsu

I wrote up information on Dragon Quest XI just this morning, only to come home from work and find out it’s been delayed.

That March 28th release date has been moved back about four months to July 11th.  I, along with most of the Square Enix fan base aren’t surprised.  The company is usually known for missing their release dates or just in general taking much longer than most other companies to release their games.

Rumors on the reason for the delay abound on the net, ranging from flaws in the game to accounting issues.  No matter what the reason, we still have to wait till July.

You have to admit though that after the title is released it’ll still look pretty.  I still expect this to be another great game.  I just don’t like waiting so long.
Source:  Famitsu

Some companies release special edition DS’s when their software hits the market.  Square-Enix decided that with Dragon Quest IX, a case will do just fine — and I agree.

The case, which is coming out on March 28th (same day as the slime speaker), will retail for about $12 and really is quite nice to look at.

I have seen other cases on DSs that seem gaudy or are just eye sores, but this one displays a picture of a couple of slime without overbearing colors.  This should be relatively easy to get outside of Japan and I may even try to get this case even though I have never played a Dragon Quest game (don’t kill me!).

Source:  Famitsu

Famitsu has some news on the re-release of FFVII:AC in March.  Square has decided to release three versions of what is called the Complete Works of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. So, what’s that mean exactly?

New stuff will include hi-res pictures of the upcoming Final Fantasy games (XIII, Agito, and Versus), a trailer, and deleted scenes from the movies.  One of the more important scene modifications that I am interested in is apparently a much longer bike chase than what we saw in the original.  I thought it was a really interesting fight, and hopefully adding extra to it won’t make it boring.

The three versions being released are regular DVD, Blu-Ray, and PlayStation 3 (which will supposedly have a demo of FFXIII on it, though I don’t know why that’s not just on the Blu-Ray).  All three should look wonderful, but I wouldn’t mind getting my hand on that sweet-looking Blu-Ray version (I don’t own a PS3).

Source: Famitsu

Square Enix’s much anticipated game for 2009, Final Fantasy XIII, is finally leaking a bit more information, and I can help pass that info on to you.

Basically, what is being reported is that the main female character’s full name is Dia Walruva. Some of the other characters from a recently released video include names such as Snow and Lightning. This seems to be a big deal in Japan — I was unaware how important it was to get the right names for characters in RPG games since I always change them anyway.

The other and maybe more important information for the readers is about the battle system. According to Famitsu, the battle system is near seamless to just wandering in the world. When you see mobs on screen, those are the mobs that are there, and when you decide to attack or what have you, you go straight into the battle screen with no notice of transition.

The captions under other photos describe combo moves such as fighting and then directly doing magic back to back for more damage. Also, there appears to be what people feel is an “amount” or some word for the number of uses of magic you have until you either have to recharge them or what have you, as opposes to a mana or MP value. Lastly, they seem to be intrigued by the words “Chain” and “Bonus” appearing in the last screen shot. Chain is pretty straight forward, but it is unsure what you need to do to acquire the bonus.

Look for this game on PS3 (and supposedly Xbox 360) in 2009.

Source:  Famitsu

Famitsu is reporting that on January 29th there will be a special edition DSi to go along with the release of the new game titled Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time.

This nicely designed DSi will come with the game in which it’s themed. There isn’t a price listed yet, but I’m sure it won’t be cheap. The new DS game will link with the Wii title of the same name. The selling point for me on this game is the online playability. You can link up to four players either locally or online over the world. The game itself is coming with a system similar to the translator found in Final Fantasy XI that can help with simple phrases, but just like in FFXI I’m sure people will create new phrases that everyone understands.

I like the look of this special edition DSi, but I really don’t go in for things like this nor do I have the money, but if someone would like to buy me one I would be more than willing to use it.

Source: Famitsu

So there have been a few releases of Square Enix’s “potion” drink to celebrate the release of games or movies, etc. The most current is for the release of the PSP title Dissida. These drinks have new flavors compared to previous releases, which is good because most people really disliked the former flavors. With two separate flavors to chose from, you may be able to find something you like for two dollars a can.

I love theme drinks — there’s just something about getting to try something new for a limited time that drives me to a purchase. Maybe it’s the idea that not everyone will get to try it, therefore I have been a part of something not everyone will be a part of, or maybe it’s just that I like shiny objects and new — as you all know — equals shiny. These new drinks released for Dissidia are both new and since they are in cans do have a level of shine to them. What about the flavor, you ask?

Well, some of you may remember the former “potion” drinks released were not met with a positive response from fans. I remember them as tasting sort of bland and having no appealing value. There was also just the one flavor. These new Dissidia drinks come in two wonderful flavors, and they seem to have matched the idea behind the drink names to their taste. You can choose either the white can which is Cosmos or the black can which is Chaos.

The Cosmos flavor is a mellow citron flavor. Think semi flat orange soda. Not bad, but not exactly something you feel like drinking everyday especially for two dollars. The Chaos flavor has a bit more bite to it, as its name suggests, obviously bad guys have a harsher taste than good guys. If you try to drink a large amount of Chaos at once it sort of hurts, and not regular soda carbonation burn hurt, but almost sheer pain so I guess it works out great for the character it is named after.

The cans are also decorative items, each one having character art from one of the many games that Dissidia is drawing from. I, of course, had to purchase the FF7 can because I can’t get enough of angsty Cloud, and somewhat effeminate Seph. I didn’t see them in the black style, only white, so I grabbed FF2 just because I couldn’t think of any other FF game that would be important to me. I was really hoping for a Shantotto, but maybe they aren’t doing special characters.

To wrap this up, this is the best release of potion to date, at least for me. The downside is that its two dollars a can, you can get a liter of any other drink for about the same price so it’s hard to justify going out and buying a bunch of these, but if you’re into Final Fantasy that much and really want to support Square-Enix, check these out if you’re in Japan. Sorry America.

So I’ve discussed the game and the cards. Today I want to focus on PvP and my final thoughts on the game. I haven’t put near the amount of time some people have put into this game, so my theories may have some flaw to them, and I am far from a master at this game. This is really just a listing of what I’ve learned to do by being beat by the people I have played and using some of those tactics to beat other people.

Crystal Strategy

The first and simplest idea to winning is to just take out the other team’s arcane crystals. There are three of them on a PvP map and they are always in the same place. It seems simple enough but if their team enters the area of the crystal you are attacking, then you stop attacking it to focus on fighting them. This can, of course, slow you down, but if you have a stronger team it isn’t anything to worry about.

When I first started playing PvP, this is the only thought that came to my mind. My cards weren’t strong enough to be effective in battle, so I ran from crystal to crystal trying to lower their life bar before the enemy could take out my whole team. Now PvP match-ups are usually about four levels apart max, so at times I was playing people I had no chance of beating. This is how you can start to annoy the high level people.

As I stated last time, there are some monster cards that lower the power of arcane crystals much faster than any other cards. These are great to have on a team, and also terrible to have. They make your team slower than you could possibly imagine or want. Once you do get to a crystal, though, you’re set. There is a side strategy to using these cards and that is to take out the opponents search eye or shield generator which will give you some speed boosts, letting those slow but dangerous monsters get to the crystals much faster.

Opponent Destruction Strategy

This is the next simple-but-not-as-easy way to win the battle: if you fight and take out the other team completely, their life bar will go down a decent amount. You have to defeat the whole team, though, or this doesn’t do as much good. This really works well for people who have leveled up their cards a bit and have a team that is strong against that particular opponent. I have tried using this strat a few times but always seem to lose out in the end. There is something about this I’m doing wrong and I need to spend a bit more time figuring out how to perfect it.

What really gets me about this method of winning is the monster card’s strength and weakness to certain attacks. If, say, you do dark damage, you are usually weak to light damage. So obviously, if you’re team is solely dark damage monsters and the other is light, it could be a draw, but if they aren’t light then you’re damage won’t be as effective and theirs will work better. There are also cards that can either change your strength, damage, or your weakness thus causing you serious headaches.

“Lock Out” Strategy

This is something new I’m working on. It has not been used on me to its fullest yet in a match, but I used it on someone to achieve a sneaky victory. In the PvP field, there are three gates your team can come through if you lose all teammates or need a quick health recharge. If one is broken by the other team, it can’t be used until you spend time standing in front of it to fix it.

The idea is if you break all three gates down, and then proceed to either attack the other team or work on crystals, they will have no choice than to hurry and fix their gates, or try and take you out to get some time to repair their gates. The gates do repair themselves but very, very slowly. I have taken out all three gates on someone before and then went to the furthest crystal from them and cleaned house. This strat doesn’t work well if their team moves faster than yours, though, so it’s a bit tricky.

Conclusion

Well, that is about all there is to Lord of Vermilion so far. It’s a fun card game with some great card art. You don’t have to get every card in the whole game to have fun, and you don’t have to have many cards to start. If you are in Japan for a length of time and feel like trying it out, go for it — you really don’t need too high a Japanese language skill to play it, and even if you have trouble, the person sitting next to you may give you some simple tips for playing. I recently upgraded from the weak plastic card holders to stronger stuff because some of the more serious players rock their cards pretty hard while combating, and I think I’m almost at their level. We’ll see, though.

Just saw over at Famitsu a bunch of news about the new RPG coming out for DS titled Blood of Bahamut.  With what they seem to have planned, I am very excited about this game being released.  Read on to find out what I’m stoked about.

Wi-Fi multiplayer.  Yes, I said Wi-Fi multiplayer. On the DS. In an RPG. From Square. This is what I thought the DS was going to be for in the first place.  There aren’t too many games that utilize Wi-Fi, and those that do either have it in the genre I don’t want (Advance Wars), or do it a bit differently than I had hoped (Castlevania).  According to the article, BoB (not a great acronym, I know) will have four-player action to go along with a single-player story.

From what I can tell on the screenshots, you do most of the story if not all of it from atop a monster that I can only assume is a reanimation of the monster Bahamut.  It is yet to be seen what the true story is, but it should be rather good.

I hope I’m not getting too excited over this game only to get shafted on the multiplayer aspect, but time will tell.  I’m still looking forward to this game either way, but if I can play it with friends and actually play out story mode with them co-op style, I’ll be that much happier.

Source: Famitsu

Square Enix has posted on their career board the chance of a lifetime for many a video game fan.  They want a writer to live in Tokyo and help turn those wonderful games that come out into an English speaking experience as opposed to a Japanese one. 

This position is written up really open ended.  The required skills basically grind down to a person that has been to college or taken AP English, studied a little Japanese, and has two to three years experience working in an industry.  Mind you it doesn’t say video game industry so I think they are really asking for trouble.

You have to mail everything to Shinjuku for consideration and a long with that resume they want a creative writing sample.  The sample is to be 800 to 1000 words about a character from a Sqaure game that gets stuck in Japan and “using the language of the position” write a story.  Let the fan fiction jokes begin.

I of course, will be applying as well because of course its a dream job.  Im sure my application will be among hundreds of thousands of fan fictions to grace the desks of some poor human resources department people to review and then stamp not accepted and be mailed back.   Yes, that’s right, Square is going to mail back your submission after they have decided if they want you or not.

So get out there, good luck and write something worth reading.

Source: Square Enix via Kotaku

IGN randomly decided to release the very first (as far as I know) real-time, in-game screenshots of the FF XIII series. I must say, they look stunning. Not Heavy Rain stunning, but not especially far off.

Things to pay attention to, in addition to the immaculately detailed player models, are the architecture and set pieces. Screenshots for Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and Final Fantasy Agito XIII can all be found after the jump.

First up, Final Fantasy XIII:

And next, the first in-game screens of Agito and Versus:

I’m giddy with anticipation. I can hardly wait for 2009, when the first Final Fantasy XIII game will hit store shelves.

Square Enix President and all around peaceful guy Yoichi Wada recently stated that his company remains neutral in the ever flame-inducing console war.

Fans (or fanboys) of the 360 and PS3 were at each other’s throats yet again recently when supposed long-time PlayStation backer Square Enix announced that their flagship title Final Fantasy XIII would be released for the 360 — in North America, at least.

“We’re now in the age of the multi-platform, but depending on age and territory, users have different tastes. Therefore it’s very difficult to just deal with one company or one hardware platform – in order to offer our product to the vast majority of gamers we need to deal with multiple companies and platforms.n North America Microsoft is doing very well with its hardware, and for that reason it’s a very important partner for us.”

He also states, “We always consider the territory and hardware for titles, and I just want to make sure that we’re neutral about dealing with companies.” This should come as no surprise to anyone, as Square Enix titles have popped up on nearly every system at some point since the glory days of the NES.  So this isn’t a knife in the back to Sony at all — perhaps a bullet in the brain to Kaz Hirai considering the game is still a PS3 exclusive in Japan.

Speaking of Nintendo, when asked about the Wii, Wada said in typical lawyer-over-the-shoulder speak that they didn’t have any plans, but the system was kick-ass and that they’re “ready to offer various types of content to various types of users.”  Basically, if it can make money, they’d be willing to make a game for it.

You can read the full interview over at gameindustry.biz

From Emily: After acquiring the games journalism bug when I coerced him into live-blogging the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix beta with me, Josh has written his first review. I had been planning on covering this myself, but it got to the point where he had put 20 hours in (then 30, 40, etc) so I knew I would never catch up. This works out because he is actually sort of an expert on Final Fantasy Tactics in general, and I am not really that great at turn-based strategy anyhow. Feel free to heckle us both from the comments section.

The original Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my favorite games of all time, and despite being a twice-removed cousin of that original gem, Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is a remorselessly cute and surprisingly deep turn-based strategy game. FFTA2 is solidly in the camp of its GBA predecessor (thus the “A2″ part of the name). It has the same judge system and simplified combat while adding two more races and even more jobs (bringing the total up to something like 44).

The story (which is quite thin compared to the original FFT) starts with a snotty little kid (our hero) getting detention in the library at school, where he opens the namesake grimoire (an old book), gets sucked into Ivalice, and is thrown into the mercenary profession.

Make no mistake; this game is about being a true mercenary, working for whoever pays your salary and barely thinking twice about switching sides in back-to-back missions. In a way, it’s nice that the story isn’t a morality tale (ignoring the part about power corrupting, cause we all know that’s true anyway).

The main story arc is actually a minimal part of the game. There are side quests aplenty — at least 200, the number I completed — and many of them form groups of related missions that tell stories of their own. You collect little Moogle statues, too, one for each 50 missions you complete. Many of the jobs are unlocked through various quests as well.

Dispatching (sending groups of your fighters off to complete quests in the background) is a great way to level and learn abilities, and is much easier now that there is a new visible stat, MVP, that indicates how effective a leader a character will make on dispatch missions.

But what if you fail? Fear not, for this game is endlessly forgiving. Any quest you fail you get another chance at next time around the calendar. Time passes when you move between regions on the world map, and with no random encounters, advancing time is far less tedious (and dangerous) than it was in FFT.

The battles are entertaining. The range of attacks, spells, and techniques at your disposal is vast, and the 2.5d isometric animation is top-notch. It’s not quite as pretty as the original FFT (and you can’t rotate the map) but it moves more quickly and is easier to follow since actions are always carried out immediately.

Sometimes I miss the deeper system in the original, where the target of your spell could move out of the way before it went off, but then I remember how, as a relatively pathetic gamer, I enjoy not being repeatedly humiliated by my toys. Make no mistake, this game is not hardcore, but it is fun.

The judge system can be infuriating, though. It places arbitrary restrictions on each battle, prohibiting things like “dealing <20 damage,” various elemental attacks, “harming the weak,” and even reaction abilities (automatic counterattacks).

Why obey the judge? While under the judge’s protection, you get a “clan ability” bonus that can increase your speed, power, luck, or grant other benefits. You can also resurrect KOed characters — if you’ve violated the Judge’s rules your dead guys are dead until the battle is over. You also get bonus loot if you haven’t pissed off the judge by the time you win the mission.

But what good is loot? Let me tell you about loot. Loot is for crafting. Loot is how you make 90% of the 300+ weapons, shields, and accessories that turn your cute little Moogles into raging tanks of destructive power. (The level cap was raised from 50 to 99, so those tanks can really rage.) Items are divided into 94 categories (with marginally helpful names like “Vermillion Vestments”, “Gift of Stone”, or “Night’s Embrace”) and five ranks (A thru E).

Unfortunately the crafting system is a cruel mistress, forcing you to blindly send your materials to the bazaar in the hopes that a great item (like the Materia blade, granting the Ultima Sword ability) will become available, and not something like Ensanguined Shield, a shield that actually makes you more vulnerable to fire. Both are ranked “A” so you have to be careful.

Or would have to, if I hadn’t done all the hard work for you in the form of this handy spreadsheet (XLS, HTML), which lets you know how to make a kinky Rubber Suit for your female warriors to protect them from lightening.

Having a reference is especially helpful for Ninja-lovers out there as there is no way to learn four Thief abilities (the prerequisite for becoming a Ninja) without crafting at least one item that grants a thief ability. Cinqueda, a rank C knife from Smallswords crafted from Damascus, a Spiral Incisor, and a Kalos bloom is a good choice since it grants Loot Lv. 4, a great way to collect rare loot to craft even more goodies.

There is a mini-game Auction system that is a multi-round silent auction whose explanation in terms of story makes no sense at all. Why spend collective experience called clan points to enter and win auctions, just to gain control (in name only) of geographic areas and have random citizens give you generally worthless junk? Nonetheless, the auctions are an entertaining diversion. Win all the auctions in a region to be declared “champions for life” and start playing auctions for items instead of prestige.

The format of this game lends itself so well to the DS’s instant sleep, instant awake, über-portable system that I kept it on my desk at work, playing a round or two while my code compiled. Of course, I also played it in the morning when I woke up, which sometimes made me late for work. I played it before I went to bed, which sometimes made getting up so I could play before being late for work more difficult.

I played it in the bathroom. I played it waiting for pizza at Seranno’s. I played it while eating lunch. I played it while eating dinner. I played this game for eighty hours (about 20% of my waking life since getting a copy) and was still kind of sad when I made it to the (admittedly anticlimactic) ending. The last time I was this obsessed with a game, I was playing Bioshock.

This game is by no means for everyone, but if you have a taste for a cute version of Ivalice, and love a little light, turn-based-strategy you can pull out of your pocket to play while waiting for the elevator, this game is for you.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.