Niahak's Place

As you may know, I started playing FFXII 4-5 weeks ago.  Well, I’m finally nearing the end of it – 50+ hours of gameplay so far – and I’m still impressed.

I enjoyed Suikoden V more (obviously, since I beat it in maybe 2 weeks and it’s at least as long) but it’s still a decent game.  Just about the only part that is not good about it is the music.  I like game music to be a bit ambient in places, but it’s just too downplayed to be interesting.  But other than that… the battle system is solid, the story is fairly good (if a bit like Star Wars), characterization is okay, and (perhaps most importantly) Vaan isn’t Tidus (Vaan dresses slightly better and is less whiny).

I think the nicest part of the game is the translation.  The localization team used a good deal of old English grammar and style, which gives the game a feel similar to that of Dragon Quest VIII.  Probably the nicest translation for an FF game I’ve seen so far.

Also remotely related to FFXII, everyone I know is progressing faster than me.  One of my roommates and a friend have already beaten it once and are replaying it to break the game still more, while another roommate started playing it and is almost as far as me.  None of them had started the game 3 weeks ago.  The only reason I’m keeping up with Lord Yuan Shu is because he got fed up with the side-quests and replayed Tactics for most of the past week instead.  The question is, am I just not as into the game as other people?  Am I slow at games (probably not)?  Or has Stepmania slowly crept in and stolen much of the time I would’ve spent playing FFXII?