After what had to be my worst performing experience ever, the boy showed up with this in hand, three days after release. Better yet, it was the pretty edition with the metal casing and the bonus DVD and the 300+ page strategy guide and the art book.

It’s a little different from the other FF games – it’s being very careful to spread the relevant stories around all of the characters, and to give those characters flaws. The supposed protagonist, though, of course, an angsty late-teens boy, appears to have decided to grow up a little earlier this time around, and isn’t hogging the screen. There is, of course, the hot, sexy, utterly unattainable woman (and this time, she has the Playboy bunny ears to prove it), but despite her appearances, they’re doing a good job so far of allowing for romance budding out of friendship without having it be the center of things.

I wasn’t sure I was going to like the new battle system, with the automation and the speediness and all, based on playing the demo disc that came with Dragon Quest VIII, but now I’m in love. Being able to tailor actions and priorities in such a nuanced manner … now, if I could only figure out how to make it so that my thief character spends his first turn stealing from the nearest enemy, then joins in the fray to defeat that one before turning to another potential victim.