Well, I have to admit I got quite excited about this when I first heard news of its release. The first true Final Fantasy sequel, and it was a sequel to my favorite FF to date – Final Fantasy X. Its many new features look promising, yet still looked more like a mini-game than a game with an actual plot. Still, I looked past that factor…until I played it.

The start is quite, well, embarassing. Most people refer to it as Charelie’s Angels, and I have to agree. What seemed to bother me the most was the fact it had barely any storyline path, you could do what you wanted – and miss scenes if you didn’t feel like playing through a multitude of mini-games. I’d have to say atleast half of the entire game is mini-games and optional scenes, and at least a third of the playtime is taken by those. I guess that had to be done, in order to see the multiple endings. The game really isn’t haven’t-played-prequel safe.

Then again, most of the optional scenes were quite fun, and could sometimes be overly hillarious – or even downright corny.It felt like I was just pushing my way through the game just to say “I got 100%!”. For example, you usually play mini-games for the rewards, not for the actual enjoyment of them. This whole game was like that – and I’d have to say a waste of my 50 hours gameplay (35 of which were optional).

The features were nice though, I expecially enjoyed the battle system and dresspheres. What I didn’t like was the only thing you could choose to equip was accessories, all the weapons were pre-defined depending on what dressphere you were wearing. Also having an airship in the first of the game wasn’t so fun, as it opened access to every location – allowing the players to stumble where ever they want.

There is one thing they did quite well - the graphics. Even in regular gameplay I was amazed at the detail put into the character designs. I noticed a lot of shadowing which was a little less obvious in FFX. This game seemed to have a lot of rich colors, and I found they used that quite well. The scenery and rich-color used made the areas even more fun to explore - but after going to a certain place more then 5 times, it didn't help at all.