Note 2010.01.07 - First post in 2010 and FFXIII

First post in the year 2010. First of all, thanks for the claps. =)

There are going to be many new things this year and definitely requires me to put more efforts in those things to do a good job. I’m always bad at making new year resolution and even worse at fulfilling them. Goals like good time management, get up early, stop drinking coke…etc, don’t seem to work for me very well. So I’m not going to making any resolution I think, I’m just going to try to do the things that I plan to do like my life depends on it. Borrowing a quote (might not be exact) from Lightning from FFXIII, it’s not a matter of you can or can’t do it, you have to do it.

Now, huge amount of FFXIII spoilers. You are warned. and sorry no videos of the game either cuz my computer kept freezing up when I tried to record it. =_=

first, a fan art of Serah~

I was busy during the Christmas and New Year break playing FFXIII, and just finished it last week. I did make some people concern that I wasn’t sleeping enough hours and just sit in front of my PS3 for the whole day(s). Overall, I spent about 51 hours on FFXIII which is kinda around the normal time it takes me to complete a FF game. Of course, that does not includes getting all the weapons and completing all the mission and quests. I still remember that I spent hours trying to get Titus most powerful sword in FFX, by riding that chocobo across the field in time…those were some good times. I think FFX was the FF game that I spent the most time on because I was trying to collect everything.

Anyways, about FFXIII, of course graphics and music wise there’s not much to say except it’s awesome. I actually like the battle music very much, it’s somehow different than the old battle music but I like it a lot. The thing that bothers me is that you don’t have a airship to drive around with…or maybe I’m missing something =_=? And I don’t like it that the chocobo runs away everytime you get off it…I got a bit tired running back and forth to complete the quests.

Some things about Hope. He started out as a boy that seems a bit cowardly when compared with Vanilla who APPEARS to be very young too. After his mom died he turns into a boy that place all the blame on Snow and tried to revenge. In the beginning of the game, Hope sometimes annoyed me although he does look cute. But after he revenge Snow (and was saved by him) and got some love from his father (who he was not closed to) he turned into a nice little boy that interact with Snow like brothers. I feel that he is an important role (of course all the characters have an important part in the story), after he clears up his troubled mind he started to see hope in their journey. Many of the encouraging lines were said by him later on in the story and in a way, gave them hope that some good will come out of the whole thing.

Lightning and Snow are like the main characters in the game, but I feel that the other characters get more parts in the story XD. Such as the Fang and Vanilla pair; the two girls took up large part of the story XDDD. Hope got lots of air time too, and Sazh also got important part because of the incident between Vanilla and his son. Lightning and Snow are two people that are stubborn in different ways. But without their persistence nothing would get done.

I like the answer Lightning gave Hope when he asked her how could she keep her hope up in the situation they were in and work towards saving her sister. She said it’s not a matter of you can do it or not, it’s you just have to do it. Not doing it is not a choice for her and that’s why she’s so persistent in Hope’s eyes.

As for Snow, in the beginning he kinda annoys me a bit cuz all he would say is ‘Serah said so’. XDDD When the others asked him why going against their given mission and save the city was the correct way, he said because Serah said so. XD;;;;;

Other than the 6 main characters, the character Cid (voiced by Nakamura Yuuichi) also left deep impressions for me too. When I was watching the trailer I thought he is a bad guy. But he actually is a good guy in a way, and his final moments were very cool. He told the solider(Rygdea) that’s working under him (and good looking btw) to kill him when he was looking at the disaster around the city. He said with a very calm tone ‘do it, I will become puppet of Galenth’ (or something similar to that) and Rygdea killed him out of mercy and his request.

quick sketch fanart of Cid

Serah is sweet and cute, but to be honest she doesn’t really represents important point to me in the story except she is the reason that Lightning and Snow won’t take give up as an option. So somehow…I hate to say it but the ending doesn’t really touch me that much compare to some parts in the middle of the story. Or maybe I’m missing something and not seeing the important point that she represents.

The story is a bit confusing at first because of all the nouns like Farushi, Rushi, Parushi/Pulse…etc. but it gets better after a while and things started to make some sense XD. All in all, I love the game and would probably play it again when I got time so I can complete the quests and collect all the items.