Hi! What?

I know, I said that twice. I guess my problem is that it's hard to type coherent sentences while trying to maintain a "What the fuck?" sneer after playing Final Fantasy X-2. And that was two days ago, so... hi! What?

Okay, my brain's starting to catch up to the nonsense I've seen. For all of you who don't know, Final Fantasy is an RPG series, which is short for Role Playing Game. Unlike most others, FF (Final Fantasy) decided that most gamers don't care about certain things about RPGs. Listen, I guess I like some RPGs, and I gotta say that the FF series wins my award for the "best stories in the history of video games". Sadly, this is an award equivalent to "the healthiest person in the history of scurvy" or "the best looking liver spot on an old woman's ass!" What I like best, is that Final Fantasy RPGs are the only ones that don't make me feel like I'm the sort of person who wants to rimjob a hobbit, and it eliminates a lot of the needless crap I hate about RPGs. For instance...

- The Charisma Rating
Some RPGs give you a "charisma" stat. Unless I missed the "Get head from the barmaid" mini-game in Dragon Warrior 2 (and believe me, the fat kid in my 3^rd grade class searched hard for it), I don't know how the fuck charisma helps me use my +2 Icebrand Hammer to defeat the dark elf of Eldarod, or whatever Lord of the Rings ripoff these game designer assholes whipped up.

- That Dice Equation Nonsense
Wow! My sword hits for 2d5r3 damage?! Holy fuck! That's better than the 32x5j4 spear I got in the Cave of Esmerelda's Panties! Jesus, why do these weapons have names like obsessed chat room teenagers' acronyms? I mean, OMFG, LOL! JK! A/S/L? (Those last three describe the damage done by the Elvish Cheese Grater of Possai.)

- THAC0
THAC0 is the single reason I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons when I was offered it at the tender age of thirteen. I heard THAC0 means "To Hit Armor Class Zero", but it could also mean "Toasters Have Attractive Cohorts! Zero!" for all I know. By the time I got to that part of my tax return/character sheet, I decided that the mystical world of D&D was too much like CPA training to bother. And speaking of CPAs, AFAIK, RTFM, JK! LOL! Seriously, A/S/L?

- That Leveling Up Shit
Stupid.

- That "Oh! I found a treasure chest in cave, randomly!" Shit
Dumb.

- That "I'm as healthy as I am at 1 HP as I am at 500 HP" Shit
Crap. And why the fuck does HP stand for Hit Points? That doesn't even make sense!

Final Fantasy took all that and said, "Hey, broheim! You ready to put some extreme in your role-playing? Well spark this shit up, motherfuckers! It's intense and extreme, and it's the FINAL MOTHERFUCKING FANTASY!!! FUCK!!!"

I don't know why Hironobu Sakaguchi cursed so much, nor why Microsoft Word decided that "Hironobu" could pass spellcheck, but not "Sakaguchi", but regardless (really, try it in Word - it's weird), the game designers dropped 10% of the boring parts of RPGs, and made something rather fun to play.

Then they made a sequel, which I thought kind of made the "Final" part of "Final Fantasy" invalid, but it was really Squaresoft's way of saying: "YO, BITCH! YOU THINK YOUR CANDY ASS WAS DONE WITH THE FANTASY? WELL, PULL THAT CHICKEN WING OUT YA MOUTH, TUBSY! YOU THOUGHT THAT LAST ONE WAS THE FINAL ONE, JUST BECAUSE WE TITLED IT THAT?! FUCK THAT SHIT, BIZNOTTICHGUGGENHEIM! IT'S TIME TO DIE, CAUSE HERE'S FINAL FANTASY TWO!!!! DRINK MOUNTAIN DEW WHEN YOU SKYSURF, YOU FUCKS!"

Actually, if you'll allow me, I'd like to summarize the entire series. Or most of it, boredom permitting.

	Final Fantasy Elfy characters finish the quest! Drink, dark mage! Drink!
	Final Fantasy II Great story! But my main character's name is Cecil! When your name is Cecil, you might as well append every sentence with, "-and I look fabulous!" Like, "Oh no, I'm in the Cave of the Antlion - and I look fabulous!"
	Final Fantasy III Squaresoft designer: "You know what, fellow game designers? The yellow birds you ride like a horse in the last game wasn't weird enough! We need white cat people with balls on their heads!"
	Final Fantasy VII Cloud: "My sword is really big!" Sephiroth: "And my sword is really long!" Cloud: "Let's make out!" (Yo, by the way, why does "Final Fantasy 7" in a google images search bring up nudity? Come on people! They're not real!)
	Final Fantasy VIII Squall: "Hi, like Cloud from the last game, I am full of angst and am named after weather."
	Final Fantasy IX The good news? No more phallic swords! The bad news? The graphics are all fucking cartoony again!
	Final Fantasy X Who ordered an underwater version of soccer with their last Final Fantasy? No one? Well, here it is anyway, consumer whores!
	Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within This movie is the suckiest thing that I have ever experienced in my life. Next to that time I played "Super Mario Bros. in Blowjob Land ". I don't know what Nintendo was thinking there.
	Final Fantasy XI "Gee, being an Everquest geek, and an anime geek is too much work! I really need something that combines the two! Oops, time to fuck my sister with an octopus!" Oh yeah, and this game costs $5 a month. Yeah, I might pay that. If I had a lesion on my brain.

And now we have Final Fantasy X-2. I'm going to say everything good I have to say about this game here.

1. The graphics, voice acting, etc. from the last one are back and are just as awesome.
2. There are an incredible amount of minigames!
3. I really like the updated battle system!

Now, for the part I don't like: Almost everything else!

So, don't worry, since I'll keep this thing spoiler free, but at the end of the last Final Fantasy, Frodo drops the ring into that lava, Bruce Willis is a ghost, and Kevin Spacey is Kaizer Soze. Oh yeah, and the main character dies, but not really.

It's a pretty common theme in the latest Final Fantasies, actually. I like the fact the designers treated me like an adult and gave me sad endings, but got sort of confused, since they did things like completely reverse the bad endings to give me sort of somewhat good endings. Emphasis on "sort of somewhat". For example: (Oh, fine, Spoiler Alert... whatever)

At the end of Final Fantasy 7, we see the once mechanized human world overgrown with vegetation, as if Mother Earth has rejected the humans that were hurting her, and took shit over. Then the FF designers decided to make a straight to DVD movie called "Advent Children" which star the main character and villain from the game, so I guess that overgrown world without humans bit wasn't true, or won't happen for some time later. Hi! What?

At the end of FF8, gasp in sad horror since Squall is lost in the void of time, forever! Except on the ship at the end! But the camcorder of everyone partying ran out of batteries before he can be filmed! Did the love of his life, Rinoa, just dream him? Or did his memory of his friends save him?! Speaking of ships, I think the cheap, transparent "Leave it up to the player's interpretation because just killing off the hero would have made people sad!" ship is casting off soon!

FF10: Tidus, the hero, was never really real to begin with! And his existence ends when the dreams of the Fayth wake up!... I guess. And he's reborn in water after the credits! Hi! What?

And then, the FF designers decide to make a sequel. But unlike the other nine sequels they made, this one contains characters from the previous story. So it's an actual sequel. And that's why they named it Final Fantasy Ten-Two! Because it's part two of ten! In the normal world, this would be a weird thing called "FINAL FANTASY ELEVEN, YOU DIPSHITS", but in the world of nonsense which we live in, it's 10-2.

Okay, so FFX ends when the main character kinda sorta dies, and is kinda sorta reborn. Whatever, cool. I can deal. Now when FFX2 starts, the love of his life, Yuna, is onstage at a big concert, and singing a song worthy of the Spice Girls (okay, except I can listen to it without stabbing my ears blood red with a corkscrew). The background goes 70's-Charlie-Angel-kind-of color scheme, and it announces "Yuna!" Only a question mark arises, which is the game design equivalent of a man beating you with a hammer, screaming "But is that *really* Yuna? But is that *really* Yuna?" over and over.

(For those of you wondering, it's not.)

Rikku, a girl from the last game says "Y.R.P. in position. Get ready, girls." into an earpiece, and is given a similar introduction. At this point, I was like, "What's with the 70's Charlie's Angels kind of intro? Wasn't the prequel dark, brooding, and" - but my mental monologue was interrupted by the introduction of the third girl, Paine, who kicked - what I suppose was - a security guard's ass.

This is LeBlanc. I'm going to mention her in a minute.

Paine and Rikku get on stage and attack the fake Yuna, who runs off, and eventually reveals herself to be the evil LeBlanc! A character whose designer asked the question, "Why does cleavage have to end?" And simultaneously answered the questions, "What kind of villains can twelve year olds masturbate to?" and "What time to I get to fuck my sister with an octopus?"

When the three of you (the real Yuna, Rikku and Paine) unite, you're shown them with the caption "Y.R.P." with that same Charlie's Angels kind of intro. If I were Joan Rivers, I would pantomime putting my finger down my throat at this. But then again, if I were Joan Rivers, I would be criticizing other peoples' dresses while scratching my dry, leathery vagina.

Okay, back to the game. Later, Yuna is riding on a jet powered airship, seeking out spheres. Spheres are - in the FFX world - video recordings. So she's a singer seeking out video recordings, which makes her a combination of Destiny's Child and Bob Saget. Wait, did I mention in the last game she was kind of a holy priestess, so this tape-seeking pop singer thing doesn't make sense? No? Well, I guess I did now.

One of the sphere recordings is of a silhouette and a voice of a man who looks suspiciously like her lost love, Tidus. Let me correct that. One of the recordings is OBVIOUS TO ANYONE WITH WORKING EYES AND EARS a recording of the silhouette and voice of her lost love, Tidus. Yuna isn't sure (because she's a moron), but decides become a sphere hunter, so she can hunt down spheres across the world to make sure. Since, you know, simply looking for Tidus would actually make sense. Whatever.

Sphere hunting, as it's called, is apparently a popular sport, and many rival teams compete in it, as the game implies. But by "many", I guess they mean one LeBlanc and her stupid minions follow you throughout the game, and your job is to beat them to the spheres! Why? Because this is ridiculous nonsense!

Earlier, I mentioned that I like the battle system in the game. And I do, except for one particularly silly aspect: The Garment Grid! See, you play as all women in this incarnation of FF, so of course, you have to play dress up, too. Each character's abilities are determined by what dress they're wearing, and which dresses you can wear are (brace yourself for this) are determined by the way you place Dressspheres on your Garment Grid.

Wow. I am stunned. Garment Grid? Dressspheres? How long before Tecmo rips this off with Lingerie Spheres? How long before I rip my hair out before deciding whether the Warrior Dress is better than the White Mage Dress? Er, Hi! What?

Lemme get serious for a sec. The Garment Grid thing, while fluff, actually does add a good dimension to the gameplay. The battles are so intense and rigorous, that it keeps you on your toes. It's hard to make good decisions at times, so you have to make, "Good for the time being" decisions, and I have to admit, Square really did a good job keeping the pace intense, so that even something as ridiculous as changing my characters' evening gowns managed to be rather thrill packed.

In other words, it's cool that this RPG, which has rather slowly paced brethren, sped things up, because it's less about well thought out strategy, and more about quick thinking on your feet. Very cool, Square-Enix. My congrats.

Of course, sadly, this leads to a train of thought on the order of, "Oh shit! I gotta make Paine put on her Songstress dress, so I can quickly cast the Darkness dance on this Marboro, before Yuna gets her Gun Mage dress on! Fuck, I'm getting attacked by a goblin!" And at that point, you step back in sheer confusion, because this utter nonsense hurts your brain, you drop you Playstation 2 controller and you say, stupidly: "Hi! What?"

I don't know who this woman is, but click her to go back to the main page.