It appears to be time...

...for my yearly bout of FFX addiction. It usually hits around Christmas, which is why I thought I'd avoided it this year, but no such luck, as it turns out - I am currently up to about six hours of gameplay a day. Which is understandable, considering the fact that it's probably the best movie I've ever clicked my way through. (On a side note, alas for Black Isle Studios and the wonderful Baldur's Gate games. Would that SE had tanked and they had not.)

And now for an embarrassing fandom revelation: I'm one of those horrible people who's never actually made it through to the end. Of course I've got a fairly good idea as to what happens both in X and X-2, thanks to the ( ever so sublte cover of the Square Enix FFX-2 official strategy guide. )

In my defense, my inability to finish FFX was not due so much to lack of motivation as it was to my former television set, whose crappy screen resolution turned about 80% of the kanji in the in-game tutorials (the booklet being a virtually useless source of information on gameplay) into formless white blobs. Imagine trying to work your way through some routine hack-and-slash, let alone face down a boss character, with your only guidance being something along these lines:

While in the midst of battle ****** may ****** to your ******. Press the circle key in order to ****** the ******'s *******, and the square key to ********. If, during battle, your ******** ********s, use the ******* ******* to ********. ******* is a ******** way to ******** ******. But be careful: it is not possible to ******** once the ******** is used.

My newest television is actually new enough to display the kanji properly. Literacy, I'm finding, does wonders for my gaming ability.

これで以上です。