TWO HOURS UNTIL YAKUZA KIWAMI UNLOCKS PLEASE HELP I'M DYING

Hey, listen! It's not going anywhere. I know precisely what you mean (a good friend of mine was like 'WHAT' when she heard I don't even HAVE Nier Automata yet, let alone played it, but I have a couple of JRPGs I have but haven't played, and my girlfriend just got me Vesperia, and - and - )

Whenever I get too much '!!!' I just tell myself they're not going anywhere and it's a treat I'm saving for future tsuper (or Timo!)

The dancing parts are good it's the other idol things that are the problem.

Saejima is a lot of fun, and has the best revelation cutscene

And if Death should come for you, give him a kick too, just for good measure. :)

Nooooo...! The Angel of Death (peace be upon him) is my beloved friend! I look forward to the day when I may see him, again. I hope that, next time, we will have more time for conversation as there is nothing quite like kickin' it with Death.

13's combat was a great evolution of 12's Gambit system - which was great in theory but terrible in practice, at least the way I did it. I was so excited for 12, and so disappointed in it after the fact.

Maybe I played 12 wrong, but I was so good at setting up the Gambit system that my party would defeat 95% of encounters all on their own with no input from me. At that point, I was no longer really playing the game, I was watching the game play itself. It didn't help that combat was excruciatingly slow, with terrible feedback. For example, the final boss fight in 12 took around 30 minutes, and it was a repeating cycle of 4 minutes of me doing nothing and just watching the game play with itself followed by 30 seconds of panic as suddenly my party was half dead and I had no idea what happened or why or what I could possibly do to prevent it. It was an excruciatingly boring battle, though not as boring as fighting any ranged foe that required charging the super slow melee-to-ranged attack.

The story in 12 was actually really good, except the pacing was terrible. Story segments were spread so far apart that I'd completely forget what happened before by the time I got to the next one. That could have been partially my fault, as I wanted to fully explore all the zones and kill all the enemies I encountered - which in retrospect was a mistake as some zones would take hours to fully clear/explore, and have absolutely nothing of interest to show for it. I didn't actually realize that 12 had a good story until I went back and actually read a transcript - the poor pacing and padding between story elements was a real shame.

I hated how the License Board upgrade system was hidden from view and thus either based on luck or on looking up what the board actually is, or how there was no rhyme or reason for selecting one weapon or armor type over another, or how every character ended up with all the same spells and unlocks and any differentiation was forced by me for the sake of differentiation.

I hated the dungeon at the end with 2-3 hours between save points - that was cruel then, and would be unplayable for me now.

But most of all I hated the combat, where I had no idea what was going on or why. I'd get into a boss fight where I'd have to do nothing for 90% of it, and then suddenly the boss would stop taking damage and I'd have no idea why or what I could do about it. The feedback was terrible. Between the maps and the combat, it often felt like playing an MMO all by myself. It took me over 80 hours to finish it, and I was glad to finally be done.

13 was thus a breath of fresh air. The battles were fast, frantic, exciting, and finally fun. Characters had specific roles so it mattered who you had in your party. The modified sphere-grid brought back fond memories of FF X. The early parts that broke up your party were annoying, but really illustrated how important different classes were, and how annoying it was to go without your Commando for example. By the mid game, when you had a full party, I felt like I was elevated from a peon selecting Attack over and over again to a general commanding my troops, telling them what roles to switch to in response to how the battle was going. Battles became a thing of strategy, with up to me to decide on how to finish each battle in the least amount of time.

I loved how accessible the game was. A linear structure meant I didn't have to worry about wandering around lost (I never finished FF 7 because I couldn't figure out how to get to the next spot I had to get to in order to advance the plot). Save points every 20-30 minutes meant that I could get some playing done on a busy schedule, without having to commit hours at a time. Respawning on death right before the fight allowed for challenging boss fights that weren't punishing (we know getting to the boss through trash mobs is easy, so why force us to do it over and over again?). I died more in 13 than in any other FF game, and I loved it. I had fights where I had to change my party composition, change my equipment, sometimes repeatedly. I used more of those specialty defensive items (that normally just gather dust) in 13 than in all the other FF games put together.

13 took me 50 hours to get through, but it felt so much shorter. It felt like a roller-coaster ride, exciting from start to finish. For that, I'm willing to forgive it some annoying characters and a needlessly complicated story (though whoever though that fal'cie, l'cie, and c'ieth - all in one game - was a good idea, should really not be allowed to write anything ever again). 13 was one of my favorite FF games.

Sorry for the long ramble, I just love digging into what works and why in games. :)