I got "Final Fantasy XII" for Christmas! (I also got a book by Alton Brown, but that'll be a different entry. ) Having played it for just under two hours, I haven't really gotten far enough in to form a binding opinion, but I'm fairly confident in saying that it's significantly less-goofy than "Final Fantasy X," and that's even WITH a blonde male lead running around in a half-shirt.

Which doesn't say as much about "XII" as it does about "X."

I wasn't with the Final Fantasy series from the beginning -- I joined, along with most of my fellow posers, when Final Fantasy VII hit for the original Playstation. THAT was a good game, with a lousy ending -- though if you take the recently-released CG feature 'Advent Children' as a proper epilogue, then it evens out.

But, wow -- hard to describe the feelings I had the first time I played through "Final Fantasy VII." For one thing, it was almost a decade ago, and I've forgotten most of them. However, I DO remember being incredibly impressed with the FMV sequences, having only recently gotten over the shock of hearing in-game digital vocals that didn't consist of the sentence 'Wise fwom your gwave' recorded at a bitrate of .5 and played back through a dead frog.

The story was something else, too -- mainly in that it actually had one. It got floofy and Japanesey as it went on, true, but it was engaging, and an amazing change of pace from the mass of the gaming world at that time where characterization was largely established by a character's clothing color, and whether he punched or shot when given opportunity.

Sadly, that's still just about where we stand on video game character depth -- which is why I get the FF games when they hit, regardless of how Japanesey they get, or even if their hero is a whiny, feathery-haired chicken-boy in short pants. Which, heaven help us, it often is.

Anyways, I'll talk more on FFXII later. I'll bet it'll be very entertaining.