Let me start by saying, I don't understand a lot of the flak this game gets. It's no more linear than my favorite game of all time (Final Fantasy X), the story was pretty good and I don't get why people say it's confusing, and the characters were pretty awesome. That being said... I hated this game >_> but not because it was bad necessarily.
If I had to describe my playthrough of this game in one word, that word would be: Struggle. I struggled at the boss that looks like Bulbasaur, I struggled at Sazh's Eidolon, I struggled at Barthandalus, all the way to Orphan (though his second form was a cake walk, tbqh) his first form took me like a week to beat though. Some of the bosses seemed really ridiculously hard to me, having instant death attacks and being able to inflict every status ailment under the sun on every party member at once, but maybe I just suck at this game, since I've heard through the grapevine that it's been beaten with no Crystarium (crazy)
Anyway, if we ignore the fact that I struggled more than Peja Stojakovic in the 2011 NBA Finals, this game is actually pretty cool. I really liked all the characters, which is more than I can say about most Final Fantasies. Oh, and for the record:
Snow > Lightning > Hope > Sazh > Vanille > Fang
That's not to say I don't like Fang, because I really think she's kinda cool. Snow makes a strong case for my 2nd favorite Final Fantasy Character, and Lightning is probably Top 5. Sazh is awesome, but he's kind of a negative nancy, whereas Hope straps the huevos on and becomes a man, so I gave him the nod here.
tl;dr I think this game gets a lot of unwarranted criticism, but I struggled and it seemed really absurdly hard but I probably just suck, and Snow is awesome.
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MZero the extreme
yes i am Yugi i have spike hair and i play card games with ugly monsters on them its time to Duel-ertyu