I think the my days of having the patience to sit through a 40 hour video game are through.
It took me almost 5 months to put in the 45 hours needed to finish Final Fantasy 13, with a lot of it feeling like an obligation to my sometimes misguided principle to always finish what i start. That’s not to say there weren’t some great moments in the experience, but by and large everything the Final Fantasy franchise stands for has become stale.
Final Fantasy 13 tries so very hard to advance the aging Japanese RPG genre and actually does succeed in doing so on some levels. I, for one, am actually glad they got rid of towns in this game. When you boil it down, the only thing towns are good for are a) buying items and equipment and b) fulfilling a required plot/character interaction in order to advance the storyline. Getting rid of them streamlines the gameplay. It’s much more convenient to be able to buy items at any save point instead of hunting for several buildings in a town to complete your shopping list.