:B: - Final Fantasy XIII-2

I didn't quite get to the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2. It's a shame, truly, because my journey through the game was almost definitely the most fun I've had with a JRPG in a long time. However, there's a new contender for 'most frustrating last boss ever', at least in my eyes. Spoilers, obviously.

The final boss comes a bit out of nowhere. It's three Bahamuts, two of which are less powerful and a third one with more than a million HP. You need to beat the first two before being able to fight the third, and they regenerate fairly often. I was using a strategy I found on the internet which was working pretty well for me.

You have to stay on your toes during the battle to quickly swap Paradigms so you take less damage. It's a stressful experience because you can't take your eyes of the screen for even a second, because if you miss them advertising an attack and you don't switch to Sentinel quick enough, it's game over. It was on my third attempt when I quit.

I'm not someone who can sit down and do the same bit over and over. The third time, I was 30 minutes into the battle and the main Bahamut was almost down to half HP. I was keeping my HP up religiously and one of the lesser Bahamuts regenerated back into battle. He used an attack I'd survived many times already but I went to swap to Sentinel anyway. I wasn't quick enough, and that attack that shouldn't have killed 3 fully-healed characters, did.

I haven't lost so much good will to a game so quickly in a long time. I loved the journey, truly I did. I like the battles, I love the stat-balancing, I love finding fragments and I even thought the story was pretty good. But I just can't deal with final bosses that take an age to beat and have attacks that kill you in one hit. I really, really can't. Give him loads of HP, fine. Give him super strong attacks, fine. But don't, for the love of god, give him both.

Up until now, this game was a certain 5 stars. But after that battle, I just can't bring myself to because I'm too bitter. 4/5 stars.

New - Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Metal Gear Solid HD Collection

It was a big day for releases on Friday. There were three games I would have happily bought out on the same day; Soul Calibur V, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Metal Gear Solid HD Collection.

After reading reviews, I decided against Soul Calibur V. The single-player content has apparently been reduced to very little. I have no desire to play a Soul Calibur where my only offline options are a single Story mode and arcade battles. Where's weapon master mode? Individual stories? Challenge tower? Hell, even that sort-of strategy mode from the third one would have done. I have little to no desire to play against others, especially using my spotty internet, so I gave it a pass.

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on the other hand was always going to be a must-buy. It came out elsewhere back in November and I have no idea why it took them so long to bring it out here, but hey, at least I didn't have to split my time between Skyrim and Metal Gear. I've only played it a little bit but how GOOD is Metal Gear Solid 3? I played it back on the PS2 way back when it came out and it was actually top of my favourite games ever but I forgot how awesome it was. There are bits I didn't even catch back then - like Snake making dick jokes. It's going to be great going back.

Finally, there's Final Fantasy XIII-2. There were a lot of things I hated about XIII. I could go on at length about boring environments, too-lengthy battles, little party customisation and the enormous amounts of exposition that explained nothing. I got halfway through Chapter 7 (about 14 hours) before giving up and trading the original in, and have no regrets about doing so before reaching the end of the 'tutorial'. However, after reading the reviews for XIII-2 and playing the demo, I felt confident that not only had they fixed most everything I hated about the first, and in the process made what was probably going to be everything I like about JRPGs in one game.

And out of what I've played so far, I don't think I'm far wrong. At this early stage of 8 hours in, I'd happily recommend it for full price.