FF12’s Awesome Cast: The Pirates

If the kids are the foundation of Final Fantasy XII, and the nobles are the driving force behind its plot, I think it’s certainly fair to say that the sky pirates are its heart and soul. Balthier and Fran are, unquestioningly, the most memorable PCs in the game.

Fantasy writing — and JRPGs in particular […]

FF12’s Awesome Cast: The Nobles

The first thing a fantasy story does is belch out a bunch of nonsense words at you. These nonsense words are supposedly the names of places, important characters, groups of people, concepts or ideas… but you won’t remember any of them because a stream of nonsense words doesn’t mean anything without context. So when the […]

How to get the Zodiac Spear (in fifteen easy steps!)

Look up on GameFAQs which arbitrarily-placed treasures to avoid. Play Final Fantasy XII for about 30 hours. Figure out enough of the medicine-hunting sidequest in the Estersand to get across the river and into Mosphoran Highwaste. Kill King Bomb. (This is the easy part!) Run through like nine maps’ worth of unkillable monsters who […]

FF12’s Awesome Cast: The Kids

Among the harshest criticisms lobbed at Final Fantasy XII is the alleged “pointlessness” of Vaan and Penelo. The argument goes that a pair of common street urchins don’t have much place in a story about high magicks, the clashing of gods and men, twisted political machinations and displaced princesses. There is, in fact, quite a […]

Nihopalaoa

Sony finally got their act together and re-launched PSN, so I was able to log in and push the magic button I needed to push in order to gain access to Portal 2 on my PC. That’s good! Now I just need to figure out which of the dozen or so PS3 refugees I’m going […]