Onto disc 3 of Final Fantasy XIII!

Not a lot of updates during the week, because I spent it playing FFXIII to try and get to the fabled "open" area, and a little bit of Bastion. I haven't written much about Bastion, but it's another game that I waited to play despite loads of good reviews-- both professional and word of mouth from real people. It's great. I will write up more about it sometime, I know at least one person who reads this was considering picking it up during some sale, and I hadn't played it enough to really give him an answer on it. But, since that's only maybe 2 or 3 hours of the last week, let me get to FFXIII.

I finished all of disc 2 in the past week, a disc that (much like disc 1) was extremely linear and story-based. I know that's been a major complaint of this game, but I don't really mind it. Yes, it's a series of hallways that I fight on. I know that it's sort of restricting without an overworld map to tie the linear dungeons together, but at the same time I didn't really have to do any real grinding like I would have to in most JRPGs. Really, up until the end of the 2nd disc (chapter 10), I didn't even have too many hard fights. Fights that had gimmicks, sure (especially to earn the summons), but nothing that required me to go out and kill random enemies for hours. I suppose in some ways that I just played through 2 discs of tutorial to get to where I am now, but it was a pretty tutorial that actually did the job-- I feel really comfortable with the game at this point.

Everyone said "wait until about 30 hours in, then it opens up". This has actually been pretty true, I'm at 29 hours and 2 minutes, and I'm at the part that opens up. Story-wise, it feels a little out of place-- but it's already my favorite part of the game. It's a large over-world map section, with respawning monsters that I can see, and treasures over the map that you need to fight guys for, Missions you pick up to kill special spawns, and some giant monsters that wander around that are terrifying in scale to you. It's the best part of FF12, but in one area. I'm not 100% sure exactly how large the map is (I just got to it this morning), but I can see spending another 20 hours of so just in here killing marks for missions and leveling up my guys happily.