Results of Ruminations

To be brief, Final Fantasy XV is a great game. Not without its flaws, of course, but it's a video game that deserves to be in the running for the best of the storied franchise's history. (Here I'll give some impressions, but I'm writing this without restraint on spoilers. It's likely a better read after having played. Oh, I will say, though, that you should play the game until you get to the point where you're supposed to get on the ferry to go to Altissia. Then start the movie Kingsglaive . It fits perfectly into the story at that point.) Then again, as I've said before , the Final Fantasy franchise is huge, with nearly 100 entries to date. So the fact that this is a "good" Final Fantasy  game means that it's unusual to be so good. While I would argue that it's not as good as Final Fantasy VII  (and some would through VI  in there, too, which I concede because of popularity, not personal experience), it returns to a lot of tried-and-true...

In 1997, my brother rented the PlayStation game with the largest hype that I had, in my 13 years on the planet, ever heard of. As this was pre-internet (which was there, but so nascent at the time that hardly anyone used it), I didn't have any connection to why people were excited or what made them salivate so much when someone mentioned Final Fantasy VII. My older brother, suckered in by the hype, threw down $4 (I would guess) and picked up a copy from the nearby Hollywood Video (probably; Blockbuster was the other option). I remember him running through the intro, changing the main character's name from "Cloud" to "CloudY" because he was simply fiddling his way through, fought a couple of enemies, and said, "Looks pretty cool." You don't have to watch the entire video, but it goes through those opening scenes which, with the exception of Resident Evil 2  (which came out one year later), is the game that I've played the most--though...