Faster, Meaner, Weirder. Bloodborne owns and its combat advancements over the other souls games are fresh and exciting, but unfortunately the difficulty and encounter design as well as the Fucking blood vials get in the way of me fully and completely falling in love with this thing. Bloodborne brought my piss to a boil more than any other entry in the series I think, but it also delighted me in some pretty huge ways, especially toward the end. It's fantastic, not overrated by any means, but ultimately not an all-time favorite.

Someone has already taken out an iDroid device and called for a chopper, and then, when I'm not really listening, watching instead someone who looks remarkably like Ocelot field-stripping a pistol, someone asks, simply, not in relation to anything, "Why?" and though I'm very proud that I have cold blood and that I can keep my nerve and do what I'm supposed to do, I catch something, then realize it: Why? and automatically answering, out of the blue, for no reason, just opening my mouth, words coming out, summarizing for the Diamond Dogs: "Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I'm fifty-two for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself at Mother Base, maybe anywhere, in 1984 and how soldiers, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Venom Snake means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh..." and this is followed by a sigh, then a drag on my e-cigar and another sigh, and above one of the doors leading to the interior of the Command Platform is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the door’s color are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.

It's honestly staggering that Final Fantasy XII is as good as it is when you consider its famously troubled development. This is a game with one of the most brilliant RPG gameplay systems in all creation, a semi-automated battle system where the bulk of the consideration happens before the battle. The perfect midpoint of tactics and action RPGs, with one of the most addictive progression loops I've ever come across. All of this collides together and sings in beautiful concert when you consider the vast open fields and intricate dungeons that this team has designed for you. Forget Final Fantasies X, XIII and XV, THIS is what we call fucking vast. Gliding across frontiers, trudging in catacombs, I'm not sure I've ever felt more genuinely immersed in an RPG. Nocturne comes to mind but slips in dungeon design ever so slightly.

All of this! And then you consider Ivalice. How exactly did we forget to design towns and cities in this genre? It was clearly once there, this game is proof that a world can feel lived in and populated, but as budgets balloon and resolutions multiply, we continue to lose the soul of a Place in these games. Kamurocho in the Yakuza/Like A Dragon games, that's the last great JRPG town. This game has like at least 5 cities that feel huge and memorable. A modern marvel. I've spoken about Hiroyuki Ito but I haven't mentioned that this game was once helmed by Yasumi Matsuno. He created Ivalice after all, and I think even at the beginning of the game you can feel that exact same voice ring out in the story. After some internal reshuffling, Matsuno cited health problems and promptly left the Final Fantasy XII team. This is something I knew going in, I was bracing myself for the story dropoff, though hopefully not quite as cavernous as Vagrant Story's more vacant chapters.

Color me surprised then, when I found out that the story still comes away rock solid. It's maybe not quite as brilliant as Final Fantasy Tactics or as thought-provoking as Vagrant Story, but Final Fantasy XII does manage to retain that soul. People point to the characters being relative strangers as a weakness, I found it beautiful. That we could have 6 people bound by hasty circumstance, come together for the good of their homeland. People complain that there isn't a strong main character, I find that an utterly fascinating aspect of the story. It's clearly not what was intended, in early drafts it was clear that Basch was meant to be the protagonist of the game. But god, just how cool is it that we have three duos of characters to latch onto. Vaan and Penelo, the little fish in a big ocean. Gateways. Balthier and Fran, the cool, aloof, free sky pirates. Aspirations. Ashe and Basch, tragic victims learning to forgive. Heroes. This is well rounded! The game makes you care! It just doesn't throw 15 hours of cutscenes and constant dialogue at you to make it work. Final Fantasy XII trusts you to invest with your gameplay. Play the Roles. People, either jokingly or dismissively, say the game cribs everything from Star Wars. Sure yeah, Gabranth is Darth Vader. However, in every way that it is Star Wars it is also Lord of the Rings, Godzilla, AKIRA, and allegory to the occupation of Japan in the 1940s and 50s.

Final Fantasy XII. I love it. Completely and utterly. I'll be back.

His custom playlist sprang to life in his ear "city pop hits", nostalgia for a life he had never had, a life that wasn't very good anyway; the future spiralled out before him, a rote, ruinous world, routine until fated death- feared and awaited in equal measure. He took a long smoothe draw of his e-cigar and watched his reflection on the world as it slipped past the window. The closest stop to his target still necessitated a long walk under the baking sun, depending on the day and mood his opinion of the trek varied- sometimes it was pleasant and meditative, other times it was simply dull. He had arrived at his target, He was supposed to be the Big Boss of this operation, that's what it said in the mirror, but he knew he was just the same as everyone else, only he had more paperwork at the end of the day.
"Welcome to McDonnell's, can I take your order?"