Now that E3 is over, I can get back into the swing of things with reporting on my journey. Having finished off Final Fantasy IX and XI, I had a tough time deciding what to play next but eventually opted to restart Final Fantasy X HD once more. This marks my third attempt at replaying this game, so we shall see if it holds up better this time. Right now it's not looking so good as Stormblood and FFXII The Zodiac Age are coming up soon. I might move this one to the side and play some FFV Advance or some FFX-2 in the meantime to fix my job system cravings while I wait. We shall see.

If you want to catch up on my prior pieces, here's a link to Issue 21 from two weeks ago.

Final Fantasy X HD (Vita)

Final Fantasy X is one of the few games in the series that I went into blind. I knew it was coming out, but I had gotten out of the habit of reading up on games and was busy with college, so I simply missed all the previews for it. Even though I had been on an unofficial blackout, I had it pre-ordered and got it on launch day. I quickly fell in love with its slower turn-based system, especially since you could easily swap characters in and out of combat right in the heat of action. I'd wanted that for years, so I fought almost every battle in the game making sure all of my characters got a turn. While it took a long time to do this, it helped me get a clearer understanding of each build and gave me the level of development that I wanted for my party.

As I mentioned in the intro, I've since struggled to replay FFX. I cannot tell if it is due to the extraordinary amount of time I spent with it initially or if it's just not as exciting now that I know all of the ins and outs of the game, but it's tough to get over the starting hump. I had thought that the expert sphere grid might help, but nope. This time I've started once again with the normal grid and am going to try to streamline my playthrough as much as possible. I've only played a little here and there over the past few weeks and have just finished the part with Rikku, so it won't be a problem to put this on hold for a bit for other games if need be, but hopefully I'll make real progress and finally finish the HD version this year. Are there any favorites that fans would like to see me focus on if I do a minimal character leveling run? Auron is a must, but I'm open to other suggestions.