Monday Gaming Diary: I Love Strategy Guides Way Too Much

Goddamn timer.

My dedication to strategy guides occasionally goes beyond the prudent call for playing something that I will like or for something that is even good. Right now I’m playing something I absolutely hate but wanted to like, and it hurts me so much that I hate it that I literally have to talk myself into playing it instead of hunting down all of the collectibles in The LEGO Movie Videogame. I am sadly talking about Lightning Returns – Final Fantasy XIII.

After my rage from finishing Final Fantasy XIII-2, I knew the only way I would play the last game (this will be the last game, right?) would be for the sake of strategy guides. Despite how much I despised where the story went in FFXIII-2, I had hopes that the finale would be better. Not sure how, but the story actually got worse.

After watching the intro sequence that left me utterly confused, I opened up the game’s Datalog to fill in the blanks, as I’ve always had to do with FFXIII games. My heart sank. My head bowed. I wanted to drop the controller. Instead, I found myself hoping things would improve. Somehow the story steadily worsened, and I don’t think it’s going to climb the other direction before this travesty is over.

It doesn’t help that I don’t like the gameplay either. I thought Square Enix perfected the paradigm party system in FFXIII-2, but they’ve had to twerk it again to something even more confusing with some FFX-2 flair. On top of that, there’s a timer, one of the three things I loathe in video games.

As I continue to play, all I feel is pity for the poor strategy guide writers who had to pour in hours in the name of strategy guides. I genuinely hope they liked it to ease the pain at least a little.

At least the strategy guide so far is fantastic. It may help prevent me from destroying the world in the game on purpose.