This game… I don’t even know what to classify it as. Can it even be called a game? It feels more like a way of life, if you will. There aren’t that many things you can do in this sandbox title brought to us by the creative mind behind Katamari Damacy, yet it’s so strangely addictive. You stretch. You eat. You grow. You contribute to GIRL’s growth. Yes, helping girl is all you wish to do. No, all We wish to do. For We are not the only BOY out there. It’ll please FAIRY and SUN too, that it will. It pleases Them greatly. And after all, all GIRL wants to do is grow too. With your help, she can reach out to everyone in the universe. Why are We talking like the King of All Cosmos? Anyhoo,  We just described the basis of the game in a nutshell, but if it was too cryptic for your puny mind to analyze, well, read on then.

This is BOY. He is pleasing to Our eyes.

As BOY, your mission in life is to stretch and grow. As you stretch, the amount by which you stretch is added to a meter. Simple, yes? You can also eat the inhabitants of the maps you visit, which make you grow even more. Eat, Stretch, Grow. The more you do this, the more GIRL grows. You wish to please GIRL, don’t you? She’s counting on you to help her grow. She wants to connect all the planets in the universe after all. And she can only grow depending on how much BOY grows. Of course, you aren’t the only BOY in the world. At the time We write this, there are 23,768 BOYs on Earth, all doing their best to help GIRL grow. It’s a cummulative effort, you see. Competition between the BOYs to see who can please GIRL the most. There’s even rankings and the links to display which BOY has pleased GIRL the most. At the time, We are only rank #4625 , but that will change soon enough.

This is GIRL. We think she is very lovely. FAIRY thinks so too.

Truly, this game can be very perplexing. It has confused Us on quite the number of occasions. But We will keep playing this, for you see, right now, GIRL wishes to reach the Moon. While she’s only 321,350,131 meters long right now, she will soon reach her goal, and then, soon enough, We will help her reach the next planet, and then the next one, and the next one. It’s a never ending struggle to please GIRL. This BOY will certainly do his very best.

This is... the very essence of Katama- Noby Noby Boy. Yes.

While the controls feel very Katamri-ish, this is clearly not the same game. You move BOY’s head with the left analog stick, and BOY’s rear end with the right analog stick. You press L2 to eat, and tap it to make BOY’s head jump, and hold it to make BOY’s head resist movement and stand in place. R2 does the same things, only with the rear end. Of course, if you eat with BOY’s head, you can imagine what his rear end does. You stretch by pulling BOY’s two parts in opposite directions, and stretch furter by eating, which causes you to grow in size. All camera controls are handled with R1 and L1, and while they take a while to get used to, work spendidly once mastered.

y halo thar butt

We do believe We have gone on enough about this charming title. After all, We need to go and help GIRL grow to reach the Moon. If there are other BOYs out there reading this, why are you not out there helping GIRL as well? Stop wasting your time online and get to it. We are most displeased with you.

In this day and gaming generation, it actually takes a lot of work and polish for me to be very impressed by a game within just an hour or two of playing. So recently, I’ve been taking a trip down nostalgia lane, revisiting old console games to look for that joy and excitement that I used to find over sitting down and playing games non-stop, which is something I rarely do nowadays unless I’m in “in the zone”, if you will. On one of these trips (a.k.a. heading over to my local Play N’ Trade to scoop up some retro titles), I saw a complete copy of FFV Advance (Box, Manual and Game) just sitting there. Now I call myself a Final Fantasy fanboy all I want, but the truth is, there are a few of the main titles in the series that I’ve yet to beat, or play much of at all, V being one of them. Going on a gut instinct, I sacrificed some other $5 SNES games to pick up FFVA, and so far, it’s been a very good $20 investment.

The one FF title I hadn't really been interested about before. I regret not picking it up sooner.

FFV picks up the Job system back from FFIII, but gives a definitive cast of characters rather than the generic Onion knights from the previous game. I tend to like that more in RPGs rather than having a “create a character” scheme because while you may or may not like the character the developers give you, it allows for actual character development in games, which usually improves the plot quite a bit. Anyway, the game introduces a young Freelancer called Bartz, who while randomly traveling with his chocobo partner “Boko”, discovers a meteorite impact site, next to which is a young lady, Leena and an old man, Galuf. Shortly afterwards they meet a pirate, Faris, and they all set off to discover what is causing the elemental Crystals, the central theme for nearly every pre-VII game.

The spritework is average FF fare, but still looking good. The text is also easy to read.

Another thing I’d like to add about this specific gem’s gameplay is that unlike FFIII, which is a game I liked, but disliked because of this very reason, you don’t have to worry about your stats changing depending on what Job you’re using as you level up. A character’s core stats are fixed, and will change along with their HP and MP depending on what Job said character has equipped at the moment. This way, you can focus on raising those Job levels just so you can have your characters multi-task as much as possible, without compromising your stats in the process. Like I mentioned before, this is one aspect I REALLY disliked about FFIII, since unless you could hold out until getting the Monk job and spent a lot of time just gridning as a Monk, it would be impossible for a character to even come close to getting 9999 HP.

Now, while I’ve only gotten marginally far into the game thus far, and haven’t even caught a glimpse of the villain in this game yet, I do believe I’ll be as entertained by it as I have been so far. I think part of the reasoning for that is the fact that I’m constantly changing the way I travel through the world, what with starting out using a Chocobo, carrying on on foot, using a boat, ditching the boat for a Wyvern, and now commandeering a new vessel, from what I can assume now that I’ve ditched the Wyvern too. I’ve also gotten a few laughs from the different main characters cracking jokes here and there.

My official rating of the game may vary later on, but for now?

I give this game a solid A. Now I should get to work on my Unfinished games and my Dissidia: Final Fantasy review…