Oui love T&A!

Special thanks to G-Man for the sprite edit!

 You won't have to look hard to find a hardcore RPG fan who's fed up with Squaresoft these days. Fans have various theories as to when and where it really was that the company once known as the "makers of the world's best games" started to slip into Sephiroth-like madness, but by now, even the most optimistic of fans are becoming cynical and bitter.

 I could write a term paper on all the mistakes Squaresoft has made in the last four or so years that have rattled my faith in the competency of gaming companies to its very core (and I get more tempted to with each passing day), but for the sake of us all I shall attempt to stick to this one particular subject: The Final Fantasy X sequel.

 One of the big controversies surrounding the FFX sequel is the mere fact that they're making it. Shouldn't they have left it alone as it was? Well, personally I think they should have stopped the story before they showed that brief post-credits cinema where we see Tidus, who's inexplicably alive and well. If they'd left that part out, the ending would have been perfect, in my opinion. It wouldn't have hurt if they threw in the traditional Final Fantasy epilogue music either. I still can't believe they actually had a Final Fantasy game with that theme, it's one of the greatest themes I've ever heard. But, since they DID include that little post-credits bit, I don't think a sequel would be that bad of an idea.

 The girl you see in the picture next to Chun-Li is the star of the unimaginatively titled Final Fantasy X-2, Yuna, in her new outfit for the Final Fantasy X sequel and wielding her new weapons of choice. You can see more art of her here. Believe me, I wish I was joking. Sweet little Yuna, who wanted to follow in her daddy's footsteps and save the world from the ultimate evil is now packing heat and wearing an outfit that makes Lara Croft look conservative. Not only is she showing off much more butt cheek, but her top now shows off absurd amounts of what we would call cleavage, if she actually had breasts. Seriously, the quality of fan service in showing Yuna's cleavage is comparable to dressing Snow White up as Mai Shiranui. And yet they still did it. And if you think THAT'S bad, wait until you see Rikku's new outfit. I could just cry.

 This has got to be the single most disgusting thing Square has done since... well... since their last game where they cast Mandy Moore as the voice of Aeris and Lance Bass as Sephiroth. While there are a few fans who didn't like FFX, I loved it. I thought it was really a step in the right direction for the series after the atrocity of that WB high school drama we know as Final Fantasy VIII and the freak show that was Final Fantasy IX. The characters were colorful, interesting, and well-cast. The music was great, and although the battle system wasn't used to its full potential by any stretch of the imagination, it was still fun.

 Yuna especially was one of my favorite characters. At first she seemed like a pretty typical naive-white-mage-slash-summoner-love-interest, but when the team was about to face off against Yunalesca and Yuna gave her speach about defeating her sorrow without false hope, I gained a lot of respect for her. Her speech reminded me of Don Quixote, the seemingly crazy old man trying to be a knight, when he sings about "The Impossible Dream." I think it was an excellent defining moment for her. While I never cared for her the same way I cared for previous FF girls like Terra and Aeris, I still liked her, and she really deserves better than this.

 What worries me even more is this: When Square first announced there would be FFX sequels, they said that there would be two games: One starring Yuna, and another starring Rikku. Bear in mind that this was more than half a year after the release of FFX in the USA. Then they started giving previews of FFX-2 and announced that there are actually going to be THREE sequels and Rikku wouldn't be the hero of any of them. I don't think Square has entirely thought this whole thing through, or at least they didn't when they started, and that scares the hell out of me.

 This issue raises another important question Square's diehard fans need to ask themselves: How much of Square's BS are gamers going to put up with before abandoning them altogether? For me, it won't be much longer now.

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