Just to give everyone a taste of how truly vast Final Fantasy XIII is, I’m about to enter my 7th hour of playtime and I am still being prompted with battle tutorials and gaining new abilities. It’s almost as if the game hasn’t even started yet. This far into any other game and I would be getting ready to face the final boss.

I’m finally out of the crystallized Lake Bresha and am now at the edge of Cocoon in a forbidden badland where the carcasses of burnt out fal’Cie and scrap metal lie. Progression is still pretty linear at this point, but I can understand why, it’s because there is just so much story to tell here. Sometimes even after watching the 5 cut scenes that happened over a 20 minute gaming session left me wanting more. I kid you not, the storyline is that enticing.

I’ll tell you who I could do without though, Hope. Lookout FF XIII rookies there are about to be some spoilers. Hope is the teen boy whose mother was killed helping Snow fight the last PSICOM Purge. Being a teenage boy and a quite immature one for that matter, he undoubtedly blames Snow for the fate of his mother. I understand why his character is upset, but does he have to be so annoying about it. His main goal is to confront Snow and say, “You killed my mother, you jerk!” Which is all fine and dandy if he would actually get it over with, but instead he constantly stalls and lets Snow go his own way without confronting him. Hope isn’t good for much, he’s not a good fighter, he whines all the time, gets scared easily, and any sort of compassion you felt after his mother’s loss is soon left once his sissyness kicks in. Here’s to hoping that his character evolves later in the game so that he can join the rest of the all-star cast.

That brings us up to our next oddball character, Vanille. Let me first start off by saying Vanille is hands down the cutest Final Fantasy character to date! Everything from her style, location of l’Cie mark, and running animations add to her adorableness. But, there’s just one thing that irks me about Vanille to no extent, her voice. I don’t know who, what, or where her voice actor is from, but her accent is weird. I can’t tell whether she’s Australian, British, or Japanese. In fact I’d like to venture a guess and say that it was a made up dialect constructed just for the game’s universe because I’ve never heard anything like it anywhere in the world.

That brings me to another point, it is sort of weird hearing some of the voice talent in Final Fantasy XIII with an overly dramatic American accent (Snow in particular) because they are clearly of Asian descent. In some past Final Fantasies the character’s origins were less distinct, most characters looked like a mixture of Indo-European descent, but in XIII the majority of the cast are of Asian descent. I’m not saying that a strong Asian accent needs to be applied, that would be ridiculous, but I wouldn’t want a southern accent on them either, or even worse whatever accent Vanille has.

Overall I have been enjoying my time with Final Fantasy XIII like I have no other game in a very long time. The last time I felt this invested in a game was with Final Fantasy X. Throughout the day I constantly find myself wondering what Pulse looks like, when I’m going to have Snow back into my party, and other l’Cie driven daydreams. Final Fantasy XIII is a real adventure and I suggest that even if you only kind of enjoy RPGs to take a risk and pick it up, because not only is it the most gorgeous game to grace the PS3 to date, it is one of the best all around.