Final Fantasy XIII and Steam

Admittedly, there are long overdue games on my list, 2008-2014 are the years I stopped playing games because I could not finance them at the time. So there's been Iconic and popular games that has totally gone by that have totally missed me.

I am slowly catching up with games that I have always wanted to play. I have always been an RPG fan and you just can't be one if you haven't played at least three titles in the Final Fantasy series. XI, XII and XIII is only ones I haven't played yet. XI, I'm not really into that MMORPG gaming since I hate interacting with strangers overcompensating. XII, sadly, I irreparably broke my Playstation 2 while in the middle of playing this game and Playstation 3 was, I think, already in the works at that time, so I did not bother buying a new PS2. XIII, couldn't afford a PS3, so the PS3 era went and gone unnoticed by me.

Thanks to steam though, I've bought and downloaded Final Fantasy XIII and have played it this weekend. Visually, it was incredible, Final Fantasy has always been ground-breaking CG rendering and cinematic cut-scenes. Unfortunately, the weird outfits and hair no longer great when a game has much details. Gameplay-wise, it was mediocre. Gameplay difficulty setting, really? I was expecting a incredible way to level up and an engaging battle system, as was seen in FFX and Vagrant Story, I think they focused too much on aesthetics. Story and plot-wise, I've only played two hours of it but the direction of the story is bland and forced. It was generally disappointing that I stopped and just continued playing Tomb Raider.

But I did learn a few things from trying FFXIII. Namely, Go for games intended to be released and optimized for PC gaming, like FPS games. Avoid later ported games. Controller support might not always be a good thing.

Buying from Steam is a hit and miss kind of relationship, but I haven't given up on PC gaming. I'll know definitely if PC gaming is right for me once I've tried an action-packed First-person Shooter.