Those who know me well know how I love the trading card game Magic: The Gathering. I’ve been playing since 2004 and have seen the game change a lot in all that time. When Wizards of the Coast started their experiment with the Universes Beyond expansions, I was not really a huge fan at the time. And truthfully, I’m still not sure how I feel about them doing the card sets for Assassin’s Creed and Fallout. Does that really fit into a Magic: The Gathering themed world?

However, Wizards recently released a Universes Beyond set with Final Fantasy cards, and I was very much into that. This set has made cards of EVERY mainline Final Fantasy title while bringing up so many good feelings of nostalgia. Because of this, I had to start playing the Final Fantasy series yet again.

Long time readers will remember I was shaming myself in some of my past columns for never taking the last few minutes to finish Final Fantasy XIII. I decided I should just start replaying the trilogy to have a true blast from the past. It took a few minutes to get used to playing on the Xbox 360 again, but before long I was shifting paradigms like the keynote speaker at a business buzzword convention. It took a little longer than I thought to reach the final boss, the Fal’Cie Orphan, but I eventually made it there.

The battle was fierce and took everything I had to finally stop Orphan’s evil schemes. It was a three-stage battle and while the stress of fighting for my life was the high note, the whole story during the fight was a great disappointment. At one point almost every character is turned into a mindless L’Cie horror. Throughout the game, being turned into a L’Cie was irreversible and was often considered a fate worse than death. Yet everyone turned back to rescue Fang as she was being hurt by Orphan, and the only explanation was an offhand comment from Lightning where she said, “Probably more Fal’Cie smoke and mirrors.”

Wait, what?

Then there was the ending cinematic where Fang and Vanielle became Ragnarok anyway. They ended up saving the planet cocoon by turning into a giant pillar of crystal. The Fal’Cie are gone and Lightning’s sister (Serah) and Sazh’s son (Dahj) have reverted from their crystal forms and embraced at the end. This title felt like it had so much potential but just couldn’t seem to provide great explanations for why anything happened.

I jumped into Final Fantasy XIII-2 which I reviewed years ago for Game Industry News, and it earned very high scores at the time. Now, I am currently about halfway through it, and it’s uh…something. Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes storytelling from avant-garde to the completely nonsensical. The opening cinematic has an armor-clad Lightning in Valhalla with no explanation other than she just is. Then, instead of fighting with the amazing heroine that you spent so much time with over the first game, you get to use her weak sister.

The story had all sorts of time paradox nonsense that was used to essentially move the plot forward. In fact, XIII-2 commits so many game design sins, it’s honestly astounding that Square Enix made it. At the end of Episode (chapter) 2, I saw two different time gates. One was the story gate while the other, I assumed, was an optional gate to a variant timeline. I hopped in and watched a cinematic where it said, “Episode 3: Part Two,” and I was hit with confusion and panic. I may not be a game designer, but I don’t think a player should be able to skip an entire chapter. There were so many other issues like a trivia game having the question “heads or tails” that you have to get right. So, asking a player to guess heads or tails is not a trivia question.

Spurred on by the Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond expansion, I will for sure keep playing the Final Fantasy series until I have completed them all. I think if XIII could get a full remaster, it would be a much better game (kind of what happened recently with Oblivion).

Final Fantasy’s world has a lot to offer, and there is so much untapped story potential too. They just never capitalized on it, which is why the series became the poster child of the era of mediocre role-playing games, especially on the Xbox 360. But even so, I am having a good time playing the Final Fantasy series. It’s just that I am remembering both the high points and the flaws.