You might want to switch on your safe search if you’re googling for pictures of these guys together. Just in case.

….and I’m done. Just a few thoughts and quips:

- If you are not a fan of having your troupe walking around searching every nook and cranny for switches and feel frustrated that a piddling short fence is a huge obstacle, then you haven’t been playing that many JRPGs to know that that sort of wankery is pretty much the mainstay of the genre. Dungeons in the game amount to nothing more than a linear path that’s easy on the eyes with a bunch of enemies littered on the screen. Thank god it’s not random battles.

- The skits might seem pointless to some, but I feel that they bring out more of the cast’s personality and flesh them out a little. Having Rita beat up the annoying kid for being a bother and seeing Estelle do her best to win the approval of Yuri’s mutt with failure makes me chuckle a little bit. Why most RPGs don’t do these sort of small sequences are beyond me. Perhaps Namco Bandai patented them?

- Even if you’re 20 hours through, I’m very sure that you can tell who the "unassuming" villains are. JRPGs have the tendency to foreshadow things to a point that they might as well wear a billboard like those SingTel advertising stooges you see in shopping complexes. For God’s sake, even their wardrobe and weapon of choice is following a template set out by the bishounen villains made popular by the albino guy with the long sword from Final Fantasy VII. You know, the one with mommy issues.

- The game’s item synthesizing feature and Dog Maps subquest is sure to bring out the OCD in a lot of gamers, just like how the "Dodge 100 strikes of lightning" challenge in Final Fantasy X and "trying to get Marjoly and Devil Prier" in Disgaea did to those same kind of people. They’ll be searching high and low in each and every continent getting rare materials from giant variations of monsters tucked in god-knows-where and proceed to get the tar beaten out of them.

- Musical ponderings: as I reached close to the end, they seem to take the motif of Bonnie Pink’s song and somehow worked it into the more dramatic and tender moments of the game. Also, the battle theme at the third act of the game is more peppy and is reminiscent of Motoi Sakuraba’s days when composing for the battle theme in Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean 2. It’s not a return to form yet, but it doesn’t offend at the least.

- Am I the only one who’s glad that the only animal in your party does not talk? While I adored Mieu in Tales Of The Abyss, I occasionally just used his fire-breathing attack, which lets out this nauseatingly cute shrill voice from the mascot’s mouth, repeatedly to piss off my friends. It’s up there with deselecting and selecting characters repeatedly in Smash Bros. Brawl in the griefing factor.

- UPDATE: I should also point out that the ending and resolution between characters did not turn out into one of the biggest cliches in JRPG history. You know, the one that involves a thing called "forced romance" upon two prominent cast members of the opposite sex.

Bottom line: I liked it. Anyone who plays JRPGs will find something to like here, from the combat to the enjoyable story to the likeable-yet-familiar cast. Anyone who doesn’t might want to rent it for a while to see if it’s your cup of tea.
And one last community message: if by any chance you know someone who paid for the 10 levels upgrade or any of the retarded DLC content, do me a huge, HUGE favor, and punch them in the groin. Repeatedly and as hard as you can. Paying for this defeats the entire purpose of an RPG: to grind and enjoy the battle system. These are the same people willing to pay for horse armor and other bulls*** like buying Samurai Shodown II on XBLA or Virtual Console when you can get ALL SIX of the Samurai Shodown games for $30. YOU are part of the problem, people. Stop wasting your money and make Namco Bandai cease this pointlessness.