I hope you like looking at Bret Michaels up there if you plan on playing through Final Fantasy XIII, because from the sounds of things, you’re going to be looking at him a lot. FF13 director Motomu Toriyama recently sat down and said, ”For XIII, the size of the entire game is considerable. Just running through the main story takes experienced players over 50 hours. For the first time, I think it’s possible to play through in full in about 60 hours or so.” That is not exactly what you would call a rental.

I’ve heard quite a few people my age who grew up in the JRPG heyday near the tail end of the SNES era and through the PlayStation era say that they wish games in this genre were shorter as they’re such a huge time sink when relaxation time isn’t as bountiful as it was in our youth. I see their point, but I think this has more to do with the average quality of JRPG’s recently. I have no problem sinking 50 or so hours into something like Final Fantasy XII or Xenosaga or Lost Odyssey, but it tends to be a little more grating when you’re potentially sinking 50 or so hours into Star Ocean: The Last Hope or Infinite Undiscovery or Magna Carta 2.