K guys, here's a little bit of advise for the future: minor diversions that relate to the topic are fine. I'll split them if they need to be split off (in this case, sure...it can be an interesting discussion). So basically, the PSX discussion was fine until it suddenly became about the site. Where did that even come from anyway?
* Spectere be puzz'd.
Anyhoo, now for something related to the topic: I started a new game of FF12 yesterday (I'd only gotten an hour or two into it before and it's been a while since I'd played, so I figured I'd start from scratch) and proceeded to die within the first five minutes of gameplay (after watching about two days of constant FMVs) because of a random boss that they decide to use as the second enemy without warning the player that it was out of his league. Thankfully, there is a way to skip FMVs.
I would have been completely fine with it had it been a tutorial on how to use magic (namely, cure, which I was in the middle of casting when the boss killed me with his long-range attack -- on his second hit on me, no less -- that I was apparently in range of despite being pretty far away from it). Another way that they could have used the boss without frustrating the player is to have the other fighters help you up or revive you if you were unlucky enough to get knocked down (and possibly advising you to be careful with your targets) rather than giving you a game over screen and forcing you to start over with the lame movement tutorials. Or, hell, it could be like the first boss in FF7. You know, one that's actually possible to take out without much danger. You don't throw a very powerful enemy in immediately after
introducing the battle system. I can't even begin to describe how idiotic the final implementation of that is.
I guess we'll see how the rest of the game goes. :|