Age 13 was a tough year for me. After making my way innocently through elementary school as a naive, good-natured, obedient, straight-A student, I found myself suddenly thrust into the world of junior high, where the traits that had helped me remain so admired among my family and teachers made me tragically uncool among my new peer group. Seeing old images of myself as I sorted through family photos not too long ago really drove home just how awkward I was at that age.
So I feel some sympathy for the Final Fantasy series. Age XIII was a tough time for it, too. With Final Fantasy XIII, it went from being the cool, cutting-edge RPG series that everyone in the world loved to a symbol of everything troubling the Japanese game development process in one fell swoop. No longer was it the bold, sweeping definition of refined console-based role-playing it had been in the 16-bit days. No longer was it the cutting-edge exercise in marrying technology and narrative that its 32-bit iterations represented. Even the quirky sense of self-reinvention that defined its PlayStation 2 entries was lost.
