With Shonen Jump’s now infamous Final Fantasy XII spread floating through every website with “game” in it’s URL (plus a few choice extras), tonight seems like a great night for a Final Fantasy related update. However, rather than discuss, at length, Square-Enix’s reason for including completely interchangeable male and female heroes in their latest FF installment (honestly, can you tell the difference?), I think I’ll use this opportunity to cement my opinions on Final Fantasy X-2. Celebrate the relevance.

Final Fantasy X-2 looks pretty damned cool, and not just because the game stars three scantily clad females who understand the importance of butt cleavage even more so than Manatee (OMG CG GRRRLZ R HOTT). Though I’ve never played Final Fantasy X, and have no desire to do so, X-2’s fast paced, narrative-light gamplay really appeals to me. With thirteen job classes to chose from, including the absolutely ridiculous Singer and Gun Mage (it’s a Blue Mage, apparently) and sporting an extremely light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek narrative that favors exploration to straight linear progression, X-2 seems like a console RPG I could actually enjoy, especially after the intense RPG burnout I’ve been left with since playing through the RPG-heavy library of the PS1. That’s right, the entire library. I’ll be sure to save it a spot on my ever-growing list of PS2 games I’ll buy along with my backward compatible PS6. (That list consists of Ico.)

In further related news, Crystal Chronicles should not be allowed to exist.

Fun fact: I had to read through two reviews and a handful of previews before I was able to piece together all the above facts (all three of them). Is it really so hard to include information on the actual game your reviewing/previewing rather than rambling aimlessly about nothing in particular for 500 words? GamePro says yes.