Just a heads up to anyone who wants to play Xenoblade: the game is only being released through GameStop stores and Nintendo's online shop, and will be limited! The game is also supposedly a pretty phenomenal "evolution" step for JRPGs, so if you want it, I've been warned a few times that it's in your best interests to preorder.

Do it do it do it.

I did, and I'm pretty sure it will be absolutely worth it!

Tales of Graces F is supposed to be out tomorrow. I'm going scouting for it, but am unsure if my store will actually have it on its release date or not.

Oh, and as other things go:

Little Big Planet (PSP): I finally started my copy of this around Christmas and have been dutifully doing little bits of stuff on it when I can. It's pretty interesting, even if you suck at platformers as much as I do. The visual style is really well-maintained, and there are good play mechanics that encourage you to explore and grab and jump and retry as much as you want. On top of all this, it has a really super English narrator fellow who makes the game even more charming.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3): Still pluggin' away. The random battles are a little bothersome in Augusta Tower (where I am), but I'm still motivated to finish the game and go back for completion purposes. I still wish you got a proper party of three characters, but the monster thing does work decently (and better than in the similar Tales of Symphonia 2). A bunch of DLC came out recently, some of which I will probably cave and buy. I'll tell you about it if I do! :>

Final Fantasy IX (PS1): I restarted this recently (fourth time, I think!), but I think I only mentioned it on Tumblr. It's worth its own posts, so I'll probably TL;DR about it sometime soon. It makes me happy.

Aaaah. I picked a random playlist on my iTunes and got a bouncy French pop song followed immediately by O Fortuna. Great way to scare yourself all of a sudden!

Anyway, I'm playing through FFXIII-2 at a normal speed (IE: not the crazy srs speed of the people who make the walkthroughs, oh my god), and am about halfway through. Mind you, I've been trying to get all the branch-outs, etc. etc. so my first chunk of the timeline circle things is pretty much all filled in.

So far (spoiler-free):
- I have only gotten to play as Lightning once :[
- there seem to be a few too many songs with lyrics. The one about the "crystal view" is especially annoying and I actually have to mute the TV when I'm in that area. asdjkshd
- I'm warming up somewhat to the "Pokemon" monster system thing they've got going on. I loathed it at first, and it still has some issues, but I'm having a better time with it now. I just wish I was having better luck finding monsters with Sentinel roles!
- the recap when you start up again sort of reminds me of a bad TV show, haha. I liked the text ones better, but they're skippable, so it's okay.
- the locals are quite pretty most of the time
- I have not re-encountered that atrocious "piggy kitty" thing from the demo, thank god, and am hopeful that it disappeared.
- the plot is slightly silly, but is okay. :>
- I don't strongly dislike any important aspects of the game; the only thing that's a mite annoying is sometimes you have a serious lack of direction. Usually you can just skip to a different area and do something else for awhile, though, so it mostly balances out.

Oh, and I recently-ish downloaded some demos, one of which was for Sonic 4. Oh god, why. I will whine about it in a different post. 8|b