Finished Chapter 7 and 8 and I'm well on my way into Chapter 9 at the moment.

Definetly a remarkable set of chapters. Hope actually became a likable character, Snow is just awesome, Lightning finally gained a personality and Vanille stopped acting like one of those dumb blondes on the slutty college girl porn they advertise at night I just wish it didn't take nearly 20 hours to make the cast likable. I'm still waiting for a real plot thank you.

Hope's story is resolved in a pretty satisfying way and thank god I now know longer have to listen to him talk about Operation Nora and how Snow is the devil. Lightning finally gained a real personality though I found her angsty revelation in the tunnels to be more hilarious than thought provoking. Her motherly feelings toward Hope is both amusing and unsettling at the same time.

Fang is just smurfing awesome. There is very little not to love here. My only gripe with Chapter 7 is much like everything lately in the game, it feels very long winded. That Chapter took forever... I'm beginning to get burned out on the combat system even; so now the long boring dungeons are getting a bit worse for me. Chapter 9 has been killing me.

Chapter 8 was amusing but like others have mentioned, I felt SE seriously dropped the ball here and could have given players a break from the constant battling and boring dungeon design. Though the simialrities between Nautilus and the Gold Saucer were quite amusing. Anyone else notice how the actual "dungeon" part of the chapter had elements found in the Speed Racer minigame from VII in the background? The Chocobo theme was awesome.

Sazh's story really reached a powerful moment in this one which was very nice. (SPOILER)He really is my favorite character now even if the whole scene walked the thin line between being emotionally powerful and being cheesy melodrama. Vanille is a bitch.

The game is finally moving in a favorable direction but lately I can't shake how much this game is reminding me of Xenosaga. Specifically Episode II, with similar dungeon design and a battle system that is slowly gone from making fast fun battles to very long drawn out conflicts. I take down bosses faster than some enemy groups now. We'll see where it goes from here later. Back to Chapter 9.