I just hit a milestone moment. I just reached the Bionis Leg, and was shocked to find Grand Pulse, just a huge sprawling land mass with gorgeous mountain ranges and an impressive ecosystem. The thing I would have to trudge 40+ hours to get to in a Motomu Toriyama FF title, is the third area of the game. For those who can't play the game, the starting location, Colony 9, is located on the foot of Bionis. I just got passed the knee and arrived on the thigh, and it's about the size of Grand Pulse. I haven't even explored the whole place yet.

The Seer ability of the Monado has to be the most intriguing idea in the entire game. It's really changed the direction of the story, and I am amazed it's actually utilized for gameplay and quests as well. The new Shield option is also an intriguing gameplay mechanic and makes me really interested to see what else the Monado is going to do to mix up the gameplay routine. It's use in quests have been wonderful since it tells you if an item is important for a future quest, or just adding stories where you get to see results of people's choices. Speaking of which...

I also really love the NPCs in this game. I feel the largest reason I like doing the quests in this game is just watching how interconnected all the minor NPC townsfolks lives are with each other. I can honestly say that the mountain of side-quests really endeared me to Colony 9, so I definetly felt a bit more invested when misfortune befalls it. I've also just been amused watching how everyone knows each other and basically helping people fix their relationships with one another. Suddenly finding X amount of items doesn't feel as much as a time waster when you're doing it to placate a mother's kids so she can go on a date you set up with an inventor that helped you fix the pendant that said mother's son had broken and she was furious at him because it was a memento from her belated husband. Doing these quests are almost like watching a mundane soap opera unfold before you and it just feels gratifying to have what would usually be considered tedious quests for the sake of padding, actually have more meaningful weight to them.