Sad Face

When I am playing an FF game, usually.

I really enjoyed it when I started it.  I don't mind the DS art style.  I don't like games where the level does not matter.  I want to be able to fight a technical battle or overcome by sheer force.  What usually happens with me is that I get caught in a technical battle, fail horribly, grind, then come back to wipe the floor with the beasty.  That cannot happen in this game.  The monsters level with you, forcing technical fights to be even more technical.  The fight I got stuck on (some lighting bird in a tree, I think?) only got more harder and more difficult the more I grinded.  I even followed a guide, with no luck.

I want levels to mean something.  When monsters level with you, the game turns into an arms race.  Awesome powers end up being larger numbers against a larger defense, rather than being actually awesome.  

It is the same thing I saw happen to 4e D&D.  The numbers on both sides got bigger, but the ratio between attack/defense and damage/hp never changed.  If the ratio is never going to change, why even have a increase in the number (like leveling)?  I'd rather find out how much of what resource I need to overcome a challenge and then later modify how much of the resource I give myself to increase/decrease the challenge on later playthroughs, than only have the one way to beat a boss or monster.

Something else bothered me, too, but I cannot recall what it was.  I ended up giving the game to my nephew.  I must not have hated it, I just realized that it was not the game for me.  Not what I look for in a Final Fantasy.

Word, no doubt.  But I guess I was not looking for that at the time I was playing.  You have made my pants less sad.  I don't think I will pick it up again since I still have a bunch of other games I want to give a try (oh, and these things called books), but I will stop thinking of it in a negative way.  I look forward to that far future date when you all podcast about it.