Final Fantasy XIII-2: My First Collector's Edition

Growing up I never really followed the Final Fantasy series. In my mind there were always several tiers of gaming, ranging from the casual-style of game to the hardcore style. People like me weren't able to purchase games on launch day and really only owned a few games, so the games that we purchased were almost always casual-style games. To me, casual-style games are first-party games (made by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, etc.) that feature their top mascots (Mario, Sonic) and are easy to approach and have fun with. Basically, it all boiled down to the question, "Given that you can only own a select few games, which games would you own?" The Marios and Sonics of the world were the classic games that everyone felt that they should own, and subsequently I picked these games up as a kid.

The next step up from the casual-style of game were the games that may or may not have been first party, but were still must-own titles, such as Tetris, Zelda, etc. Sometimes if we were lucky our parents would pick these games up for us, but mostly these were rental titles (well, maybe not Tetris). To this day I never bought a brand new copy of Zelda, and I actually really regret that. These games, though not as common as Mario, Duck Hunt, etc., are still relatively easy to find out in the wild. RPGs are a whole different beast.

RPGs, aka role-playing games, cater to a different niche of gamer. These are almost always special franchises with small, but extremely dedicated followings. RPGs aren't very easy to approach and require a lot of time commitment, so most people pass them up (which is a total shame, btw). JRPGs, or Japanese RPGs, are even more elusive. Final Fantasy is one of the quintessential RPGs out there. I never owned the original Final Fantasy, or the more popular and genre defining Final Fantasy III for Super Nintendo (which is actually the sixth in the series, which is actually REALLY confusing). Final Fantasy VII was my first introduction to the Final Fantasy series and I adored that game like no other. Unfortunately I sold it two years ago on eBay (and rebought it a few months back), but that mistake will not be happening again.

Final Fantasy XIII is very well known for being hosted on the Playstation 3. It isn't the best game of the series (by a longshot), as it gets docked for being heavy on the hallway-style levels and boring walking around. Final Fantasy XIII-2 (14 I guess?) supposedly fixes this, and has been a game I've been wanting to try out. With the bad reputation of XIII at work the prices of XIII-2 have been plummeting, and thus I was able to pick up a copy of this game in the collector's edition for a paltry $25. I probably won't be opening this, as collector's copies can fetch a pretty penny down the road (especially when unopened and RPGs), so I'll wait until Black Friday to get a normal PS3 copy of this game for about $10. This is my first collector's copy of a game, but hopefully not my last.