I've been playing quite a bit of The World Ends with You since the final credits rolled in Crisis Core. I was completing one day every night, and then I racked up some serious hours on the road trip to and from Houston. I really am addicted to this game. As soon as Gabe goes down for even twenty minutes, I have my DS flipped open and the stylus ready to erase some Noise. I honestly don't know how my touchscreen isn't scratched all to hell. At the first black noise fight... I was scribbling away as fast as I could.

I am kind of blowing through it instead of giving it undevoted time for every aspect of the game. I'll erase as many Noise as I feel like it at the time, and I'll give every Pig Noise a try. But if I have to level up a pin I never ever use just to grease a pig, forget it. I have too many other games en queue to do nothing but level up every pin I discover. I also haven't mastered fighting with both screens, but I haven't really forced myself to learn either. My partners seem to do just fine on auto-pilot, so who am I to mess up their rhythm and work twice as hard?

As for the pins, I'm really partial to the slashing pins and the pins that shoot fire. I'm sure if I mastered some of the other pins I'd find a good use for those, but I'm sticking with what I'm most comfortable with.

I must say that it's just a bit obvious that this game was created for girls. I don't keep up with fashion trends in the  real world, so it's hard to make me interested in them in a virtual one. However, I do always check and see if my brands are ranked at the bottom before picking fights with Noise. I think this game is trying to make me dress better...

Haven't touched KH2 in weeks. At this point, I'm not sure if I'll finish it this year at all. If it doesn't happen before Christmas, it definitely won't happen before New Year's.

Yep, finally finished Crisis Core today. I decided to hell with the rest of the missions, it's time to finish this puppy. The ending sequence was over 30 minutes long, and I cried for most of it. Yes, I knew Zack was going to die, but I had no idea how much of his death they would show. That wasn't the only or most heart-wrenching aspect of it, but you'll have to play it yourself or catch it on YouTube to see all the details.

The story was absolutely wonderful, but the final bosses were a complete let down. I'm not sure I even needed the last accessory I obtained. I defeated the final boss in less than five minutes. I cast three spells, and he went down. I didn't even complete 60% of the missions, so I know my final level wasn't extraordinarily high. I can't imagine how easy the game would be if you actually completed all the missions. But really, that's par for the game. I never really pushed myself in doing the missions throughout the story, because a lot of the missions are HARD. Most of the time, you have to re-equip your accessories and materia for each individual mission, and that got to be a pain in the butt for me. I don't want to play a mission, get killed in one minute because I didn't have this one accessory equipped to block a Stun spell because I was still equipped with the accessory to block the Death spell that was necessary at the last mission. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you have the right accessories. This is particularly true for the missions tagged as "Very Hard." However, because the missions were so hard, the story seemed so incredibly easy. Or maybe it really was. Or maybe the missions level you up enough to make the story easy. Either way, missions hard, story easy.

But that's really my only gripe. I loved this game, and it's definitely one I will play again. I cannot wait to play the original Final Fantasy VII game now.

Well I finished one game, so let's see if I can finish another this week...