D. Jim Maybury GameSpot Live Intern

Now Playing: Champions of Norrath (PS2), Metroid Zero Mission (GBA)

Do You Know When to Quit?

I hate to admit it, but if it says Final Fantasy on the box, I'll buy it, no questions asked. I just love what Square has done with this series, and I'll probably stick it out until the bitter end. I have to say, though, after finishing X-2, I was a little disappointed by the way the character advancement system was structured. Changing different classes in the heat of battle is cool and all, but it just wasn't as rewarding as maxing your characters' stats or questing for the ultimate weapons. Side quests seem to be finding their way into every Final Fantasy with increasing regularity lately. These tasks can, admittedly, be tedious, time consuming, and sometime downright boring. Spending 50 to 100 hours on a game is a big time investment. Winning is usually inevitable, so many people, including me, will try to max out character stats and attain the best weapons and armor, just to wring a little more time out of the game. These items lately are rewards for enduring the increasingly pervasive side quests. How do you know when to quit? When is the task more of a nuisance than the reward is worth?

Hand-eye coordination comes in handy.

A good Final Fantasy side quest presents you with tasks that exploit many different gamer frailties. There's a vast library of skills we need to play games, and people excel at different facets of different games. When a task is too hard, do you just skip it, or do you try to master that skill? If these challenges didn't exist, most of us would probably just get bored and go do something other than play games. The tricky part, however, is riding the line between a fun challenge and absolute frustration.

I had a hell of a time getting Lulu's Venus sigil to power her Onion Knight weapon in Final Fantasy X. Dodge lightning in the Thunder Plains 200 consecutive times? Sounds easy enough. All said, I ended up spending 13 and a half hours trying, and failing, to dodge 200 lightning bolts in a row. For those who haven't indulged in this particularly cruel side quest, let me explain a little about the process. Stand, wait one to four seconds, dodge, repeat 200 times. It sounds easy, but it requires you to react with split-second accuracy, over and over again. This task was so show-stoppingly difficult, I ended up spending a full night and day trying to accomplish it. Many peripheral factors can hinder your success, such as ambient lighting and the game's sound. All it takes is a minor distraction to bring the counter back to zero. As I continued trying to complete this side quest, I learned not to count, breathe, move, blink, sneeze, or fall asleep.

Don't break a controller. It's not worth it.

After a while I kind of got into a groove and would do well for 20 minutes or so. But eventually I would lose feeling in my arm or something and would have to adjust my position, then, zap, my character is on the ground recovering from the lightning strike. Well, after 12 hours of this I was bored with the task and frustrated with my inability to complete it and found myself questioning every minute of every Final Fantasy game I had ever played, just because of this one task. The joints in my fingers started to creak, and I had to alternate which digit was on button-pushing detail. After several hours of teaching my new button finger its sole purpose in life, I managed to successfully dodge lightning for a good 45 minutes. My best time previously was around 40 minutes, so I started getting really excited, and that little drop of adrenaline broke my concentration, and I was struck down just eight lightning strikes short of 200. At this point, I briefly contemplated how well my FFX disc would serve as a boat in the canal behind my house. Still, I soldiered on and was eventually rewarded after a total of 13 hours. I had completed one side quest. A great achievement. Right.

What did I gain from this fool's errand? A silly little weapon, nerve damage to my thumb, and a black hole where 13 hours of my life used to be. I was disappointed in FFX-2's lack of good side quests and frustrated by FFX because of the difficulty. Maybe I'll learn to swallow my pride sooner and move on, or maybe I'll just start playing FFXI.