I am a HUGE, huge fan of the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy IX and X were both superb games that I played for months. Just what is up with this dress-up game, Final Fantasy X-2?

My first impression of the game was that it was made by a bunch of male game designers who wanted to watch semi-naked teenage girls dance around to sexy music. Yuna and Rikku have both been given makeovers to wear scanty clothing. Paine was added in to give the 'goth' alternative in the trio. The three are like Charlie's Angels (a movie that I love) but less intelligent, more childish. These women are supposed to be in their 20s but act like they're 8 years old.

You get to play Yuna, Rikku or Paine and you battle and puzzle your way through the game series, gathering spheres and working through missions. Somehow you have completely forgotten the Al Bhed language and have to relearn it. Somehow your cousin is in love with you. Instead of strategy battles, you are in "active time battles" which double penalize you for spellcasting and reward you for button mashing. The graphics were GREATLY reduced in order to bring this change, too.

Gone is the brilliant sphere grid system to customize your characters. Instead you get ... paper-doll clothing changes. Yes, I'm serious. You get to try new outfits on your characters and get a few skills with each one. Of course, most of the outfits are quite revealing.

The music was really annoying and I had to turn the sound off in some situations. The side quests were sometimes just tiresome and sometimes bordered on the highly questionable (giving back rubs to hit pleasure levels?) I had a lot of respect for Yuna after the end of FFX. Given what was going on two years later, it seemed like Yuna regressed rather than matured.

I know a TON of women who loved FFX and gladly played it. It seems with FFX-2 they tried to make a "game for women" by turning it into insipid nonsense. What an insult to females everywhere, to say that the only way we'd play was to give us dress-up outfits and girly-girl giggling. And what an insult to say that girls should be sex objects that have to fall out of their outfits to get any attention.

The game designers should have taken a good look at Eowyn and Arwen in the Lord of the Rings movie series to see how women can be intelligent, strong, skilled and amazingly appealing. I will finish FFX-2 to write the walkthrough, but it won't be a pleasureable experience.

I'd rent this for a week and make sure you really enjoy what it offers before you buy it.

Buy Final Fantasy X-2 from Amazon.com