I bought a DS the day before a 25-hour flight (including stopovers obviously) so I wanted something that could suck up a lot of time and attention; I knew from the old PSX experience that an instalment of Final Fantasy Tactics would deliver (and it was only $20) so I grabbed it up.

It's excellent. It's got a million different jobs and a billion quests and a truckload of items and abilities and all that crap. It's everything I wanted. 32 hours in and I've not even completed a third of the available quests. Awesome.

But the storyline... is god awful.

[spoilers ahead kind of; there's really nothing to spoil]

It follows Luso, who, much like the protagonist of FFTA, gets sucked into Ivalice from what is ostensibly Earth. The means of this is through a magical book with some empty pages.

Luso is unbelievably nonplussed about the whole situation, barely managing to give half a shit about getting back to his own world. "Sure, I guess we could investigate how I can ever see my family again but hey look, let's do some adventuring first!" Fair enough, I understand narrative imperative there or whatever.

He realises that a mysterious empty book has somehow travelled with him. "Weird! I wonder if this has something to do with the mysterious empty book that brought me here in the first place!" OH MY GOD LUSO, DO YOU THINK? But we're all used to FF games having terrible writing. Put it down to localisation issues.

The method of return is revealed within the first couple of quests, though, so don't worry. The book fills itself up with text as Luso completes quests, and when it's full, transport back to Earth will be a cinch.

That's it. There's no actual goal for the whole game. Imagine Lord of the Rings, except instead of "the only way to destroy the ring is to toss it into Mount Doom", it's "the only way to destroy the ring is to complete an arbitrary number of unrelated adventures. Go, Frodo! Slay a dragon or something, then search for buried treasure, and then something with ghosts maybe? Whatever's interesting, off you pop, go do it."

At all points the game actively avoids ever having a storyline. Potentially interesting things crop up and then get instantly dashed away again like a great big cocktease.

At one point the magic book gets destroyed by an evil villain and you have to stop this crazy-big demon from coming through into Ivalice and messing shit up; it's awesome. As soon as he's defeated, the wise old Wizard of Exposition comes up, the dialogue goes like this.

Luso: "My grimoire! It's destroyed! How will I get back to earth!"
WoE: "Don't worry, it's not destroyed, I have it here."
Luso: "Are demons gonna keep trying to come through the rift? Should we stop them?"
WoE: "Nah, just keep having unrelated adventures."
Moogle: "I hear there's a treasure hunt at Moogle City!"
Luso: "Sweet! Let's do that!"

I have three quests left in the main quest chain. Some stories are badly written, and you don't give a shit about the main story arc. This story is not one of those. This story literally does not have a main story arc to give a shit about. I exaggerate not.

And as if it weren't bad enough already, they kick you when you're down by having the most contrived cameos ever of the two main FFXII characters, Vaan and Penelo. They just show up and Luso's like "I just feel like I can trust them," despite the fact that their opening lines are essentially death threats. Why do you feel this way, Luso, you horrible little bastard? Because you recognise them as crossover protagonists?

I love FFTA2's gameplay. The graphics are gorgeous. But I hate the storyline. Not the kind of "I HATE YOU YOU FUCKER GO DIE" sort of super-saiyan white-hot hate that comes from dying six times in a row on what should have been a simple mission, but rather a slow-boil loathing that has grown slowly over thirty hours of betrayal.

FFTA2 is a girl who makes me want to slash my wrists whenever I talk to her, but has such a nice body that she still manages to get me into bed every time.