I should have known better, I really should have. When the free 30 day trial if Final Fantasy Online was offered to me I should have punched the clerk in the face for setting my home and my PC up for such fail. I didn't though. Like so many times before with so many different drugs and drunken women, my curiosity got the best of me and I took him up on the offer.

The installation was enough to make me hate this "game". Then I got to the registration process which was so cryptic that my feelings of "fuck this, shut it off" were over shadowed by my confrontationist leanings. I couldn't let this game defeat me before I had even played it. I suffered through screen after screen of randomized login ID's and registration codes until finally I was able to log into the game.

Then came the opening cinematics. Now before I begin playing any game I like to watch the opening sequence. It normally gives me a frame of reference and some sort of interest in the world I'm about to enter. This just bored me. I was shown face after face of crypto-Asian characters engaging in some battle with monstrous beings, then two small children running for safety only to have one be consumed by the beasts, to which I said "good, she was annoying". Most games keep the opening scenes short enough to keep your attention, but this being Final Fantasy and all they decided against that. This movie crept along for what seemed like half of an hour before I was able to make my character.

My character options were two be expected. Several options of nearly indistinguishable sexes of several races, all except the giant beast people of which would only let me be a male. With such few options for customization the process was rather speedy and I was finally entered into the kingdom of some random Final Fantasy named place... only to be greeted by another real time cinematic.

As the camera slowly flew over and through the town I was starting in the white text appeared at the bottom of the screen giving me even more of a back story that I didn't care about. The worst part was that I couldn't cancel it, I had to wait it out. Then I was shown my character and thought I could finally go play... wrong. An NPC began talking to me and I spent five minutes clicking the text away until he gave me some item I didn't give a damn about.

When I had completed that portion I decided to move outside the city walls and fight some things. Now why would a computer game use the standard WASD configuration for character movement? That would make too much sense that's why. I had to hold and click my mouse in the direction I wanted to go, except I kept running in half circles because the controls were so wonky.

Finally I was outside. I should also note that I did not see a single other player during my five minute run, which should have been my first clue that this game should have been vaporware. I saw a rabbit and decided to fight it. I walked up, fumbled through the poorly designed command menu and clicked "attack". Another five minutes later the rabbit was dead.

The most challenging part of this game proved to be exiting it. I tried standard commands of the escape key, looking through the menus, typing /quit. Nothing worked. I had to resort to alt+tabbing, bringing up task manager and shutting it down. Uninstalling it was more fun that anything else I had experienced involving this game.