Well, I can't as of yet comment on that, as I am a FF noob and have only played FF-X. However this is not necessarily my fault as my parents have been very very anti- games for most of my 15 or so years of living. That is, until my dad discovered MMORPG's via my cousin. He fell in love with MMORPG's and bought a wide variety of them, the instant he came home from work he would go straight to his computer and play games until he went to bed at 3am. Then he would trudge up to bed and snore until 7am and get up and go to work... he's been doing this for 3 years now, it's starting to get a bit predictable and a little bit sad for a 46 year old man with a wife and two children.
Anyway, a year or so after he discovered gaming as a form of escapism, he bought my younger sister and I a Playstation 2 after condemning them and all games consoles for I don't know how many years. Well, FF-X was a game bought for me by my friend, and I fell in love with it. Of course, I had never before seen anything like it, as I had been shielded from the world of console gaming for years. So nobody can say anything to what they might think is a poor taste for games... I am a deprived child! *sobs*
Although, even though having a dad who doesn't talk to me can be seen as a handicap, it works to its advantages. He buys me games now, much to my poor mother's dismay. I... am never quite so bored any more, unless lying in my bed not asleep trying to escape the evils of insomnia. I just wish this had all happened a little sooner however, so that I wouldn't be so addicted to gaming during my exam years.
It's not as if I never had played any games before the purchasing of the PS2, of course. I used to play old-school shoot-em-ups like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem etc from the age of 3 (disturbed kid I was...) but games weren't really a big part of my life. I watched more TV then. Later came the pre-teen phase of the Sims (plus the 100 expansion packs) and tasteless commercial games like Theme Park World. Nothing with a lasting character, nor any intrigueing charm of any sort. Along came the decline of the television, even as we updated with a Freeview box, and the endless "reality TV shows" began. The demise of original television as we once knew it. I was bored. I needed something new. And that's when he discovered MMORPG's... blah.
Wow if you've read all that.