Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings opens with a pretty gorgeous cinematic sequence showing Vaan and Penelo, two of the heroes of Final Fantasy XII, flying through the sky in an airship. As the sequel opens, we see that Vaan has achieved his stated goal of becoming an air pirate in his own right, and it's pretty clear that now we're going to see a story exploring the adventures of these two. Sounds good.

I was especially eager to try this game out at E3 -- not just because I was a big fan of Final Fantasy XII, its characters, and its world, but also because Square Enix stated it had made a lot of changes to the game from its Japanese release. Because Revenant Wings incorporates a lot of real-time elements into its core RPG gameplay and Square Enix's argument went that Japanese gamers weren't ready for that, the original release of the game was, based on most impressions, pretty easy. They promised a much more challenging, retooled game for the US. So how'd that work out?

...