The day after I finished Dragon Quest 5, I also reached the final boss in Final Fantasy 13. Of course, as is the case most of the time in Final Fantasy games recently, I wasn't able to beat it on the first pass. This is actually pretty unusual for me. Dragon Quest 5 was one where the final boss went right down. Most Grandia games, most Dragon quest games, even the older final fantasy games I was able to finish the game on the first try, but starting with FF9, I've had trouble either with the final boss, or with battles leading up to the final boss. FF1, 2, 5, 7, 8... All finished easily.

Is it that I'm lousy at the games now? Are they harder? Or am I just getting less diligent about side-quests in my old age...

A big temptation has been to stick the game on the shelf for awhile and come back to it again when I'm not burned out on it. FF9 stayed on my shelf for a year, as did FF10. FF12 I pushed through to about 50 hours and was nowhere near the final boss and burned out on it, then shelved it for 3 years, and only recently put another 25 hours in to reach the final dungeon.

I'm really resisting the urge to do that with FF13, but I've already had it sitting there for nearly 2 weeks and I even finished off Brave Story while I had FF13 shelved. I suppose the difference with FF9 and FF10 though compared to 13 is that there's still a whole chain of optional missions I haven't finished, whereas in FF9 and 10, I just had to grind more levels up to be able to challenge the boss.

I just started to plow through those other missions. I hope that by the time I finish them, I'll be able to finish the game... Of course, if not I'll probably just shelve this for a year and work on other things. I do want to finish Demon's Souls and White Knight Chronicles.