Have you ever wanted to take a loved pet you’ve raised, feed it a cherry bomb, and admire the results? If so, you’ll probably sympathize with Square Enix’s approach to the Final Fantasy franchise with “Final Fantasy X-2“.

“Final Fantasy X-2″ (FFX2) is the first true sequel to a Final Fantasy game. Since the days of the venerable Nintendo Entertainment System, Square produced regular installments in the series. (We will ignore the irony of a game containing the modifier “Final” spawning fifteen-plus games on over seven different platforms during more than a decade.)

FFX2 continues the story in “Final Fantasy X” (FFX), the first of the franchise on the PlayStation 2 platform. FFX was a wonderful game with a great storyline about generations of summoners selflessly sacrificing their lives so that their families will live in peace, safe from the ravages of a force called Sin. FFX featured some great characters, including the protagonist – a young man who awakes after an attack on his city to find himself a thousand years in the future. FFX did away with the overworld map found in previous games, and leveraged the PS2’s power to create visually stunning settings and characters. Finally, the score to FFX was one of the best in recent years. The “Zanarkand” theme is one of the best pieces of original music to come from video games in some time.

“Kimahri no have musical talent, thus cannot help you save the world.”

So, now imagine that you’re a Square executive, with this popular game on your hands. The fans are happy, the game is selling well, and you see the opportunity to make a quick buck from the game’s popularity. What do you do?

Any self-respecting Final Fantasy fan would have probably made a game about the events prior to FFX. (Prequels are hot at the moment.) But, Square did the opposite and created a sequel. In order to cut down on expenses, there are very few new settings and places in the game. If you’ve played through FFX, everything looks exactly the same as when you left it. The character models are recycled and the proud warriors you met on your previous quest are now hawking souvenirs and guiding tourists at the key places in the previous game. Rather than invest in a good new score, Square replaced their successful composer and his music with J-Pop. (We’ll get to this in a minute.) Finally, Square cut the traditional amount of storytelling in half and replaced the missing hours with annoying mini-games and sidequests. In order to force the diehard fans to play through tedious tasks of finding cacti and digging for crap, Square tied the ending of the game to percentage of tasks the player completed. If you just want a good story and don’t feel like spending weeks finding and raising chocobos, you’ll be rewarded with one of several crappy endings. I understand the appeal of finding every last energy tank and missile in games like Metroid, but such things really piss me off when I’ve spent twenty hours on a game only to find out that I won’t find out what really happened, because I skipped an inane mini-game five hours into the game.

“If I cannot join your band, my flunkies will battle you. Repeatedly.”

However, with those warts, FFX2 might be forgivable, save for one last thing. In FFX2, you play the same three characters through the entire game, and your three characters are the fantasy equivalent of the Spice Girls. That’s right – you travel around the world, fighting monsters and solving mysteries as a girl band. When the population is about to start a civil war and things are getting ugly, you don’t bash some heads, instead you throw a goodwill concert. Not only do you play a girl band in the game, your characters’ powers and abilities are a function of the outfit they’re wearing. If they’re set up as a kick-ass physical warrior and find themselves against a magical foe, a quick trip to the wardrobe to don the “oh so cute” wizard outfit will set them up to cast Firaga, Ultima, and the rest of the traditional Final Fantasy spells.

“Introducing the ‘Saving Spira Through Bad Music’ Tour!”

Now, before a female reader accuses me of being a misogynist, let me be the first to say that I enjoy games with strong female characters. I’m a big fan of Namco’s Xenosaga series (featuring many female leads) and I enjoyed Square’s “Parasite Eve” (featuring a young female NYPD cop). However, I do not want to be playing a game where I’m sending the fantasy equivalents of Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera to fight evil and save the world. There’s a time and place for that kind of nonsense and it’s not inside my PlayStation.

Now, as I write this review, I must confess that I’ve not fed this game the bomb. I have been about two hours away from completing the game for the last two months, and despite my hopes to the contrary, I am dreading finishing this game. I’ve already sunk twenty-five hours into the game so two more hours shouldn’t be an issue. However, I don’t relish completing a Final Fantasy game knowing that I’m getting the ghetto ending. I keep telling myself that I’ll finish the game “this week”, but the will to do so never materializes. I keep telling myself that I need to reach closure and beat the final stage so I can find out what happens, but I’d rather pretend that some cynical bastard executive at Square Enix didn’t just take a dump on one of my favorite series in order to make a quick buck.

Update: The bomb has been served. I had to sit through long unskippable cutscenes (didn’t make it on the first try), dialog and writing that would make George Lucas blush, and the standard Final Fantasy “fight the boss five times before going home” battle. But the bomb has been served.