I haven't played as the Crusader in awhile. They really suck on the offense front compared to the other classes, and I'm not sure that specializing in defense is actually very useful in that game.

Geez. There were plenty of boss encounters where I wouldn't have won if I hadn't had three equally-strong characters waiting in reserve.

I swear they nerfed all the storyline bosses. There were plenty of places where the mobs on the way to the boss were tougher than the boss itself, including on the Bahamut.

Did you have any final thoughts on FFXII? I know it wasn't your bag, but you always have good points to make.

The story is so good in so many ways (the way it handles a major character's potential suicide is brilliant). It does what The Witcher series was praised for in regards to branching narrative, but better and a decade earlier.

So what am I playing this weekend?

I'll get to what I'm playing in another post, but I beat Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age earlier this week and have a lot of thoughts to share on the game. I consider it one of the best Final Fantasies, and certainly one of the most unique in the mainline franchise.

Pan's Labyrinth is the only one I've watched, and I'd say it is overall his best film. The (subtitled) dialogue is nothing amazing or memorable, but it doesn't actively detract from the film the way it does in, say, Pacific Rim.

He was diplomatic, but you could tell in interviews and special features that he wasn't super stoked about Hellboy 2, with the Troll Market sequence—the film's best one—being a point he was especially clear was not how he would've done things.

Yeah, he just has no skill with dialogue. I don't know if his Spanish-language projects are any better in that regard, but the subtitles make them seem similarly workmanlike.

Dammit, I meant "Gore Verbinski." Every damn time!

I like his output, but every del Toro movie would be a little better as a Gore Vidal movie.

I started reading the comics after seeing the films, and they are indeed very different from one another. The del Toro films are much more overtly wacky than the source material, and almost infinitely more interested in romance as a driver of the story.

The creator of Hellboy, Mike Mignola, seems to be all on-board with this one. I don't think it was necessarily studio execs holding the franchise back.

I genuinely think that Mignola just didn't like the direction that del Toro took it in and was more of an obstacle than anyone has publicly admitted.

"HULK HERE TO SMASH!"
"Uh, I don't…I don't think I can handle that."
"NO, HULK POWER BOTTOM."
"Oh. Well let's do this!"

That seems to have been the thinking with Hellboy in Hell, but then Mignola got bored of it. The prequel series Hellboy and the BPRD and the occasional graphic novel (Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea being the most recent) seem to be filling that role right now. Hellboy and the BPRD has been particularly fun.

Watching featurettes and reading interviews, I strongly suspect that Mignola wasn't super satisfied with Hellboy II and may have been more of an obstacle to getting Hellboy III off the ground than anyone let on.

Hot take: Every Guillermo del Toro movie would be a little bit better as a Gore Verbinski movie.

Saw that last night and it was very cute.