Want Knights of the Round? Of course you do, you can’t beat the game without it. You *could* spend endless hours racing chocobos, hoping to finally breed the right one, but who has thirty-five hours to spend on a minigame? Not you. You’re cleaning up child vomit and/or poop, holding down a 9-5 job, and wondering why your marriage is on its last limb because “just six more hours of racing my fake digital ostrich, honey, and then I’ll come to bed, I promise” is starting to wear really, really, thin, and oh God she’s just added an old boyfriend on Facebook.

What I’m saying is, when the chips are down, and you’re staring at the PSN “Buy Now!” button that will short-circuit all of that, give you the fabled Materia you so ardently seek, you *will* buy it. “Honey, I can explain this charge. It was either this or I drive you back into Luke’s arms. Yes, Luke, your high school boyfriend? We saw him at your reunion. The ankle monitor comes off this month! Don’t give me that look, I know you still feel for him!”

Square knows this. They’ve always known this. They hooked you back in the day. Your first taste, well, that was free. But now that the monkey is on your back, they know… they know you’ll slink back to them and say, “hey, y’all got any more of that DLC I can buy?”

FFVII was originally very different from what Squaresoft did before, but it seemed like they went ahead with it anyways because they knew what what they were doing was brilliant. Now, it seems like they have to let bits of the game out at a time in order to get feedback to see how the public reaction is, then ignore it anyway. These are really seasoned developers guiding the remake, and it surprises me that they have completely lost their sense for making games.

1 Materia: $1
10 Materia: $12
50 Materia (best value!): $80