So I was carousing around Borders a week ago and stumbled across this in the Philosophy section.

I read about 5 or 6 chapters of the book.

Now I'm pissed. I pretty much just wasted $17.95.
You will too. Don't buy this book, enticing as it may seem to those of you who are the deep-thinking type.

The yellow flag that should have prompted me to put the darned thing down was that it's clearly flagged as "unauthorized", which is a codeword for "authors likely have never played the games". As it turns out, they obviously haven't; this tome is nothing more than a compendium of undergraduate-level tangent-ridden banal essays that attempt to compare philosophical (and non-philosophical) ideas and principles through the worlds of Final Fantasy. In other words, it generally follows the format of "here's some sort of philosophical/ecological principle. Final Fantasy VII demonstrates it in X fashion." Seriously. That's it.

One of the authors actually made a large mistake in thinking that Cloud and Squall were in the same game. Furthermore, on the back of the book, it claims that it covered titles up to #13; the copyright on the book is 2009. Guess they forgot the Roman numeral for 12 isn't XIII.

If you're remotely curious, then pick it up. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

I haven't bothered searching yet, but I'm sure that denizens of this site have probably done a much better job getting philosophical FF-style. And this shit's free.

</rant>