Hummm. Well the Chocobo breeding in 7 I thought was very interactive. You could breed better chocobo's and go race them, which I thought was fun, but more importantly you could breed them in order to get to different areas of the map in order to get rare materia. I don't know, I've played through twice and had a good time with it both times, but to each his own.

By the way, I do think XIII is going to have that combination battle system you thought would be good. It's like 12 with enemies visible on the battle field, but you will enter a battle screen like you wanted. Could be a big win for that game. I agree with you.

It's not a big deal over 8's conceptual nature, but I don't think trains in anyway make it a traditional fantasy setting. Afterall we use trains in the real world and we can put people on the moon. When I think of a traditional fantasy setting, I'm referring to High Fantasy, something akin to lord of the rings, and more of what we saw in the earlier games, esspecially the original and then really all the way up through 5. A very Forgotten Realms/ Lord of the Rings appeal. I didn't really see any of that in 8. I suppose the Sorceress, but the towns were highly modern if not sci-fi, esspecially Esthar, and the only real town that felt remotely fantasy was that place that Laguna grew up in. But that was only a minor town. You could go with the ruins where you aquire Odin, but that also was quite minor. Even the characters were military cadates, and not mages or knights or warriors in the traditional sense of this series, which by the way I thought was a good thing for that game and worked well. I'm just saying I didn't get a "fantasy" feel out of it.