First off, the games we knew plenty about already. Final Fantasy X-2 is obviously the next 'AAA' release from Square Enix, and if the success of Final Fantasy X (and indeed X-2 in Japan) is anything to go by, it's probably going to be the company's biggest game this year. So we can probably expect some more of these hyphen-2s further down the line. There's not a great deal to say about the game post-E3 that couldn't have been said beforehand, but nevertheless. Graphically, things haven't really moved on from FFX (although given how good looking that game was, we're not really complaining), but it's filled with new locations, new characters and new costumes for the old characters.

This is certainly FFX does Girl Power, and each of the scenes we played featured an almost entirely female cast. It's hardly Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, though - Final Fantasy is hugely popular with female audiences, and they would no doubt object to their favourite series turning into a flesh-fest. Series followers will be interested to hear that the game seems to have overhauled the combat system fairly significantly, and has introduced concepts like character classes - which can be changed mid-battle, complete with an anime-style transformation sequence.

E3 was the first chance we'd had to get any hands-on time with the game (although with X-2 apparently not out in the US until November, it doesn't take a tarot reader to see a Japanese import somewhere in our future), and really the game simply lived up to the brief we expected from it - more Final Fantasy X, with some nice tweaks. We did note that most of the original voice cast seem to be back in the frame for the returning characters - while we don't think the American cast were particularly fantastic in Final Fantasy X, it would certainly be jarring if they changed any of the voices between the games, so we're quite glad to see that they've apparently reassembled the same cast.